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astrologista · 4 years

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jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!!

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands.

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up.

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth.

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally?#for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

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imagine-fight-write · 3 years

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RANDOM - Banana Fish Review, Vol. 1, Part Four

(This was one of my fav gifs looking for gifs of Shorter.)

*There will be pictures/gifs included tomorrow, because this is already late & loading them is taking forever, for some reason.

Haha, no, I actually prettied it up 1/5/21. Yes, I’m glorious.

No I’m actually Dio DIO in this situation, who am I kidding.

(This transition from Caesar to Dio fascinates me, by the way.) (The GIF.)

The JOJO reference is because I’ve finally finished Diamond is Unbreakable! It was fun! I enjoyed it a lot! Ready for the next part!

But back to Banana Fish.

Hope you enjoy this!

So my plans failed again. Who is surprised? (Not me.)

I apologize profusely for the gaping void of Banana Fish-ness left since last I posted.

No really. I now have an alarm set for every Wednesday.

Let’s see how this goes. News Update: Maybe next time.

Also, my internet is still blitzy & rotten, otherwise I would’ve posted this yesterday (the 15th).

Now on to the in-depth, delighted gushing - er, review, of Banana Fish!

*Also, this is part 4, and 4 is a special number for me. Because of this guy:

And I can spell his name correctly!!! (It’s Ulquiorra, from Bleach, my 1st anime fan gushing love.)

Yes, I’m strange. Moving on.

So, brief recap, since I’m not sure anyone has read Part 3, given how terrifyingly long it is. If you missed it, here’s the link:

https://imagine-fight-write.tumblr.com/post/632014616404344832/random-banana-fish-review-vol-1-part-3-my

Please love & like it & repost to the rest of the Web. I worked tremendously hard on it.

Yes it’s long, but oh, it was delightful! There was snark! Delicious food! Wine! Fabulous mustaches! Mysteries! I gushed so much!

(And snarled at the wonton waste of good breakfast food, which I will not forget & always condemn.)

*I mean, I know people who will throw up if they have breakfast in the morning. But it’s important to eat so you have energy to do things & feel good.

And Dino took a perfectly beautiful breakfast & essentially wasted it for no good reason. I was so mad.

We meet Dino Golzine, a.k.a., Ash’s worst nemesis /enemy (note, I can’t spell nemesis) and major reason for why his life sucks.

(Although society doesn’t help either. Though the police try. They really do. Except what’s his face who’s complete scum & thoughtless, but we won’t meet him til Vol. 2. Plus I don’t think he has a name?)

But yes, Dino Golzine. All around awful person, and not safe around children (or anyone, really.) He’s low-key in this scene, mostly using verbal assaults (to great effect) but just you wait. There’s a reason he’s a mob boss.

Ash snarks, to great effect, but he’s no match. Dino has all the cards and all the dice (cards & dice being metaphors for power, & how he involves awful, painful memories of Ash’s past & tries to manipulate & order him around. Brrr.)

But Ash rallies, and ultimately refuses returning to be Dino’s heir / toy.

We meet Shorter! Huzzah!

(End of recap.)

It’s clear right away Shorter & Ash are old friends. They exchange quips about Marvin. We learn Marvin holds a mean grudge, so savvy readers can guess it’ll come to play later (it does.)

Shorter’s last line is strange.

“Just don’t put me in the position of having to kill you.”

Which is kinda out of the blue. I don’t know what to make of it. It doesn’t spoil or fore-shadow anything (unless in a very confused, round-about way) because that never happens later. So I’m confused.

Ash laughs it off and goes zooming off on his motor-bike / motorcycle (not sure which).

Note, from this short scene we already learn Shorter has his own sources of information - he knows Ash went to Dino’s, fast enough to be there before their conversation ended (unless he was just lucky to be there already - why was he there?). He already knows about Ash’s talk with Marvin, with enough detail to warn Ash about Marvin’s temper & that Marvin likes him, which is a bad combination.

Shorter is smart & cares about his friends, warning Ash about Marvin.

Aren’t friends great?

Especially after meeting such a dominating if soft spoken monster like Dino?

The answer is yes.

Next, we get this hilariously great shot of Ash running up the steps to his dingy apartment (pg. 47.)

It’s reminiscent for me of a scene in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 1, when Jonathan & Dino have their epic fight in the Joestar mansion.

There’s a part where Jonathan does this epic flip up to a second floor via sword (it’s epic) & it ends with this a few-seconds-longer-than it-needs-to-be shot of his butt. You can’t miss it. I’m usually oblivious to such things & I noticed it. I laugh every single time.

Anyway, back to Banana Fish.

(The atmosphere of grunginess (it’s not a word, I meant dirty, ugly, rough) & spartan furniture is great. Just look at those walls. I adore it.

(But would never want to live there.) Ash is clearly not rich & after Dino’s rich mansion, this is a stark contrast.

Also, there are no pictures or posters on the walls (which are festooned with dirt and cracks instead.) In fact, there’s almost nothing in terms of personal effects at all.

This baffles me. I mean yes, I assume they’re all dirt poor, living in a gang & working for the mafia on the side isn’t something you do for the luxuries. But surely they’d have something.

Or maybe it has something to do with Japanese decorating aesthetics? Meaning, Japanese appear to be more spartan than Americans in terms of decor (see the book, In Praise of Shadows, for example.)

* I can’t spell aesthetics. Why do I even use that word?

The apartment just looks extremely bare compared to others I’ve seen in movies depicting this era. Is what I’m saying.

Look at those bare walls. (It hurts me.)

Thoughts? Comments on how Japanese, Americans, and Europeans differ in basic decorating styles? Comment below!

Also remember as always, Banana Fish is both set & was written in the 1980’s, well before the “modern” style we have now.

Unless - wait. There is something very important to Ash which he’s clearly hiding in the apartment he goes to, which I assume only Skip & select members know about.

So maybe this isn’t actually Ash’s main base, where he sleeps & hangs out?

Yes, that must be it.

If you’re confused, I’ll explain once we get done with this section.

Moving on.

We meet Skip!!!! (Pg.47)

Black characters (and Latino) are still, alas, extremely rare in manga, anime, & other media, so all the cheers for including Skip so early & as such an important character.

Because Skip is very important. For multiple reasons. More on that later. Also note, 1 of the gang members Ash busts earlier is also black.

Again, the dialogue is great here between Ash & Skip, establishing Ash’s trust in him. Which is no small thing.

Skip is like Shorter, (agh, both their names start with S) sweet, but also has a nose for news.

Arthur’s going to get it, hah!

There’s yet another reference to it being early.

Though there’s no specific time mentioned . . . Nope, not since Ash found the poor, dying banana fish dude.

Does Ash usually sleep in? Is he a night owl? He was wandering around at 1 in the morning last night, after all.

*Yes, technically it was early morning, but it was still dark, so bite me.

But then, he was also suspicious & keeping tabs on his 2 gang members. So, who knows.

But I’m going to guess he’s a night owl.

Ash sits on the bed, and after Skip mentions everything is good, “him, too”.

Ash gives his 1st real, genuine smile. Gentle, relieved, no hard edges. Just pure happiness & relief. It’s sweet.

(Also, I just realized the “him, too” is supposed to be a surprise / shock for the reader & I spoiled it earlier. I do apologize.)

Skip offers to get coffee but Ash declines, deciding to nap, which reminds me:

Actually, drinking coffee before you take a nap can, for some people, actually make you sleep better.

Also, short cat naps (15-30mins) can boost your energy and mood.

Naps are good for you!

I almost wondered if the comics Skip had on the table might’ve been manga, but remembered it was the 1980’s and, far as I know, manga wasn’t big the U.S. yet. Alas!

Which is funny if you think about this being in a manga.

Skip goes to leave. Ash puts his hand in his pocket and gets this intense, almost fierce expression on his face (middle panel, pg. 48).

I was absolutely baffled by this reaction for a long time, but finally figured it out. Ash’s reaction is supposed to be baffling, because what he realizes right here will be revealed in the next few pages.

Skip, concerned, asks what’s up, but Ash brushes him off and sends him off to buy coffee. (After which I sincerely hope he takes a nap, because he needs one, he’s been up all night.) Sleep is good for you!

Skip is able to buy coffee with a single coin. A single coin.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

All my tears, and curses on inflation and overpriced coffee! And Starbucks!

Anyway, we learn Arthur’s going to get it (and Skip is the best spy ever) and the scene cuts to:

Our favorite person (not) Dino Golzine, tending his orchids.

I like this. It’s a rather unique hobby for a villian. I assume to give him a refined, elegant, and exact air.

He’s interrupted by Angie & his fabulous mustache (snickers) and this delightfully comic scientist person (who might be important later? The face sameness makes it difficult to judge, & I’m too lazy to consult my other volumes, which are not close by.)

But his entrance is priceless (pg. 50). I mean seriously, please go find it if you haven’t already. It’s dramatic, with a big WHAM! & he looks so cartoonish.

I love it.

Dino tells him, essentially, “don’t disturb my orchids” and me being an non-gardner person, I wonder: is it actually true loud noises can disturb flowers?

Comment below!

Anyway, Dino quickly establishes yes, he did send Ash’s gang members to kill the poor banana fish guy who started this whole mystery, and yes, it was important.

There’s a great panel (pg. 51) of scientist dude, drawn much less comedic, the whole panel black except for a white aura around him sweating and clearly in distress.

He whispers, “It - it’s gone.”

Dino snaps to attention with a leonine look, exactly like a cat who has just spotted another cat. It’s easily my favorite picture of Dino so far, very striking.

The dialogue is brilliant and snappy, short and direct.

“What is gone? . . . You’re positive? . . . Just a small amount.”

And we get the grand reveal:

Ash, taking out a bullet shaped capsule (was the shape intentional by Yoshida?). A capsule he’d clearly taken from the dying banana fish guy. There’s a great panel on the bottom of pg. 52 of Ash’s questioning expression and a ?

He unscrews the capsule and pulls out a tiny vial.

Thinks of the address the dying banana fish guy gave him.

Ash goes into the next room, where we see the silhouette of someone sitting with a plaid blanket draped across their knees.

He expresses his first real look of vulnerability, and gives a wonderful line:

“Go see . . . Banana fish . . . He said it and died. And you say it and you might as well be dead. Who did this to you? Griff . . . Please tell me, big brother.”

Everything clicks together (almost.)

Griff /Griffin is the soldier shown way back in the very beginning. The one who left for a few minutes and came back insane and shot up his squad.

Who’s now a human vegetable.

Banana fish is clearly responsible. Somehow.

And Dino is mixed in with it (of course). Pieces are coming together, but questions still remain.

Until next time!

#random #banana fish #banana fish review #manga #ash lynx #skip #banana fish shorter #friendship #xena warrior princess #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

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trickstermiraculous · 4 years

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Siblings That Are Both Heroes But Only One Knows That Fact

Summary: Jason is nervous but gets to talk with Marinette and Adrien?

Chapter Two: Nervous And Texting Your Sister's Boyfriend

Author’s Note: Not used to writing the bat brothers dialogue so sorry if this is bad. I know about the bat brothers from young justice, some of the comics, Tumblr, fanfiction and my own research.

Jason was nervous to say the lease, he finally gets to see his baby sister again in person since he was Robin. He had been back for three years at this point and he didn’t visit his sister, Jason was just glad that she and her adoptive family agree to meet them although, he was upset that he couldn’t see her at the Gala due to her being busy.

“Todd, can you please shut up” growled Damien who was sat across from him on the plane, reading one of the books from the mansion’s library,

“I didn’t say anything brat” retorted Jason glaring at him,

“You were thinking too loud” replied Damien,

“He’s just nervous Little D,” Dick said cutting off Jason,

“I am not” snapped Jason which just made Dick raise his eyebrow.

“Well maybe if he didn’t leave his sister in the dark so long, he wouldn’t be” snapped Damien,

“You know full well, the reasons I had to do that, you brat” growled Jason which just made Damien roll his eyes and go back to reading his book.

“If you so nervous, why don’t you just text her before you meet her tomorrow” stated Dick throwing a piece of paper at Jason which he caught and saw that there was a phone number on it,

“This is her phone number?” Jason questioned slowly,

“yep her parents gave it to Bruce so that you could contact her” answered Dick,

“And you tell me now?” snapped Jason,

“Well when Bruce told me to give it to you I was busy and I just remember that I had it” defend Dick putting his hand up in from of him as a way to say ‘don’t attack me’, “now text her before your nerves get the better of you”.

Sighing Jason pulled out his phone and added the number to his contacts with the name Pixie Pop which is something he used to call her when they were both still on the streets.

-------- Chat Open --------

Jason: Hey Marinette, it’s Jason Todd

Pixie Pop: Jason as her big brother who is actually alive even though he has been missing for years

Jason: yes

Jason: who are you? because I know this is her phone number

Pixie Pop: Her boyfriend Adrien

Pixie Pop: she asked me to keep her phone safe while the teacher pulled her in for a ‘chat’

Jason: a chat

Jason: she in trouble

Pixie Pop: more like she got the blame for not being the perfect example that our class has to follow

Pixie Pop: even though she not at fault for the crap behaviour that our classmates have

Pixie Pop: shit I’m rambling

Pixie Pop: I told Mari that I caught it off her

Jason: right...

Jason: so let me get this straight, she’s in trouble for a teacher not doing her job

Pixie Pop: got it in one

Jason: how the fuck does that work

Pixie Pop: We’ve been questioning that for months butbdjsahdjdfs

Jason: you ok kid

Pixie Pop: Adrien is fine

Pixie Pop: Holy shit Jason

Pixie Pop: wait no this could be a prank by Max

Jason: what kind of sick person would pretend to be someone brother who you thought was dead as a prank

Jason: what kind of people are you hanging around with Pixie Pop

Pixie Pop: well I know for a fact I never told people about that nickname and mum did just confirm that you were given my number

Pixie Pop: so hi Jason

Pixie Pop: as for what kind of person would do that, well I would really put it past her

Jason: who is her

Pixie Pop: no one important

Pixie Pop: anyway

Pixie Pop: It’s nice to finally talk to you

Jason: don’t go changing the subject

Pixie Pop: I’m not talking to you about school drama especially when I’m at school

Jason: fine but we are talking about this later

Pixie Pop: sure thing mom

Jason: cool it with the sarcasm

Jason: also question

Jason: what’s got you so busy that you can’t come to the Gala

Pixie Pop: commissions

Pixie Pop: also I got asked last minute

Jason: Commissions?

Pixie Pop: I’m a fashion designer

Pixie Pop: well technically I’m just starting out but uncle jagged did ask me for a commission over proper designers

Jason: Uncle Jagged?

Pixie Pop: Jagged Stone

Pixie Pop: he’s been close family friend since I made him the Eiffel tower glasses

Jason: Holy shit Pixie Pop

Jason: Your designing for Jagged Stone

Pixie Pop: A fan?

Jason: yes but I blame Dick for it

Pixie Pop: Your brother, Richard Grayson

Jason: yeah how you know that

Pixie Pop: Research

Pixie Pop: more like a background check

Pixie Pop: shut it, Adrien

Jason: Background check

Pixie Pop: I was curious about who adopted you

Pixie Pop: ok

Pixie Pop: like you haven’t done the same

Jason: fair

Jason: also Adrien,

Jason: Your boyfriend

Jason: want to explain that

Pixie Pop: first off I’m seventeen

Pixie Pop: second off it’s more of a secret relationship until he’s eighteen

Jason: why a secret relationship?

Pixie Pop: Press

Pixie Pop: and his father would make us break up if he knew

Jason: He has a shitty father, got it

Jason: also press?

Pixie Pop: Adrien Agreste, teen model for the Agreste brand

Jason: A model

Jason: nice catch there Pixie Pop

Pixie Pop: thanks

Pixie Pop: shit gotta go

--------Chat Ended--------

Jason turned off his phone with a smile as his nerves seemed to have disappeared for now although he was concerned about what type of school she went to. “I’m guessing texting her went well,” asked Dick smirking,

“Yes” muttered Jason as he grabbed his laptop from his bag,

“Whatcha doing then?” replied Dick,

“Research” answered Jason as he searched up Adrien on his computer, finding out that he goes to Collège Françoise Dupont which most likely meant that was where Marinette went.

“For what?” asked Dick,

“She mentioned something concerning about her teacher, well she didn’t her boyfriend did” replied Jason,

“So she has a boyfriend” question Dick,

“Adrien Agreste” answered Jason,

“The model?” asked Dick

“Yeah, how do you know?” replied Jason raising an eyebrow,

“A few of the younger heroes were drooling over a magazine with his photo and when I asked, I got basically his whole background” answered Dick,

“Right” replied Jason,

“Anyway have fun with that research” stated Dick turning back to his own computer where he was working on a case.

Jason just hummed in response as he eventually found Marinette’s social media to which he spent the rest of the plane ride looking through in order to get an idea on how much his little sister had changed.

Author’s Notes: Glad people enjoyed the first chapter, I just hope you enjoy this one.

AO3

Wattpad

#ml x dc #miraculous ladybug #batfamily #miraculous fanfiction #Jason Todd #dick grayson #Damien Wayne #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #adrienette #aged up #Only One Knows That Fact AU #maribat #big brother jason

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homespork-review · 4 years

Text

Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

#homestuck #Let's read #homestuck meta #reread #literary critique #sporking #Homespork

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macklives · 5 years

Text

homestuck recap

i hated this so fucking much bc my 2 am bitch-ass didnt want to read a recap thats probably longer than any slowburn out there

anyways here it is

also, uhhH sorry im using this as a end of session discussion bc that shit gets explained in her as well. and im not writing up more recaps of a recap so this is where im done for the day. (by done for the day i mean last nights session, im still doing a liveblog soon. i just wrote this yesterday)

also that this is long

you dont have to read it, theres nothing of importance

ive been coping with humor to get me through it

neato.

have fun with what i suffered through:

why was “beta” the only thing unhighlighted?

like did i miss a page???

OH its the beta version of HS thats why

damn its like 5 pages and thats it

mmh

well youll all be happy to know im clicking every single one of these links again bc i like looking back like ahh i remember that. good times. also in case i forgot some shit existed.

do you think andrew had fun writing this? or was he like “fuck”

thats a lot of fucking package talk. good thing im not confused as of now and remember it pretty clearly. of else, this early on in the recap, id be screwed.

god remember when i did an analysis on each item and what it did

i feel as if i have the technology engrained inside my head right now

cruxite, alchemeter, all that jazz

flashbacks are starting up already

yeah, that was the good part in homestuck where i knew 100% that i probably would continue on this liveblog in its entirety, ngl

that one explosion scene. bc it kept me going.

OH W A IT SHIT

i just realized how the intermission spades probably fucking foreshadowed the whole jack revolts thing and gains the ring, which was also technically JOHNS fault considering he slashed up the doll in the first place

my god, i guess thats the only good aspect of the recap. looking back at things and realizing the missing pieces.

oh that makes sense for the whole “this prototyping had no effect on the enemies, since he was already in the medium” i didnt actually think about that

little did rose know where that would get her right now

oh yeah

there’s still the whole entire lab terminal thing and how mom basically knows the place exists. i guess we’re still venturing onto that and itll come up later when we find out how mom knows SO MUCH about the game.

still think shes some weird spy or secret agent

i kinda love her ngl

anyways, theres literally no reason for skaia to produce a cloning machine. so technically, they only sent the meteors in, right? so who put the cloning machine in if not mom?

oh yeah that impact was nerve wrecking asf

and still at this point in the comic i called dave fuckboy red

huh, how times change

i hated reading that whole paragraph ngl, the frustration just kicked me in the boobs again

yeah nobody else got tornadoes, huh?

OH that makes also much more sense

bc she did prototyped them before she entered the medium.

i gotcha

man one of my favorite edits i made, rose hitting that meteor with a bat

are you

telling me

the exiles structures they arrived on were in the form of the items the kids used to enter the medium?

THE EGG

THAT EXPLAINS “EGG”

of course it was 413 years ago. that was never explained. simply vague “many years in the future....” but i expected no less from this

man serenity is the most wholesome character in hs no doubt

damn thought andy here was really gonna spoil us jade’s planet

okay cool, im glad i now have the layout to the whole “their stations went to the coordinates of the home button” shindig

man i honestly dont know what else to say besides “yeah cool recap” when i already pretty much know what went down? ofc im looking into each link and shit and adding in things when i see fit, but otherwise its just me going “ah good times” yknow

the whole meteor thing kinda makes sense now?

we’re still missing a few pieces of info but we’re getting there, folks

oh yeah that reveal

god jade and dave have it in the shits for parents huh

bro isnt the best and jade has a fucking dog

who lowkey

is doing better than bro

who knew a fucking dog is a better guardian than bro lmfao

dreambot = terminator. im telling you.

sorry im still on that idea and it will never leave unless i have the actual proof in front of me that its not going to become a thing. meaning, ive finished hs and theres still no terminator dreambot or either andrew himself gives me a canon letter with “the robot is not arnold, mackenzie, pls just let it be”

why is the entire game session highlighted

i swear to god if this is like to a second recap or smth of the whole game session i may fucking CRY

okay thank god its just a design of the skaia layout

which is honestly cool

idk why its blurry tho but i can at least see the layout now. which is honestly how i pictured it anyways.

yeah, john did make a huge impact in his friends’ life and i find that so fucking touching

yep. got that. everything loops around. cool.

especially when the trolls come in. god we havent even gotten to that recap portion yet, we havent even gotten to the INTERMISSION

pls can this be the halfway point to the recap

AT LEAST

so they were exiled after the whole jack: ascend thing, right? considering theyre way in the future. man no fucking wonder.

speaking of jack

man that whole dad and jack interaction was gold, ngl

OH THAT EXPLAINS THE RING THEN

and wow, andrew’s really giving us the best female content huh. andrew is the true god of equality and diversity.

also hey, i didnt realize that wow. so PM tricked the queen in showing the parking ticket to be able to take the present from jack. she’s a smart cookie, that one..

she and PM basically snitched on jack and it was the best thing that has happened to me so far

oh yeah okay

but why did AR panic over bec? bc thats something we havent learned yet, right?

anyways

exile town, the only town which should exist. facts. i dont make the rules.

noice

i love PM being queen. like.. thats canon now. shes an actual queen.

yeah that was a fun game and the consorts were cute

fuck yeah the dick head

hate them even more now that i know john was killed because of them

anyways, i wonder what dick move dave’s denizen did? maybe thats why its filled with lava bc the denizen was like “fuck it. make the land red. kill them all”

UH WHAT

WHAT

OH MY GOD HOW DID I JUST FORGET NANNAS LETTER LIKE THAT LMFAO

THEIR TITLES WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME!

so i still dont know what they mean but i can gather it has something to do with the game giving them abilities. considering dave is the “knight of time” and he can go back in time. whack.

which means john can either control someones breathing or simply wind. and rose is... like that one girl in the winx club who does the sun shit. bc whenever i think of light powers, i think of stella.

and jade is space. witch of space.

nice

i have no idea what that means ngl

okay finally

we’re at the trolls

maybe this recap will end soon

i remember when i thought they were internet bullies

yesss

someone asked if i basically knew the trolls were on a different veil than the kids, so not presently with them, and i know lol. i was making a joke before btw. jsyk. dont think im incompetent to forget these things when sometimes i choose to forget it so i can add in a joke

it be like that, i annoy many

then again, pls dont assume im trying to say im not incompetent bc im also a fucking dumbass and DO forget shit and i have no excuse

imagine being so bored on the meteor, your last resort is speaking to aliens

ngl me if i was ever trapped on a meteor and could potentially do that

nah ik its bc its their only hope at helping with their session or whatever tf CG said to john. but there was BOUND to be a conference meeting between them like “okay guys. humans. that needs to be sorted out” and you just hear CG screaming in the background

i cant wait to meet them honestly bc im growing on all 4 of the ones we’ve seen already. and on top of that, i know what they look like and i know theyre not THAT bad, just a little on the crayy zee side sometimes

but theyre trying

OH MY GOD

I GET IT

FUCK

DOES THAT MEAN THE INTERMISSION IS *APART* OF THE MAIN FUCKING STORY??

AND SPADES IS WV FOR THE TROLLS

GOD D A M N

wow

i didnt expect that. but maybe the signs were there and i was just willingly choosing to ignore it or smth bc “haha couldnt be, right”

flashbacks to how i thought the trolls were humans

anyways, i guess he got his revenge on the kids version of “snowman” ie the black queen. but really

he did not have to do that. he could have cut off the finger and fled. but he decided “nah, lets implode her” so the loml is dead and all i got was a catchy song

i knew they were different types of “bullies” but now i just have to replace bullies with uhh

trolling strategies

anyways, this is cute. i love how they’ve come to be friends through mutual frustration. good part in the comic.

i wonder why it explodes

more importantly

....

terminator time?

this was my favourite sequences of dialogues in the whole entirety of homestuck. that is to say the back and forth thing that the kids went through to become a sort of wingman for the other.

absolutely gold.

all except AT’s rap.

GC was the only smart one with the linear shit

anyways fuck he still has to kill the denizen now but apparently its hard to beat for a sleeping dick head so

that will be fun for the future

john will probably need to kill A LOT of imps to get there

yeah rose is a badass bc she slayed that thing with needles of all things

OH and the white queen was the cursive

damn did AR ever do the whole guide process to a kid yet? maybe he will with dave, idk

oHHH

i fucking SEE

thats why he said DNA

to use it and replace all the life forms in the ocean

fucking neat wow

man that sounded sarcastic but im genuinely impressed bc all i got was bullshit as i read jaspersprites log

so thats the secret. it was “meow” bc that somehow translates to the genetic code she needs then. and that code apparently took fucking years to write as well. sick. whack. oh man.

derse is very pretty, ngl

and wow shit

“dave had already been awake in his tower all along without realizing it” how tf does someone just

do that, awake in both places at once

i didnt even fucking realize that fact as i read that pesterlog wow

ah yes, around the time things got confusing

okay so the capsule makes sense bc at first i didnt know it was a fucking time capsule so i got confused as to how it just apparated the game lmfao

the more you know i guess *twinkle*

i find that a neat concept tho

like the whole whatever you prototype affects the imps and shit

yeah so that whole “he had no advice” basically impacted his future

no shit dave wanted to reset things bc he probably thought he caused some sort of bad butterfly effect and killed his best friend

fuck calsprite thats all im gonna say

i read that first sentence and i think i got an aneurysm

and then everything else just made me sad again

i mean good thing he fucking did amirite?

we got pain at first but now we got cool shit like idk

fucking DAVESPRITE

damn idk how that works

will rose have like two minds now? or will this be some steven universe fusion shit?

“and understood their meaning” course well i fucking didnt so could you pls elaborate, rose?

okay but then what the fuck did he use that was inside the fucking box

bc i thought he used his knife?

im only every going to refer him as that now, thank you andrew

alright okay..

god that was a lot

i dont know what will happen once i click on those links but i am going to see that for myself bc i refuse to add ANYTHING ELSE

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

Text

Spec #312 Thoughts

Surprisingly decent

Let me save you some time and money up front in case you are desperately curious about this comic.

Morlun is killing Spider-Man, but then Miles shows up to help him, Jonah goes to get major police artillery to help them (they arrive at the issue’s end), Peter winds up in the zoo and delays Morlun with Miles’ help before planning on using a shitton of tranquilizers to put him to sleep and tells Miles to leave him be and lead the Spider-Army.

That’s all that happens in their comic but whilst I my summary was derisive last issue it’s not the case here.

Now to be clear as crystal this is far from the Coming Home arc by JMS and Romita Junior. Even if you distilled that story down to purely the Spidey vs. Morlun battles scenes that story still comes out on top. It’s a superior fight/action comic.

But this issue ain’t half bad in that department.

It does a better job of selling you on the punishment Peter is taking in the comic and has some modest yet effective combat scenes, such as Peter using his webbing to manoeuvre Morlun’s arm off of Miles holding Morlun with a web line whilst anchoring himself. We also get sold on the desperation of the situation quite effectively, Peter and Miles delaying tactics against Morlun are smart but reek of last ditch efforts, reminiscent in fact of Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut and the Firelord brawl, both from the 1980s. Hardly surprising because this is the same idea. Spidey vs overwhelmingly powerful foe who’s nigh indestructible.

Speaking of Miles he’s mostly used quite well here. He and Peter work well together in the few scenes they do work well together and Sean Ryan doesn’t punch down on Peter to make Miles look better at all.

Even Miles cheatcode worthy Venom blast is ineffective. Technically speaking that’s a flaw in the storytelling I will admit that. the Venom blast has taken out more powerful people than Morlun but now with no explanation it doesn’t work. This is to the benefit of the comic though because if used correctly there would be no plot.

But that’s a problem with the Venom Blast ability itself. It’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too overpowered meaning it demands you write badly to accommodate it by either having Miles use it and look ridiculously overpowered or have Miles forget to use it and look stupid. When faced with that option Ryan’s compromise of Miles using it but it not working is the lesser evil. Of course he could’ve explained why it didn’t work better.

As far as my enjoyment goes though that wasn’t reductive though because I hate that ability’s cheatcode nature.

Another tiny problem regarding Miles is that his first appearance is him just being there. No entry through a portal, no fanfare, no nothing. It’s kind of flat.

Now as you all know I’ve been critical of how Marvel oversells Miles in the past. Even the ad for his latest debut issue proclaimed him the coolest Spider-Man (because who is 2099 I guess?). And I was braced for that in this comic because the dialogue prior to his arrival essentially sets him up as a miracle and initially his battle with Morlun seemed to be portraying him faring better than Peter did.

However Ryan and Frigeri took a more balanced approach. Morlun does get the better of Miles, and Miles, whilst helpful, doesn’t swing in to save the day for Peter at all.

Even if you feel he does seem to be fighting Morlun better than Peter did last issue bare in mind Morlun blindsided Peter when he was already exhausted from a night’s work whereas Miles is younger, more rested, went in knowing who he was fighting and blindsided Morlun.

The best thing about the use of Miles though is oddly how Ryan seems to know how not to use him. This is still Peter’s book so Miles is backup. Peter isn’t passive and takes initiative to save himself, Jonah, Miles and do his part in the new war with the Inheritors. The focus is fundamentally on him and he’s the guy coming up with the pans and making the hard choices here.

The scene where he decides to stay in fact is modestly strong.

It shows a determination and heroic resolve. It also displays a sense of practicality and strategy. Realistically Peter can’t help the other Spider-Heroes right now or in the immediate future. It just makes more sense for him to go this alone and leave the war in the hands of someone he can trust, namely Miles (since he doesn’t know who else is there). It also helps legitimize Miles AS the leader rather than in Spider-Geddon where he gets the role just because this whole event is a tie into a film about him. Granted it still doesn’t strictly speaking make sense as there are more experienced Spider-Heroes who’re also used to working in a more leading role (like RYV Peter Parker). But it makes it better is what I mean.

The scene, indeed the whole comic, sells you on a Peter/Miles partnership (reminiscent of the video game or movie) better than any comic since Miles came to Earth 616. Peter is more the older wiser mentor here than he’s been to Miles before *glares at Slott and Bendis*.

Other great things from the comic are Jonah’s human decency. Much as I justifiably criticise HOW we got to this point, this point is still worth a lot now we’re in it. I think Jonah if written and developed far differently could come to accept Peter as Spider-Man it’s just the speed and method we used to get there. He needed more work and more development to gradually come around to the idea.

Peter’s ruminating on his past encounters with Morlun and other people, including a nice flashback scene, was also really nice to see. Ryan evidently did his homework so kudos.

Of course being a fight comic a lot of praise must go to Frigeri, perhaps the lion’s share.

Really the glaring problem with the comic is that it should have been released/be read before Spider-Geddon #3 not afterwards.

#Spider-Man #MIles Morales #Peter Parker #Morlun #j. jonah jameson #Spider-Geddon

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ask-asuka-x-shinji · 5 years

Text

Right. Several days ago on my personal, I said i had a decent idea for an Eva fic and if It was gonna go anywhere i’d post a preview here. This is very much a preview version of chapter one, while I try and remember what I did with my Ao3 account’s password I’m gonna really clean it up and add a lot more dialogue and a probably another scene or two. Also this is very much not the verse I RP Shinji and Asuka in, I’m using mostly different headcanons for this. Mari Ikari the protag, her friend Hana and her yet to appear love interest Wing were all created specifically for this idea.

I’m Mari Akahime Soryu-Ikari, age 14, student at Tokyo 3 City Middle School class 2-A hobby Kendo special skill artistic composition, yes it’s a very long, rather stupid name. Mari after a friend of my late grandmother’s and Red Princess because I have my mom’s bright red hair and it was her own stupid nickname as a kid, not sure how either of us would qualify to be called princess though my understanding is mom was wild and violent as a kid and i’m pretty rough looking myself.

My mom drives me really crazy, I have the great distinction to be the daughter of former child genius and ‘great foreign beauty’ Asuka Langley Soryu, a woman with two children and no idea in the slightest how to do housework, no actually it’s probably that she has no interest in ever learning. Shortly after my brother was born my dad left the military to become a musician full time, he usually works from home but occasionally he goes on tour like he has been the last few days leaving us in her care. I think even my dad just wants to get out of this house now and again. I really don’t want German food in my lunch box, it’s bad enough being German without eating meat and root sandwich spreads. The stupid penguin doesn’t even find that crap edible. She’s not even awake yet, i’m make my own lunch!

Our current house is actually pretty nice. Well equipped kitchen, my brother and I both have our own bedrooms, I can easily make a few decent rice balls to avoid my mom’s cooking.

“Good morning, you’re up early you don’t have extra practice this morning do you?” And there she is, not dressed fully and yawning like she didn’t even sleep to begin with, she has work at the same time whether dad’s here or not. I bet she played video games all night, again. Asuka Langley Soryu-Ikari, Age 29, Professor of Theoretical Evolution Tokyo 3 College of Sciences, hobby mixed martial arts, special skill, being a pain.

“I’m making lunch, if I didn’t you’d send me to school with something weird and you know it.”

“Well how much is lunch from the school store, it can’t be more than...”

“No! We can’t be so careless with finances, i’m old enough to make my own lunch and one for Eren, you need to get dressed and shower and so forth! You should be the responsible one here mom, so don’t you anything stupid like standing here all morning arguing with me.”

“Hey! I need to make some coffee. You should try doing a job that mostly grading papers when you’re an adult, it screws over your brain.”

“Whatever. I think other things have screwed with your brain from your youth.”

“oh Clappe!” She squeezes by me to get the electric kettle while pouting like a teenage girl and muttering under her breath.

She had me very young. What’s probably way too young as you could tell from our ages. I know people like to whisper about it when they think neither of us are listening. Everyone says that she had a breakdown that ended in getting pregnant, but clearly she got better, better enough to get that ridiculous doctorate in a field that no one else understands, while dad never even went to college. But her mother had been famous scientist all the Soryu’s had been for years and years so she wanted to follow in their legacy. She’s such a pain. Although grading papers from students who can’t follow you must be a pain I can’t begin to understand what she’s supposed to be teaching.

It isn’t long before i’ve got those lunches made and get my brother out the door. Hana is already waiting for me outside. Hana Aida is probably my closet friend and has been since we were little. She’s a giant robot fangirl and knows probably more about NERV then my parents who actually worked there. Her cousin is pretty much the same and has been dad’s friend since school although he’s even more out there than she is. People used to call her a freak, but then I got in the habit of beating them senseless and they stopped, of course I got into trouble but also every time I did, my mom was actually incredibly proud of me.

“Red and Little Eren, a good morning to you on another average 90 degree day in Tokyo’s useless autumn, time to work our buts off at school and suffer for it huh?” Hana starts out with.

“My teacher said there is no Autumn in East Asia.” my brother replies confused before he frowns and turns to walk the other way to kindergarten not staying around for an explanation but still confused.

“I think he usually doesn’t understand a word of what you say Hana just don’t take it too personally.”

“I don’t.” She really didn’t did she?

“So what are your plans for tonight Red? Do you have more babysitting or can you come over? I could use your eye for detail, you are a born artist.”

I should probably avoid leaving my mother and brother alone together for too long if I can, but really he’s too young to mind her so it should be fine, it’s not like she’s dangerous just absent minded. She won’t feed Eren penguin food or leave him unattended so it should be fine to hang out after school, it’s not like this hasn’t happened before and isn’t just a constant part of life.

“I’ve got nothing pressing and it would be nice to get out of the house. What do I need to get?”

“Now now, I’ve got everything technical, that’s just who I am after all... if such a thing exists for the creation fan art, Ohana Aida has it, or is gonna barrow it from a relative.”

I think she’s just being nice to a degree. Even if our house is pretty nice now and everything, When i was younger the three of us lived in a one room apartment that my dad had as a NERV officer and when I was born apparently we are all crammed into one bedroom of Colonel Katsuragi’s old place. It’s easy to not realize exactly how bad off you are as a kid, but when you get older you realize how stupid that is. How innocent you were not to see makes you angry or at least it makes me angry. Family pride doesn’t pay any bills and I can’t say the Soryu family has anything else.

And like that, I didn’t pay attention to my classes and the day is very much over. I need to relax and I feel like hitting something or someone, I promised Hana I'd hang out, so not hitting anyone.

I guess I should explain since I didn’t earlier what Hana and I actually do, I get so fed up with my family that this narrative is suffering. Like I said my special skill is artistic composition and Hana writes some really bad manga so I’ve been helping with cover art and the like for awhile now... of course you probably have guessed that’s not entirely it.

A basic benefit of being the daughter of the two of the first actual Mech pilots to ever live is a family resemblance. The type that allows you to model both your parents to you’re mech nerd friend for her art. A decent wig and contacts later and if you didn’t know I might as well be Rei Ayanami we basically have the same face after all.

It’s never actually bothered me that Hana does this or that I’m helping. Only A handful of people actually know what it was like back then and my parents certainly aren’t talking about it to me. Dad says they met on the deck of a battleship I’ve heard only a few million times that they had some kind of rivalry over who was the better pilot. But specifics? It might as well be the stories from Hana’s comics, so helping is... a way to see Dad how he used to be.

Of course, the tsundere girl with the catch phrase ‘don’t be so stupid’, and a firm belief in the bright future that the UN represents for humanity can not be my mom, no way, I sort of like that versions, of course I helped write her and sadly enough based upon myself.

It’s late by the time, I actually feel brave enough to come come.

“I’m back, Hanna says hi and wants to borrow some clothes, should I get started on dinner or are we eating something weird yet again? next time please have said leave us dinners.” no reply, the lights are on. I finish taking my shoes off and... and both my mom and little brother are curled up on the floor of the living room fast asleep, the TV still on. She really didn’t sleep last night did she? They’ll be awake when they smell dinner.

“...Misato put some actual clothes on, don’t stand there like that for Shinji to see and don’t fix us anything weird for dinner just order a pizza like a normal person... what? are you stupid, there’s nothing traditional about instant anything...uh...” and I heard all of that, she’s sleep talking and probably has been.. of course you could guess that’s not why i’ve stopped dead, that actually might as well have been me complaining couldn’t it? best not to admit i heard anything and walk slowly away to start cooking. Right...

#evangelion #fanfic #neon genesis evangelion #ooc

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letstalkaboutwebcomics · 6 years

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Let’s Talk About Novae!

Before we continue, please be sure you’ve read Ye Olde Disclaimer so you know what exactly is going on here!

And beware… SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let me tell you, I had to shorten what I originally wrote by a lot because I couldn’t shut up about it.

I wanted to start off this series with a webcomic very dear to my heart, which is the wonderful Novae by @kaixju, a duo of artists with a solid comics resume behind them. KaiJu have collaborated in the past on The Ring of Saturn, Mahou Josei Chimaka, and Inhabitant of Another Planet, which is the prequel to Novae. All are hosted on Sparkler Monthly, and I highly recommend reading them all. Not just because Sulvain and Raziol cameo in The Ring of Saturn as well as Mahou Josei Chimaka, which I thought was so good.

Novae follows the tale of two men in 17th century France, at the height of the scientific revolution. One is Raziol Qamar, the apprentice of the esteemed scientist Christiaan Huygens. Raziol is the son of a translator, and has a boundless love of astronomy. The other is Sulvain. Yep, just Sulvain, no last name so far. He’s a mysterious traveler that we know very little about yet, other than the fact that he is curious, lonely, and loves the stars just as much as Raziol does. You can see where this is going.

We get a number of strong visual hints as to Sulvain’s past or the truth of his existence, and surely more info will be revealed very soon. Novae has just completed Chapter 4, which very neatly contains the blossoming of a relationship between Sulvain and Raziol. I won’t summarize the story thus far, because I would much rather you go read the comic for yourself! Instead, let’s start looking at some of the key themes Novae gives us:

Loneliness

Belonging

Grief

The powerful multifaceted-ness of love

In Inhabitant from Another Planet, we are introduced to many of these key themes through a look into Raziol’s past- namely, his last intimate relationship. This, in addition to Sulvain’s flashbacks from Chapter Four, brings me to one of my favorite things about Novae: it is not afraid to be absolutely open with the character’s past loves. Novae is a story primarily about the love between Raziol and Sulvain, but it is just as much about the love that, inevitably, brings them together. Something I see often in the Romance genre is this idea that giving positive and meaningful context to a character’s past relationship(s) is somehow de-valuing their present one. Past relationships are sometimes treated as a stepping stone to get to the ‘one true love’, or a device to create hurt comfort. As if the current relationship needs to be the only good one the characters have ever had, and that’s what makes it meaningful. It’s not. And I’m not saying that stories where that happens are inherently bad, because that’s not true either. It needs to be handled delicately.

What Novae does is provide us with insight into the past relationships that built Raziol and Sulvain into the people they are now. That they have loved before, they love now, and they absolutely can love again. Romance is not devalued by the presence of other loves. And I love the insight into that. It tells us so much about them. Raziol’s relationship with Bevan provided a moment in time where he felt considerably understood and happy- temporarily, yes, but that temporalness led him to reconnect with his father. The feeling of otherness has not left Raziol in Novae, and it’s a pivotal part of why he connects with Sulvain. Raziol gravitates towards people that help relieve that. As for Sulvain, at this point we can only guess. I have my theories about his condition. There are many hints that he practices Necromancy, and even more hints that he’s either undead or immortal or something of that nature. Immortality and loneliness are inseparable from each other, classically. Raziol gives him something he can easily give back: familiarity and nostalgia, and the delight in learning new things.

But with immortality (or whatever it is that plagues him) comes the other classic issue: the fear of intimacy and, you know… getting attached. How many times can one obviously sensitive guy handle burying the people he loves? And yet, intimacy and comfort is all too enticing. Who can blame him? I’m interested in seeing where that goes once we know more.

Side note, I appreciate that this is the first time they see each other. Nothing is better than main couples having an embarrassing first interaction.

And Sulvain is just kinda like [nods] “Yes, understandable. I, too, have that reaction to myself.”

Another one of my favorite aspects of Novae is the attention to detail. So many tiny bits of the world are so carefully researched and considered, it makes my history-loving heart sing. Objects in a room can do so much in developing a character, and it’s so nice to see that so thought out for both Sulvain and Raziol’s father’s apartments. It is believable that a person lives there, and the word feels so tangibly like 17th century France. This makes is so easy to become immersed in the world these characters inhabit. We are not simply following their story on its surface, but becoming part of the environment that drives that story. Not only that, but the comic places such a loving emphasis on tiny, quiet moments.

Every small gesture, every silent look they give each other means something so visceral and signifies a huge step forward. Soft and so often silent, but that’s what forces you to pay attention. The limited color palette deftly assists in this, every single page dominated by either a rich blue or yellow or a mix of the two. Blue, the historical color of divinity, cosmos and magic, and yellow, the historical color of happiness and knowledge.

I want to bookend this with a look at my favorite scene so far, which is related to my earlier point about Sulvain’s past love: the final scene of Chapter Four, in which we see a flashback showing Sulvain burying the mystery woman from his memory (Ohhhoh whooo could she be??). The color palette transforms stunningly. It’s not easy to show flashbacks without being heavy-handed and direct (or alternately, not being clear enough), but this color palette change does it in such a nice way that sits well with the feeling of the rest of the story. The burial shown is a traditional burning-pyre one, and this is the first time we get to see Sulvain displaying extreme emotions. He weeps for her, wailing, but silently due to his inability to speak. And it’s beautiful, not only because of the stunning imagery but also because it handles quick, simply addressed death within a story pretty fantastically.

Sulvain’s relationship with this woman is powerful and meaningful. Her death is not the end of his story, but it does lastingly impact it. And he is allowed to mourn, and feel vivid emotions, and still grieve however many years into the future when these feelings affect the new connections he builds, and that is okay. Sulvain is not shamed for having complicated feelings, or not being completely ready to dive in headfirst into a new romance, but instead go slowly. Don’t forget, in the Novae timeline, Raziol and Sulvain have only known each other a few days (which is just my guess). It just makes me unbelievably happy that that understanding is there in the formative moments of their relationship, and it’s not used as a miscommunication drama fodder (a big pet peeve of mine). Each of them knows that they are both going into this with a lot of baggage, and part of a strong relationship is working through that together, and giving it time.

To briefly address another technical aspect, suffice to say dialogue is one of the most difficult parts of comic writing. There is a fine line between too much dialogue and just enough. Novae stays within this line wonderfully. As a reader, I never feel like the story is unnecessarily being explained to me. It takes advantage of the beauty of a visual medium and allows visuals to tell the story clearly and concisely, and all dialogue serves to enhance the story. It never feels too wordy, and everything is so astoundingly poetic that the dialogue itself works perfectly in tandem with the environment.

In conclusion, Novae deserves serious props for handling a slow, quiet narrative so well. It’s really difficult to manage that, especially in webcomic time when you generally update a page at a time. With longform webcomics, it’s easy to lose the reader’s attention from update to update if it feels like nothing is happening. But here, with every page, something huge is happening. It’s just a quieter, more contemplative something, and I look forward to it every time. I know whenever a Novae page goes up, it’s going to be gorgeous and I’m already completely invested in the complexities of these characters. Reading this comic, you can feel the love and care the creators have put into developing it. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

PLEASE go read Novae, leave many comments, and support KaiJu! You can do so by:

Following them on Twitter

Becoming a Patron

Sharing their Portfolio

Follow them on Tumblr

And tell your friends about Novae!

#webcomics #queer webcomics #comic reviews #comics #lgbt webcomic #essays #novae

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sparda3g · 6 years

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One Piece Chapter 900 Review

One Piece has reached 900th chapter milestone. It’s an amazing accomplishment that Oda definitely deserves great recognition. As it hits the milestone, I asked myself, “What made this series truly magnificent?” The journey has been fantastic; whether there are good moments to remember or bad moments to wish to forget. Oda has been called “Goda” because he’s beloved by many and love his writing no matter what. This chapter answered my question; I wouldn’t mind calling him “Goda.”

I have to admit, I did hear reactions toward this chapter from early spoilers, yet I was hiding from those fans and info. The best I can describe is it is similar to Tokyo Ghoul:re Chapter 143. If you read it, you will know what I mean. If not, I’ll explain briefly. In that said chapter, there were uplifting feelings like everything will be fine and the wild ride is almost over. Then, that single page threw everyone off and the rest is history. Not only the tone is similar, but so as the reactions.

I have check around the discussion board before writing this and see mixed reactions. Happy for Oda being bold and did the unexpected twist that got people in denial, which is also similar to Tokyo Ghoul:re, only with the recent chapter. Frustrated that Oda did a twist that either fans didn’t want their beloved characters to get caught like this or believe all characters got buried as in lost hype. I for one love this chapter.

Oda must have created an illusion of happy thoughts when the cake was made to be the decisive factor of everyone’s fate. Hell, he continues to press forward with Big Mom actually loving the cake. In short, everyone is saved. The tension beforehand actually got me chills because it almost plays off that it was going to be a complete dud. While remembering the reactions from the fans being in the level of “WTF,” I was even more incredibly frightened. I still remember Marineford War Arc vividly and the shock value is still high to this day. Thankfully, the cake was good enough to bring Big Mom back to “life.”

As Big Mom start digging in the cake, the atmosphere mirages the tone of happiness and the arc was going to conclude in a bright light. Chiffon got to witness the effect; simply joy that her trust in that cake pays off greatly. Big Mom was in another world sensation. She technically got foodgasm, only done for comedy with her somewhat comical expression. It’s for the best to not go Soma on us; otherwise, it’s truly a nightmare.

The townspeople begin to celebrate as all of their troubles have been lifted. It’s sad that Sanji or even Chiffon gets no credit in creating the cake; only Pudding gets everything. What’s worse is that there are people that actually believed that Pudding threatened Chiffon to help out the cake and praise her like a goddess. Not only Sanji gets no mention at all, which hurts the ideal of a chef, but Chiffon remains as a traitor and despise by all. It speaks volume that Pudding looks depressed while being praised. I like the fact she feels this way; the character growth is apparent and while she can remain in the island (if Big Mom is now cool with her), she feels unpleasant to take the glory. The complete opposite of who she was before.

The strangest part of the chapter is how everything was looking bright for Strawhats and others that are against the Charlotte Family, only we didn’t get to see them celebrating. It’s true that they are in a predicament, trying to escape the island, but the one part that I didn’t want to see is the good feel from the enemy’s side. Basically, it got me a bewildered to see Perospero celebrating like we are cheering for him and his family all this time. I’m like, “…………….You’re not Sanji…” When the chapter ended, it hit me: this is good news for the wrong side.

From the very start, it highly focuses on Big Mom and the outcome; believing that it could be poison. Since she didn’t die instantly and continue to eat more, Perospero got excited that all of their troubles are gone, even though Strawhats are escaping. It’s sort of funny how he believed that she did eat poison but her immunity is so amazing that it had no effect. You would think the momentum would sky rocket for Strawhats; instead, it’s given to the Charlotte Family. In other words, stopping Big Mom with that cake did more harm than good. Because of it, the unexpected downhill spiral begins.

It was a bit uplifting to see the Sun Pirates saving the day and help Strawhats by making a pathway to escape for them. The loyalty is touching to say the least; once a friend, always a friend as they would say. Then the downhill begins when Oven comes through the Mirror World. The uplifting spirit ends here once Oven single-handily takes out the Sun Pirates by simply boiling the sea. Oven may get tricked or surprise attacked here and there, but he’s no joke when he can take out everyone in one move. You can call this a red herring for believing everything will be fine with them around; now, we are more or less back to square one.

The most haunting moment is not just with the images of downfall; it’s Big Mom singing a very creepy song, let alone just singing. Again, the cake should have been like good news if she is done rampaging, yet it’s nothing but disaster. The song is downright terrifying to read; can’t imagine how it would sound like in the anime. The choice of words is disturbing with the use of dead animals and selling out to hell for the sake of the imaginary peaceful world. It’s the nightmarish foodgasm.

It’s brilliant of Oda to incorporate the imagery of her world and the current event. As her song is filled with dark and creepy tone, it is fitting for what’s going on outside to be darkness as well. It just I didn’t expect this level of darkness. She is in her own world while her family, now uplifted with the best news, is taking care of Strawhats with ease. There’s no dialogue from anyone but Big Mom, which connects the scene together in a horrifying way. When Queen Mama Chanter shows up, I want to quote for them with, “You got to be shitting me…” I got chills just by singing along in my head. Charlotte Family continues to win, Strawhats continues to suffer.

If that wasn’t enough, Germa and Vinsmoke Family are also being cornered to the point that someone is really going to die. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone does. This is like Metal Gear Solid 4 Oven Scene; just how much chaos and downfall am I going to see? The imagery of Big Mom’s past and her words scares me. It’s clear that she is way out of her mind and I don’t mean the fact that she is like high or whatever right now. This song practically describes her mentality too well. No matter what condition she’s in, she’s a monster.

The massive shock value that got people in denial or start singing Doraemon Theme Song is the Thousand Sunny getting destroyed in a single blast. The Jolly Roger is on the sea; leaving the depressing tone of defeat. Let me say that first of all, I don’t think Luffy and others are dead; but the ship being destroyed is really, really hard to debate on. I can’t say it is guaranteed destroyed, but the option is up there. When One Piece becomes unpredictable, it really hits hard with the “risk” or “twist” Oda conveys in his writing.

Even though the outcome is anyone’s guess, the situation still leaves in deep peril. Sun Pirates got taken out quickly (not all I think), Germa is struggling, and Luffy is in no condition to fight for a while. At this rate, we need Shanks or someone else to come in and change the tide. They were expecting to escape by the time Big Mom is pleased with the cake; instead, they are still trapped and if the ship is truly destroyed, they are screwed. Nightmare might be generous for this.

The chapter certainly got me shocked and I love it. While the overall thought for the arc is still in process, this chapter itself was outstanding. The presentation is brilliant with the use of the song that describes the scene and Big Mom’s character perfectly. I didn’t expect the dark tone it brought in, but it was captivating and unnerving. I don’t know if we should expect a rebound, but there are arcs before that didn’t end happily. Is this the arc that will join with others? In two weeks, we will know. I hope…

#one piece #chapter 900 #review

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unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years

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hey man your comic stuff?? fucking amazing do you have any tips for a novice child artist such as myself

hmm!!! thats a good question if i have any advice at all…i dont really draw things in comic form that often because of how slow i am…its a whole project for me lol

also natch im just an amateur at all of this vs people who like…pay attention to how to do things really well and/or draw comics on a regular schedule &/or get paid for it and all. so seeing this i was immediately trying to think of like, advice ive seen from random professionals on twitter & stuff & i’ve tried to moreso shake it down to the stuff I’M actually doing when i draw a comic. which is a bit tricky because of my small sample size & the fact that i dont have any kind of consistent process or technique unifying all the comic-type stuff i draw

like sometimes its just a few floating sequential drawings and other times is definitely more like, really thinking of it in terms of how i’m going to structure it in Comic Form & use the format to adjust my presentation of whatever idea i have

like i know ppl whose Job (officially or just by their own standards) to do a bunch of comics pages will do a script of scenes to decide what goes on what page and sort dialogue / action into panels & describe how things will look etc…and then do like maybe really rough layout pre-sketches, then the first rough sketch for a page, an optional more cleaned up sketch layer on top of that, and then the final lineart

i sorrrt of do a version of that, in that i am generally sitting on a Comic Idea for a while before i even start getting into the business of thinking through how it’ll actually work. i have to make sure that im “committed” enough to the idea to wanna make more than one drawing for it, and that i think i have at least a vague notion of how i could put it into a comic. sometimes i DO end up just putting the notion into a single drawing or condensing it into like, 2-3 lil floating drawings or w/e. coz a lot of the times the idea starts out really vague, often with one “moment” that serves as the whole inspiration & that i then try to build a scene/sequence around….a lot of the details beyond that can be really vague in my mind, like the setting or dialogue or who’s involved or what happens or the pacing or extra events or etc…basically Everything is real amorphous for a while

so yea step 1 is me having this one idea and trying to decide if building a scene around it would be a better way to present it vs just having one drawing, & if i think i can actually effectively carry it out….which is in reality even less fancy than it sounds…i just sit on an idea for a while & never get around to actually focusing on it / putting down any of the thoughts abt it that im formulating. but the upshot of me putting it off for forever is that i do end up with a kind of mental script / layout for a comic before i start it…..but even the extensiveness / format of these unwritten scripts varies a lot for me

like, a few times when i have made something that’s maybe longer than just one page &/or something ive been mulling over for an extra long amt of time (which tends to be stuff that is starting out w/ heavier than usual ideas) i’ll like, actually write down what happens page by page, even plan out specific panels, maybe even put down a few rough sketches of certain parts. i’ll have the Main Moment which is the idea that started the whole thing in the first place, but what tends to happen is i’ll come up w other moments that i think could lead up to / frame / follow the main moment, and i pretty much just decide how they all fit into one cohesive piece. so what my “rough drafts” look like for these more extensively planned ones—still really not that exhaustive, i only put things to paper when im basically done enough w my ideas to be just about ready to start actually making them—can vary in their actual formats (e.g. simple chronological bullet points of events, a few drawings, a rough sketch of how the whole thing might look), the core of it is basically just me finding a way to nail down how i’m going to arrange the Moments i have and how i’m going to lead one into the other…….like for things with enough pages / panels, i’ll tend to focus on which Moment will end each page &/or each line of panels, then have an idea of which other Moments i’ll need to put on which of those pages, and kinda figure out how to pace things

again that all sounds like maybe i have a real process…..I Do Not

im kinda lucky in that i think i have a decent sense for composition without having to struggle over it too much. so a lot of times i can leave a lot of that up to be felt out as im actually doing the rough lineart for the first time. i also often don’t nail down panel arrangement that carefully & also make it up as i go along a bit, which is probably not something anyone should emulate. someone was saying something about how some certain page layout of like, 3-something-something panel rows looks best, i dont know. i’m guessing, as with all things, nobody can say “always do this / never do that,” but i think staggering odd/even numbers of panels in each row is always a good guess. just makes it easier for them to read more distinctly at least, surely

sometimes i DO think about certain panels when i wanna frame a certain “shot” in a very specific way. but im just kind of doing whatever. i know vague rules like that wide shots / negative space slows down the pace, vs tightly cropped / small panels / packed w a lot of visual info tends to read as a faster pace, more chaotic. i dont quite go too wild about that sort of thing tho, because for me as a reader, a lot of times really tight shots that are like cutting between 5000 different angles rly fast all in a row, sometimes it is absolutely unreadable to me, as in i do not understand the visual info at all. it feels like the equivalent of how action movie editing keeps hanging on to the “incoherency = intensity” vs just me tuning out until the scene is over & missing details b/c i just am not getting anything out of it

thats not much of a factor for me coz i dont really ever do things with extended sequences of movement / action or whatever. i’ll keep things in one place. i’ll like to do smaller, “quicker” panels moreso to like, show simultaneousish details / to extend one moment…..occasionally i do Big Panels for a moment of higher intensity / impact too. btw putting a High Intensity moment in a super tiny panel is always really funny for the contrast of it all. i dont think ive ever done it, but it is

ummm…….also planning where your speech bubbles will go is good. i dont do that enough, but i should. most of the reason i dont have a more proper, organized process to anything i draw is that i just dont have the focus / patience to slow down for More Planning vs just going ahead and drawing it. jokes on me, since some quick vague planning can make it a lot easier on yourself vs just diving in and struggling w something for ages

uhhh also since im not that fantastic or mindful of panel layout? sometimes i’ll make a point of just having uniform rectangle panels of the same size/shape, so i only have to really worry about the layout within the frame. this is mostly good obv for things with not that much shift in pacing throughout it or action or whatever…you lose the advantage of how panel sizes can affect the tone of a shot or something & probably cant get that detailed in ur drawings but that is often Fine By Me

when i do use the uniform rectangle structure though, i kinda have to focus more on each individual panel, vs like, knowing ok, these three moments are going on this page, i have a vague idea of what’ll connect them, just make up the individual panels as you go along. this does mean that i have to kinda think more about what justifies each panel….how its different from the ones before & after it or how i might want it to be similar to “hold” a shot for a beat or w/e or draw focus to a small movement, what’s actually going into each panel, if i can/should condense two panels into one, etc. its still a lot of playing it by ear, i dont have solid rules of how i think i should do it each time

even when i do have a like whole plan for something im drawing i’ll often make more changes as im actually making it. sometimes its deciding something would be more effective, sometimes it’s just “hey this would work too & be easier,” and thats definitely fine. nobody knows the change you made, and Easier isn’t necessarily Worse anyways. convenience is good where you can get it

ive also definitely had specific comic artists formatting/framing styles in mind when i specifically wanted to use that while drawing my own stuff. like the way i’ll draw maybe a kind of horror vibe (more diagonal lines / “fractured” panels than i’d normally use, quick tiny shots of different smaller details, that kinda stuff) is gonna be different from when its a calm & quiet tone. where i dont really get too creative with the panels really & keep them pretty steady

and then that one time i did a largely nonsequential sort of panel collage b/c the marge simpson anime gave me great inspiration for how to combine & present a bunch of vague notions i had floating around all into one page. it was a good accomplishment & thats unsurprising because the inspiration i was using was That Good. thank god we can all benefit from each others good ideas and knowledge & work & all that. it does help to jump on a feeling of “wow what a cool comic i wish i could make something like that.” just go ahead and make something like that…

ummm this is all on the technical side-ish still but i dont really know what to say abt the kind of stuff that makes me wanna draw a comic in the first place vs just putting the idea into a regular single drawing…usually it Is kind of a more nuanced moment that i think would be better presented within some amount of context and buildup and all that. i basically exclusively draw emotions….and sometimes theyre better shown with some amount of action/dialogue, or at least a few different shots or something. i dont know if this area is helpful information or anything anyone would benefit from knowing about, or even if i have anything to say about it…is it all self evident maybe? idk! i do think i communicate emotions best through comics…not that each one is “here is my mood!” or talking about me at all, but i was for example trying to communicate about an abstract emotion, i think i can draw about it better than talk or write about it or anything. i DO sometimes draw more directly from my own specific feelings/experiences for things, but mostly when i think it can be relevant…i cant really do anything all that directly autobiographical, even casual diary comics or whatever. thats what my text posts are for… but i have been interested in how to convert these huge emotional issues that i’ve been v familiar with into a few pages or panels and how to present its impact in the simplest, straightforward ways i can manage…sometimes i think its worked for sure…..i feel like i gave a more Relatable sense to a certain experience by putting it in comic form than any of the times ive discussed it as a personal thing at length via text. like i said i communicate best via comics probably, despite not drawing them all that much coz im too damn slow lmao

speaking of, i’ve kind of been like “what a waste” abt the fact that i dont have like, a proper approach or regular strategy to thinking up comics before i draw them, but i think theres something actually okay to be taken from that lol……just that i know if i got too caught up in trying to plan it all out perfectly before getting into actually drawing it, i’d be making it into a bigger project and slowing myself down even more & i’d risk dropping it partway through or just never getting started at all. so if i have a less than perfect end result, at least i have an end result, and ive finally got that one idea out of my head in some way. and i feel like some of my comics do work out decently enough….a good handful of times ive been surprised w how well some ppl receive them

so i think it is good to just go ahead and dive in. i did that once w an idea i’d been sitting on for like half a year, and i think it turned out good enough. i just knew i could easily spend months and months more turning over all the details, which might make it Better, but would also mean that yknow, i’d never actually get around to making it b/c of feeling like it had to be ideal. so i simplified it a bit, used a uniform panel layout, did little drawings, and just got it drawn out in an afternoon or two. and now at least it exists lol. and ive sort of come back to the same idea in a way…if i feel like it turns out i wanna elaborate on something more, i can just make another pic/comic built on the same theme, who’s gonna care or stop me

i also try to focus on what lines are/aren’t necessary to avoid things being confusing or just pointlessly cluttery….this isnt a big issue b/c i dont often bother w bgs. dont emulate that either lol…….but im not doing any Serious art so its no big deal to me if im not “good” or not progressing as spectacularly as i might. i dont need my drawing abilities to be that amazing here. but bgs still serve a purpose beyond being a “skill” or whatever so im trying to include them more, aka occasionally, at all. still hardly ever. but sometimes you at least need like one halfassed establishing shot yknow. anyways

mmm this has all been kinda vague and i’m trying to think if there’s anything more specific i could/should talk about!! i dont know. i dont have a good perspective on what its like to look at my art while not being me lol & what ppl might think or what stands out to them or whatever. rip

sorry this is so long, i dont really have ppl wanting to know abt my Processes or drawing thoughts or whatever so i’m kinda jumping at the chance to talk about this sort of stuff after having been actually prompted to. but i dont know if i’ve said anything at all!! i dont know if any of it has been helpful

“tldr; i dont really know what im doing, but go ahead and jump into actually making them as opposed to feeling like youre ready / you know the best way to make a page, because nobodys ever ready or can say This Is The Best Possible Version so just go ahead and use whatever process feels like it makes your life easier, while still actually making the damn comic” is my whole thing, i guess

i dunno, if there was some specific thing you wanted to know abt that i didnt talk about / talk about well here, feel free to ask me to specify because i totally will, which is both an invitation and a warning obviously

sorry this is so long everybody…….writing an essay & by the end of it not being sure if ive given any info at all is part of my whole Thing

#long post //#jfc this is even longer than i thought #i dont know if theres anytning helpful about this at all #maybe its that ‘’if you think i’m good its good news for you b/c you probably know what youre doing just as much if not more than i know #what i’m doing’’

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eyedelater · 7 years

Text

notes (translation and otherwise) on chapters 100.12 and 100.13

basically i typed these up the day of translation for the respective chapters but never published them because i was feeling weird about them but i figured i’d put them out there anyway

translation notes marked with a * at the front so you can read only those if you want. overall this is pretty long and kind of nonsensical

for 100.12

*the "brother you can earnestly compete with" is the same phrase that i translated last chapter as "serious conflict," as in "there's never been a serious conflict between us," and i can't decide whether i translated it too strongly and then too weakly or vice versa but basically the meaning of the phrase (honki de butsukariau) is like, “seriously clash.” yeah, clash is the best word, isn’t it. it’s got all the right connotations, like bouncing off each other and general conflict but not necessarily a destructive fight and also not necessarily a friendly competition. yeah i should’ve said clash both times, huh. do you ever have regrets

*i was right about the sound effect at the end of 100.11 being a flash, sort of..? it was a precursor to this first panel's sound effect, which is "PIGIIIIN" which is an unusual sound effect, or at least, one i haven't really seen before. i mean it's entirely possible to just invent a one-off sound effect for any particular situation, you know? but in this case the sound effect appears to describe the phenomenon of ritsu being utterly immobilized by ???% in an instant

i was wrong about the percentage meter being mob's :0

raise your hand if you lost your shit after doing a double- or triple-take between the omake title and the omake itself and finally realizing what it was

i still need to sort out exactly how ritsu's interpretation of ???% and my ???% hypothesis work out, but i've been too busy playing psychonauts... plus i'm sure we will continue to better understand the nature of ???% as this chapter progresses. [[edit: psychonauts was good, and i’m probably going to reserve judgment on ???% until we get the full story, since there’s no point in speculating when your speculations will be addressed a week later]]

for 100.13:

*well, i had a lot of decisions to make in this chapter... which i guess actually just means i was slightly confused/ambivalent a lot. it comes with the territory of not actually being that good at japanese. i've said this before, right? it's on my about page. so don't let it come as a surprise to anyone that i'm not that good at japanese. i mean i'm not terrible, i have a solid handle on it. it's just that my approach to translation is more like decrypting a cipher as accurately as possible and then phrasing it in a way that captures both the meaning and the feeling. i try really hard, but i know i couldn’t be a professional translator without further education. that’s why i never claimed/aimed to be the best or only translator of this series. but i do still believe my work is accurate.

*anyway, starting on the first page. ritsu says "wakatta... wakatta yo..." and wakatta just means "understood" and the "yo" adds emphasis, but we don't quite have any emphasis-adding particle in english, so i changed the latter to "i get it" to make it sound more insistent. even though i really try not to translate the same phrase two different ways, especially not in direct sequence like that. but at first i translated it as "i get it... / i get it, okay..." and that sounded way too whiny, so i thought the better way to phrase it would be to do what i did. i think ritsu feels bad about causing distress to ???% and is saying, like, "i know it feels bad, but i had to do it." (<< interpretation, not a translation)

*when ritsu says "right...?" i was thinking about translating that as "don't you think...?" (what he actually says is just "nee...?" which is just a call for confirmation basically) and while i do think "don't you think...?" would've been the cuter translation, i went with "right...?" because it has the same number of syllables as the raw line and maintaining brevity is important to me sometimes.

*thanks again to femoralynn for hand-drawing the "STOP!!!" on the third page~ i think it makes a big difference. in the raws it was also hand-drawn and it said "TOMAREEE" which means... "STOP," but in english there's no good way to add more letters to "stop" to indicate you're stretching out the pronunciation, so i added three exclamation points in order to convey the intensity and desperation of the line. even though i usually try my best to stick with the punctuation offered in canon without adding or removing any.

*translating newscasters is an ordeal because they use hella kanji but i think i got the majority of it down... the only bit i'm not very confident on is the speech bubble to the right of tsubomi's face, but like, i don't think it will have a huge bearing on the story, and i'm pretty sure it's close enough. i've said before that i'm not going for archive quality, and i'm not going to go back and fix little mistakes unless they're really annoying or really important to understanding the story (like the mistakes i fixed last week).

*i hope it's clear in the "the government has claimed that no official agencies are involved in this matter" line that they're saying that no official agencies are responsible for causing this disaster, and what they're NOT saying is that there's no government agency investigating it. because like. surely there is. like, joseph works for the government, and he dropped touichirou on it, so the government is doing Something.

*yes, ???% uses "boku" pronouns. an established fact, but just a reminder to the curious who forgot or didn’t know in the first place.

*oh, i might've mentioned this in previous translation notes, but whenever i put "power" in quotes like that, it's because it's in quotes in the raws. whenever it's Not in quotes (like in ritsu's "innermost power" line), i don't put it in quotes. i'm not yet sure about the significance of this, because although mob seems to use "power" in quotes consistently, he's not the only one who does it, and yet, not everyone does it. hmm.

i guess i’ve unconsciously switched to using “he” pronouns for ???% sometimes in my meta. this is probably exactly what ???% wants...!

*now about the confusion that led me to post the chapter an hour late. on page 8 of the chapter (labeled page 149 in the bottom right corner), you'll notice that the four speech bubbles in the last two panels have no tails to indicate the speaker. tailless speech bubbles are my mortal enemy, as both a translator and a comics reader in general, and if you're someone who makes comics or ever will, i strongly urge you to add tails to your speech bubbles no matter what (and if the speaker is offscreen, do the thing where you make an inverse tail in the speech bub by taking out a wedge). so basically, i rely heavily on context and got confused about who is speaking in the last two lines of this page. of course, i was also confused by the grammar to a degree, otherwise i wouldn't have had to rely on context in this case. anyway, at first, i thought it was ???% saying, "if you do that, you'll disappear. i live freely." the first line makes sense in a way, telling mob that he'd disappear if ???% disappeared, but the second line seems like a non sequitur, and i couldn't really make sense of it. then i thought, oh, it's mob talking from offscreen, and he's saying, "if only you would disappear. then i could live freely." that's a very reasonable sentiment for mob to express, and it would make sense as mob elaborating on the line that came directly before those two lines... but then, on the next page, it seemed strange for mob to be saying his fifth line in a row. it seemed like it should be more of a back and forth than just mob talking at ???%. and note that i had poor femoralynn typeset all these confused iterations as i thought of them at like 11:25 this morning. sorry again for that. but anyway i finally realized that ???% really IS the one talking in those last two lines (no thanks to the tailless speech bubbles, again), and he's responding to mob's request to go away by suggesting that mob should be the one to go away, since he's the fake one. and finally that makes perfect sense with the lines surrounding it. i don't know why it took me so long to understand that... but the speech bubbles definitely had something to do with it. remember, kids, if you put dialogue in your comics but don't indicate who is speaking, the reader doesn't know either! unless they're the only one on the page, like when mob was yelling into the void inside his own head.

it doesn’t help that in japanese, they often leave the subject (and sometimes the object) out of the sentence entirely and leave it to me to interpret who is doing a verb to what/whom. because in english, you can’t just leave the subject out of a sentence. (e.g. “korosu” is just the verb “to kill” but if you say “korosu” to someone, you’re essentially saying “i’ll kill you.” notice how i had to add the subject [i] and the object [you] even though the literal translation would be nothing but the verb “kill.” so if i see a speech bubble that says “korosu” and it doesn’t have a tail to indicate who is saying it, i Literally Cannot Know who is threatening to kill whom or what, except by using context to make an educated guess. you see why this is a problem? and naturally they do this with tons of verbs completely unrelated to killing, i just thought of “korosu” first because bakugou katsuki says it all the time)

(ONE-sensei is usually very good about tailing his speech bubbles. i wonder if the lack of tails was intentional here, meant to further reflect the fact that mob is arguing with himself and that they’re kind of both technically the same speaker. still confusing though)

(oh and for the curious, the raws for the last 3 lines on that page, page 149, were as follows: 「僕の中からいなくなってくれ。」「だったらキミが消えてくれ。」「僕は自由に生きる。」 yeah the "kure" in that second line really threw me off bc i'm a fool and also i translated that same "kure" as "please" for mob but i didn't put "please" in ???%'s line because i couldn't figure out how to put it in there concisely and also it's clear that ???% is being a dick even if he kinda said please. and also because i don't know shit)

(and fuck, if i'm being honest, that "please" probably teleported up to ritsu's "so please... come home..." line, because he didn't actually say please in that line. should i correct it? i feel like a fraud. i just thought the "please" helped convey the sentiment of the line, but in retrospect i could've translated it more accurately without losing the feeling of it.......... what ritsu really says in that line is "dakara... kaettekite ne..." which, if you've watched the one punch man anime, you can only hear as the lyrics to the extremely sappy ending credits song, so maybe that impression of extreme sappiness sapped through into my translation and made me make it sappier than it really was...............)

about how ???% is like "ritsu is my little brother. he was saying that i'm his older brother." i might be wrong in my interpretation (not translation, which is more or less literal, but the interpretation i'm about to give), but i took this to mean something along the lines of "just now, ritsu kept addressing me as his brother. i think that means i am his brother. today i learned that i am ritsu's brother." as opposed to meaning something more like "i'm the one he called 'nii-san,' so i'm his brother and you're not." (plus ???% did not literally say, “he called me nii-san.” i translated that line accurately.) although either way, it seems to indicate that ???% only just recently started noticing (or being able to notice) whom ritsu is addressing as "nii-san;" otherwise, ???% would have known that the other million times ritsu has called someone "nii-san" in his life, it has been directed at mob, not ???%. so even if ???% is suggesting that he is ritsu's only True nii-san, his claim is only based on the last few minutes of ritsu addressing him directly, which would back up my claim that ???% only learned/decided just now that ritsu is his little brother... if any of this makes any sense.

i love how serizawa is like "let's get out of here i'm sure kageyama-kun is fine" and reigen's like "...he's in the tornado isn't he" and seri's like "..........maybe"

and serizawa's new umbrella, which he must have picked out and bought himself specifically to use as his preferred vessel of psychic power, is transparent. is that... a bubble umbrella...?

#mob psycho 100 spoilers #MOB BLOG MOB LOG #very late but oh well

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thebibliomancer · 7 years

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #116: BETRAYAL!

October, 1973

Here we go! Part three of the Avengers/Defenders War! Well, technically parts 2 and 3. For some reason.

So you just know that as soon as she tells him not to fall in the volcano that both he and the Surfer are going to be wrestling around in it like its mud.

Lil’ Vision doesn’t approve of Wanda being so close to an active volcano but this is only the typical cover exaggeration. In the comic, her situation is a lot stupider.

And lets just say that its not the only way in which this cover is telling fibs.

So, last time: the Avengers had decided to pay a visit to Dr. Strange to get him to explain the strange disappearance of Black Knight.

This time:

Dr. Strange politely but firmly discourages any visitors.

(Also happy ten year anniversary, Avengers!)

But seriously. Dr. Strange put a spell on his door so that if any touched the latch, they’d be sent hurtling through the air. Its safe to say that he probably wasn’t expecting any packages today.

This also doesn’t do much to endear the Avengers to the doctor.

Although what gets Iron Man’s goat is that Dr. Strange claims to do magic stuff. Which is dumb. Magic is fake and dumb. But rigging repulsors or whatever scientific explanation to your door doesn’t inspire trust.

Thor just starts banging on the door. And Dr. Strange’s manservant Wong answers to tell the Avengers to fuck off. The doctor is busy with vital research and does not wish to be disturbed.

Thor really doesn’t like when doors are slammed in his face, so he huffs and puffs and CHOOM!s the door down with Mjolnir.

If the Avengers are so impetuous that mystical warnings and straight up telling them to get lose won’t work, Wong will just beat them up.

Except Mantis. Mantis happens. Bye Wong.

And then as the door Mantis just flung Wong into opens, "several Avengerial eyes snap wide at what they see within that darkened chamber.”

There’s some new vocab for you.

And then a new spell blows all the Avengers out of Strange’s house.

But the Avengers have seen enough. Their Avengerial eyes saw the Black Knight, turned to stone, with Dr. Strange determined to keep them out.

So Thor yells at nothing that the Avengers aren’t licked, nosiree, they’ll be back once they figure out how to fight all this stupid magic.

Meanwhile inside Dr. Strange’s house, he has no idea what has been going on with the Avengers at all. He knows there was a disturbance but the mystic seal he placed around this room took care of it and that’s all he cares about.

Let me just state here that if he had talked to the Avengers now, several issues of story and a / War would not have happened.

Anyway, Strange recaps the Evil Eye for the other Defenders and for the readers. The Evil Eye belonged to Prester John of Avalon, who was accidentally woken up from a 700-year snooze by the Human Torch and Wyatt Wingfoot.

And then Johnny stole the Evil Eye because he believed it could be used to destroy the Great Refuge that Crystal of the Inhumans was imprisoned within.

Except the Evil Eye was building up energy toward an explosive overload so Prester John and Wyatt Wingfoot had to follow the Human Torch and shoot the Evil Eye out of his hand with a polarizer gun.

And then it exploded. The Evil Eye, I mean.

But instead of being destroyed, it was split into six identical fragments and scattered to Osaka, Japan; Rurutu, French Polynesia; Ft. Wayne, US; Los Angeles, Also US; Monterrey, Mexico; and Sucre, Bolivia.

Apparently this was how the Evil Eye was designed by the people of Avalon. So that anyone who used the device at full power wouldn’t get to use it a second time.

Long story short, Johnny Storm ruins everything.

Anyway, six fragments. Six Defenders. Pretty self-explanatory really. Hawkeye and Valkyrie will take the southern two fragments. Silver Surfer and Namor will cover Rurutu and Osaka respectively. Hulk will jump hella high to Los Angeles. And Dr. Strange will guard the Black Knight and head to Ft. Wayne when another Defender returns to take his post.

And then they split up.

But meanwhile: the villains. Dread Dormammu and also somewhat dreaded Loki.

But Loki is having second thoughts. First, Dormammu hasn’t restored his vision yet. But second, it just struck Loki that if Dormammu conquers Earthrealm, he’ll have access to Asgard. And Loki may be a villain but he’s a proud Asgardian as well. Clearly only he should conquer Asgard. Not some dude with his head on fire.

And since he’s currently banned from Asgard, that only leaves one person he can turn to for help. But boy does it make him Thor to consider.

So Loki projects himself in front of the Avengers. Not that he can tell. He’s blind. But he loudly requests that whoever he’s talking to bring his half-brother to him.

He doesn’t bother explaining who his half-brother is but luckily he did appear in front of Thor.

Thor immediately starts yelling at him about deceit and trickery. Because family.

But he’s wise to do so because Loki can’t help himself. He lies. Because otherwise he’d have to admit some amount of tiny blame for everything. And that’s ridiculous.

Instead, he tells the Avengers that the Defenders have hatched a plot that threatens the universe. And describes them in the least flattering way possible.

Dr. Strange, who hides himself away from most mortal men.

Valkyrie. Remember her? She kicked your asses.

Hulk. I mean, everybody knows he hates humanity.

Namor. He’s always declaring war on the surface world and yelling Imperious Rex.

Silver Surfer. Man, he is so bitter at being stuck on Earth. Bitter enough for evil? Yes. That exact amount.

And finally, Hawkeye. Would you instantly believe a trickster god telling you that your friend has turned against you? When it’s Hawkeye you would!

Before his projection ends, Loki tells them where the Defenders have headed. But can’t or doesn’t tell them which Defender go where. So the Avengers pretty much split up arbitrarily.

Captain America goes to Japan. Because he hasn’t been to Japan in a while.

Wanda and Vision will go to Rurutu. Probably to scope it out for their honeymoon.

Swordsman will go to Bolivia. He feels bad about the time that he tried to conquer South America.

Mantis wants to stay by Swordsman’s side but she has a hunch that Black Panthe will need her aid at Ft. Wayne.

Thor will go to California. Its the most central location so if any of the other Avengers need help, he’ll be close at hand.

And Iron Man will go to Mexico because its the last one left.

And then they split up. In... I can’t tell if those are Quinjets or not.

So we reach part 2. Er, chapter 3: The Silver Surfer vs. the Vision and the Scarlet Witch!

Nice logo face off.

So anyway, with Tomie the board, Silver Surfer got to Rurutu in no time but now he’s been flying around the island dozens of times without being able to find the Evil Eye fragment.

And then some probably offensive natives start worshiping him as a shiny volcano god.

He’s not all about that but them mentioning the volcano reminds him that the volcano is the one place he has not checked. So then he takes off.

The natives figure he’s trying to lead them somewhere and follow him.

Silver Surfer can fly through stars so a volcano isn’t that much of a big deal for him, in terms of just wading into the lava. Still, the Evil Eye isn’t going to be easy to find. He’ll have to handle this delicately by blasting the shit out of the volcano.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch and Vision arrive over Rurutu. In a weirdly flying saucer model of Quinjet. I swear, the Quinjets change every time I see them.

Despite the plausibility of Loki’s story, a story told by a trickster god mind you, Vision is having doubts. He doesn’t want to attack without exploring peaceful alternatives and maybe giving conversation a chance.

So he flies off to scout ahead.

Scarlet Witch thinks he’s being too logical. The pieces all fit together. The Black Knight was taken away by Dr. Strange and others in costumes. The Hulk, Namor, and Valkyrie have all been Avengers foes before, Silver Surfer has struck out at mankind in melodramatic snits as often as he has helped it, and Hawkeye is Hawkeye and believes that the Avengers have wronged him.

Meanwhile, Silver Surfer accidentally triggered an eruption by blasting the shit out of the volcano.

The eruption blows Scarlet Witch’s Quinjet out of the sky. Because she was flying way too close to an active volcano.

Vision spots her falling and swoops down to catch her, talking the whole time about how he’ll be able to save her if he acts rather than talks. Talking is a free action, Vision.

Setting her down on the ground, Vision sees that she has some second-degree burns and seared lungs but she’s not permanently damaged. And then he sees Silver Surfer crawling out of the volcano, wondering what’s going on.

And Vision flips his shit.

See, Scarlet Witch said he was too logical. But when it comes to times where she’s hurt or endangered, he’s a bit too emotional. So he goes from logical to livid in the space of three panels.

And he just tackles Silver Surfer right into the volcano.

I guess at full density, Vision can withstand lava.

Also, Silver Surfer is confused by what Vision is doing here and why Vision just tackled him into a volcano. But neither can hear the other over the roaring volcano. And as the caption box notes, waist-deep in molten lava is no place for a meaningful dialogue anyway.

I sort of disagree. If you could stand waist-deep in molten lava without dying, you should definitely have at least one conversation in such a place. If only so you could tell people that you did. Although you might have to yell.

Anyway, productive exchange of ideas is definitely not going to be happening here. Not with Vision trying to drown Silver Surfer in lava. Which is confusing on a number of levels. I mean, first, unless Silver Surfer is denser than molten rock, good luck keeping him under. Second, does he even need to breathe?

Not that it matters because the Surfer summons Tomie to PLOW! right into Vision.

Not being much of an aggressive person usually, the Surfer decides to surf on out of there. But he runs into the crater wall due to the smoke.

This is not a proud moment for either of them, really.

And yet, kind of cool. Put it on a rock album cover.

Meanwhile, the definitely offensive natives have taken the volcanic eruption to mean that their shiny, shiny god needs to be appeased. And hey, they just so happen to have found a strange girl lying unconscious near the volcano. Shouldn’t look a gift sacrifice in the mouth.

They place her in the path of the lava flow. Once she’s sacrificed, then everything will be better forever.

Meanwhile inside the volcano, the dumb two continue to fight inside a volcano. A blast from Silver Surfer accidentally dislodges the Evil Eye fragment from where it was hidden, probably in the crater wall?

Both heroes leap and grab it and start wrestling over it.

Silver Surfer is frankly confused. Black Knight is an Avenger and a teammate of Vision. Why is he trying to prevent the Defenders from saving him?

Probably because you never told the Avengers, his teammates what happened to him, and blasted them out when they came looking for answers, leaving them vulnerable to lies from a god of lies making them assume the worst about you??

Seriously, how long has Black Knight been a hat rack in Dr. Strange’s sanctum? And at no point did he think to drop a line to the Avengers to explain what happened?

There’s a lot of coincidences that keep the heroes from talking - the accidental eruption completely souring Vision’s talkative mood, for one - but this all could have been avoided if Dr. Strange had done one, obvious thing!

Anyway, the Evil Eye (fragment) is thought activated and with these two unfriendly boys wrestling over it, the Evil Eye fragment responds with a powerful blast that rockets the two out of the crater.

Between running into the wall and this, things are getting pretty slapsticky considering that they’re wrestling inside a volcano.

Silver Surfer and the Vision race anew to grab the Evil Eye (fragment) but Vision spots Wanda in the path of the lava and successfully prioritizes.

While Silver Surfer grabs the Evil Eye fragment and absconds, Vision gets Scarlet Witch to safety.

And Vision can’t match Silver Surfer’s flight speed but if he can find the Quinjet radio in the Quinjet wreckage, he can warn the other Avengers that the Defenders are out for blood and must be met with full force!

And Silver Surfer rockets back towards New York so he can warn Dr. Strange and the other Defenders that the Avengers seek the Evil Eye for their own ends and will attack without cause! The Defenders must be ready to fight them to the death!

Womp womp

This is how we get misunderstanding fights. A lot of jumping to conclusions and bad timing.

I mean, I joke but its fairly believably set up. The Defenders lineup is almost tailor-made to make the Avengers suspicious of them. Half of the Defenders are people that the Avengers have fought before! Another one is their jerk friend who ragequit the team. Between that and the unexplained circumstances behind what happened to Black Knight (unexplained because Dr. Strange is absentminded or something), the rude way that the Avengers are given the brush-off when they come looking for answers, and Loki’s warning, the Avengers were primed to think the worst of the Defenders.

Its a little more inexplicable from the other side. Yeah, Vision did attack Silver Surfer out of nowhere. RIGHT AFTER Silver Surfer made a volcano explode in an area where Vision was. And he saw Vision with Scarlet Witch afterward.

Way to take no responsibility for your actions, Silver Surfer.

Although I get the sense that the Defenders will have their own reasons to be wary of the Avengers explored in later parts.

Actually, the Avengers/Defenders War reminds me a lot of JLA/Avengers. I’ll try to remember to explain my thoughts regarding that when we get to the end.

Next time we get three more chapters in the Avengers/Defenders War (which well and truly has earned its Avengers, Defenders, /, and War by this point! I mean, wrestling in a volcano happened...) and fights between Iron Man and Hawkeye as well as between Dr. Strange against Black Panther and Mantis.

Doesn’t seem that sense is going to prevail any time soon. Good news for people who like watching superheroes punch each other in the face.

#Avengers #Defenders #Loki #the Vision #Scarlet Witch #Silver Surfer #Dr Strange #Strange is bad at hospitality #and at telling people things about their teammate #Silver Surfer is no volcanologist #Vision goes from calm spock to murder spock in three panels #and for some reason wanda decides to come back to the place where she almost got lava'd to death for her honeymoon #Essential Avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging

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