#as like a way of facilitating that chapter combination thing
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Arslan Senki Chapter 128 (Part 2)
What a top choice, contrasting Arslan, the ruler Pars needs, being unable to draw the sword that would prove his right to rule, with Hilmes, who is choosing to brute force a coronation ceremony in order to give his position legitimacy.
While Arslan freely admits that his bloodline gives him no claim, Hilmes is still trying to maintain the lie that he is the son of Osroes. Ugh, watching him falter over this line during the ceremony was hard. He is far from at his best here, but I still have sympathy for him despite all that he's done.
However he needs to BE NICER TO ZANDEH, DAMN IT.
Things in Ecbatana... are not good. We get an overview: dry wells, Andragoras's growing army outside, closed gates, dwindling food, friction between citizens and soldiers, all combined to insinuate that it's only a matter of time before Hilmes's control of the city is overturned.
And a coronation won't fix this, (and nor will a crown patch up the emotional damage that was inflicted on him by Andragoras's big reveal) but what else can Hilmes do right now?
Ashamed to say I laughed at this. His face...
Man, Zandeh really is trying his best in this chapter. He and his men were the ones who went scrounging up golden coins to melt down in order for Hilmes to actually have a crown to wear after Guiscard stole the real one, but Hilmes isn't in the mood to appreciate his efforts.
(That little guy is with him in this scene, looking nervous of Hilmes's reaction! Feels like Zandeh also knows Hilmes isn't going to love what they've done, but as he says, it's the best they can do for now.)
The fact that Zandeh adores Hilmes and can't wait to see him crowned yet is willing to tell it to him straight: calling Sam away from defending the underground waterways to attend to coronation ceremony is a bad move.
Fucking ouch. At least he didn't tell Zandeh to go and watch the passageways himself!
'The ceremony was a miserable, spare, and unsatisfying one' 🙃
Starting out strong.
My boy is so happy!
When Hilmes starts talking about 'King Osroes's legitimate heir', things start to go to shit. He falters, Sam and Zandeh can see something is wrong (and while Zandeh is puzzled, you know Sam knows) and then after failing to get the words out twice Hilmes rips the cloth off his scar and fucking commits to that lie.
I wanted a mask-free coronation for Hilmes but NOT LIKE THIS 😭
Sacrificing Innocentis to the gods isn't going to make that lie any truer, but Hilmes is just grasping at anything that will give him even a whisper of security right now.
Zandeh is very into it, lmao. I love him but am unsurprised to see his rough treatment of Innocentis. If I recall correctly he was excited about the idea of killing him before.
Filing this away under 'things that should not be hot'. (Also noting that he removed his armour for the ceremony 👀 and that he's abandoned the idea of burning Innocentis alive in favour of a different method.)
Also... how blind can you be, Hilmes? "Thus will I show what happens to those of other lands whose ambitions threaten the peace of Pars!"? Pars is your own country, and you facilitated that. Pars would likely still be at peace if not for you and your ambitions.
Anyway, Innocentis, who is likely delirious with fever from his wound, asks for sugar water, which enrages Hilmes so much he's about to strike him with his sword, when who should burst in (no doubt through those poorly-defended waterways, sigh) than Team Arslan?
(The coronation ceremony is taking place 10 days after Team Arslan set out for Mount Demavant. Chapter 126 says they 'rode East along the Continental Highway for several days' until they encountered Don Ricardo, so it seems a little more time has passed between the events of the first part of the chapter and those of the second).
This fills me with fear because no way will Hilmes withdraw.
Anyway, there's a panel of Team Arslan entering the room where you can't see what weapon Arslan is holding. Rukhnabad, you there?
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Hi dear Ms. Wet Cat, I’d like to scream about the latest Pieces chapter if that’s all right!
I think taking away flirting from Astarion is fucking GENIUS. It’s so fascinating to see him try to navigate direct communication and being so… honest?? We all knew but the contrast really illuminates how much he was actually deflecting all the fucking time.
Also I’m now so invested in Astarion and Ser Verity’s relationship I’m not even kidding. You write her delightfully. And I realized we definitely need to see more Astarion/cat action in general. Let 👏🏻 Astarion 👏🏻 pet 👏🏻 cats 👏🏻 (and wear jumpers because that was fucking adorable)
I’ve been thinking about your Astarion and wanted to ask you — do you think he is sort of even more weary of himself than in game? Cazador controlled him but not to the point of complete override like Ascendent did. He used ALL of him, none of him was his own. And now even tiny things like his body language and ways of communicating feel tainted?
hello very lovely anon, thank you for the message! <3
I'm really thankful for the kind feedback! Act 3 has weirdly and accidentally become the most AU characterisation of both characters, and I only appreciated this once I'd returned to my in-game narrative lmao. Astarion is feeling guilty and weird about flirting!! Rosalie is just tired and wants a hug!! He's waiting for an explosive argument and a roast that's never going to come, because Rose said all she needed to to the Ascendent and she just wants to rest!!
Anyway, it means the chapters are taking a little longer to draft and a lot more thought than usual. I'm really thankful people are enjoying it, I think it's going to be fun getting them both back onto an even keel but I'm doing it carefully. Knowing readers are still on board with my shenanigans is always a relief lmao.
As to your question! I one day dream about writing a meta post of what the Ascendent is so I can explain every facet of my thinking, but the fear the Ascendent represents to me is [REDACTED - to be explained in due course], and the fear he represents for Astarion is a mixture of extreme, unpleasant dissociation in traumatic episodes, [REDACTED - to be explained in due course], and the idea that someone only ever wanted the facade. That they only ever wanted the experience the body and what the body could facilitate, with no care for what's underneath. So yeah, he's feeling some kind of way about himself. Like yes, he's done horrible things to Rosalie, but he wasn't in control of any of it - that's the dissociation. You're right, it did use all of him. But he also has a set of memories confirming that what people wanted from his was just sexual fantasy and power, and so while there's disgust at his own behaviour and the time he's lost basically being driven by an outside force, there's also the knowledge that people liked him like that, which um. I don't know. Confirms a lot of what I think his fears are? That personally would cause me to freak out. No wonder flirting feels weird!
(To end on a lighter note, Ser Verity is a combination of three cats in my life, my two little demons and then my bestie's cat, so truly like. just a chimera of cat energy!)
#asks#anons#again before anyone thinks I'm making a judgement on Ascended!Ending I'm literally writing a horror story. none of this is canon!#wip: pieces still stuck in your teeth#lovely words from lovely people
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stage 01 presentation
okay so we had to do the research about academic industry. And this is a group work. So my group did different kinds of researches under this topic.
Semi government universities
I did some researches for semi government universities. And found useful information to work on our assignment.
Btw I had to make some questions to interview. Here’s my questions,
can you remember the first day you went there. Can you remember what u felt that day.
what kind of a impression you had when u entering to the university. And is the same way you have it now.
Did you get any troubles, struggles kinda things in your beginning of the journey at (name of the university)
how was your syllabus in ( the uni)
did yall had examinations or did yall just had assignments
how about your lecturers
how about the lecture hours (are they cool/ boring/ enjoyed etc…)
how about your peers
how you think about your university now.
is there anything you think that they should develop or add to their university or to the syllabus?
(as an extra ques) if you got a chance to go back to those old days would you like to go?
what are some things about your university that you think are unique to your university ?
how did you find the transition from high school to university?
What do u think semi gov uni compared to others
Interview - i
sorry guys i can't upload the video. maybe because it's kinda long video.
Interview - ii
this interview i did trough DMs. cause my sister was so busy, preparing for her final examinations.
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Q: Can you remember the first day you went there? Can you remember what you felt that day.
A: I vividly remember the first day I went to the SAB Campus. I felt a mix of excitement and nervousness, as I was entering a new chapter of my life.
Q: what kind of a impression you had when u entering to the university. And is the same way you have it now.
A: When entering the university, I was impressed by the campus's infrastructure and the welcoming atmosphere. While my impression remains positive overall, my perspective has evolved with time and experience.
Q: Did you get any troubles, struggles kinda things in your beginning of the journey at (name of the university)
A: Like many freshmen, I encountered some struggles at the beginning of my journey at SAB Campus. Adjusting to the new academic environment and managing time effectively.
Q: how was your syllabus in ( the uni)
A: The syllabus at SAB Campus was comprehensive and well-structured, covering a wide range of topics relevant to my field of study.
Q: did yall had examinations or did yall just had assignments
A: We had a combination of examinations and assignments throughout the academic year.
Q: how about your lecturers
A: The lecturers at SAB Campus were knowledgeable, supportive, and dedicated to helping students succeed. They provided valuable insights, guidance, and mentorship throughout the learning process.
Q: how about the lecture hours (are they cool/ boring/ enjoyed etc…)
A: Most of the sessions were more engaging and I enjoyed it.
Q: how about your peers
A: My peers at SAB Campus were diverse, talented, and passionate about their areas of study. Interacting with them enriched my learning experience and facilitated valuable exchanges of ideas and perspectives.
Q: how you think about your university now.
A: Reflecting on my university experience now, I have a deep appreciation for the education and opportunities it provided me. It has played a significant role in shaping my academic and personal growth.
Q: is there anything you think that they should develop or add to their university or to the syllabus?
A: While SAB Campus offers a strong educational experience, there are areas where it could continue to expand. This must include new degree and mastered programs.
Q(as an extra ques): if you got a chance to go back to those old days would you like to go?
A: If given the chance, I would gladly revisit those old days at SAB Campus. Despite the challenges and pressures, it was a time of growth, discovery, and meaningful connections that I would cherish revisiting.
Q: Is there anything you think that is unique to your university compared to others?
A: I think there is a difference between the government and semi-government universities. These differences impact the university's infrastructure, faculty resources, research opportunities, and overall quality of education.
Q: What is the difference between your high school life and university life?
A: Universities typically offer higher education programs. but Schools provide primary and secondary education. Both universities and schools are educational institutions, they serve distinct purposes and cater to different stages of academic and personal development.
************************************************************************
that's it. hope ya'll get a knowledge about academic education. see you on next blog. take care till then. byeeee.
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We live in a world of screens and fast everything from food to clothing. We need to provide spaces in our communities to reflect and reconnect to the natural world.
Communities started reconnecting with green spaces during Covid lockdowns. As Venturing outside became a vital relief from the day to day.
Introducing art outside in natural spaces helps people to engage and settle in, being in nature extends the experience. Globally artists are stepping outside working within their communities. Projects that focus on local resources to improve outdoor spaces with art. Having social impacts, working in collaboration and facilitating human connections. Examples of global projects. The Incredible Edible Park, CA, USA. A park that grows edible crops and is maintained by the community. “An exercise in sustainability and community spirit”. ‘Rise up International’ brings young people and artists together using “art as a tool for social change”.
Resourcefulness - showing others what can be created, out of things you’ve found or collected. This opens new thinking an awareness that trickles down. A sparking of new ideas, a new way of looking at discarded and surplus items. The usefulness of things in nature like natural pigments, tools, endless fibres and things that you can construct with e.g. willows / hazel. Endless inspiration.
Creative cities funding this year from B-ham city council for B22F allowed for community arts organisations to deliver Arts programmes of all kinds this summer. 82% of the organisations were Arts organisations from the West midlands, with a 106 community-based projects. With collaborations from across the Commonwealth. Connecting people from all over the country. Combining practices and collaboration is important, so artists can create experiences that are transformative and impact social change.
The Art of helping others, Mark Smith
Green is on the agenda collaboration is the future. Opportunities are there to get involved in this sector if you have a passion for impacting positive change, human connectivity and greater change.
Below snapshot of WGSN trend matrix 2024
With the arts becoming recognised as important to health. The NHS trust fund now has a service Arts For Health that freelance artists can sign up to.
Funding opportunities are available for individuals or groups from numerous organisations, the bigger ones being Arts council, National lottery and Children in Need.
Arts council toolkit for making the case for community art .
Included in the Government’s 25 year plan to improve environments, A Green Future. Chapter 3 of this plan makes a pledge to connecting people with Green spaces to improve health and wellbeing in communities. Creating more opportunities within nature.
"Human Beings connected can create any future" Rushkoff, D.
As community artists we can encourage, connections to the environment. Inspiring those we work with to consider what we can create, rather than consume. With the planet and its inhabitants at the centre of our practices.
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Squidworld
Squidworld.io is a vehicle. It's designed for you — Squid Game fans
INTRODUCTION Are you ready to start the Game?
Will you be the last man or woman standing when our SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game kicks off and take home the Grand Finale Prize Pool of 30,000,000,000 SQW? Join us on this exciting journey! Let's start by thanking you for considering us! As a Team, we are committed to restoring trust and transparency in this crypto space, while at the same time providing our investors and loyal followers with a safe and trusted portal that is fun, exciting and profitable. A well planned and well thought out project is the foundation for a successful business. We understand this.
SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game is the ultimate adventure game that will be part of our First Chapter in this token life cycle. Yes, we have more plans! The concept behind this Game is to provide our investors with a SquidGame themed adventure game with prizes and in-game purchases leading to a Grand Finale Prize Pool of 3% of the total token supply. This can be very interesting especially if we reach our envisaged market cap when the time comes! A new SquidWorld Island website will be built to facilitate this.
Are you sick and tired of seeing your investments scammed?
We also! This is why the SquidWorld Team decided to build this portal to restore the trust and confidence that is sorely lacking in this crypto space while keeping things decentralized. ! Join us on this fun journey and we guarantee you won't see another Squid website or meme!
Our plan is to provide you (our valued investors) a one stop portal full of latest utilities like Swap with Token staking and LP farming, NFT minting, staking & marketplace. WE ARE HERE TO STAY! The SquidWorld team aims to be one of the best (if not the only) Squid Game related meme site that will combine all the standard offerings of crypto related utilities PLUS more! P2E mini games SquidWorld and SquidWorld Metaverse Game will have you (as an investor) compete for different prizes and in the end the SquidWorld Island Metaverse Grand Finale Prize of at least 3% (of the total share of SquidWorld tokens) as the Netflix series Squid Game Season 2 approaches!
Marketing Strategy and Why the Name SquidWorld
Squidworld.io is a vehicle. It's designed for you — our Squid Game fans! The launch of the SquidWorld (SQW) token will now allow us to build on the current phenomenon that is Netflix TV Series Squid Game 2. With your help and support, we will be ready to become the meme portal for all Squid related utilities.
We are investors like you. We've seen time and time again, endless teams regardless of what they've done before, start a project, make big promises only to fall victim to personal greed and/or be undermined by internal team tensions and dynamics. We don't want to just be a Squid degen meme site! We will be your Squid Game Community token. Your support and trust are the key ingredients to make this project a success and a household name!
We are in discussions with a number of well-known marketing companies to enable the exposure we seek, but as with any startup, cost and value for money are usually part of the growing difficulty. This is why quite a lot of private funding has been injected to make things happen behind the scenes.
Problems As We See
Blockchain technology — more specifically, the meme token space — has come a long way in terms of utility and cutting-edge decentralization. However, it is a tough road filled with undertones of regulation, deception, carpet pulling, and opportunism. As investors ourselves, we understand this. We want to change this! The issue we see in this space is not just about the Team's ability to code its capabilities and/or implement smart contracts and/or utilities, but rather its ability to leverage existing blockchain technology and bring together the skills needed to plan, design, develop and market tokens. effectively. This is what we do every day! With the Squidworld.io Core Team,
Market Sentiment
One of our main hurdles when we come together as a Team is how do we restore trust, transparency and values to the Community? There is no easy way to deal with this especially when you (as an investor) have been bombarded with so many empty promises to date. As we mentioned earlier, we are investors just like you. We understand your fears and reservations. This is why we have invested our hard earned money into development even before the token hits the market. Let us cooperate with us. Give us your support and trust, and we guarantee you will have a Core Team that puts your interests first!
ROADMAP Core Team Onboarding Website Releases Smart Contract Information Audited & Implemented Project Lead KYC Team Members Releases Documentation (internal) Whitepaper Social Media & Community Settings Started Pre Launch Influencer Marketing Partnerships AMAs & Community Marketing Partnerships Airdrops & Giveaways Twitter & Telegram Competitions Starts Private Sales ( 20 BNB) Pink Sale Launch Started Launch Marketing Stage 1 on PancakeSwap Platform Swap & Staking Release P2E Mini Release SquidGame Theme Game Started NFT Platform Development Started Platform Development Lottery & Sweepstakes Telegram & Twitter Biggest Purchases & Purchases Comps Apply CMC & Register CG Release Lottery & Sweepstakes Platform Updates &New “Squid Game Island” Interactive Website Release Begins Phase 2 Squid Game Marketing Release NFT Staking / Minting / Marketpalce Starts Development of SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game Starts Discussions with CEX Starts Development of Multichain Bridge platform Starts Discussions with Netflix's SquidGame Series Identifying Real-World Uses for SquidWorld PHASE Token PHASE PHASE Release SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game Platform Starting Phase 3 Marketing Apply for CERTIK Audit Grand Final Prize Winner Announced Security & Onboarding Real World Utilities Partnerships Whitepaper Update & more to come!
Tokenomics
10% BUY AND SELL TAX
BURNING: 1% for burning wallets (dead addresses).
REFLECT: 2% auto-reflective generous for all owners.
REWARDS: 1% into the Prize Wallet (in addition to the 5% already in the wallet. The winner of the Squid World Island Metaverse Grand Final will be guaranteed a minimum of 3% of the prize)
TIM: 1% Team wallet.
CLEARANCE: 2% Liquidity.
MARKETING: 3% Marketing Wallet.
Maximum hold in Wallet is 3%
Buy up to 0.5% & Sell up to 0.5% per trade
No internal wallet for tax calculation in Wallet
Roadmap
State 1
Introducing the core team
Information website release
Audited and Deployed Smart Contracts
KYC Project Manager (InterFi Network & AnonyDoxx)
Doxxed team member (internal)
Official report release
Social media & community settings
Start Marketing Before Launch
Influencer partnership
AMA & Marketing Partnership
Airdrop & Community Rewards
Twitter & Telegram Contest
Phase 2
Start selling privately (20 BNB)
Launch pink discount program starts
Start Marketing Stage 1
Launch on PancakeSwap
Release of swap & staking platforms
Mini P2E SquidGame theme game release
Starting NFT platform development
Start developing lottery & lottery platform
Telegram & Twitter Top Buy & Earn Comps
Sign up for CMC & CG. List
Stage 3
Lottery release & lottery platform
Update and release new interactive website "Squid Game Island"
Marketing Stage 2 Begins
Squid Game Release NFT Staking / Minting / Marketpalce
Starting the Development of the SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game
Start a discussion with CEX
Started Multichain Bridge platform development
Start a discussion with the Netflix series SquidGame
Define real world usage for SquidWorld token
Stage 4
Release of platform game Metaverse Island SquidWorld
Start Marketing Stage 3
Register for the CERTIK test
Overall winner announced
Secure & show real world utility partnership
Updated whitepaper and more to come!
Team
KrypTOK21
LEARNERS & PROJECT LEADERS
KryptoK21 has more than 25 years of experience, business management, human resources, IT business system/network management, as well as back end & front end web development. Have been interested in crypto since 2014. KYC and committed to bringing this to the moon!
Manager
Adult Companion & STRATEGY
Managers have a long track record of working in the IT industry. He has been in the Crypto space since 2017. He started his own closed TG community in 2018, “Scandinavian Crypto Pubtalk”. He has been the founder of several previous BSC projects.
J3C
COO & CORE. TEAM
J3C has more than 15 years of experience in business management. He has owned and run many successful businesses. Specializes in PR work, team building, marketing and business development and business strategy planning. Passionate to be a part of a real crypto project and care deeply about its investors.
EVOLUTION
EXPERIENCE BLOCKCHAIN & GAME DEVELOPMENT
We partnered with Snelwebcenter BV ( https://snelwebcenter.nl ) to initially develop some of our add-ons. The team is experienced and well known in the crypto space with around 20+ developers. We are in the process of finding more partners to help us with our roadmap.
Conclusion
Squid World is one of the best projects I've seen so far. This project precedes the others. Since everything in this project is very clear, it can be said that the future of this project is very bright. Hopefully investors can benefit when investing in the project. Since this project is going according to plan so far, I think this project will be much better. Because yes, but most of these big investors have invested in the project. I think the future of this project is bright.
For more information
Website: https://www.squidworld.io/
Whitepaper: https://www.squidworld.io/Squidworld_Litepaper.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SquidWorldTeam
Telegram: https://t.me/SquidWorldOfficial
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKHuF9vqAtFFqpkFTTLxhg
Username: pause
profilelinks; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3357659
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SquidWorld
Squid World — USEFUL PROJECT FOR OLD AND NEW INVESTORS WORLDWIDE.
INTRODUCTION
Are you ready to start the game? Will you be the last man or woman standing when our SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game begins and take home the Grand Finale Prize Pool of 30,000,000,000 SQW? Join us on this exciting journey!
SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game is the ultimate adventure game that will be part of our First Chapter in the life cycle of this token. Yes, we have more plans! The concept behind this Game is to give our investors a SquidGame themed adventure game with prizes and in-game purchases leading to a Grand Finale Prize Pool of 3% of the total token supply. This can be very exciting especially if we achieve the market capitalization we envision when the time comes! A new SquidWorld Island website will be developed to facilitate this.
Let's start by thanking you for considering us! As a Team, we are committed to restoring trust and transparency in this crypto space, while at the same time providing our investors and loyal followers with a secure and trusted portal that is fun, exciting, and profitable.
A well-planned and well-thought-out project is the basis for a successful business. We understand this. Our Core Team members are experienced business and IT professionals with a combined 50+ years of real-world experience in logistics & change management, information technology & business systems. We come to you with strong determination and strong motivation to take SquidWorld Token to the next level!
Are you sick and tired of seeing your investment cheated?
We too! This is why Team SquidWorld decided to develop this portal to restore the trust and confidence that is sorely lacking in this crypto space while keeping things decentralized. ! Join us on this fun ride and we guarantee you'll never see another Squid website or meme!
Our plan is to provide you (our valuable investors) a one-stop portal full of latest utilities like Swap with Token staking and LP farming, NFT minting, staking & marketplace. WE ARE HERE TO STAY! The SquidWorld team aims to be one of the best (if not the only) Game Squid related meme sites that will combine all the standard offerings of crypto related utilities PLUS more! The P2E SquidWorld and SquidWorld Metaverse Game mini games will make you (as an investor) compete to get different prizes as well as the SquidWorld Island Metaverse Grand Finale Prize of at least 3% (from the total distribution of SquidWorld tokens) as the Netflix series Squid Game Season 2 approaches!
Marketing Strategy and Why the Name SquidWorld
Squidworld.io is a vehicle. This is designed for you — our Squid Game fans! The launch of the SquidWorld (SQW) token now will allow us to build on the current phenomenon that is the Netflix TV Series Squid Game 2. With your help and support, we will be ready to become a meme portal for all Squid related utilities.
We are investors like you. We've seen time and time again, endless teams break away from what they've done before, start a project, make big promises only to fall victim to personal greed and/or be undermined by internal team tensions and dynamics. We don't want to just be a Squid degen meme site! We will be your Game Squid Community token. Your support and trust are the main ingredients to make this project a success and a household name!
We are in discussions with a number of well-known marketing firms to enable the exposure we seek, but as with any new enterprise, cost and value for money are usually part of the difficulty of growing. This is why quite a lot of private funds have been injected to make things happen behind the scenes.
Market Sentiment
One of our main obstacles when we come together as a Team is how do we restore trust, transparency, and values for the Community? There is no easy way to overcome this especially when you (as an investor) have been bombarded with so many empty promises so far. As we have mentioned before, we are investors like you. We understand your fears and reservations. This is why we have invested our hard-earned money into development even before the tokens hit the market. Let us work with you. Give us your support and trust, and we guarantee you will have a Core Team that prioritizes your interests!
Audited and KYc team
We understand that transparency, trust, and confidence in this crypto meme space is hard to come by. Every precaution is taken to ensure that your funds are SAFU with our Team. Although we cannot control the daily market sentiment, we can offer you a safe platform, a secure platform, and a skilled, experienced, and committed Team that will push this token into the stratosphere! YOU — The community is our main driving force and the key to our success. We need your support! Let's take this token to the Million dollar market cap together!
Appreciation and Partnership
Rewards and Partnerships are the two main ingredients for a successful token. We understand this. Tokenomics is designed with this in mind while ensuring that we attract the best and brightest to take tokens to the next level. A successful partnership with Netflix's Squid Game Series is one of our goals. Our road map is directed to add value to Seri. SquidWorld WILL aim to be Seri's partner of choice if Squid Game decides to enter the crypto space!
Tokenomics
10% PURCHASE AND SALE TAX
BURNING: 1% for burning wallet (dead address).
REFLECT: A generous 2% auto-reflective for all owners.
PRIZE: 1% into the Prize Wallet (in addition to the 5% already in the wallet. The winner of the Grand Final Squid World Island Metaverse will be guaranteed a minimum of 3% of the prize)
TIM: 1% of Tim's wallet.
CLEARANCE: Liquidity 2%.
MARKETING: 3% Marketing Wallet.
Maximum withholding in Wallet is 3%
Buy up to 0.5% & Sell up to 0.5% per trade
There is no internal wallet for tax calculation in Wallet
Road map
State 1
Introduce the core team
Information website release
Audited and Deployed Smart Contracts
KYC Project Manager (InterFi Network & AnonyDoxx)
Doxxed team member (internal)
Official report release
Social media & community settings
Start Marketing Before Launch
Influencer partnerships
AMA & Marketing Partnerships
Airdrop & Community Gifts
Twitter & Telegram contests
Phase 2
Start selling privately (20 BNB)
Launch the pink discount program begins
Start Level 1 Marketing
Launch at PancakeSwap
Release of swap & staking platforms
Mini P2E SquidGame theme game release
Started development of NFT platform
Start developing lotteries & lottery platforms
Telegram & Twitter Top Buy & Get Comps
Register for CMC & CG. Register
Level 3
Lottery releases & lottery platforms
Update and release new interactive website "Squid Game Island"
Marketing Level 2 Begins
Release of Squid Game NFT Staking / Minting / Marketplace
Starting SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game Development
Start a discussion with CEX
Begin development of the Multichain Bridge platform
Start a discussion with the Netflix series SquidGame
Define real-world usage for SquidWorld tokens
Level 4
The release of the platform game Metaverse Island SquidWorld
Start Level 3 Marketing
Register for the CERTIK test
The overall winner is announced
Secure & demonstrate real-world utility partnerships
Updated white paper and more to come!
Tim
KrypTOK21
LEARNER & PROJECT LEADER
KryptoK21 has more than 25 years of experience in business management, human resources, IT business system/network management, as well as back end & front end web development. Been interested in crypto since 2014. KYC and committed to take this to the moon!
Manager
Adult Companion & STRATEGY
The manager has a long track record in working in the IT industry. He has been in the Crypto space since 2017. He started his own closed TG community in 2018, "Scandinavian Crypto Pubtalk". He has been the founder of several previous BSC projects.
J3C
COO & CORE. TEAM
J3C has more than 15 years of experience in business management. He has owned and run many successful businesses. Specialization in PR work, team development, marketing and business development and business strategy planning. Excited to be part of a real crypto project and really cares about its investors.
EVOLUTION
BLOCKCHAIN EXPERIENCE & GAME DEVELOPMENT
We partnered with Snelwebcenter BV ( https://snelwebcenter.nl ) to initially develop some of our add-ons. The team is experienced and well-known in the crypto space with around 20+ developers. We are in the process of finding more partners to help us with our roadmap.
Conclusion
Squid World is one of the best projects I've seen so far. This project is ahead of others. Because everything in this project is very clear, it can be said that the future of this project is very bright. Hopefully investors can get profit when investing in the project. Since this project is going according to plan so far, I think this project will be much better. Because yes, but most of these big investors have invested in the project. I think the future of this project is bright.
For more information
Website: https://www.squidworld.io/
Whitepaper: https://www.squidworld.io/Squidworld_Litepaper.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SquidWorldTeam
Telegram: https://t.me/SquidWorldOfficial
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKHuF9vqAtFFqpkFTTLxhg
Username: Sewdiee
Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2979414
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Squidworld
Squidworld.io is a vehicle.
INTRODUCTION
Are you ready to start the Game?
SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game is the ultimate adventure game that will be part of our First Chapter in this token life cycle. Yes, we have more plans! The concept behind this Game is to provide our investors with a SquidGame themed adventure game with prizes and in-game purchases leading to a Grand Finale Prize Pool of 3% of the total token supply. This can be very interesting especially if we reach our envisaged market cap when the time comes! A new SquidWorld Island website will be built to facilitate this.
Will you be the last man or woman standing when our SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game kicks off and take home the Grand Finale Prize Pool of 30,000,000,000 SQW? Join us on this exciting journey!
Let's start by thanking you for considering us! As a Team, we are committed to restoring trust and transparency in this crypto space, while at the same time providing our investors and loyal followers with a safe and trusted portal that is fun, exciting and profitable.
Are you sick and tired of seeing your investments scammed?
We also! This is why the SquidWorld Team decided to build this portal to restore the trust and confidence that is sorely lacking in this crypto space while keeping things decentralized. ! Join us on this fun journey and we guarantee you won't see another Squid website or meme!
A well planned and well thought out project is the foundation for a successful business. We understand this. Our Core Team members are experienced business and IT professionals with a combined 50+ years of real experience in logistics & change management, information technology & business systems. We come to you with strong determination and strong motivation to take SquidWorld Token to the next level!
Our plan is to provide you (our valued investors) a one stop portal full of latest utilities like Swap with Token staking and LP farming, NFT minting, staking & marketplace. WE ARE HERE TO STAY! The SquidWorld team aims to be one of the best (if not the only) Squid Game related meme site that will combine all the standard offerings of crypto related utilities PLUS more! P2E mini games SquidWorld and SquidWorld Metaverse Game will have you (as an investor) compete for different prizes and in the end the SquidWorld Island Metaverse Grand Finale Prize of at least 3% (of the total share of SquidWorld tokens) as the Netflix series Squid Game Season 2 approaches!
Marketing Strategy and Why the Name SquidWorld
Squidworld.io is a vehicle. It's designed for you — our Squid Game fans! The launch of the SquidWorld (SQW) token will now allow us to build on the current phenomenon that is Netflix TV Series Squid Game 2. With your help and support, we will be ready to become the meme portal for all Squid related utilities.
We are investors like you. We've seen time and time again, endless teams regardless of what they've done before, start a project, make big promises only to be victimized by personal greed and/or undermined by internal team tensions and dynamics. We don't want to just be a Squid degen meme site! We will be your Squid Game Community token. Your support and trust are the key ingredients to make this project a success and a household name!
We are in discussions with a number of well-known marketing companies to enable the exposure we seek, but as with any startup, cost and value for money are usually part of the growing difficulty. This is why quite a lot of private funding has been injected to make things happen behind the scenes.
Market Sentiment
One of our main hurdles when we come together as a Team is how do we restore trust, transparency and values to the Community? There is no easy way to deal with this especially when you (as an investor) have been bombarded with so many empty promises to date. As we mentioned earlier, we are investors just like you. We understand your fears and reservations. This is why we have invested our hard earned money into development even before the token hits the market. Let us cooperate with us. Give us your support and trust, and we guarantee you will have a Core Team that puts your interests first!
Audited team and KYc
We understand that transparency, trust and confidence in this crypto meme space are hard to come by. Every care is taken to ensure that your funds are SAFU with our Team. While we cannot control the daily market sentiment, we can offer you a secure platform, a guaranteed platform and a skilled, experienced and committed Team that will propel this token into the stratosphere! YOU — Community is our main driving force and the key to our success. We need your support! Let's take this token to the Million dollar marketcap together!
Awards and Partnerships
Rewards and Partnerships are the two main ingredients for a successful token. We understand this. Tokenomics was designed with this in mind while ensuring that we attract the best and brightest to take tokens to the next level. A successful partnership with Netflix's Squid Game Series is one of our goals. Our roadmap is geared towards adding value to the Series. SquidWorld WILL aim to be the Series' partner of choice should Squid Games decide to enter the crypto space!
Tokenomics
10% BUY AND SELL TAX
BURNING: 1% for burning wallets (dead addresses).
REFLECT: 2% auto-reflective generous for all owners.
REWARDS: 1% into the Prize Wallet (in addition to the 5% already in the wallet. The winner of the Squid World Island Metaverse Grand Final will be guaranteed a minimum of 3% of the prize)
TEAM: 1% Team wallet.
CLEARANCE: 2% Liquidity.
MARKETING: 3% Marketing Wallet.
Maximum hold in Wallet is 3%
Buy up to 0.5% & Sell up to 0.5% per trade
No internal wallet for tax calculation in Wallet
Roadmap
State 1
Introducing the core team
Information website release
Audited and Deployed Smart Contracts
KYC Project Manager (InterFi Network & AnonyDoxx)
Doxxed team member (internal)
Official report release
Social media & community settings
Start Marketing Before Launch
Influencer partnership
AMA & Marketing Partnership
Airdrops & Community Rewards
Twitter & Telegram Contest
Phase 2
Start selling privately (20 BNB)
Launch pink discount program starts
Start Marketing Stage 1
Launch on PancakeSwap
Release of swap & staking platforms
Mini P2E SquidGame theme game release
Starting NFT platform development
Start developing lottery & lottery platform
Telegram & Twitter Top Buy & Earn Comps
Sign up for CMC & CG. List
Stage 3
Lottery release & lottery platform
Update and release new interactive website "Squid Game Island"
Marketing Stage 2 Begins
Squid Game Release NFT Staking / Minting / Marketpalce
Starting the Development of the SquidWorld Island Metaverse Game
Start a discussion with CEX
Started Multichain Bridge platform development
Start a discussion with the Netflix series SquidGame
Define real world usage for SquidWorld token
Stage 4
Release of platform game Metaverse Island SquidWorld
Start Marketing Stage 3
Register for the CERTIK test
Overall winner announced
Secure & show real world utility partnership
Updated whitepaper and more to come!
Team
KrypTOK21
LEARNERS & PROJECT LEADERS
KryptoK21 has more than 25 years of experience, business management, human resources, IT business system/network management, as well as back end & front end web development. Have been interested in crypto since 2014. KYC and committed to bringing this to the moon!
Manager
Adult Companion & STRATEGY
Managers have a long track record of working in the IT industry. He has been in the Crypto space since 2017. He started his own closed TG community in 2018, “Scandinavian Crypto Pubtalk”. He has been the founder of several previous BSC projects.
J3C
COO & CORE. TEAM
J3C has more than 15 years of experience in business management. He has owned and run many successful businesses. Specializes in PR work, team building, marketing and business development and business strategy planning. Passionate to be a part of a real crypto project and care deeply about its investors.
EVOLUTION
EXPERIENCE BLOCKCHAIN & GAME DEVELOPMENT
We partnered with Snelwebcenter BV ( https://snelwebcenter.nl ) to initially develop some of our add-ons. The team is experienced and well known in the crypto space with around 20+ developers. We are in the process of finding more partners to help us with our roadmap.
Conclusion
Squid World is one of the best projects I've seen so far. This project precedes the others. Since everything in this project is very clear, it can be said that the future of this project is very bright. Hopefully investors can benefit when investing in the project. Since this project is going according to plan so far, I think this project will be much better. Because yes, but most of these big investors have invested in the project. I think the future of this project is bright.
For more information
Website: https://www.squidworld.io/
Whitepaper: https://www.squidworld.io/Squidworld_Litepaper.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SquidWorldTeam
Telegram: https://t.me/SquidWorldOfficial
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKHuF9vqAtFFqpkFTTLxhg
Pandjie
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3394105
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HEY chapter # game 66 31 35 44 52 sory if we’ve already done these 🙈🌷
i am also not keeping track of what numbers you’ve picked already c’:
there’s a bunch of chapters anyway so you usually just end up picking new ones anyway
i’m also too lazy to stop abbreviating the chapters n stuff now so you’ll have to be living w/m# and r# now lmao rereading this sentence i read that as m-sharp and r-sharp lol
a lot of these are part of the tour arc!! as evidenced by all the abba lmao
31 - m19 honey honey by abba
I heard about you before
(I heard about you before)
I wanted to know some more
(I wanted to know you some more)
this is the first chapter in the tour arc!! i don’t remember why i picked this song, but i do remember struggling to come up with an abba song i liked that also fit this chapter. and then months later when i was picking out the summary lyrics (like... a week or two ago lol) i was like “damn. what part of this did i have in mind when naming this chapter”
the main event in this chapter picks up right after the end of b1 which i feel okay mentioning here bc we are posting on tuesday what the fuck. anyway *sparkle sparkle* ~*girls’ niiiiight*~
35 - r14 mamma mia by abba
Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I've missed you
this is the rhythm chapter that covers “the gang watches a liveshow of the mamma mia musical”!! the moment chapter that covers the same event is called “dancing queen” and these two chapters will be published on the same day.
ALSO. it has a pool moment. C:
i really love this chapter. it has top ten pictures taken just before disaster vibes.
44 - m27 boo hoo by mindy gledhill
Cry, baby, cry
Everything is gonna be alright
You gotta live a little in the dark
To appreciate the morning light
lowkey. this is a bit of a recap episode ahahahaha.
it’s basically a bit where jirou goes to visit togata again the day before they go on tour!! she tells him about kaminari. c:
52 - m31 name of the game by abba
What's the name of the game?
Does it mean anything to you?
What's the name of the game?
Can you feel it the way I do?
Tell me please, 'cause I have to know
this is the last chapter of the tour arc. jirou and bakugou are running around six flags and arguing because they each keep dishing harsh truths out at each other and they get mad about it lmao. it’s peak bkjr friendship imo.
but they both character develop as a result of it, and the conversations they have in this chapter affect the decisions they make in the rapidly-approaching endgame :D
fun fact, m29 is taking place at the same time as m31, and it follow kaminari and kirishima around six flags. c:
66 - r29 would you be so kind by dodie (reprise)
Oh, would you be
So kind
As to fall in love with me, you see
I'm trying
I know you know that I like you
But that's not enough
So if you will
Please fall in love
super ultra mega spoilers but this is the chapter where krbk get together for real.
the reason it’s a reprise is because i’ve used this song as a chapter title before in rhythm!! it’s the same as chapter 1, which had these lyrics for its summary, as reference:
I have a question
It might seem strange
How are your lungs?
Are they in pain?
'Cause mine are aching
Think I know why
I kinda like it, though
You wanna try?
other fun facts include that the song that gets reprised in moment is “Queen of the Night” by fialta, which, in just the chapter “queen of the night” covers homecoming. so if “would you be so kind” parallels the fake getting together and the real getting together, i wonder what queen of the night is gonna parallel homecoming against?
c: c: c:
i am like, genuinely so excited for this chapter tho because of all the parallels and callbacks and just the detail i can imagine the scene in. it’s just. aaaaa!!!!!
#asks#w/o you Bb#Bb spoilers#long post#there's also one song that gets used as a chapter title in both moment and rhythm#it's called 'every night i dream of dancing'#the parallels between the queen of the night chapters aren't as strong as the ones btwn the would you be so kind chaps#at least not from the perspective of someone outside of band#so uh. //pat pat. that's rough buddy#i love how here i was just like 'oh yeah this is where krbk gets together'#but the REAL fun is how they get there after the uh#top ten moments just before disaster thing i mentioned earlier#god i just wanna talk about the details of it so much bc i'm so excited!!!! but i shouldn't :'c#thinking about making print copies of PH once it's done n stuff like one in publishing order and one in chrono#i think the chrono order one would end up with fewer chapters bc some chaps would get squished together#like m12 and r7 or m29 and 31#thinking abt it i should probably write m29 and m31 with specific moments where bkjr and krkm cross paths w/o realizing it#as like a way of facilitating that chapter combination thing#i feel like the chrono and publishing orders have different arc definitions#bc some arcs like the kegger arc hop around in time despite the main focus being the kegger#aaaaaaaa are you excited??? i'm excited!!!!#the Gals and i have chosen one place to apply to n it's really rlly nice wao#a little bit out of budget but we'll deal since it's actually worth more than what they'd give it to us for#it has a washer and dryer IN the apartment!! no going off-site to laundromats!! and no paying for it!!!#bc most of the other ones have like facility laundromats where you have to pay money to use them >:C#and also. FRENCH DOORS. idk why but the other girls are like rabid abt french style doors#i know housing searching is a pretty boring adult concept but i have been cooped up for three months#having adventures has been illegal for months this HAS been my adventure and i will take what i can get#there was this one place that was like 1550 and we were like 'it's shoddy.' and then i was like 'oh shit termites!'#i found their pellets squatting around and looking at the gap btwn the FLOOR AND THE WALL lmao and texted the chat
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Chapter 159: Justice is blind + Foreshadowing from chapter 6 and JJK0?
This chapter we’re introduced to Higuruma, one of the players in the Culling Game with 100 points who Yuji and Megumi will most likely target in an attempt to add new rules to the game.
As I mentioned before, JJK is the equivalent of Murphy’s Law on steroids and we are guaranteed for Gege to pull the rug from under our feet. For all you know, the odds that Higuruma agrees to help them without a problem are 50/50.
Onto this week’s theories... This is a long one so brace yourself.
Higuruma’s Shikigami is the stuff of nightmares
Higuruma’s Shikigami, if that’s what it is, is loaded with symbolism. Perfect for my Cursed Technique of reading between the lines and over-thinking every single detail.
What I love about Higuruma is that he is a man on a mission--sort of like a Shonen Protagonist. He is single-minded in his pursuit of saving those he sees as victims to the monster that is the Japanese legal court system.
Despite continuing to put himself on the line for the people he is trying to “save,” the oppressive system that they are part of makes it impossible for him to achieve his goals. And yet, he keeps trying to fight the beast that is the legal system even when the odds of him ever winning are .1%.
In the end, it isn’t the legal system itself that breaks him, but rather his own unwavering conviction combined with his frustration and the anger from those he promised a victory he was not able to deliver despite his greatest efforts.
The only thing granted to all is an unfair reality
Lady Justice has been depicted as blind since the 16th century. Her blindfold is meant to represent her objectivity and impartiality before the law.
But Higuruma knows that a 99.9% conviction rate is anything but objective and impartial. Keeping his “eyes open” is his desire to bring awareness to a system that is broken.
What I found interesting, however, is that while Higuruma is intent on keeping his eyes open, his Shikigami’s eyes are sewn shut, as though they are being forced shut by thread.
If there is anyone who is closest to embodying the ideal of blind justice, it is Higuruma.
This makes me wonder how we’re going to see Higuruma’s character evolve, especially as he comes across Yuji and friends.
Higuruma vs. Megumi/Yuji?
Remember I said Higuruma might be willing to help Yuji and Megumi add a rule? I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen, but it is still a possibility. He does seem like a fair (pun intended) person after all.
What’s being set up, I feel like (and I could be wrong), is a showdown between two opposing belief systems:
Higuruma’s blind trust in serving and facilitating justice vs Megumi’s self-serving justice.
Ironically, they both
want to save good people,
neither considers himself to be a hero, and
their sense of justice is self-serving... they just have different criteria for what that means
Higuruma wants to facilitate justice for people who are innocent but are victims of the Japanese Law system. He’s done the research and he believes these people to be innocent and as having done nothing wrong.
On the other hand, Megumi wants to facilitate justice for people he cares about no matter how potentially dangerous they are (and this last bit is really important).
I realized recently that despite Sukuna having killed a lot of people during Shibuya, Megumi has not attempted to kill him since the Cursed Womb Arc.
Remember, Megumi has said he’s responsible for those deaths since he was the one who saved Yuji.
In addition, not only does Megumi need Yuji’s strength to save Tsumiki, but I am going to go as far as saying that Megumi cares deeply for Yuji to the point he still doesn’t want him to die even after everything that has happened up to this point.
Which begs the question, how is Higuruma going to react to Yuji’s existence?
This brings me to the possible foreshadowing from all the way back in the Cursed Womb Arc and possibly even JJK0.
Foreshadowing from chapter 6 or Crack Theory?
When I first read the new chapter I was intrigued that one of the characters Higuruma is defending as an attorney has a similar backstory to Tadashi from back in chapter 6.
Although their face structure looks similar...
The circumstances are slightly different in that Tadashi’s case involved driving without a license and Higuruma’s client was drunk driving.
But if we’re willing to suspend judgement for a minute, this is important because, if it is, in fact, Tadashi he is referring to here, then this panel just goes to show that Gege foreshadows like a boss.
And what if that girl who got ran over happens to be Rika from JJK0?
There isn’t necessarily concrete evidence that Tadashi is the one who ran Rika over AND I would need to look at the timeline of events more closely, but if it IS the case... talk about butterfly effect in action.
But the foreshadowing doesn’t end there. Someone pointed out that in chapter 143, Megumi tells Yuji they aren’t heroes fighting for justice and that no one can truly ever judge JJS.
So... no one can judge sorcerers, unless judging is exactly what Higuruma has been doing to rack up points...
The fact that Higuruma has 100 points tells us he’s been on a killing rampage, and from everything we see him go through in the chapter and from that look on his face in the last panel, we should not be surprised that he’s gone off the deep end.
Honestly, characters who loose their shit (hello Feral Megumi) are one of my favorite things about JJK.
I am writing all of this because it goes to show that Gege does not show you anything in his story that doesn’t have meaning in the grander scheme of things. Which leaves room for interpretation about whether Saori and Yuko will have roles moving forward.
Right along these lines, in looking for a specific line from chapter 9, I ran into this little gem:
Is this foreshadowing about Tsumiki too?
Maybe, maybe not.
As I said before, half the fun is in going through the journey of JJK unfolding before our very own eyes, while putting the pieces together from all of the breadcrumbs Gege dropped along the way.
But the fun doesn’t end there. I am fascinated at how as a fandom we willingly get traumatized when Gege kills off everybody and their mom that you cared about, while simultaneously loving every single minute of it.
We know it’s coming, and we’re there for it.
That’s Gege’s Cursed Technique for you... he gives you what you didn’t know you wanted.
Gege setting up the stage for madness
All in all, Gege has been painstakingly setting the stage for the madness that is to come during the Culling Game and the hype just keeps on escalating. If the Culling Game arc is anything like Shibuya, we can expect, again, Murphy’s Law in full effect.
I was chatting with @darthdutton about how I started reading the Shibuya Arc only a few months ago and therefore I did not get to experience it as it was unfolding.
It makes me so happy that I now get to experience the Culling Game as it happens and I am both so distraught and excited for whatever comes our way.
And when I say “whatever comes our way” I mean that I trust Gege to continue to surprise me.
I am here for the hype but I stay for the story
I loved this chapter!
I thought it was the f*cking bomb.com because you can see Gege starting to tie loose ends from possible foreshadowing he shared at the beginning of the story.
Plus, we got to see his story-telling skills in action as he creates yet another relatable character.
I truly admire Gege as a writer--the fact that he can come up with a story on a week-to-week basis, execute on it, create very human and relatable characters, set up foreshadowing all the way back at the beginning, and drop breadcrumbs along the way is just mind-blowing to me.
God, I love Jujutsu Kaisen.
Anyways... this was a bit long but I just felt like I had a lot to say about this seemingly insignificant chapter. Hope you enjoyed it, and as always, I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it!
#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen manga#jujutsu kaisen spoilers#god i love jujutsu kaisen#jjk theory#jjk ch 159#fushiguro megumi#megumi fushiguro#yuji itadori#Itadori yuji#gege akutami#okkotsu yuta
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Author Spotlight: Gleefulpoppet Day 1
Author Spotlight: @gleefulpoppet
How did you get into Glee and Glee fandom?
Crazily enough, I was having the worst day ever a couple of years ago, and I was down a rabbit hole of Ms. Mojo’s top 10 videos; I’d never seen any of them before. I watched the Top 10 TV Kisses, and when the Klaine one came on, I got the chills! I sat back and thought, “WOAH! What did I just watch? That was intense on a whole different level. Like I’ve never seen on television before.” I set out to figure out how to watch Glee and was thrilled that it had been put on Netflix. I took some vacation days I had been hoarding and binge-watched all six seasons in about ten days. That led me to watch every interview I could find on YouTube, which led me to Tumblr, which led me to fanfic.
In general, what drew you into writing (and/or creating)?
I’m an artist by trade “in real life,” so I know how imperative creativity is to our mental health (I could talk about that for hours, so I’ll just leave it there). I was always interested in writing in the back of my mind but had never thought about it seriously.
What was it about Glee that made you decide to write fanfic for it?
For the first time, I didn’t want to create art with the characters; I wanted to write about them because I was so unsatisfied with the show itself. I have a love-hate relationship with Glee like a lot of us do. The characters were brought to life in such a fantastic way I couldn’t get them out of my head. They took up residence in my mind, and I couldn’t help but think about how I would have written them. And when I ran out of fanfic to read and couldn’t find more of the kind of stories I wanted to read, I decided to write my own.
Have you been a part of other fandoms before? Have you written fanfiction pre-glee?
I’ve always been a huge fangirl, the biggest one before Glee was probably BBC Merlin. But I had never read or written fanfic before Glee.
Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
I want to try so many things. Now that I’ve started writing, it’s something I doubt I’ll ever stop. I wrote a one-shot about a vampire/werewolf combination, and I’d love to expand on that someday. I also would like to write Daddies!Klaine, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I hope to very soon.
Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
Incest. I accidentally read a few chapters of a story that was not tagged correctly, and BAM, there it was. I threw my phone across the room in shock. And I can never get that scene out of my mind—I still cry thinking about it.
How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
I have a list of about thirty stories I’m serious about wanting to write and then the list is about fifty more deep of just random one-lines and thoughts that “could be” a fanfic someday.
I’d love to share! One of the things I want to do is rewrite the classic Audrey Hepburn movies with Kurt and Blaine. Maybe, Breakfast and Tiffany’s and Roman Holiday to start with. Not sure when I’ll ever get to them, but I think about it a lot.
***
Check out Gleefulpoppet’s Fics
Better Knot Bow Tie Company - Blaine Anderson has been a Better Knot Bow Tie Company monthly subscriber for years. This summer he's taken a hiatus from Broadway to facilitate the Journey Performing Arts School's summer program in New York. What happens when a zany bow tie sets off a chain reaction of events that may change their futures forever?
Soulsongs and Seastars - In a world where Doms and subs depend on the symbiotic relationship their pheromones provide, it can be a matter of life and death to go too long without a claim. When one of the most powerful Doms in New York comes home for some much-needed family time, he stumbles upon a scene that throws his instincts into high alert as he witnesses a sub do something he’s never seen before. Will the bravery of one man change his life forever? Kurt Hummel knows there’s only a one-in-a-million chance of finding his Soulsong, but what are the odds it could happen in a run-down mall in Lima, Ohio?
The Playhouse on the Edge of the Forest - In the small town where Kurt lives, there is a forest of trees his home is nestled right up against. In the backyard, there is an enchanting playhouse made of bricks and wood and has genuine glass windows with metal striped awnings and flower boxes. This is the tale of his adventures in the playhouse from age 3 to 33 and how everything changed when he met the boy next door.
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Of Moons, Millionares and Mothers FINALE: Moonvasion! or Duck Avengers: Endgame (Commission For WeirdKev27
Before we get to the review a bit of self promotion. As i’m sure anyone reguarlly reading these reviews is aware I have a patreon. For just one dollar a month you get exclusive reviews (Including an exclusive darkwing duck review and an exclusive Carl Barks review about wigs. yes really), votes on polls and a FREE review on signup. So if there’s a ducktales episode I haven’t covered yet your dying for me to cover sign up today. And act now before the end of august and i’ll review ALL 40 SOME EPISODES OF QUACK PACK, along with other special rewards. Just click RIGHT HERE
Hello all you happy people and WELCOME to the FINAL chapter of “OF Moons, Millionaires and Mothers” my exhaustingly long look at the arcs of Ducktales season 2, the longest retrospective i’ve ever completed. And just in time for the ...several days the Ducktales Anniversary. Yeah in the future remind me not to put a ton of time senstive reviews in the same week then have a combination of sleep issues and a massive bout of shoulder pain kay?
It’s been a long road to get here: we’ve seen Pinocchio somehow be in the main duck universe, Donald baffled he’s in a will, ghost busters homages, david tennant using slang,, gay vikings, gay space aliens, all Glomgold do is win, space sexual tension, a mother and child reunion that was only an ocean of stars away, STAND OUT ABOVE THE CROWD EVEN IF I’VE GOTTA SHOUT OUT LOUD. TILL MINE IS THE ONLY FACE THAT YOU’LL SEE GONNA STANNNNDD OUT. TILL YOU NOTICE ME, Huey becoming speckle in 20 years, Donald surprisingly getting mental help, Louie nearly destroying space and time, Louie surprisingly not giving a single shit he destroyed al lof space and time, and Zan Owlson finally being so done with this shit.
It’s been a crazy, sometimes disappointing, always interesting ride and before we get to the last leg of it i’d like to thank Kev, my patreon, friend and benefactor for paying for this retrospective. It was a great idea, i’ts been a great way and I especailly thank him for taking on the Louie arc as I felt these would be incomplete without it. Your a good man bud, thank you.
So with that we’re in the endgame now: Lunaris is on his way to earth, Penny is MIA and it’s up to the greatest adventuring family of all time, sorry richards-grimm extended family.
To save the earth. So pitter patter, let’s get at er under the cut!
We begin in the mansion with Scrooge playing Sessions Presents: Sounds of the Scottish Highlands as he relaxingly takes in the day.. so peaceful and serene surely nothing like say an alien invasion could happen to ruin this chill mood he’s set up. Yup just a nice peaceful hour of family bonding... and oh yes the ALIEN INVASION penny warned of that Della tries to “Promise you won’t be mad away”. Della that’s reserved for things like breaking a vase or doddling on a family portrait or your son nearly destroying all of space and time.
So our heroes watch on tv as Duckburg tries to make first contact.. by using the police to facilitate it because SURELY a group with only one good cop that we’ve seen in this series and a long history of shooting anyone diffrent first and saying “well they had a gun that I coudln’t find.. because it was invsible.. invsible gun” later can do that. They thankfully send in fenton instead who offers them a pie.... which begs the question why more first contact scenario’s don’t have pie. And why I don’t have pie. And why you, the person reading this does not have a fresh pie in front of them. These are truly the questions that keep me up at night.
Anyways the pie goes over well... they still attack but i’ts more because their being led by a general with a petty grudge against earth. Don’t blame pie, for blaming pie is the real mind killer.
So sensing the writing on the wall our heroes make haste from the mansion to the bin in the jeep sans launchpad whose on fire at the moment he’ll get back to you. We also get one of the best gags of the episode when, as their fleeing the moonlanders, Dewey being.. Dewey decides to open the back window of the Jeep and become savior of earth> Webby not wanting her brother-cousin to die pulls him back in with a “nerp”.
At the bin.. things are somehow worse than outside: Every contingincy scrooge had in case of something this catstrophic? Down before he could activate them.
It instantly sells that Lunaris wasn’t bluffing in how well he knew Scrooge or how he knew just how to attack him: he made sure to know every counter scrooge had and take out most of them before he could even make a gesture.
So with that our heroes are in dire straights, with Lunaris parking his flagship over the mansion and naturally gloating like any supervillian: The moon is superior, I will beat you, i’m going to kill your family..
Lance Reddick does deliver it incredibly well though. Point is things are bad so Scrooge decides to take a play from the “Don’t Touch My Ascot: The Fred Jones Guide to Traps and Mystery Solving” and split up gang: Della and the kids will go find whatever allies they can Globally, and Scrooge and Beakley will stay in Duckberg and take on Lunaris. After all i’ts not like Della say talked to scrooge right before and clearly has ulterior motives right? She woudln’t lie to her kids and Cousin Daughter righttttt?
Della Lies to Her Kids and Cousin-Daughter
So Team Della heads to go gather who they can.. supposidely. IN practice their visit to egypt to recurit Djinn and Amunet ends with them abandoning the two to fend for themselves once the moonlanders overwhelm them.
Then they head to Ithiquack where Zeus, to no one’s surprise.. i boarding up all the gods to hide and refuses to let Selene and Storkules help, and slams the door in Della’s face despite her wanting to just hide in there with them.
So after that Team Della dodges a spacecraft... and Della scrambles to find SOMEWHERE remote to hide, with Huey spotting the thread that none of the places have reinforcements and Louie yanking it, realizing she never had any intention of getting help and was scamming them the whole time. With Lunaris coming after them, she panicked and wanted to hide their family. The kids.. are unsuprsiingly not pleased their mom yanked them away to try and hide them while their friends and family all fight. As this plot feels like the cumilation of the series so far, and the season it’s ending in paticular, it makes sense: Dewey’s best friend, Webby’s girlfriend and best friend, Huey’s best friend, and Louie’s money are all back there struggling and fighting to surivive... while Della forced them to do a runner without tellng them for what turned out to be a wild goose chase. And they didn’t even find Gladstone yet so it hasn’t even been a SUCCESFUL wild Goose Chase.
Della’s actions are understandable: She finds a super smart, machavielan asshole coming fo rher kids.. and she gave him the tools to do it. This is her fault she feels, the spear of selene all over again, and she just wants to fix it. But the kids are right that they just.. CAN’T hide. They have to fight and as Lunaris himself points out, unsuprisingly having made his big bold threat to the kids to lure them and Della away, Della is the ONLY one who knows them and their technology. And she left out of fear. IT’s understandable to be afraid for her kids and all.. but it’s also undrestandable these aren’t normal kids, and the world needs them despite the risk.
The argument is tabled for now though when they crash onto a deserted island.
And find something they lost in the process...
And also Donald! .. and Mickey Melon! Yeah for some weird reason Disney never let Frank use Mickey, though Mouseton was referenced via Owlson that Chekov's gun was never fired, they found a workaround.. having a melon who looks, sounds and acts like mickey that Donald’s using as a puppet/common-law wife , voiced by Chris Dimatopols to boot since he was already voicing 2 characters this ep what harms a third.
Before we can get to Donald’s frayed mental state though he and Della properly reunite.. which goes exactly as you’d expect...
I absolutely love this. While most fans expected some warm embrace before the shouting.. let’s face it this was always going to happen, with Donald mad they didn’t come for him and Della mad he was apparently on vacation and Dewey mad his name isn’t Turbo. The two eventually end up hugging before Donald’s psychosis flares up again revealing Melon.
After a scene transition Melon has apparently filled Team Della in on the moon, and further explains he met Melon as his best friend, and they bonded over sandwiches and that one time Donald put a hole in him. Good times.
So after agreeing to not tell Donald they thought he was on a crusie for the sake of what’s left of his sanity, the kids naturally want to you know, go back and save their friends, loved ones and Gyro from certain doom. Della however wants to settle in on the island you know, play some volleyball with Donald’s live in boyfriend (He’s the ball), have the kids sleep in lockers (With Huey and Webby sharing one because in a nice detail Webby was clearly added after Della realized she forgot her cousin-daughter and hastily added her to Huey’s because Dewey’s the faviorite and she owes Louie one for the whole robot thing.. and for not calling child services for said robot thing.).
What makes this truly heartbreaking is when the kids point out the obvious: if she keeps them stranded her she might as well be trapped on the moon again... and her denial.. has her reaching for a piece of oxy chew. It’s a truly gripping bit of PTSD: She may of left the moon.. but in a crisis.. she defaults to the surivival mode she used to get past it. By not getting help, by not trying to eve rprocess what happened she almost let it happen again.. and it breaks her, with Della retreating.
We then get one of the genuinely sweetest moments in the series: Louie goes to comfort her... which makes sense. After they finally bonded.... because the episodes said so and no other reason... it hits hardest that the one comforting her is the child that took the most time to accept her and then just did because plot said so.
But Louie’s awful character arc aside.. this moment is sweet as Louie sings a song... a very familiar song.....
Face each new sun with eyes clear and true
Unafraid of the unknown
Because I'll face it all with you
Monihan and Brewster just.. nail it. As for how the hell Louie knew that.. Donald sang it to them. Every night.
So with her confidence resorted and realizing her boys need to face this and she needs to face it with them, her brother and her cousin aunt, della’s finally ready to face her trauma, face her fears.. and leave. The question is how.
Well last minute is a bit much as something from an episode I haven’t covered all the way back at the start of the season comes back, Mitzi, carrying fethry and Gladstone! Gladstone’s luck naturally blew him clear of the invasion, straight into his dear cousin, and then he found melon who della punted into the ocean earlier as he started to get hungry. So our heroes now have a way home, reinfrocments after all, and the husk of donald’s un-wife to snack on.
So we end this part of the hourlong/two parter with both generations of clan mcduck striking a pose and Dewey wonders “Aw man am I the uncle donald” to which I say no... that’s huey. Your fethry. Your impuslive, live in your own world and will probably fuck a shrimp at some point.
So as our heroes head to hteir big damn heroes moment, let’s wind back the clock and see what Scrooge’s been up to.
But Not Our Dumbest:
So about 12 hours back, and with their satlites down thanks to Louie, Gyro comes up with a plan b. And I do like his characterization here: he has his spark back by this point feeling more like the unhinged version from season 1, just with more heart, making for a better character.
Anyway he sends his little bulbs out to gather whoever in Duckburg they can to reinforce their army: Lena, whose loitering in a park for reasons that totally don’t involve betting on squirrel fights, Violet and Quackfaster, who are both naturally at the library, Duckworth who for some reason didn’t float after them in the van, Fenton and his mama, and last of all Launchpad, who was absent earlier because the limo ws on fire and is joined by Darkwing.... okay like Lena and Webby earlier I really missed the hoy yay here. I mean Drake drove ALL the way here to visit launchpad BEFORE there was likely an invasion. That’s a good boyfriend.
So with that Scrooge has everyone he could get for an army.. also the ottoman empire guys for reasons I don’t fully get. I mean sure one of them DEFINTELY killed that guy with an ottoman but that wasn’t ON PURPOSE.
Bickering also naturally ensues with Lena rightfully calling Duckworth a waste of magic for wanting to politely ask the invading force whose leader has made it ABUNDNTLY CLEAR he has a personal grudge against the earth.... to leave.
Gyro’s plan is less suprising: use his clone army and use Fenton as a meat shield/sacrifice. Unfrotunately for Gyro, he made the horrible mistake of offhand bullying his intern.. in front of said intern’s mother.
Who threatens to literally shove his head up his ass to match how far it is metaphorically. She also reveals in the process she clearly knows who Fenton is and when he tries to deflect she states the obvious; She’s his mother and a cop. She knew. I love this reveal too: i was curious how the hell she didn’t know given all the evidence and the fact Fenton is REALLY not good with keeping a secret identity at all. She was just waiting for him to tell her and presumibly decided “Fuck it this is taking too long”. But clearly she holds no resitment either: she gets this was a lot for Fenton to process and he wasn’t hiding it from her to be cruel, but because she DID dunk on his other identity pretty hard at first and was likely scared to tel lher. Thankfullly unlike say Aunt May, it didn’t take 80 years and learning his identity to make her come around.
Anyways, Scrooge naturally has a plan..
I”m only half joking: his plan is to use this ENTIRE assembled strikeforce to distract the aliens and take them down while he, launchpad and Darkwing (who he barely acknowledges but is going anyway) sneak in and head for Lunaris directly. So yes folks Scrooge is using pretty much the EXACT SAME PLAN from the Suicide Squad years before that. Minus assuming they’ll all die horribly. Granted his isn’t to just sacrifice them most of the heavy hitters are on the other team as opposed to a guy with a javelin, arms fall off boy and the most punchable face in america. But I do question scrooge not taking ANYONE ELSE but himself, launchpad and darkwing to assaul tthe manor. LIke... what if team a gets captured? what if they loose? What if Scrooge McDuck didn’t find Mjonir and become mighty thor? What if Lunaris has every inch of the manor packed with goons? The plan isn’t TERRIBLE, he just needed a few more tweaks to it.
But it goes off anyway with the main group having an utterly SPECTACULAR battle with tons of great moments: from Lena casually dispatching some goons and giving her baby sister a mace hawkgirl style, to Johny and Not-Johnny suprisingly hnot being useless, to a few gyros dying and the remaning leading one not being sure if one was a clone or not, to gizmoduck using lemon meringue pie.. to summon the harpies. I TOLD YA this tied back all of season 2. I was not kidding. Every character except the christmas ep ones is touched on every storyline touched on, everything leads to this and it is amazing.
Team Scrooge meanwhile sneaks in and Scrooge soon has a better plan.. since no one notices darkwing it’s time to..
Darkwing puts on Scrooge’s battle tartan and gets beaten up but given this is Darkwing, while he’s left dazed, he’s also left triumphant as he takes so much punishment the moonlanders tier out.. while Scrooge sucessfuly sneaks in, even pulling off the terror that flaps in the night schtick and makes it ot the ship... which is a hologram. Yeah unsuprisingly Lunaris was ready for THIS too.... and was smiply waiting for Scrooge to find it so he could land his REAL flagship, a giant engine designed to make the earth orbit the moon.
Well for once they do as this will freeze them all and Lunaris could care less.
So when we pick back up with team Scrooge the next episode their hiding at the fisherman restraunt from “The Ballad of Duke Balloney” down to nearly no one: everyone but Scrooge himself, Beakley, Duckworth and somehow Launchpad have been captured to thin the cast out, and Duckworth quickly leaves to prepare their graves. “It’s not reassuring he went down”. An utterly incredible joke.
Scrooge is lost metaphorically after losing literally, as he realizes every plan he has.. Lunaris will counter. He’s facing a foe who knows how his brain works and thus can counter every move. It’s such a frightening prospect i’m not suprised they recycled it again next season with bradford, though I am pleased as punch they made it work.
Cue the savior of earth: Glomgold, doing a jaws parody and offering his help. Beakley points out that his last scheme resulted in him loosing to a child and every villian in town wanting him dead.. but Glomgold SUPRISINGLY has a good counter.. he surivived that didn’t he? Which.. fair enough. Magica alone should’ve taken his heart out and eaten it.
Scrooge however... ends up agreeing. He’s tried everything, he’s all out of ideas: better to try something stupid that probably won’t work than a well put together plan that definitely won’t.
So we get a glomglorious slide show from Glomgold having to acknowledge his company is a subsidary of McDuck enterprises (To which scrooge smugly grins) to Glomgold doing beard pushups, to Glomgold, getting fed up with Scrooge’s snide commments acting like an annoyed school teacher: “Oh do you not WANT to survive?”
His plan is his usual charming level of stupid and short sighted on steroids: his plan is to use sharks in parks (He calls them sharkas), to swim down and chew through some of the supports of the engine ship, and have Beakley disgused as a farmer for reasons that are lost to time launch launchpad, disgused as a rock in the part he was born to play, at another one. Meanwhile Scrooge will distract Lunaris as someone EVERYONE trusts... and Scrooge’s mos thated enemy and ex... SANTA CLAUS. The fact they tied THIS back into it is fucking incredible.
It actually ends up working.. mostly because it exploit’s Lunaris own analytical mind: He ASSUMES the plan is too stupid to be real. Thus Lunaris falls over himself assuming this is some big gotcha he can counter.. when really i’ts just the dumbest plan alive.
It also feeds on Lunaris’ main weakness: his own fear driven ego. Lunaris is so obessed with beating earth and scrooge he’s convinced himself he’s better and that SURELY the only response Scrooge would have to the guy is the greatest and most brilliant plans possible.
Scrooge on the other hand will do whatever it takes to win... and admitted he had nothing left. BOth can see all the angles.. but only Scrooge really sees himself, and thus puts his own faults into it. Scrooge could admit he could loose.. and thus tried something stupid out of desperation and it WORKED because Lunaris can’t see a scenario where he’s not the smartest man in the room. Scrooge knows better: being clever, seeing all the angles is fine.. but sometimes you just can’t win even if your scrooge mcduck.
So Scrooge and Glomgold make it to lunaris.. and naturally this was in part a scheme to get his company back as the script includes scrooge giving it back. Somehow this is legally binding.
Glomgold: No takebacks on christmas!
Scrooge: It’s not christmas!
Glomgold: Then why is santa here?
Lunar is breaks down, with Scrooge realizing he really is that up his own ass and remarking
Scrooge: You were ready for our best.. but not our dumbest
Glomgold: And i’m the dumbest that’s ever been! Muahahahaha... wait...
What follows is an aweosme fight scene as Glomgold proves he’s not actually bad in a fight as he and Scrooge team up, both seeing the fate of earth as more important and even Glomgold getting in on the “The moon isn’t a planet gag”. Eventaully though Lunaris proves that while not the better planner entirely.. he is the bestter fighter and nearly has both beat.. until
Damn straight. So while Lunaris is baffled by Mitzi, Mitiz is able to start yanking the last support, and with help from Gladstone’s luck and a well placed shark, the world engine is defeated, and Lunaris is thwarted.
The Ducks reunite with Scrooge naturally blowing the whole “we totally realized you were missing and not on a cruise thing” away, with david’s delivery of “So he wasn’t on a cruise then” just being delightful.
Our heroes don’t have a lot of time to rest though as Lunaris takes off in his flag ship to go for plan b... blow up the fucking earth. Moonlanders included, which gets them to realize their boss is just a wee bit mad with power.
Having their second wind, the Duck family isn’t about to take this lying down and Della finally fufills her dream of taking her children into space. Granted it’s to stop a power mad dictator from destroying the world but let’s face it, given this family’s life it was a pretty good chance it was always going to end like this. That or with Yogi eating everyone.
So we get a gorgeous sequence in space with Della and Donald both taking the pilots chair, Scrooge standing by in command picard style, and the kids taking on the guns: Webby and Huey aim, Dewey and Louie fire. What follows is an utterly gorgeous triumphant space battle to a fucking beast of an orchestral version of the moon theme. Because of course Frank had to bring it back one last time and give it one last awesome version. Of course he did. We also get the great gag of Donald and Della arguing like children over who should pilot while Scrooge happily sighs how much he’s missed this.
Our heroes do manage to turn the tide and take out most of Lunaris’ guns and englines.. but he has one left set to barbeque them.... until PENNY returns, finally making her entrance to slam into Lunaris’ ship..
She seemingly dies.. for about a minute before smacking into Della’s ship. Della has her prioritys straight and wants to introduce her girlfriend to her family... but Penny reminds her maybe do that AFTER getting Penny inside before she slides off the ship into oblivion.
Lunaris tries escaping.. but finds his backup power cut as Jaws is here, long live jaws, he is a shark who bites the law, he was in a movie you should watch it it’s called jaws. So yeah Jaws cut the power, and to just pour an industrial barrel of salt in the wound Selene messages him, letting the fucker know she put things back int heir proper orbit with the help of storkules doing mad pushups bro, but on the bright side.. Lunaris is earth’s newest moon. And newest skelington floating around the moon along with the remains of William Howard Taft.
So with that the day is saved and our heroes return home triumphant and in time for an epilogue: For starters of all people Glomgold has earned a happy ending: after a season of trying to earn people’s love by beating his arch enemy in a contest no one cared about but him and Scrooge himself, Glomgold legitly earned the people’s love and respect by helping save earth. Granted he still somehow frames it as beating Scrooge despite Scrooge’s incrediolous “We were on the same side!”, but hey it’s a happy ending and Scrooge decided to let him have his company back given next season. It is christmas after all.
Launchpad gains a crush on Penny, not realizing she has a case of being gay as shit, and everyone celebrates with one hell of a group shot. Something my friend @jess-the-vampire noticed when I watched this with her as part of our movie night was Scrooge holding his daughter, a nice little touch of foreshadowing.
So happy ending right.. except... we cut to an ominous red room
This has gone too far. The ducks almost cost us the world today. And without the world, who would we larceny against? The pieces are finally in place. Time to come out of the shadows, take control and end Clan McDuck. If the McDuck family wants an adventure... we'll give them their last.
FOWL emerges, consiting of a ton of characters from throughout both seasons along with Steelbeak and the Phantom blot..... most nottably BRADFORD, revealing all long the board has been plotting against Scrooge... and our heroes have one last fight ahead.
Of course having covered all of season 3 as it came out... I know how this goes as I’m sure you do: Huey finds a girlfriend and a folksy hallucination, our heroes get trapped in Westview, Launchpad and Steelbeak prove to both be really bad at cards, Della tries to murder sexy merpeople, Donald finally had something go right for once, Huey finds a boyfriend, Dewey piledrives a god, Violet is susceptible to vampires while Lena earns the power of love, Penny tries to come out but can’t outright say it because Disney is stupid, Spike tries to eat some children, Scrooge kills a man in Florida, Darkwing Duck finally Darkly Dawned, Della left the time loop room, Della Left the Time Loop Room, Della Left the Time Loop Room, Huey unlocked Ultra Instinct, Storkules tried to intitate a threesome, Donald had a grunge phase, Scrooge’s sister is hot wayne there I said it, Scrooge reconnected with his ex good old St. Nick, Mark Beaks wore out the public’s welcome with fire, Kit Cloudkicker spun it and begun it.. it being a new career not trying to literally become his dad, Scrooge got a Sham Trial from the Fonz that we’d all like to forget, and Webby thinks she’s a clone now there’s always another two just a hanging around.. that Donald quickly adopted.
Point is it was a crazy season and this is the best lead in it could’ve asked for. This is one of the best cliffhangers in tv history, brilliantly leading into the final arc with one hell of a setup that had been slowly building underneath the seurface of the series. A brilliant end to a brilliant episode
Final Thoughts:
I belivie I said brilliant... but to elaborate: This episode is an utterly thrilling conclusion to everything up to this point: every episode of season 2 contributes to the climax in some way great and small and all three plot lines intersect. The result just feels utterly satisfying: like every step of the journey wethere it was part of the main three plots or not lead here and every bit mattered. It’s probably why the proper series finale felt mildly lacking: it had a LOT more ground to cover and the fact it didn’t cover it all when this one did with slightly less runtime probably didn’t help.
But this finale is to me the platonic ideal of what a finale should be: all consuming, satisfying and leaving you wanting more for the next season, if there is one. It sastifyingly ties up Della’s character arc, gives Glomgold a brief moment in the sun before he ruins it for himself as is his nature, and gives us so many impactful, amazing moments in the span of 45 minutes. This is truly one of the series finest hours and deserves al lthe praise I can give it.
Final Thoughts on the Della Arc and this Retrospective:
So with this two parter we finally bring both Della’s personal arc and this entire retrospective to a close. ‘
Della’s arc is far and away the best of the season. In one episode they managed to take a blank slate and make her into a character as vibrant and fleshed out as the rest of the cast and thus keep us invisted all season as she reconnected with her family, slowly growing as a person, and to meet her kids needs: telling Dewey he didn’t need to impress her, letting Huey explore the world, virtual as it may of been at his own pace and putting a foot down with Louie, someething he badly needed even if she overdid it. She even was a good parent to webby in the episode we didn’t revisit, telling the girl she didn’t need to be just like Della, just herself. We got to see an emotionally stunted woman settle into being a mom, and in the end tackle her own trauma to save the world. Paget’s acting all season is phenominal.
The moon side isn’t shabby: While Lunaris is an obvious main antagonist, Lance Reddick does a good job hiding it, being genuinely jovial and likeable.. until the mask drops and we see the selfish obsessive bastard underneath. Once he gets to, he still plays a smooth, calcuating mastermind, an utterly carasmatic villian with an understandable if still petty motive. He’s just fun to watch every time he appears and while it’s a shame we didn’t get to see him again, his ending is so fitting it almost makes me want to not use him in anything in the future. Almost.
Finally capping off the three characters that truly make this arc we have Penumbra. Julie Bowen steps out of her more famous role as sitcom wife and into the roll of a gruff, confrontational commander who slowly realizes just hwo she REALLY feels about della.. and how badly she misjudged her commander. Penny was an okay character to me on first watch but is utterly gripping on rewatches as we see someone who has their purpoes yanked away.. only to regret getting it back as it threteans her people and who ends the season the hero she always thought she was.
So yeah Della’s arc is a triumph and worth a rewatch> The arcs as a whole.. as i’ve said are a mixed bag, with Della being excellent and the other two being arcs with good indvidual episodes, but a messy whole. They work as pieces of a season.. but not peices of their own story. And that’s disapointing.
Still I did enjoy this project. It was good, got a ton of episodes out of the way, and while i’m happy to FINALLY move on from it, it was a good ride while it lasted. I’ll still have more duck content for the rest of the year, including the conclusion of life and times, some birthday episodes of ducktales, and a singing contest turned lovecraftian.
As for what i’m doing for Kev next? Well... that’s as simple as a piece of cheese...
Thank you for coming, thank you for staying thank you for reading the article.
#ducktales#moonvasion#finale#disney plus#disney xd#disney+#scrooge mcduck#commander lunaris#penumbra#della duck#louie duck#huey duck#webby vanderquack#fenton crackshell cabrera#mama cabrera#gyro gearloose#lena saberwing#violet sabrwing#bentina beakley#launchpad mcquack#drake mallard#darkwing duck#gizmoduck#harpies#flintheart glomgold#emily quackfaster#duckworth#ottoman empire#amunet#djinn
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Hi! I’m sorry you’re getting shitty anons about this and you’re probably sick of it so I apologise for asking this but I’m genuinely curious what made you start actively disliking zutara? Like, considering how much excellent and insightful content/meta you yourself used to make/write? I get that interests change over time and you’re totally valid!! the anons sending you hate over it are really dumb, but if you’d be ok with sharing, I’d be really interested in hearing why you’ve done almost a complete 180 on the ship? Was is just burnout/end of a hyper-obsession? Or was it some of us in the rest of the fandom that turned you off? Or was it even something about the ship/characters themselves that you changed your mind about? xx
In short, it was a combination of burnout, dissatisfaction with fandom, and disappointment in myself that caused my disinterest for Zvtara.
I got asks similar to this one a couple of times before, but I never gave a comprehensive answer, mainly because I didn't know how to articulate my reasons why I don't like it anymore. But now that I've been out of ZK fandom for a month and have had some time to reflect, I think I can give a much more thorough response. Beware, this is long and I heavily critique the Zvtara fandom, so if you're a ZK shipper, keep reading at your own risk.
My first minor annoyance with Zvtara is that the fandom has a tendency to idolize certain fics and creators. And while there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong about that, I feel like the Zvtara fandom does it to such an extent that it influences the type of content that content creators make in order to get recognition. And to illustrate my point, I’m going to talk about one of the most famous Zvtara fics of all time: Once Around The Sun by eleventy7.
Don’t get me wrong, I love OATS. I think it’s a great fanfic and I think the author devoted a lot of time and effort to make it such an excellent fic. The plot, the development of the characters and their relationships to one other, and the messages about family and love were all brilliantly written. I mean, there is a reason why it’s regarded as the “Zvtara Bible”. This one fanfic had such a profound impact upon the ZK fandom, and I think the biggest impact that came from it is the dramatic influx of post-war Zvtara AU fanfiction.
Because so many people kept reading OATS and recommending it to others, I think there was an overall interest in ZK fics that take place in a post-war setting. And I think that all of the high praise towards OATS made more fic writers start to write post-war fanfics because of this demand for post-war AU.* I normally wouldn't complain about it because more content is more content, but in my opinion, 99% of ZK post-war fics are the same fic but in different fonts.
Like, there's at least 3 of these elements in every ZK post-war fanfic:
Ambassador Katara
An assassination attempt (usually on Zuko's life)
A healing scene between Zuko and Katara (usually Katara heals Zuko)
Aang and/or Mai is pushed to the side or vilified to some extent in order to make ZK happen
A private journey between Zuko and Katara to facilitate #6
S L O W B U R N (that's not really slowburn and more like "I love you and I very much want to be vocal about my feelings but #7 is in this fic" but the love story takes up like 30 chapters so I guess it's a slowburn?)
Zuko's advisers don't want him to get married to Katara because ✨racism✨
Ursa is found
Azula is in the fic because a) she's going to get a healing arc ft. Zuko and Katara and thereby helps them get together or b) she's the villain and thereby helps them get together
ZK wedding happens in the FN
After reading multiple post-war fics back to back, I could tell that the format was pretty much the same across the board, which isn't very interesting for me to read. My only other fic options in the Zvtara tag on AO3 are canon divergence fics which almost always take place during The Crossroads of Destiny or after The Southern Raiders. And to some extent, those stories are pretty much the same too. There's nothing really new or creative going on in the ZK fandom fic-wise, and because of that, my interest in ZK fandom started to dwindle.
My second issue with Zvtara is that it's a very old ship from a very old show. Because there's been 10+ years since the end of A:TLA, every nuanced point about shipping and the show itself have been talked to death.** There's just nothing new to say. It's the same arguments being rehashed over and over again in the tag because there's no other interpretation one can come up with.
For example, there's so many people who talk about why Zvtara as depicted in The Southern Raiders is not toxic and that's great and all, but I (and most likely many others) have read those same points about five times already. And for some reason, each time this happens, people act like someone just discovered the lost city of Atlantis when they bring up their new-but-not-new argument in defense of Zvtara. Honestly, I'm ashamed to say that I'm not exempt from being part of the group of people that reiterate old arguments. I've done it with one of my posts about The Southern Raiders and I've done it again with my Zutara/Omashu parallels post.
There's no new content to really dissect and analyze (especially considering Zuko and Katara are rarely in the same panel in any of the post-war comics), and because of this, people are just restating points that someone else made several years ago.*** And even if someone did have a different interpretation of an episode, their ideas would most likely be shut down because for the past several years, the same interpretation has been recycled through the fandom repeatedly and people are resistant to new perspectives.
This brings me to the third thing that I dislike about Zvtara: the insistence that there can only be one way to interpret The Southern Raiders. For the longest time, I've read take after take that said if Katara decided to kill Yon Rha, it would be ok because that's her grief to deal with and if she thinks that's the best way to mete out justice, then good for her. And again, I'm ashamed to say that I perpetuated that idea in a few of my own posts. I have always thought that "Katara killing Yon Rha is ok" is just a bad take in general, but I didn't want to vocalize that opinion when so many people—so many of the nice mutuals that I made—all shared that same opinion. Taking down a popular opinion of your own ship is completely different from taking down a popular opinion of a ship that you dislike. The Zvtara fandom is the first fandom that I was actually active in and I wanted to fit in so badly with everyone else that I just parroted whatever other people said, even if I didn't agree with those sentiments.
This leads me to my final reason why I don't want to be a part of ZK fandom anymore. I think I established myself as a "meta" person pretty early on and because of that, I constantly felt pressured to come up with new takes on the ship. And when people started flooding my ask box with stuff like "Can you write a meta about your thoughts on the idea that 'Zuko only took Katara on that field trip in TSR because he wanted her to forgive him'?" and "What are your thoughts about antis saying Zuko and Katara are toxic because of TSR?", I realized that I don't need to come up with new takes. People just want me to paraphrase something that 10 other people said about the same exact topic, because if I said what I actually thought about the subject (i.e. there is some truth in what antis say about TSR and it's not as much of a "Zvtara episode" that most people make it out to be), I'd probably get ZK shippers in the replies telling me that I'm wrong because x, y, and z or "you shouldn't tag this as Zvtara".
And that was pretty much how my love for ZK turned into disinterest. I was and still am disappointed that I didn't stick to my personal opinions. For as much as I talk about herd mentality on Twitter, I certainly don't practice what I preach. In all honesty, the only reason why I held on so long to ZK fandom was because I had so many nice mutuals there and we all shared this collective distaste for antis. I think I started to become more anti-Zvkka and anti-Kataang than pro-Zvtara, which isn't what I wanted to do when I made this Tumblr blog.
The thing that made me joke about becoming anti-Zvtara was the fact that some ZK shippers just like to send shitty anons to people whom they've reblogged countless different metas from. Sending shitty anons to people in the first place is wrong, but sending them to people who tagged their posts correctly and did nothing wrong is just disgusting.
*I'm not a fic writer and can't speak for fic writers, but it definitely feels like a lot of ZK fic authors are pushing themselves to write the next OATS, and by doing so, they are proliferating the tag with post-war fics that have very similar aspects to OATS.
**I think that as more people point out the same nuanced points about Zvtara, it diminishes the actual significance of those points. Like, it's hard to explain but the more people talk about the subtleties of the ship, the more those parts become glaringly obvious and I become numb to their actual impact on the characters and the show.
***At this point, if someone wanted to make a new argument about Zvtara, I think they would have to look very closely at every little detail in every single one of their scenes together to find a crumb of new meta material. And speaking from experience, it's not very fun trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Whenever I post a "meta" like that, I feel like I'm reaching to make a point that doesn't exist.
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Kurayami’s Perspective
To understand Kurayami, it’s important to understand what a typical zanpakutō even is in the first place. Most of the available evidence in the series revolves around Ichigo, who is obviously unique, but it still gives us some insight into what the average zanpakutō is like.
ZANPAKUTŌ IN GENERAL
Ōetsu has the following exchange with Ichigo in chapter 523:
Ichigo: Oh yeah?! So these guys are the embodiment of asauchi! But... why are we being attacked by them?!
Ōetsu: So close!!
Ōetsu: Embodiment, huh? Yes, yes, yes. So close, so close. It’s a bit different, but that’ll do for now. But what’s more important... is that they’re angry at you.
Ichigo: Angry?! About what?!
Ōetsu: The way you two use your zanpakutō.
Ichigo: How we use it...?!
Ōetsu: You don’t understand? I don’t blame you. How you fight? How you swing it? No, no. Then what? It's something more fundamental!
Ōetsu: Have you been using it as a tool? Have you been interacting with it as a subordinate? Have you been relying on it like a partner? As a family member? As a friend? A superior? A junior? Pet? Acquaintance? Lover? Mistress?
Ōetsu: GIMME A BREAK!!!
Ōetsu: This how they feel about you. This is what I mean by more fundamental.
Just from the way this is being discussed, we can say that zanpakutō are none of the things that Ōetsu lists off. When Ichigo eventually returns in chapter 538, the asauchi he selects takes on his appearance and hairstyle. In chapter 540, when Ōetsu disintegrates the asauchi for forging, it starts with a hole in the heart, like a Hollow. In chapter 541, “THE BLADE AND ME 2″, we get the following:
Ōetsu: Have you figured it out, Go-Ichi?
Ōetsu: The reason why this asauchi turned white... the moment it touched you?
Ichigo: ... No...
Ōetsu: Perhaps you thought to yourself that... it’s just like... the Hollow in you.
Ōetsu: That's right. This guy is... the Hollow inside you. I had that asauchi become the catalyst to draw this zanpakutō out.
Ōetsu: Do you understand what that means?
Ōetsu: This Hollow is... your zanpakutō, Go-Ichi.
Ōetsu: The Hollow named White that Aizen created is made from layers of many Soul Reaper souls. Oddly enough... that is also how my asauchi are created.
Ōetsu: That Hollow entered your body... and melded with your Soul Reaper powers. It became your zanpakutō.
Ichigo: Wait a second... so then...
Ōetsu: That’s right. I know you know...
Ōetsu: ... About the man who's been... pretending to be a zanpakutō inside your soul!
We go on to learn that “Zangetsu”, the Old Man, is a manifestation of Yhwach, and Ichigo’s Quincy powers. Ōetsu and Ichigo then reforge both Zangetsu in chapter 541, “THE BLADE IS ME”, and Ichigo bids farewell to both, giving the following internal monologue before the title drop:“I won't ask... for your help anymore. I won't tell you to stay out of my way either. Nor will I ask... you guys to fight with me. I... will fight on my own. Thank you. Zangetsu. You are... me.”
All of this is very unequivocal: asauchi are created in the same fashion as artificial Hollows and become zanpakutō upon fusing with Shinigami powers. Once fused in such a fashion, they are their wielder and there is no real distinction between the two. It would seem from the actual Zangetsu’s behavior that he generally represents instinct, impulses, killing intent, and self-preservation instinct, although he is no mere “Id” given his relatively cordial interactions with “Zangetsu” in chapter 112. All of the talk of him being a Hollow and “taking over” Ichigo is just that: talk to motivate Ichigo through fear. (Which is necessary for evolution, remember?) Zangetsu has no real interest or desire in taking over Ichigo any more than Zabimaru wants to take over Renji. He also can’t, since he’s already fused with Ichigo’s Shinigami powers and is Ichigo.
“Tensa Zangetsu” in chapter 409 tells us, “I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to things you want to protect. [...] Make no mistake, Ichigo... What you want to protect... is not what I want to protect!” In chapter 420, White Tensa Zangetsu says, “Tensa Zangetsu is you,” and “What I wanted to protect was... you... Ichigo!” This not only foreshadows what Ōetsu says, but given that both Zangetsu are fused at this time, we can discern that this is the desire of both, to include his “actual” zanpakutō. This reasoning is presumably why Isshin’s Engetsu refused to teach him the Final Getsuga Tenshō in the first place.
(This is not an Ichigo analysis, but it seems evident that Isshin and Ichigo’s Final Getsuga Tenshō would not be the same. The existence of White Tensa Zangetsu suggests that Ichigo’s Quincy, Hollow, and Shinigami powers are acting in unison and that what he uses against Aizen is in actuality likely a combination of what Isshin called the Final Getsuga Tenshō, Letzt Stil, and Segunda Etapa. It is unclear whether what Isshin called Final Getsuga Tenshō is available to all Shinigami, only Shiba, or only himself and Ichigo. By comparison with Letzt Stil and Segunda Etapa, presumably all Shinigami should have something similar as a final mode, but perhaps it’s a Shiba specialty, as it seems unlikely only Isshin would know of such a thing, and if ever there was a time for people who did know to use it, Thousand-Year Blood War was it.)
(This is also not a Tōshirō analysis, and I don’t presume to know what’s up with Hyōrinmaru in chapter -16, let alone The DiamondDust Rebellion if it’s taken as canon, but suffice it to say, based on what Ōetsu says his experience is clearly not typical in any event. Nor is it a Kaname and Kenpachi analysis, as it’s not clear what’s up with taking the zanpakutō off someone else who died. Nor is it an Arrancar analysis, as their zanpakutō seem very different.)
All this still raises several questions, such as ones like: why does an old and experienced Shinigami like Shunsui treat Katen Kyōkotsu in chapter 649 in exactly the sorts of ways that Ōetsu mocks over a hundred chapters earlier? That’s unclear. It could be that what Ōetsu reveals isn’t widely known, and that Shinigami are allowed to labor under false impressions of what their zanpakutō actually are for some reason (such as to limit their strength). Or maybe Shunsui just finds it entertaining despite knowing the truth.
Anyway, to recap, in general:
asauchi are created in the same fashion as artificial Hollows, and effectively are themselves weaponized Hollows (which fits well with the zanpakutō which Hikone used, Ikomikidomoe, which was made from a primordial Hollow)
the asauchi facilitate drawing out the “instincts” of their wielder into a manifestation which is similar to but distinct from Hollowfication, creating a zanpakutō and its attendant spirit (or at least manifesting this spirit if it existed a priori) while leaving the wielder seemingly unaltered
zanpakutō spirits are their wielder at base, and a zanpakutō is an extension of its wielder
zanpakutō view the protection of their wielder as an overriding priority
KURAYAMI IN PARTICULAR
Accordingly, it should be understood that Kurayami, like most zanpakutō spirits, is a reflection of Yoruichi’s base impulses and desires. Unlike most Shinigami, by virtue of her high office and family pedigree, Yoruichi knows this. She was thus increasingly horrified by what she saw as a result, and internally continued to otherize Kurayami...
... But she probably missed some things in the process, because she was too close to see them clearly for what they truly were.
Kurayami is a hardliner. Her attitude toward Yoruichi is similar to Zangetsu’s attitude toward Ichigo. As discussed, Zangetsu postures in the fashion he does to try and compel Ichigo to take steps that are necessary, but which Ichigo refuses to take. The ultimate examples of this are Zangetsu taking control of Ichigo’s body in an attempt to take down Byakuya, and likewise fatally wounding Ulquiorra. Kurayami’s constant admonitions of Yoruichi, advocacy of first strikes, and appeals to violence are her version of the same idea, as Yoruichi’s preferences for socializing, toying with her opponents, and avoiding killing might get her killed instead one day. (See also: Askin.) She always pushes for the maximal use of force, for overkill, because as Ripley says in Aliens: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Kurayami only cares for Yoruichi’s continued existence. Despite being perfectly aware of Yoruichi’s guilt regarding what occurred during her time in the Onmitsukidō and Gotei 13, Kurayami would happily kill a million, a billion, or a trillion people if it meant that Yoruichi continued to live. The lives of others aren’t meaningless, but they simply do not matter to her in comparison. It’s not exactly that she only views Yoruichi’s compassion, empathy, and sympathy as weaknesses, as they can be tactically advantageous, but she believes Yoruichi is too committed to them even when it imperils her.
Kurayami largely disdains others. Being Yoruichi herself, knowing everything she knows, Kurayami can reflect upon Yoruichi’s life and judge it from a somewhat different point of view than Yoruichi herself. What she finds isn’t great. Kurayami’s perspective is that others have used and abused Yoruichi, either blatantly to get what they wanted, or subtly through needing her. Her position is thus that almost everyone else can fuck off and die. “Leave Yoruichi alone,” and “You all don’t deserve her,” are fairly apt summations of her point of view. While this hostility isn’t (usually) actively violent or lethal, she is unlikely to treat most of those Yoruichi knows in any fashion other than condescendingly.
To summarize: Kurayami is actually Yoruichi’s biggest advocate and booster, just in her own way. She’s hard on and critical of Yoruichi because Yoruichi has been trained to be predisposed to learning best from that kind of input, and because Kurayami cares enough to settle for always being cast as a villain if it means Yoruichi goes on and succeeds. She believes that almost no one is worthy of Yoruichi’s time and attention, let alone her blood, sweat, and tears. And finally, she has an infinitely negative amount of compassion for anyone who would oppose Yoruichi, regardless of any and all reasons involved in any dispute or conflict.
She loves Yoruichi (and how can she not, since they’re one in the same?) and would gladly turn the universe to ash for her to keep her going even one more day. Lobbying for murderous rampages is in effect a posture she adopts to make a point rather than a desire she lusts for. She’s never actually at risk of losing control or going berserk—it’s always only ever about doing what needs to be done with minimal risk.
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A Kid from Queens Part 15
Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader
Info: CA: Civil War Era. Tony Stark enlists his daughter to find the web slinging spider in Queens.
Word count: 1.6k
Warnings: n/a
(no Far From Home spoilers)
A/N: There’s one part where maybe pretend you have an ‘A’ initial, this idea was written more for my OC on Wattpad, so I’m sorry, but I kinda love it so I didn’t wanna change it.
Masterlist linked in my bio. Taglist in the reblog.
- - - - - 🕷 - - - - -
“Where are you headed all dressed up?” Tony asks as you’re leaving your room at the compound.
“All dressed up? Dad this is a suit.” You laughed him off, he walked with you as you were making your way towards the front to board the jet.
“Alright Scully, where are you headed? Did I miss a memo for a shareholder meeting or something?” Tony asked.
Ever since you’d presented the information to him about the Mayor, he had been extra protective. But you’d done as he suggested, you turned the information over to the FBI. They suggested that for the time being, you keep up with Thomas and the family for appearances sake, to not cause suspicion. You told this to your father. What you didn’t tell him was that the FBI invited you to aid in the investigation, due to your proximity to the case you’d be useful. Also considering they were likely stealing from a government warehouse that was half Stark owned and maintained. You’d be a good person to have on board, and your commitment would be minimal. You’d publically stay with Thomas until they told you it was time to distance yourself, meaning they’d found something or want to provoke the family into making a mistake and slipping up, hopefully exposing a hole in their network they could exploit. You thought it was a good idea, you also thought it would be best for your father’s nerves if you didn’t tell him the full story.
“I guess someone doesn’t read their emails. But no, Linda has me judging the annual robotics competition at MIT, so it’s Back to School for me.” You spoke, digging through your purse, making sure you had everything, your suitcase should have already been on the jet, but you were only going to be gone for a few days.
Tony nodded, as if he now remembered seeing something about that somewhere. He saw the jet on the tarmac, ready to take off any minute as you both stood before the glass entrance of the compound.
“Alright Animal House, no toga parties.” He hugged you goodbye, you chuckled at the thought of a bunch of engineers throwing a toga party.
“I’ll try my best. I’ll be back in a few days. Oh, and tell Wanda I left a box of clothes for her in my room. And I made a prototype of an upgrade for Rhodey’s braces that I left in the lab for you to do some testing on.” You began to ramble off things for him, knowing there was a low chance he’d remember everything.
“Alright mother hen, you don’t want to be late.” He hugged you once more, shooing you off.
You made your way to the jet, as Tony watched you from a distance. His little girl, all grown up. He hadn’t seen you this happy in a while, it brought a smile to his face. Ever since he’d practically ordered you to stay away from Peter, he noticed a change in you. You spent so much time in the lab, tinkering on things to take your mind off of life. You were rushed around from interview to interview, dress fitting to dress fitting, and photoshoot to photoshoot. He noticed the toll it was taking on you. He hated seeing you so run down, and nearly considered giving the kid a chance. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad, it worked for him and Pepper, it might just be able to work for them. He’s a good kid, but he’s not willing to take a chance yet, not when it comes to his daughters safety. He’s kept you safe for a long time, and he didn’t want to ever see you hurt again.
- - - - - 🕷 - - - - -
As you arrived in Boston, after a quick flight, a car was waiting to take you the rest of the way to MIT.
The car pulled into the familiar streets where you’d resided for a few years when you were younger. You hadn’t been back in years, yet it all looked the same. Near the entrance you spotted some of your old professors chatting, likely they were also judges.
“Y/N.” One greeted you, his expression somewhere between surprise and joy.
“Dr. Greenfield, it’s nice to see you again.” You smiled, shaking his hand.
“You’re all grown up now aren’t you. You know, I still remember your first day in my class. I had to go home and rework half of my lesson plans.” He chuckled at the memory. You remembered sitting in his class, answering all his questions that were meant to stump the class. He was a sweet older man, and you were happy to be here with him now.
You chatted and caught up for a few more minutes before you were invited inside to check in and meet the teams. You were given a metal name plate that you slipped on. Dr. A. Stark, it read.
You met the other 5 judges and mingled for a bit while the teams were still setting up in their prospective rooms. Some were industry experts, some were old professors of yours. Each judge had been assigned to a team, to mentor and offer insight and guidance before the final judging in two days time.
When a facilitator led you into a room of five boys standing in front of their invention, you weren’t met with the warm welcome you were expecting.
“Gentleman, I’d like to introduce you to your mentor Dr.-” The facilitator was cut off by one of the boys, he seemed to be the ringleader of the group.
“No, no, our mentor is Dr. A. Stark. Anthony Stark. Not some...” He waved his hand at you, trying to think of the best descriptor, “Vogue cover girl.”
You’d had a nice day so far, you were willing to let it slide, but when he opened his mouth and spoke to you with such disrespect, you were going to make him wish he’d called in sick today. The facilitator, likely a student committee volunteer, had her mouth hung open slightly in shock, she didn’t know what to do. So you stepped forward towards the boys, and that’s exactly what they were.
“You got Dr. A. Stark. Y/N (I’m sorry my OC has an A initial) Stark. My father actually doesn’t have a PhD. But I’ve got two. One of them in Electrical Engineering from this fine university.” You raised your hands motioning to the school around you, stepping closer once more, and oh if looks could kill. “But if you don’t want my help, I’m sure there are other teams who would be happy to have me...”
You turned on your heel and made one strutt towards the door before whipping around once more.
“By the way, you’re going to need the help, because I can spot six errors already from here. Seven if you count that sloppy rotary potentiometer.” And with that, you spun towards the door once more and didn’t look back at what you were certain were five speechless boys nearly shaking in their boots.
You’d certainly inherited a flair for the dramatics from your father, but this time it was merely a facade. Deep down you were on the verge of tears. This was your livelihood, you didn’t care if the civilian population thought you were some brainless covergirl, but you at least thought the people in your own field would respect you. The opinion of five students shouldn’t have hit you as hard as it did, but it now had you questioning everything. Every move you’ve made since that damn photograph came out.
You were leaning on the wall in the stairwell, if you were going to cry, you were going to make sure none of them saw you do it. You suddenly heard the large metal door open next to you, and a student looked at you in shock.
“Dr. Stark?” He asked, he wasn’t one of the boys from before, he must have been on another team. You knew he wasn’t like the others, he at least seemed to recognize you and your title.
“That would be me.” You smiled, lifting yourself off the wall slightly.
“I read your paper on nanoparticle technology. I think it’s completely revolutionary, I mean the implications alone... I just, it blew my mind.” He smiled, you watched as he spoke so passionately, waving his hands about as he spoke. A smile slowly spread to your face as well. In his excitement, he’d forgotten to introduce himself. He was tall but lanky, with a dirty blond mop of hair resting on his head, and deep blue eyes.
“That was my doctoral thesis from a few years ago. Back then the idea was completely theoretical, but even today at Stark Industries we’re developing prototypes using only nanotech.” You stated proudly.
“How’d you get around the deterioration objective?” He asked, with a slight tilt of his head.
“A housing unit that harnesses palladium and vibranium to almost charge the particles.” You explained, enjoying watching his eyes pop as you explained. It was refreshing talking to someone who spoke your language.
“That’s brilliant. It’s really such an honor to meet you. I know my team and I would be grateful if you would be able to spare a few minutes to look at our design? Our mentor is just... well he doesn’t have your experience.” He rubbed the back of his head nervously.
“I’ll see what I can do.” You smiled, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Harley, Harley Keener.” He shook your hand with a smile.
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Taglist in reblog
Please comment, like, and reblog!
Sorry this chapter is a little shorter, I’ve basically got the next one written but I thought it might be too long to combine them. Don’t worry Peter’s coming in soon!
#peter parker#tom holland#spiderman#spider-man#mcu#tony stark#peter parker au#peter parker x reader#peter x reader#spiderman x reader#peter parker imagine#peter parker imagines#spiderman imagines#spiderman imagine#tony stark daughter#tony stark x reader#marvel#avengers#avengers imagines#stark reader#peter x stark!reader#tom holland imagines#tom holland x reader#tom holland imagine#tom x reader
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Tears of Themis : Chapter 2 “Unbearable Love“ Part 15
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▌Location- Crime Scene
(Jiang MingYue’s lie about the rooming arrangements combined with the strange position that Shen Xi was found in… tells me that the missing piece we needed to crack the case was about to be revealed.)
MC:
“Even if the hallway was empty, people could come and go as they pleased through the connecting door! This means Li Zhou could have entered Shen Xi’s suite when no one was watching. Officer, when did Li Zhou check-in?”
Officer:
“Last night, 7:00 PM.”
MC:
“That’s to say, Li Zhou was already checked in by the time Jiang MingYue brought up the box of chocolates. He had time to poison the chocolates.”
Mo Yi:
“You’re right. From my guess, Li Zhou and Shen Xi must be associated with one another.”
MC:
“You’re so sure of it, is it because…”
~~~Analysis Begins~~~
[Select: Position of Shen Xi’s Body, Misplaced Phone]
MC:
“Her cellphone! Last night when Shen Xi returned to her suite, no one entered or left it, but her phone was taken away by someone. The only one who could’ve done so was Li Zhou.”
Mo Yi:
“Not only that, judging by the position she was found in and the fact that she was still dressed in formal wear… points that it’s likely she saw someone in the room. Otherwise, the first thing she would have done upon returning to her suite would have been to get changed and remove her makeup.”
MC:
“Therefore, Shen Xi must have known Li Zhou.”
Mo Yi:
“The fact that Li Zhou was staying right next door and has the connecting keys to her room in his possession, is no coincidence.”
~~~Analysis End~~~
MC:
“Did Jiang MingYue intentionally plan the room arrangements so that Li Zhou would be next door to Shen Xi?! If so, then the lies that Jiang MingYue told in regards to the room bookings were told to cover up Li Zhou’s presence. Li Zhou and Shen Xi, what kind of relationship do they have… If Li Zhou wanted to talk to her, why couldn’t he just enter through the suite door?”
Mo Yi:
“It’s not outlandish to assume that Shen Xi and Li Zhou would be involved with some kind of secret romantic relationship. Li Zhou avoided entering through the suite door to prevent being photographed by paparazzi and risk exposing his relationship, which would ultimately affect his career.”
MC:
“That’s true. There’s a saying that fans will use, ‘when an idol dates, heads will roll’. There’s no way Li Zhou would publicly announce that he has a girlfriend.”
Mo Yi:
“Jiang MingYue’s intention behind the room bookings was to facilitate Shen Xi and Li Zhou’s secret rendezvous. She lied to protect her boss and a famous actor’s privacy. Jiang MingYue would have never suspected that her boss’s lover could be the murderer. She, like Shen Xi, believed that this was part of Lu JingHe’s revenge plan.”
MC:
“Truly, once you think about it, you can find a reasonable explanation through a sea of doubts.”
(As Mo Yi and I were discussing, another officer knocked on the door and let us know that we could interrogate the hotel manager on duty.)
Hotel Manager:
“How long will this police investigation take? We’ve been receiving guest complaints all morning.”
MC:
“As long as you cooperate in the investigation, I think the evidence gathering will end soon.”
Hotel Manager:
“There goes my yearly bonus, I suppose. Go on and ask what you need from me.”
MC:
“When did Jiang MingYue make the room bookings? At the time, were the connecting rooms to room 1817 and the executive suites on the 17th floor already booked?”
Hotel Manager:
“Miss Shen and Miss Jiang’s rooms were booked under Venus Fashion’s name. But the room next to it, room 1817, was booked by Miss Jiang herself. We never could have known that Mr. Li Zhou would be staying with us. In regards to the executive suites on the 17th floor, 1718 and 1717, both rooms were vacant. No one booked it and no one stayed in it.”
MC:
“Then the suites on the 17th floor, were they connected?”
Hotel Manager:
“No. The rooms were renovated last year, and any connecting doors were removed for all suites under the 18th floor. If it goes according to plan, the connecting doors will be removed for suites from the 18th to the 30th floor starting next month.”
Mo Yi:
“This confirms our previous suspicions, does it not? The rooming situation was premeditated, whether by Jiang MingYue or Shen Xi’s request, it was intentionally planned. The choice of staying on the 18th floor must have been because of the connected suites.”
(Mo Yi’s explanation could very well be concrete. I nodded as I thought of another key problem.)
MC:
“There’s another question…”
[Select the Red Wine in Room 1818]
MC:
“I saw Romanée Conti on the wine list, but I didn’t see the actual bottle. Does the hotel really offer this product?”
Hotel Manager:
“Of course! It is an expensive wine, and I personally dealt with the request in celebration of Miss Shen’s accomplishments. The servers brought it in after making the room last night.”
MC:
“Around what time did that happen?”
Hotel Manager:
“It was almost 7 PM.”
Mo Yi:
“7 PM? Then the banquet had already started…”
MC:
“I saw that room 1817 was already cleaned this morning. Was a bottle of Romanée Conti found in that room?”
Hotel Manager:
“No, there were no abnormalities when Mr. Li Zhou returned the room key.”
MC:
“What about Jiang MingYue’s room? Was the bottle of wine discovered there?”
Hotel Manager:
“Rooms 1713 and 1817 are regular rooms, therefore, Romanée Conti isn’t offered on their wine list.”
Officer:
“The police have already searched Jiang MingYue’s hotel room and nothing suspicious was found.”
MC:
(Where did that bottle of red wine disappear to?)
MC:
“The door connecting rooms 1818 and 1817, is it normally locked? Is there only one set of keys?”
Hotel Manager:
“Our hotel is considered a legacy of Stellis City; the connecting doors were built according to old safety standards. The door isn’t normally used, so we keep them locked for our guest’s safety and privacy. There were two sets of keys, one of which we keep at the front desk, and the other was given to Mr. Li Zhou.”
Mo Yi:
“What was Li Zhou’s reasoning for wanting a set of keys?”
Hotel Manager:
“Mr. Li Zhou asked us whether or not the rooms were connected at the time of his check-in. He says he was afraid of paparazzi or fans catching wind of his whereabouts and the connecting door was a liability. So he requested the set of keys kept at the front desk and took them. The keys to rooms 1818 and 1816 were also given to him.”
MC:
“That excuse was so unfounded. If he was truly scared of the paparazzi finding him, he should have chosen to stay in a room without connecting doors. If the other person was determined to harass him and invade his privacy, they would have been able to do so if they picked the lock, right?”
(I tidied up the testimony. Even if there were a couple of murky things, there wasn’t anything else, at the time, that I needed to ask the hotel manager for.)
Officer:
“The analysis report of the glass shards has been completed. After a search in the citizen database, the dried blood on the shard was determined to be left by Li Zhou.”
MC:
“So Li Zhou has been in this room!”
Mo Yi:
“The two of them were in this room. Judging by the shattered vase and the fact that he cut himself, they must have been arguing about something.”
Officer:
“Shen Xi’s autopsy report has been completed as well, her fingernails have been torn. Compared with the marks left on the connecting door, Shen Xi’s nails must have broke when she was knocking on the door.”
MC:
“Then what about the time of death? Was there anything that could shrink the window of opportunity?”
Officer:
“No, the suspected time still falls between 9 PM and 2 AM. To add, forensics can confirm that Shen Xi’s death was caused by the consumption of poisoned liquor chocolates. Other than the minute amount of brandy in the liquor chocolates, Shen Xi did not drink last night. We performed mark analysis on the liquor chocolates as well. There were only Shen Xi’s fingerprints, and indentations made from some kind of silk material.”
MC:
“Silk product? That’s to say, when the murderer was tampering with the chocolate, they were wearing silk gloves.”
Mo Yi:
“Even if it’s not a fingerprint but a silk imprint, it’s still a clue. Officer, even if there is not enough evidence that points to the culprit being Li Zhou… we can confirm that he has an undeniable association with this case. I suggest that Li Zhou be detained as soon as possible. If he possesses key evidence on his person and we’re too late, he’ll be able to destroy it.”
Officer:
“We have updated Captain Yan’s team, and they with the idea, but… we broke procedure by taking in Lu JingHe without proper documentation. If we breach protocol again by detaining Li Zhou…”
MC:
“But if we wait for the documents to come through, it might be too late. Can’t we expedite the process?”
Mo Yi:
“In the face of these rules you call protocol, does Yan’s team not know how to improvise?”
Officer:
“That…”
MC:
“Dr. Mo, the police must follow set procedures in the justice system. Because of Lu JingHe, the media already has their eyes on the police. If you add Li Zhou to the mix, the case will be blown out of proportion…”
Mo Yi:
“I acknowledge the police’s hardship. I'm simply regretful that when one knows the path one must take to exit hardship, one is walled up by rules, a mere social construct. The road ahead stays in sight, but out of reach.”
Officer:
“We don't know where Li Zhou went after he checked out of the hotel, we’ll have to check road surveillance to find out and that requires additional clearance. To do so isn’t difficult, but considering the amount of heat Captain Yan’s team is under…”
MC:
“What can we do… I got it, I know where Li Zhou is!”
(Under Mo Yi and the officer’s watchful eyes, I took out my cell phone and dialed Cheng Cheng’s number. She’s a paralegal in our firm and is one of my juniors. She’s been with Themis for less than a year and she’s a die-hard star chaser.)
Cheng Cheng:
“Sigh, it’s Sunday, why did you call me so early.”
MC:
“Early? It’s literally lunchtime, Cheng Cheng!”
Cheng Cheng:
“It’s early for me. I was binging dramas until the sun came up.”
MC:
“Alright, it’s early, if you say it so. I'm calling about actual business, can you do me a favor?”
Cheng Cheng:
“What is it?”
MC:
“Can you help me check Li Zhou’s itinerary for today? See if he’s gone on set for a shoot or maybe at an event?”
Cheng Cheng:
“Eh? Since when did you start following celebrity news, and to be Li Zhou’s stan on top of that. Stay on the line as I check. There’s a lot of fan apps that you can search to see your idol’s public itineraries.”
MC:
“Then I’ll have to trouble you.”
Cheng Cheng:
“Hm… Li Zhou might be out of the province for a shoot. There isn’t anything on the app for this week.”
MC:
“But he was staying at the Manny Hotel last night.”
Cheng Cheng:
“Then it must be his private itinerary. It's not right to expose stuff like that.”
MC:
“Where can I find his current-day plans? Like where he is, right now…”
Cheng Cheng:
“Oi, why would you want to know something like that! It’s an invasion of privacy and it’s not allowed!”
MC:
“It’s not like I want to do this, but Li Zhou is connected to the homicide I’m currently investigating. By the time the police find his whereabouts, it may be too late, so I might as well…Sigh, you know what I mean. I have no other options… So you can’t find out where he is?”
Cheng Cheng:
“A homicide? My gosh! Then I… why don’t I help you ask my friends if they know any paparazzi or information dealers…”
MC:
“Sorry about this, Cheng Cheng. If you could, please do. I’ve put you in a difficult situation.”
Cheng Cheng:
“If it gets out that I was looking for private information, my reputation will be smeared in the fandom! Everyone will accuse me. If things go south, they’ll expose me as a sasaeng fan. You owe me big time.”
MC:
“Alright, whatever you want as compensation. But don’t reveal the fact that it’s for a case.”
Cheng Cheng:
“Of course I know that. Don’t worry and wait for my reply.”
(After the call dropped, I lifted my head to see the shocked expression on the officer’s face. Mo Yi was trying his best not to laugh as he shook his head.)
MC:
“It was an emergency, I was at my wit’s end…”
Mo Yi:
“Even if I interact with students daily, I’ve always approached the subject of star chasing as a psychological lecture topic. I thought that it was low, but now… perhaps I needed to broaden my horizons. I should not have held onto prejudice for any group of individuals.”
MC:
“I’m not too knowledgeable either, it’s all Cheng Cheng…”
(Just then, Cheng Cheng’s message came through. She sure is speedy.)
(“I found it, Li Zhou is at Stellis Airport, his flight is outbound for 12:30 PM, he’s already through security checks.”)
MC:
“Li Zhou’s at the airport. His flight takes off in an hour, he’ll be boarding the plane soon!”
Officer:
“I’ll head over right away and stop him.”
(The officer ran out while dialing a number on his phone. He must have rushed to inform Yan Wei.)
Mo Yi:
“From the looks of it, we’ll have lots of things to ask Jiang MingYue again. Before that, we’ll need to organize the clues we obtained, so… we need to obtain more evidence that pertains to Li Zhou in this room, otherwise, Jiang MingYue will be unlikely to open up to us again.”
MC:
“Jiang MingYue still has a chance to commit the crime, but as it stands, her motives aren’t as clear. Unless…”
(A man and two women, the entertainment industry, a fashion house… my mind conjured up something in an attempt to explain it all, in the most logical way possible.)
MC:
“Unless her, Li Zhou, and Shen Xi are in a love triangle…”
(Voicing something so gossipy was awkward, but when it comes to a formal investigation, nothing is impossible.)
Mo Yi:
“You’re guessing that Jiang MingYue poisoned Shen Xi out of spite and that Li Zhou was simply arguing with Shen Xi and did not intend to kill her?”
MC:
“I cannot dismiss the possibility.”
Mo Yi:
“I believe that the culprit isn't Jiang MingYue and that it can only be Li Zhou.”
——-
[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]
——-
《CREDIT》
Translator: Humi
Editor: @cL
QC: @hallowsivy
《未定事件簿》Tears of Themis is a 2020 Chinese otome game by 米哈游Mihoyo. All original credits go to 米哈游Mihoyo.
《 VOICE ACTORS 》
Mo Yi | Jiang GuangTao: https://weibo.com/jiangguangtao
Lu JingHe | Yang Tianxiang: https://weibo.com/u/1745507755
Yan Wei: https://weibo.com/lengquanyeyue
Jiang MingYue | V17-Vila: https://weibo.com/u/7360408881
#tears of themis#weiding shijian bu#otome#tears of themis translations#未定事件簿#weiding shijian bu translations#tears of themis mo yi#weiding shijian bu mo yi#莫弈
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Golden Kamuy: chapters 255 & 256 - chaos at the brewery, superior private vs superior private, the death of the first Tsurumisexual
I was hesitant to write a stand alone 255 summary and I am glad that I waited until 256 was out. I also had a busier than expected work week which kept me busy. The fire that Jack set at the brewery was large enough that the local fire department is alerted to fight it.
The next few pages show how late Meiji era firefighters worked with a horsedrawn steam pumper.
The chief calls for a bugle player to call in the rest of the firefighters and they start spraying while the main pump starts.
This the allows us to see where some of the cast are. As usual Shiraishi is near the fire fighters, he always has a tendency to know where the person in charge is, Ushiyama, Hijikata and then we see Boutarou is somewhere outside.
My most hated convict is there watching that everyone has assembled to find Jack. He then has a fixation with the ladder.
I have no patience for Ueji, I really hope he’s not around much longer.
The action shifts to Asirpa still beating our convict until her sutu physically breaks. I have to admit this concerns me since it shows that Asirpa may not have just been acting in self-defense/’basic’ punishment. It indicates that she’s bolder or losing control of her own actions towards him.
Jack reaches out to grab her fur cloak and he holds here there as he reveals his ‘tragic’ backstory. He was supposed to be the child of a prostitute and a member of the British Royal family. Wow - riveting . . . . honestly, I found his backstory to be lame and I was like ‘on with it already.’ Still doesn’t really explain why a man would become a murderer . . . .
Asirpa then becomes more desperate and she threatens to stab him with one of her arrows if he doesn’t release her, while he insists he’s the product of a virgin birth. Since he was taken in nuns and raised in some sort of catholic setting . . .
What is important is that once she looks into his face after threatening she finally shows signs of PTSD from shooting Ogata.
Here face is sweaty and flushed and her pupils are tiny and she remembers Ogata collapsing on the ice floe. I have been waiting so long for this to happen. Asirpa is good at burying and denying her feelings and finally in a pinch her fears come to the surface.
Honestly, I am so relieved to have this happen in the story.
Sugimoto then arrives and tells Asirpa that killing Jack is his job. He looks dangerous as his scarf flies back and he’s got the bayonet on his rifle.
Asirpa meanwhile is in the foreground arrow in her hand. There are then several pages of Sugimoto stabbing and disemboweling and stabbing our convict before he kicks him out a window.
With luck, he falls out near Ushiyama who finishes him off with a skull smashing step. I’ve never been a huge fan of Ushiyama, but I do like his line about how prostitutes are divine beings to him, remaining on earth to help others.
This seemed a lot more fitting than Sugimoto telling him what you do with your life is important. I’m also curious how damaged his tattoo is after being slashed open across the belly.
Now it is unclear if Sugimoto and Asirpa will be reuniting with Hijikata or not, since the skin has been delivered to Ushiyama. I’m curious to see if they rejoin his group of if they break off again.
The action finally returns to the events that I am most interested in; the fight between Ogata and Usami. The english translation has Usami calling Ogata by his first name as he beats the crap out of him while he tries to hold him off with the rifle. Usami is upset since previously Ogata called him a ‘cheap piece’ on a chessboard and he did not like it.
We get a close up of Ogata’s bloody nose as the rifle moves. The next page makes it clear that Usami has grabbed the rifle and he proceeds to empty the remaining bullets and even kicks them away on the floor.
Usami is making sure that Ogata has no chance to fire at him and knows that if Ogata tried to fight back with the rifle alone, he’d have no chance. Of course, Ogata goes to grab another clip, but Usami judo rolls him onto the floor and Ogata turns over and begins to crawl back to the rifle.
It seems like Ogata has some sort of thought in the first panel as Usami stands over him and tells him that he’s essentially useless without a gun. I’m under the indication that when it comes to fighting and combat that Usami finds him useless since both of them have done things non-combat related.
Usami then boldly pulls the bayonet off of Ogata’s belt. Usami then falls into the trope of overconfident monologue individual.
Ogata doesn’t give a damn about Usami’s monologue to him, he’s got to beat him and we get a close up of Ogata picking up an individual bullet between his bloody lips. He’s got something in mind.
Usami then insults Ogata as being a son of a prostitute he can’t call Usami a cheap piece. We know that Usami was raised in a normal but poor samurai family with both parents and siblings. He feels that since he comes from a more reputable (though poor) background he has more legitimacy than Ogata which we know is the common perception of Ogata in the 27th. We will need to know who told everyone he was Hanazawa’s illegitimate son to know how long the bullying went on for.
Usami then has self-reflective moment about how badly he’d wanted to say this to Ogata for at least a year by this point. This has given Usami a pause to his advance and Ogata uses his tongue to push the single bullet into the open rifle. He still looks back at Usami and knows he can do this since he’s not paying close attention to Ogata crawling across the floor.
As Usami prepares the bayonet, Ogata flips the now loaded rifle towards him and Usami seems surprised.
The final page of the chapter shows what a point blank rifle shot does to Usami. He’s been shot at close range and there is a massive blood splatter behind him, bayonet still in hand. The chapter ends with Ogata calmly looking over his shoulder and smoke floats away from the barrel.
What a way to end the chapter! I had been waiting for something like this for sooo long. Usami fell in to the trap of ‘oh look at me, I’m going to let my emotions allow me to monologue’ . . . Ogata used the fact that he’s bad at close combat to crawl across the floor to the rifle. Usami thought it was good enough to empty the rifle but he completely underestimated the tenacity of Ogata and his plan to reload his rifle in the most horny way possible.
If Usami and Ogata are indeed pieces on a chessboard for Tsurumi, this has shown that Ogata is a much more valuable piece. Or perhaps are all of them of equal value and Ogata just said that to rile up Usami?
Something that really stood out for me was how Usami’s approach to stab Ogata with a bayonet was very similar to chapter 5 when Sugimoto was over him about to stab him and Asirpa stops him. Ogata then has the pause to poke Sugimoto in the face facilitating his escape. In that instance, it was the combination of Asirpa and then Ogata that allowed for him to escape.
With Usami, the only person in charge of Ogata’s escape is Ogata. It this telling us that Ogata has leveled up? He’s now taking ownership for saving himself? No one else came to his aid, he did it all on his own a change for him since when they were in Edogai’s house, Sugimoto had to save him from the random guy from the 27th. . . . Just something to ponder.
Either way lets get to 256 where the action continues!
The chapter stards with Usami falling back as Ogata on autopilot ejects the spent shell to ready the rifle to be loaded and fired.
Usami tumbles down the stairs and Ogata pulls out another clip to load the rifle. As wounded as Usami is, he moves quickly enough to get out of visual range of Ogata. He holds on the the railing of the stairs as he bleeds out his back and realizes his spat with Ogata isn’t important.
He needs to tell something to Tsurumi. Is it what he saw on Kadokura?
Meanwhile Ueji is messing around with the firefighters. He’s pulled on some of the hoses and begins to climb up the ladder as people wonder what he’s trying to do and Usami exits at ground level.
Usami finds the horses for the fire engine around the same time that Sugimoto kicks Jack out the window. This inadvertently catches Ogata’s attention. Ogata then looks out the window to spot Usami on one of the horses below.
Usami is pretty rough, holding onto his chest where Ogata shot him. Ogata takes his time to set up his shot, breaking the glass and resting his rifle on a crossbar in the frame. Ogata then tells Usami that if he’s that worried about being a cheap piece . . . he needs to know what Tsurumi’s face looks like at his funeral.
Ogata has made it clear that Usami is not making it to Tsurumi alive. His goal is to stop him.
I think that Ogata is drawing on his own personal experience and observations of Tsurumi. He knows that his mother was a ‘cheap piece’ to his father since he never came to her funeral. He also got to see Hanazawa’s dying facial expression which let him know what little he thought of him as the son he ignored. Ogata also knows Tsurumi well enough that he’ll reveal how he feels about Usami in death, so really if Tsurumi cares about him, he’ll get what he wanted. Ogata likely has mixed feelings on this; his own experience is that no one cares about others in death, and he likely wants Tsurumi to be cold and calculating not giving Usami what he wants.
To snipe Usami, Ogata levels up, Usami is able to round the corner of the building, but thanks to Sugimoto kicking Jack out a window it is now open.
Sugimoto then is walking away from the open window and another window faces towards Usami. Noda ramps up the tension of Ogata aiming at the open window where Sugimoto is. . . . but just as Sugimoto moves out of the line of fire Ogata takes aim and fires.
We get a unique bullet view of his shot! Oh no? Has Ogata decided to snipe Sugimoto instead? Pfffttt! Of course not. Ogata is the type of sniper who gets his mark. His shot enters Usami’s back and exits his chest likely near his heart.
This tells us several things. Ogata really doesn’t give a damn about Sugimoto. He could have shot him, but really why? There is no point, his target was Usami. He’s off to rely information to Tsurumi.
I also wonder if Sugimoto even heard the shot after he walked away from the windows? There was no indication as such in 255. All of these events highlight that Ogata’s goals have nothing directly to do with Sugimoto and his flawed reasoning that Ogata is out to get him really needs a reality check.
Back to the action, Usami falls off the horse and is dramatically caught in Tsurumi’s arms. Usami looks at Tsurumi while Ogata thanks him.
He then removes his bandage to reveal a glass eye and he declares that he is now completed as a sniper. This refers back to when he was retraining how to to use a rifle with Hijikata. He stated he would only be a sniper, if he actually killed a person not more ducks.
For comedic effects, his glass eye pops out and he catches it. It looks like Ogata now has historical overlap with the French Canadian sniper Leo Major.
The chapter returns to Usami dying before Tsurumi. He hands over he copy of a skin that he got from Kadokura. He then begins to speak about Kadokura, while Tsurumi looks down at him softly telling him he’s done well.
Usami reaches to touch Tsurumi’s face. There is then a very uncomfortable scene where Tsurumi sucks on his pinky finger before he bites it off. He tells Usami that this will allow them to live on together. He tells him that he’ll be living inside him as his number one friend.
So, unlike saving Olga and Fina’s finger bones he took from Russia, he’ll just digest and absorb Usami instead. . . .
Usami than smiles as he dies, telling Usami that he’s so happy that he’s going to come from the feeling as he starts to call him by his first name before he dies in Tsurumi’s arms. The next panel shows Tsurumi holding him in his arms.
As a nerd with a minor in art history, I immediately noticed that this was a reference to Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Jesus laying in the arms of the Virgin Mary, the pieta.
First, based on how Usami’s death impacts Tsurumi, he can rest assured that he wasn’t a cheap piece. Second, Tsurumi has stood in for the Virgin Mary again in the context of scenes. I’m honestly curious where Noda is going with this Tsurumi = Virgin Mary bit.
The chapter then ends with Ueji standing on the smokestack of the brewery looking for everyone’s attention. I guess he wants everyone to try to attack him at once? Or is he going to jump to his death and result in the destruction of his tattoo making things impossible?
Overall impressions for the events of these two chapters.
1.) Jack was a lame convict. He did not interest me and his only importance was to get Asirpa to recognize her PTSD when she really tried to threaten him.
2.) Noda tried to tease the readers with Sugimoto-Ogata conflict but it shows that Ogata doesn’t look at Sugimoto the same way he looks at Ogata. Sugimoto thinks Ogata is messing around, an agent of chaos, but this is anything but that fact. It also shows again that Sugimoto thinks he’s more critical in the gold hunt than he is. Asirpa is key, he’s just going along for the ride and Hijikata has tried to eliminate him, as has Ogata, Tanigaki and Tsurumi.
3.) Asirpa is showing finally that she was impacted by when she shot Ogata. About time, then again, Asirpa and Ogata are very similar characters with strong internal compasses and repress their feelings.
4.) Ogata has returned to wild-type. The past few chapters he has been on fire. He out smarted Vasily, and was able to defeat Usami. Many of us wondered if his sniping days were over - he has proven otherwise, but him sniping Usami was both defensive and a highly tactical decision. It seems that Ogata has gained a new will to live, he fought his way out of very difficult situations and did everything alone (and with the help of his Yuusaku subconsciousness). It appears that Tsurumi’s statement of not wanting to have him fighting against you holds up and his own name that he is a single man but equal to one hundred. Ogata also shows even if he may have emotions and feelings about how others treat/perceive him, he doesn’t like it cloud his judgement or actions.
5.) Usami got the death he wanted. I’m a little annoyed that Usami got the death he dreamed of, he gained praise from Tsurumi and was told how much he cared about him. Usami died happy in his arms. Perhaps, this indicates a sort of guilt/responsibility that Tsurumi felt towards young Tokishige back in Niigata? If he didn’t have Usami judo fight his friend, maybe he wouldn’t have snapped and become a perfect and loyal solider.
That’s all I have for now.
#golden kamuy#golden kamuy meta#ogata hyakunosuke#asirpa#sugimoto saichi#ushiyama tatsuma#tsurumi tokushirou#Usami Tokishige#hijikata toshizo#boutarou the pirate
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