#ah shit...

[worldsneverfilled]

When your DM reblogs a post about reimagined mind flayers...

[gwimm]

I just Realize It's already 6:24 am here....

I haven't been sleeping 9 hours and a half 0-0

[sweetness-doesnt-touch-my-face]

I've been clean for 10 days.

T e n f u c k i n g D a y s

[sadmanyeyes]

Chapter 266:

Pai is back! And she's playing with yaks!

Yakumo watches her with the monk, both noting how cheerful she is being. Yakumo says being happy and eating are her only qualities. Koko joins in, saying she has a pure heart...but Yakumo knows the truth, that they're not seeing the "real" Pai. That's not kindness she's showing...it's naivety.

He goes up to her while she's on a cliff, looking at a red sky. He asks her if she wants to eat apples only for her to say that their trip to the moon was a complete waste, saying she wanted to see Shiva one last time before she dies...Yakumo points out that, no matter how nice she is, she has to know who her enemies are and Shiva is one of them. But Pai doesn't know why they need to fight Shiva. Yakumo points out that Shiva is an evil being intent on destroying the world but Pai counters that he might have a reason to destroy the world and she wants to figure out what it is. Then...she says she was just messing with him and runs past him to get some food.

Yeah, everyone knows she was serious. Maybe Yakumo is the one who needs to grow up some more...he thinks he'll just relax for now but then, Benares! He contacts him telepathically, telling him he needs to find the third triclops. Yakumo laughs him off, saying with the Devil King gone, he has no power over him. Benares just smiles back...and disappears. The others come to collect him and Yakumo wonders what the hell that was about...

Well, the chapter ends with a storm raging overhead in Tokyo, with Benares standing in the middle of the sidewalk.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Okay im just gonna roll thru these issues, I guess like a liveblog, and ramble about this shit aa it comes, as i have given up trying to wrangle my adhd ass brain into actually forming cohesive thoughts...

For starters, cover art is fucking rad. Evan Cagle has just been consistently knocking these things out of the park every issue. Really sets the mood, maybe even sets expectations a little too high. On the inside though Rafael Albuquerque is no slouch. Really the aesthetics for this run has just been stellar all around. Even love the new title logo.

Anyway scene opens on an opera house, inside is a very on the nose production in which a grieving masked figure bent over the body of a collapsed woman is haunted by a bat-like demon. The dark haired boy(man?) demands to know where this unseen demon is as we got a shot of an empty seat, reserved for one Bruce Wayne. Theres a line about pearls around a neck, just in case we somehow werent picking up on the parallels.

The textography implies this is sung, and again pointing to this being an opera rather than just a spoke word stage play. The aesthetic is all very deliberately reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera. Also of passing note: the production is titled "L'Auriga" as in Italian for The Auriga, as in the constellation Auriga, "The Charioteer." He is depicted most often with a goat or kids in his arms, which given the cliche associations with satanism seem poignant here.

Elsewhere Batman beats up some gangsters doing generic crime at the docks, one of the Maroni capos is there and a sound over a loud speaker causes him to hulk out in grody dark magic fashion. Batman is a little off his game, Talia show up to finish the thing off, and she says Bruce isnt ready for the shit about to hit the fan, its older than either of them, its not human, and he's off his game... She elaborates no further and scoots off into the night.

Bruce tries to figure out why he's old and Dick pokes fun at him. He needs to see a man about a cube. (Oh the cube was being smuggled by the Maroni crew, which is where he got it and why its tied to the monster, I hadn't really made that clear... I'm not doing a very good job summarizing...)

Cool transition tho, we see the cubes source, the Orgham palace in "Svatrstal" which is as far as i can tell a meaningless assemblage of generic slavic sounds. The castle itself however is called "Coronis" after the mythic greek princess and lover of Apollo. (The more direct associations with the sun will come into play later. By proxy it might be that The Charioteer allusion could also be a reference to Apollo, via his chariot that drives the sun across the sky, making the subject of the play, Erichtonius, king of Athens.)

(Incidentally Coronis is also the name of a Spanish zarzuela by Sebastian Duron. It is about the nymph Coronas, Triton, Neptune, and Apollo, so there's that....)

But in any case we meet Arzen Orgham and his mother, in thematically appropriate sun-like headdress. She tasks her son with going to Gotham with a confusingly styled land deed(its a scroll, like with full on umbilicus, but it's apparently a legally viable document written in english?) We also get name drops of what will be his main goons, Shavhod, Neang, and Gael.

In spite of a lot of Greek mythology being flung around(Coronis, Auriga, the labyrinth) and implicit Italian to the opera themes, the core influence seems to be more Eastern European, and given the Dracula derived aesthetics it's not unexpected, but it all feels very weirdly. Also that this is apparently fully active nobility??? Like they're still rich and have modernized finances and resources (as opposed to like, an ancient dragons hoard of nonliquid but clearly "valuable" riches) so like do they govern this country????? This weird gap in information will become more of an issue with later developments...

Anyway... Gael has been the Orgham's vangaurd in Gotham, so while the young heir and his entourage are enroute, Gael slaughters the rest of the Maroni contacts he'd arranges the botched hand off of the magic cube with. He is noticeably more, uh, "ethnic"(?) looking than the other goons. Given the overall gist of the Orghams, that would seem to suggest something vaguely Mongolian adjacent? I mean, I guess it might be more obvious to assume he's meant to look Romani, but given the rest of the themes at play shouldn't they all be Romani anyway?

Anyway then Bruce has a cool nightmare about Barbatos and then wakes up to the sound of the mystery cube, which as it turns out is a music box, and the issue ends. Other than a few little oddities, I loved this issue and thought it was a great start to the story. Love the gothic horror vibe, the Dracula and Phantom of the Opera notes, the use of Barbatos, the idea of the Arkham lineage being traced back to the old country, the idea of addressing the future of Arkham Asylum(even though I could have sworn we'd already been given a different hook for that at some point...), the idea of Bruce dealing with his age it all makes for a really solid pitch. It'll get.... I don't want to say "worse" honestly, but some of those set ups will get shakier as this goes on....

[rkchoisan]

* here we go again

. . .starter for @lixrk !

it was safe to say hookups were kind of san’s thing. he slept around often and generally took sex as a whole a little bit more casually than most people around him did, but what was wrong with that? though he did have to admit, being as sensitive as he was, a lot of the time san much preferred having friends with benefits rather than a long string of one night stands (but don’t get him wrong, he liked both -- each have their pros and cons). felix was one of them, but the two of them were a bit more than just friends with benefits. they were good friends first and foremost, but a couple of summers ago they had been boyfriends for a brief time as well.

both of them had grown a lot since they had dated, but neither san or felix were very good at talking about their feelings. they had successfully glossed over having an actual in depth conversation about their past feelings for each other more than once, but san was happy with their current relationship (and was pretty sure felix felt the same). that's all that mattered now, right?

“hey, lix,” san starts the moment he leaves the bathroom, his face scrunching up as he aggressively dries his mop of wet hair. he pulls on a shirt and throws his used towel into the hamper before trust-falling onto the boy's bed again and reaching for the nightstand to grab his phone from its charger. "do you want to go for a walk or something? it’s super nice out today."

[aviofavalon]

i think Netflix just told me to go to bed

[cryxtheace]

Oh...

You don't...have a partner...ah...I...hm