Look, you can love me too, I am so like the object.

Like... Where's the bread.... pizza needy bread.....

So for example, if you were to make a pizza anthro, and you depict her as basically a fantasy slime but made of cheese, that's no good. She should be more like a gingerbread maid, but savory instead of sweet, and maybe she has hot cheese and tomatoes for hair.

The pure cheese approach is weird because I don't even know what food that's supposed to be. I want to say 'that's not pizza that's just mozzarella sticks', but like, mozzarella sticks are coated in egg and flour and breadcrumbs! That's the stick part of the mozzarella stick!

As I understand, there was a sequel story comic series about Hellboy going through hell? I think I'm not interested in that. The ending of Hellboy classic dropped too many threads I wanted to follow.

I very much liked the characters of Liz Sherman and Roger. Liz is a rare thing in Hellboy of a girl who can actually do stuff and isn't just an evil witch. And Roger is a fresh take on Frankenstein. Further, Liz and Roger both have a lot of thematic parallels to Hellboy. I was sure that the series was going to further explore their respective relationships.

Indeed, the finale of Hellboy begins with Hellboy realising that working for a secret US government agency a la The X Files is Not Ideal and so he quits his job and walks away. He realises this when he sees the higher ups secretly installing a bomb inside Roger's chest as insurance that they will always be able to control Roger and keep his actions with United States national interest.

Hellboy sees this, realises how sick of it he is, and he quits and walks away.

But we just don't see Roger again!

I guess maybe Roger shows up more in one of the spinoff comics? But if Hellboy quit his job because of moral disagreement with how the higher ups treated his coworkers, why does he not try to reach out to his coworkers? Why do Liz and Roger and Hellboy simply not see each other again? If Hellboy choosing not serve under a human institution is an important part of his arc such that it leads finally into the end of the world, then why do we not see more of that?

See, this is why Hellboy is in hell now. Because he failed to organise with his fellow proletariat! He hates being told to wear the crown, he hates being told by prophets that royalty is his destiny, but he does not consider to embrace royalty's opposite!

And then a past minor character takes on a bigger role. Alice Monaghan. I like Alice but I also feel we don't get enough of her. At the end of the story, it seems she's only there to bear witness to Hellboy's descent, and be his emotional anchor through whom he can retain his humanity. But what's in it for Alice? What does she get?

This is really why I wanted Liz to have more stuff to do. With a character like Hellboy, who has super strength and healing and is constantly prophesied to bring the apocalypse, you really need another crazy powerful character with their own weird baggage going on. Such that neither side gets swallowed up in the craziness of the other's story and then reduced to just passively following events bigger than them. I really think Liz and Roger should have had more going on.

Possibly the funniest character is Abe Sapien. Before reading these comics, I thought he was a sort of Robin to Hellboy's Batman. Actually reading these comics, he's just the swim guy. And he only swims once. And in that once, he doesn't even swim very far. All in all, it feels like Mike Mignola had this idea of Abe being the Robin, and then just forgot!

I think my favourite story out the whole collection, ohhh, I forget the name of it but it were really good. The one where he's got a mole on his hand. And it grows bigger and bigger. And then finally, the devil in him bursts out of the swollen painful mole. Hellboy's original body and self and identity are reduced to tattered empty rags. The devil now finally free from the right hand of doom. But the right hand of doom is still there! The devil holds it and regards it! Finally free but still having to carry it like a cross to bear!!

I thought that was intense. I was so excited for that story. Thought Hellboy would go on a whole quest where he would learn a new sense of appreciation for his body and his life. But then it was just a dream! Just a dream. No need to dwell on the futility of escaping your self. Your self is still there even as you're escaping.

I have been playing a delightful game called After School Afterlife. A game about a little girl getting spirited away and having to burn Joss paper for ghosts. The burning of the Joss paper takes place as platforming gameplay with you jumping about to collect the Joss papers and then bring them back to a central fire for burning.

The protag has this sprite where she's perpetually holding her hands out for the money that will eventually be stacked on top of her. It's very funny. Since that's the same sprite she has for talking to NPCs, I like to imagine that she's just going around everywhere dramatically posing at people.

And the collectible Joss papers do stack on top of her. So it's fun to try and get as many as you can before burning them. Make the stack go as high as it can. Doing this also gives the game a little optional challenge, which is fun.

And After School Afterlife is a Singaporean game with a bunch of Singaporean stuff in it. Any time something's mentioned that the average westerner might not recognise, you unlock a little diary entry explaining what that thing is about. All written from the perspective of the protag, there's some fun little character writing in there.

Something that did make me giggle is that Sun Wukong is mentioned in this game, and he doesn't get a diary entry. But Jiangshi are mentioned and do get one. Now, as a westerner myself, I personally learned about Jiangshi before Sun Wukong. I know Dragon Ball is a famous adaptation of Journey to the West but I personally didn't know that Dragon Ball was an adaptation at all for over a decade of having seen it. But I had learned about Jiangshi from Darkstalkers, and Jiangshi do stand out as being very charming characters.

After School Afterlife is a lovely game that is full of creativity. The base gameplay is simple platforming but the gameplay is being constantly varied up. I especially enjoyed the math problems. My only complaint is, unlike Mischief Makers, the hardest math problems are not mandatory.

Peach should kidnap Bowser because she wants to bake him into a cake. Kamek begs Mario to rescue Bowser. Mario agrees because this is just what he does. Toads now take the place of Goombas. You face Peach at the end. Bowser is off to the side trapped in a batter and being stirred in a great mixing bowl. You see his head poking out of the batter and begging for help. Peach seems unusually larger than she appears in other games and this is never explained. Peach tries to destroy you with hearts and rainbows and puppies. She can also create giant shockwaves by pounding the ground.

Cow heads are bigger than human heads. Cow necks are big enough to lift that head. (And big enough to use those horns.)

If a minotaur has a cow-like human head, then she doesn't need a big neck. But also, minotaurs with cow-like human heads kinda look unimpressive and ugly?

Minotaurs with actual cow heads are much much nicer. Both cuter and more intimidating. But if you just have this big squat animal head popping out of a pencil human neck? She obviously can't lift her own head. It's too heavy because it's too large. She will pull a muscle. She will be bedbound most days.

Minotaurs are often super muscly. But they're muscly for human standards. They've got the bodies of maybe pro wrestlers. Perhaps pro wrestlers with less fat and more lean muscle. Both lean and bulky at the same time because that's what patriarchal beauty standards demands.

And a pro wrestler is big and strong for human standards. But you don't appreciate the exponential increase in body weight and physical strength that comes from a different body plan. Cows usually weigh up to and well over a tonne. Pro wrestlers weight a tenth or less of that. Lifting more than your own body weight is a high feat of athleticism. Lifting ten times your body weight is the nature's engineering domain of ants.