#fuck you bandai
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These are all staff illustrations. saving these cuz someone posted them but turned off reblogs and i wanted em on my blog.
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MORE pictures from the "Unofficial" artbook! These were apparently posted on reddit, but the thread has since been privated/removed?
The more I see, the more and more I'm convinced the staff was 100% behind Sulemio and ready to go all the way with them. This book is so extra and all-in on Sulemio as a married couple.
#sulemio#we could've had it all#the kiss cut is REAL#fuck you bandai#g witch#the witch from mercury#gundam the witch from mercury#suletta mercury#miorine rembran
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It's still just so utterly hilarious that so many conservative gundam fans were "we all know only THOSE fans are upset about what bandai said, the staff couldn't give less of a shit since they got paid for their time" and "japan does not care about 'american policies' (which just means being lgbt) so we can interpret it however" just for the G-Witch staff to put out an entirely fan made zine-like art book.
Like. They clearly did give a shit. It's very obvious at this point that they have at least given 1 whole shit. Not a whole lotta long-running world-renowned anime franchises do fan books by official staff, and it's kinda ballsy to do something like that so they care way more than anyone thinks lol and by god I wish I had a copy :^[
I don't even know what else to add here, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head for it all.
The thing that really gets me at the end of all this is that the artbook itself, despite the rather funny timing of its release, was not meant to be spiteful in the slightest. Most--if not all--of the drawings would have been finished long before Bandai's statement was even released, so the depictions of Miorine and Suletta inside are the way they are because that's how the staff viewed them. As a romantic pair, married and in love.
There doesn't always have to be a deeper meaning to a queer couple. The release of the book itself was just... rather well-timed.
#b ut mygod did you see how quickly it sold out too??? bandai fucked up lmfao#mobile suit gundam the witch from mercury#sulemio#smokey answers#anonymous
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i don't know who at bandai's marketing department was responsible but they could maybe watch their own anime before they make embarrassing statements about it because there's nothing "up for interpretation" in there. they deserve all the backlash they're getting for this.
you'd literally have to be homophobic or completely media illiterate to think that sulemio's relationship is ambiguous or somehow up for interpretation. 🤡
#g witch#i dont think the marketing department gets what g witch was about#or why it was successful#it's like that one time when one of the LIS devs validated a homophobic LIS fan#who asked if max could be straight#and they were like “it's up for interpretation!”#and that was the last straw for me & i quit the LIS fandom#(for what it's worth i've forgiven dont nod bc they're at least trying to improve)#i want cishet ppl to understand that this is not something you can be neutral about#when your work is queer or queercoded and homophobes are asking for validation there's only one right answer#the secret is this: you can't make everyone happy!!#not taking a side is being homophobic in this situation i hope that helps#the bandai situation is funnier bc they can't do anything about the canon#the text is so unambiguously gay and they can't erase it 😎 enjoy your PR fuck up bandai i'm sure it won't be the last#mp
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I'm probably in the minority with this but I wish the first 3 arcs of Sailor Moon Crystal were a two-part movie series (like they did with Eternal and Cosmos.).
This will probably make the Crystal fans seethe at the mouth bc God forbid anyone has an opinion different from them. But we probably would've avoided a lot of the embarrassing poor animation choices had they turned the material into two-part movies for each arc. They'd have more time to focus on the good bits that moved the story along. They'd have more time to also focus on the animation quality of the movies.
Maybe, as a result, they could've spent more time honing their character designs versus getting better after three FULL seasons of SMC.
Sorry not sorry, the designs in Eternal and Cosmos are way better than the poor attempts to copy Naoko's style that plagued the first 3 seasons of SMC.
#yeah i said it. i think the infinity arcs character design sucked balls#before anyone goes ugh youre a 90s fan ... all i have to say is: and? so what? i like versions of sailor moon and will criticize all of them#nothing is above criticism you dinguses#the musicals? the bandai ones are a YMMV in quality. the later ones are good but sometimes the songs suck.#manga? inconsistent artwork but i actually like that about the manga tbh - gave it a lot of 'action' in its line work. but 1d baddies#90s anime? theres a lot of filler. some of the filler is good. others are BORING. series does not grow w/ audience after 3rd season.#90s anime pt.2? the aging up of mamoru and him having a relationship with rei. ew ew ew. they ruined mamoru for me lol#pgsm? nothing. its perfect. oh wait one criticism is that they only did the first arc. le sigh. woudve loved to had more#crystal? questionable designs. questionable additions that deviated from the manga. kept in some stuff that sucked about the manga#crystal pt.2? like keeping in haruka kissing usagi to uh intimidate her??? really fucking dumb and huge yikes. the first 3 seasons r boring.#crystal pt.3? which is funny bc its far more condensed vs the 90s anime but somehow manages to be just as boring as the 90s filler eps.#manga addition: i like the manga and i still prefer it over crystal any day of the week.#we good? good. now keep your reply in the drafts#incel + crystal = cryscel fans#btw this is true w/ dragon ball super. they decided to adapt the movies into the series and the series ended up having 🥚#🥚very questionable animation choices that were fixed but still didnt look that great. like id rather watch the movies they came from.#because if im going to get disappointed that they didnt give vegeta the final strike on freiza - it may as well look good.#still mad about that. vegeta deserved so much more and no one will never change my mind#vegeta being denied from killing freiza was the same as denying venus landing the final blow Beryl. YOU KNOW IM RIGHT.
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NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#WHEN DID TAIKO.BUI.PM GET TAKEN DOWN :(#mannn i played it so much in high school... rip to a legend :( fuck you bandai namco
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I feel like Xenoverse 2 keeps getting updates because it's cheaper, quicker and easier to update a pre-existing game than to make a new one. There's also the fact that they might do something in Xenoverse 3 that turns out unpopular. At least with Xenoverse 2, the popularity is already there. That's my opinion on the matter, anyway.
oh, no you're right: adding updates to X2, on paper, is a much safer bet than trying to start from scratch
#snap chats#or 'scratch' anyway#tho when does an IP like dragonball ever lose money on a product#theres a point in a business or a franchise where you have so much brand loyalty and other profitable products#that sure you MIGHT experience a loss but you'll inevitably make it back in like. five minutes lmao#still i get it Like I Said: it's less effort and there is comparably less of a loss than making a new game#not saying no effort goes into the updates X2 gets now its just comparatively less#im p sure bandai still has a contract that makes them Genuinely Legally required to make a new db game once a year#so maybe X3 could be a Fuck It We Have Nothing Else game lmaoo
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So srs I think one of the only modern game Eng (and I specify english because other languages tend to not be as bad) localizations that's WORSE than this one is T/e/k/k/e/n and 8 is by far the worst bandai have ever done it for that game, but playing devil's advocate you can argue it's not as important there bc of the tone meanwhile XIV takes its tone very seriously so it's worse thematically and from a quality perspective to drop the ball in a serious story
#me every morning: i hope koji goes to hell today 🙇♀️#people love making excuses for the English language in general when it comes to interpreting Japanese they act like JP is just#so foreign and exotic and complex for English to handle- mf your orientalism is making you look stupid next to your other western peers#who can translate from JP just fine w/o being fucking weird about it and also doing shitty work 8/10 times#i think the problem is also ppl are bad at writing when they interpret something into English bc they have no prose even in Eng but 🤫#not all of them but from a LOT of eng localizers specifically U.S. ones i get the sense they mystify & glorify their job as well#in hopes of covering up their own fuck ups rather than accepting responsibility- it's a layered issue that boils down to stupidity & pride#be it on behalf of the company they work for the localizer themselves or both parties#speaking of bandai they did great work on Jojo ASB idk what it is that they can never get it right enough with their original flagship ip#srsly though 8 local even got the English subtitles for English speaking characters wrong like...HOW- voice script & txt are nothing alike
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Holy fucking shit Bandai.
I can't believe this was your move. G-Witch was created to bring in a new generation of younger fans because the franchise was stagnant and only popular among middle-aged Japanese men. And you SUCCEEDED, beyond anyone's wildest expectations, probably even your own, and grabbed a whole new generation of fans and re-engaged some old ones.
And you choose cowardice. You completely failed to understand your own show and what made it so popular in the first place. You created a BELOVED sapphic couple that was loved and important to so many queer and marginalized people and NOW you're going to hide and call it "open to interpretation?" Just absolute bullshit, Suletta & Miorine are MARRIED, it's in the text of the show, it's supported by the entire staff, including Kana and Lynn! Backpedaling now to appease homophobes is an absolutely cowardly move and you just pissed away all those new fans and the goodwill you built up.
Just imagine having sales numbers like these. Having your show trend weekly during it's airing and multiple times AFTER it airing. Having people celebrate the mention of their marriage so much that Sulemio Marriage trended on Twitter after that interview went live. And you pissed it all away by being cowardly and giving into homophobia.
I want to thank the staff of G-Witch for fighting to give us what we got, and Kana Ichinose for sticking her neck out to say they're married when clearly the suits at Bandai fought against this the entire way. I firmly believe they had a kiss scene planned (there was even a very reputable leak that a kiss was animated!) and maybe even the wedding (listen to The Way We Wanna Go and tell me you can't hear that playing during their kiss or wedding). This is completely disrespectful to the staff who worked hard to bring us this show and the fans who supported it.
Regardless, like I said before: they can try and censor current and future content, but they can NEVER take Suletta & Miorine's relationship and marriage back from us. There is no "open to interpretation", they are textually and canonically married and nothing Bandai ever does will change how G-Witch ended when it aired.
#SULEMIO ARE MARRIED#BANDAI ARE COWARDS#g witch#sulemio#the witch from mercury#gundam the witch from mercury#suletta mercury#miorine rembran#gundam
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Hey bog, have you seen the neat "Diversity of Life On Earth" action figures that Bandai Spirits is putting out? They're just... high-detail articulated animals of various types. Colorful lizards, some creepy fish, the occasional frog, some crabs, that kind of thing. I only bring it up because one of the model robot supply websites whose mailing list I'm on felt the need to inform me that they're accepting preorders on a huge fucking wasp, and I immediately thought of you.
Oh! I didn't know these were all under one brand but I've seen a few and I have this giant salamander!
his mouthf opens
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A bit of a bittersweet moment I experienced recently was hearing a few people I know express complete shock at the fact that Armored Core 6 just gives you complete and utter freedom and control to do whatever you want with the appearance, aesthetics and colors of your Armored Core. I asked them to elaborate a bit on that, and a few mentioned that they were fully expecting colors and overall looks to be something you pay for in microtransactions, not something to just... Be there, baseline, in the game.
And that made me so fucking sad when I thought about it a little and, yeah, makes sense that at least a significant amount of people nowadays associate "control over my character's appearance" and "looking good in-game" to "microtransaction", because that's the state of the industry in plenty of its wings. You unlock or sometimes even pay for colors, individually, you pay for looks, on scheduled releases of microtransactions. Fucking hell, I'm used to that being the exception, they are used to it being the rule. That's the bitter part.
The sweet part was seeing them glow with the intensity of a supernova 3 hours into the game when they got a bunch more parts and then spent the next 6 hours just playing with colors, patterns, the incredibly robust emblem maker, and bringing to life their ideal, coolest, sweetest rig of an Armored Core.
And part of me believes, because I can't say I know this for a fact, but god be my witness, I fervently believe, that there was one dude, one very strong dude, in the FromSoft dev team, who didn't code a single line or attend a single meeting in the developmental cycle of Armored Core 6, no, this herculean individual's whole fate-given task was to stand at the door to the studio, stop any Bandai Scamco executives or managers that wanted to drop by the studio or join in on the meetings, and defeat them in spectacular fashion so they don't fucking ruin it for all of us with their greed, because I would bet my first three children if I had any that at least one of those fucking vampires had the idea to market customization and cosmetics as a microtransaction, and it was Very Strong Dude's job to make sure that particular asshole never once set foot in the studio.
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Every single time a popular IP goes openly queer, or is intended from the start to be openly queer, the conservatives at the corporate top are near universally trying to fuck them over, by downplaying or cenosring, or even straight up erasing its queerness
It happen with The Legend of Korra here in the west, and now is happening there in Japan, with Gundam
What im saying is: dont lose heart becuase of some dumb Bandai executive. The show is over, thier marriage is literally in the text itself, and you would need to have no media literacy whatsoever to not see them as a couple.
And while the corporate overlords might try to trip them, they still walked, so that others could run
#gundam#sulemio#suletta mercury#miorine rembran#suletta x miorine#witch from mercury#g witch spoilers#g witch#wlw#queer representation#anime#yuri anime#yuri
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Premium Bandai selling new Sky, Cloud and Mist boxes with their respective rings in the coming year 2023………. I need to buy them at any cost, first of all, and secondly, please. Please. More. I’m begging you I’m on my fucking knees
#please let me be hopeful. please#ooc#also MAKE NEW FIGURES IF YOU HAVE THE LICENSING FOR KHR? BANDAI? THE FUCK LOL
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The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.
Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?
To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.
You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)
Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.
Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.
Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.
Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.
I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.
You have 2 options
1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.
2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.
Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.
You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.
But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)
Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.
Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.
Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.
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Untilted Katamari Reflections
Preamble:
Content considerations for the following include:
Parental abuse
Bigotry
Worldly anxiety
You're welcome back another day if that's too much right now.
I.
It’s fall of 2015.
You and your virgin college friends drink shitty cocktails called the “Slutty Will Rodgers.” They’re just Pepsi rawdogged with indeterminate amounts of grenadine and Captain Morgan. When you bought the mixers a Wal-Mart stocker yodeled “OOOOoOoooOH, maKIN sOMe DRINKS?!?!” and you knew it was time to leave.
We Love Katamari is on the Telly. It’s a sweet, trippy game you first bought to cope with high school. On Dark Fridays at 1am, when your inbox was barren and your balls were full, you’d drive to the empty gym downtown and sprint six miles. Then you’d come home and replay the firefly level until you fell asleep with your pug.
Your college friends are bad at the game, so they pass the controller. You’re playing the underwater stage. A spaceman falls in the pond of people gunk and stacked crabs. It’s going really well if you’re honest. You point to the screen and say “this’ll be Florida if Trump wins.” See Fig. 1.
Figure 1: Rick Desantis has big plans for Disney.
Your friends don’t reply because they soon won’t be virgins and their tongues battle each other’s. It’s a different game they play, one with fuzzier rules, but greater industry respect. You wish the campus gym was open 24/7.
. . .
Your skills as the prince are not inherent. You first meet him in 2005, when your dyspraxic hands can barely tie a shoe. Your parents catch you lose shit for the Toonami review of Me and My Katamari. They buy it for Christmas, hoping to steady your nerves while your father’s in therapy.
Dr. Flam is a Neo-Freudian hitched to your mom’s guy, Dr. Flim. She’s deep in your dad’s dream journal and makes him watch movies like Cool Hand Luke to really reign in his ego. He gets the DVDs from the Netflix site, then through the mail. As a family you watch your dad’s therapy films and reruns of Inyuasha.
In the waiting room you barely navigate the sticky ball through Namco Bandai’s Satoshi Kon parade. See Fig. 2. You’ve only seen adults express anger verbally, so when you mess up you grunt a lot and let out those Leopold Butters Stotch swears like “crap,” “shoot,” and “gosh darn.” You’re not particularly self-aware, so you probably just say “god fucking damn it” a few times and don’t remember. Years later you realize there was probably a secretary behind the glass watching you do all this.
Figure 2: Bwahbwahwabhbawahbwaaaaah.
Sometimes there’s a girl in the room with you, just around your age. She’s stuck while Dr. Flim teaches her mom about what dream snakes mean for her fear of male puberty. That's what he did for your mom, anyway.
You think the waiting-room stranger is cute, but you won’t admit you like girls yet, especially not to yourself. To cope with the cognitive dissonance, you do your weird shit louder while refusing to make eye contact with her. If you get real stressed you crank up the main menu track and yell “ahhhhh that’s so relaxing” while the “nah nah nah nahs” play through your headphones.
At one point the girl stands against a wall and stares at you with her arms crossed. You bet she thinks you’re cool, but she’s probably just annoyed and hopes you’ll notice, or maybe just ask if she’s OK. It’s probably good you don’t talk with her. You might ask something stupid, like if she's seen the roach corpse in the stairwell. It’s been there for a year straight, isn’t that crazy?
For better and worse, you power through your little game alone. Every time you lose the King of All Cosmos beats, shoots, and belittles you. See Fig. 3. It reminds you of when your own dad shattered your Harry Potter wand over the kitchen counter because you dropped a mini pizza.
Figure 3: The King of All Cosmos offers little constructive advice, all things considered.
You fail quite frequently. Eventually you drop the game because it’s getting stressful and you have the power to relieve yourself of the situation—not the Freudian lobby, just your fake dad.
II.
It’s 2012. PlayStation Network uploads The Prince’s primeval outing: Katamari Damacy. Within, Padre Cosmotic flaps his gums over too much hooch then slams his dump truck ass through the better part of our solar system. He dislodges every recognized constellation and even the moon itself.
Cosmos sends Prince to Earth—the last brick left in the shitstorm—to make slop of our planet and bodies. With the slop space itself will be made anew. The Good Son does as he's told, and every living entity experiences euphoric ego death within the bulbous heaven of the Katamari.
As a Real Gamer Teen you lose a lot less in this one. You really go in and fix Fake Dad’s mistakes, no problem at all. This is why a year ago you hailed “gaming journalism” as your calling. You write clean and play tight; should keep the lights on. It’s the most concrete idea you’ve had since 7th grade when you outlined a YA novel called Tooth Pocket. Even you didn’t think Scholastic would buy that one, though. It was just too hot for the book fair.
One day you’re cranking through FFVI and your real dad swings by, mad you're young. He grills your ass and says “I bet you can’t even tell me the biggest thing happening right now.” It’s some real “What’s a gallon of milk cost?” shit, he could mean anything.
Surprisingly, you can’t think of a good answer. You and your friends are actually pretty informed because John Stewart is still at the desk and y’all chime in every day. See Fig. 4. You also spend hours each week tearing through MSN slideshows in your Graphic Design class because the Photoshop takes five minutes. You’ve seen a staggering amount of the Syrian civil war.
Figure 4: Sometimes in Snapchat you draw glasses on your cat to make him look like Mitch McConnel. You wouldn't do that without this guy.
Still, you’re a little stumped. It’s the middle of a phenomenon native to moralist presidencies known as "a slow news week.” You actually ran out of war shit the other day and clicked through some slides about Pakistani wrestlers. The seniors who offered you Jack Daniels in the Whataburger lot saw it and laughed. They thought you were peeping dong in class. You really weren’t, but they didn’t believe you. They graduate certain you were bricked up in the Dell Lab over big guys in spandex.
“I don’t know,” you tell your dad.
He throws his hands behind his head, hard, like an orangutan chucking logs at a poacher.
“It’s the fucking carbon tax,” he yells. This comes as a surprise, you think, because that shit is last month’s news. It really didn’t go anywhere.
“Do you not pay attention because you don’t give a shit, or are you just a nihilist and think you can’t do anything?” You can tell in his eyes he thinks there’s a real answer. “Seriously, which is it?
You don’t remember what you said. You probably just stammered until he walked off.
A month later he picks you up from marching band. Your phone is dead, so he had to wait twenty minutes longer than anticipated while you found his car. He punches the rearview mirror until the windshield cracks then screams of how your birth kept him from New England.
III.
It’s 2016. A rockin’ MILF in the Psych department gets you really into Hamilton. See Fig. 5. Every day you wake up on the grind and blast “You Aaron Burr, sir?” through your shitty 7-11 cans. While cramming foreign language Quizlets and McGraw Hill Online you do this thing called “Hafilton.” It’s where rock up to “Nonstop” and quit listening just before Hamilton decides what he will stop is being a good husband.
Figure 5: Like Kojima, you know "MILF" is a mindset, not a factual inquiry.
It’s 2018. Your grades are notably better and you’ve snuck into the honors program. Like Hamilton himself, you really flourished at 19 and thought about running for office. You immediately abandoned this idea after remembering your allergy to recordings of your image or voice.
You cohabit with the Psych MILF, and she offers some advice: she’s really had her boots on the ground with this whole “clinical psych thing” and honestly, respectfully, she loves you, but dear God it might not be your scene. It’s taken a real toll on her and the friends, and she can’t imagine you going through that shit.
At 1am in your living room you boot up DOOM (2016) and listen through some Hamilton. Angelica is thirsty on main when you remember that you, yourself, could be a lawyer. You don’t have to run for Congress to fight the establishment. There’s just the common law, and it’s right there. You can just get your grubby little hands in that shit and work your magic.
. . .
It’s the last semester of undergrad. Your Western Thought professor says Hamilton wasn’t really a huge deal and really James Madison shat out the big parts of our faction-proof empire. Yes, there was, in fact, a civil war, but the caplock rifle worked it out. After the Federalist papers he has you read the Bill of Rights but no Supreme Court cases. There’s a lot of talk on negative liberties.
Just before finals, the learned doctor says your generation only has two things to worry about: the climate and the poverty. Yeah they’re big, he says, but they’re just two things. You’re crafty kids, smart as the framers, even.
. . .
The state decides law school is your jam and lets you come inside.
There’s the negative liberties but you actually read Supreme Court opinions when the big boys aren’t shaking fists for Valley Forge. They have you listen to Hamilton for context. You feel dirty. An LRW professor puts on the “I’m Just a Bill” video and your sectionmate with Ivy degrees gets really, really mad.
. . .
The Federalist Society has a comfy presence at your law school. Along with Big Oil they sling out free pizza to every Little Scalia with a rumbly tum tum.
On your way to class you hear what the pizza boys feel. They hate Europeans, those social democrats with the rotten armories and clumpy cash. The Euros, they think, give too much wiggle room for the mentally ill, and by that they mean they mean gay people and probably just women overall.
There are more than two things to fix, you think.
. . .
The pandemic hits. You and some pals start a Google Doc to stay afloat. It barely works. In the Zoom review for the property final your professor catches multiple people crying. "You don't have to be here," he tells them, “there are other jobs.”
. . .
A year passes. You’re in a niche public interest class you do all right with. The professor looks you and thirty-five others dead in the eye and says how sorry he is that law school is traumatic. You shed a single tear in your little window. You're pretty in the shit and haven’t worn pants to class in months.
Then public interest prof takes a big, big drag from his long, fat spliff. He spins his desk chair and baseball cap at the same time, never letting go of the joint.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s not your fault, really, but the world is fucked. It’s time to fix what your parents did.”
The next week he gives a practice exam where the best solution is to sell an old lady’s house to Nestlé.
IV.
It’s 2022. After throwing your whole gooch at it, you fail the bar exam.
You fall back hard into exercise. When you’re not slamming Barbri you’re at the gym binging curls and cranking the Chainsaw Man soundtrack. One night on the way to squats you finally hear “Black Parade.” Just like you, Mr. Gerry Wayland is stuck between global disrepair and the desire to write Funny Little Books.
You just started an FLB yourself, actually. It’s spin on a Story Break episode you love. In your version there’s a fucked up civil war horse that moves like a spider and is covered in bugs. Rich people kill the planet then the horse gets lost in space. It’s compelling, you promise. There’s body horror and pirates dressed like Gorton’s Fisherman. See Fig. 6 It’s about the horrors of the contemporary world state. It’ll be fun.
Figure 6: An untapped horror icon. Imagine blood contrasting that yellow.
Big problem, though: you remember rich people love hiking. There’s no grass on Mars, not that good shit anyway. Would they really fuck all of it?
You edit. In the last few years, the real breathless ones, the oligarchs cash their tab. A cartel, they think, could really muscle those stragglers, the tragically common. There’s one city left with both breathable air and refugees. They level it. The few survivors are spread amongst the stars, so their loves and languages may die.
. . .
It’s the middle of Bar Prep Round 2. You and the patient MILF see Hadestown in the Big City.
There’s a juke joint on stage flanked by devil trombones. A sad little guy slinks in from the janitor’s closet. His name is Orpheus and, just like you, he’s a sad, short writer who likes a lady so much it comes out weird. He has a vision, he says, for a little ditty. It’s compelling, he promises, and shit’s gonna change. His love is functional and realized, worth the investment of a hardened woman displaced by capital’s torture. She believes him.
You cry because you know where this goes.
It’s just a single tear.
Don’t worry.
Nobody sees.
. . .
There’s this game you like, by some corporate anarchists who hate themselves. They’re Scandinavian, from the spot in Tallin where you stopped for a cruise. Every gift shop there had swastikas and gas masks leftover from the bloody years.
In the game is a liberal yacht MILF. She thinks you’re stupid but someone’s helping with your gun, so you’ve got that on her. And yet, she pins you, re your whole writing thing. See Fig. 7.
Figure 7: She sucked, but it still hurt when she left.
Your favorite Supreme Court podcast says the ocean’s last hope is other countries. But those countries’ people cry to the Disco game, and their ministers also bought The End of History. You meet them on the subreddit. You're all geeked out, waiting for the tide.
. . .
It’s the era of desert cradles. God thinks you’re disgusting, so he sends his better kids with a memo: the flood was too much work on his end, it’s time for something different.
“Just keep walking,” he says.
Your skin bares his figure. So do the corpses. You little birds among billions, gassed out and screaming, move to clean.
V.
It’s 2023.
We Love Katamari is up on the PlayStation store. You sit with the cats and mow down some crabs. You don’t need it so much these days, but it’s nice.
There’s a Bar card in your wallet, just below your gym tag. There are two interviews in your Google Calendar. Good stuff might happen, hopefully soon. You crawl into bed and wrap an arm around your wife’s rib cage.
Everything matters and nothing is safe.
You are loved enough to sleep.
#gaming#actually mentally ill#disco elysium#fuck freud#writing#satoshi kon#2000s anime#law school#environment#hamilton musical#aaron burr#politics#marriage#philosophy#the daily show with jon stewart#bad parenting#my chemical romance#gerard way#existential despair#katamari damacy#we love katamari#succession
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What the fuck bandai. Why do you have everything EXCEPT gunpla.
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