Btw if nobody else is going to claim her I am: Melody from HxH is trans rep in my heart.

She's an extremely sweet and well meaning girl who thanks to balding is often misgendered but is used to it and politely corrects people where she can. She's hyper focused on making music to a point of essentially clicking the world's shadiest torrent for some cool samples and getting cursed for life. She's nurturing yet in turn is so preconditioned to not be cared for she takes any kindness to her without a clear motive behind it as a red flag and writes herself off as impossible to be the object of someone's attraction even when someone says it right to her face that they love her. When you get her talking about a topic she's passionate about she can go on forever, but that's only if you get past her social walls because she's trained herself to read people for any sign of mistrust or mistreatment.

So, uh, yeah. Melody is a trans girl. It's basically canon in my head. Togashi just simply gets it. I cannot be swayed.

I was trying to find the original image from some textbook from the Life or Death for Berryboy Image and could not help but cackle as Google Image Search confidently supplied its best guess

Whenever the shop gets in a new system we have to go through and check what's saved on it. Often it's a matter of preservation of digital only games that we shouldn't delete. Or more pressingly making sure we don't put anything on the shelf that's got slurs saved into it or anything inappropriate. But a side effect of this is that you also get to see some very lovely things. My coworker was testing a system today and found this picture from over ten years ago of what was clearly one of the most loved house cats in the whole world.

Since we will likely wipe this DSi to factory settings before putting it out for sale, the photo will likely not remain on the original system. But it's lasted since 2013, I think I'd like to help it stay around a bit longer.

One of the most important civic duties we can perform in this world is finding out of print DVDs of amazing films and ripping .mp4s of them to share with our acquaintances like sharing baked goods with the neighborhood.

Deadlock rules because I should always be able to look at the most annoying player in a lobby and go "you're a bunny now". This is the sort of CC hero shooters need.

I am gonna slighlty miss twitter once its done burning to the ground

Authors notes in HxH have a reputation for being sometimes grim or sad a lot of the time, so it especailly warms my heart that his most recent one is him feeling revitalized.

It's especially sweet too since I can just imagine Togashi and Takeuchi going on cute dates watching the stage play versions of each others' manga.

I don't think this is what they meant by "stanced up" buddy

Late Night Musings About Hunter x Hunter and the Pull of Human Desire

Hunter x Hunter rules for a lot of reasons, but I think the thing that's stuck with me the most since binging through it is its rather earnest approach to depicting human desire. I think it's safe to say that desire/greed is the biggest theme of the series (there's a whole arc literally named Greed Island for a reason after all), but it's not just the simple "greed is bad" reading that you expect in a lot of simple shonen narratives. Every character is defined first and foremost by what they desire and what that desire does to them/how they use it as motivation.

Characters like Leorio at first blush are the classic greedy asshole who just wants all the money in the world. But his desire is born from this very humanistic desperation, this realization that no amount of study or care for medical practice will mean anything if he doesn't also have the cold hard cash to back up his ventures. He sees money as the most important thing in the world, but only because to him it is the only clear path to protect things he loves.

Meanwhile our main character Gon smiles happily as he essentially gambles on his own life on the off chance it might resolve this void in his stomach about his father. He is pretty sure he doesn't even want to meet his father, but wants to understand him so bad it drives him down a path that most adults in his life think is sheer lunacy. And don't even get me started on how Gon's desires warp in the Chimera Ant arc.

Even beyond the main cast this sense of desire is so important to every bit of HxH. The power system is a direct manifestation of your own aura that you actively design to suit your own tastes and wants and each character's nen ability speaks volumes as to who they are as a person. And hell, the occupation of "hunter" essentially boils down getting licensed to be able to pursue your own unbridled desires. A license can get you almost anywhere and is coveted because it frees you to chase desire entirely. And every hunter we see balances whatever they desire with what the world needs from them, even if their idea of balance is just killing anything that demands too much from them.

Really I could ramble about this stuff forever. This topic is one of those where I very well might try and script a proper essay for it at some point because it really does bounce around in my head a ton. From Meteor City's "We'll accept anything you leave here, but don't ever take anything away from us." motto to the clashing egos of the Succession War, to just literally everything about Meruem, its one of the most successful themes in a shonen manga I've read and I'm so happy I finally gave Togashi's masterpiece a try.

I have lovingly been pressured from going from total newbie to competing in a major event for Flesh and Blood next month and I can think of many worse ways to start such a journey than pulling a C&C when buying my starter deck

In the back of my mind, it's always there

I found myself not really able to get to sleep right away so I decided to mess with some digital watercolors in an amateurish rendition of a scene I keep thinking about lately