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The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.

“So, uh…” Anakin said, looking around him. “This is weird.”

“Is there something wrong, Master Jedi?” the Kaminoan asked, concerned. “I was going to welcome you to Tipoca City.”

“Oh, I’m actually not a Master,” Anakin replied. “My Master’s busy, I’m just…”

He shook his head. “Sorry about that, it’s very unprofessional of me. I know I’m supposed to be professional, but being around this much water is very odd for me.”

This article was printed in the Nikkei evening edition, and the following image of it was posted on Twitter. In the article, Asano hints at a potential continuation for the story of No. 6 (!!!). @aowyn translated the article and kindly granted us permission to post the full translation, so you can see for yourself!

I've always loved chocolate. Probably, this is because of a memory.

A long time ago, I received a large chocolate bar from a relative. I split it with my older sister. While that's not much of a memory, I remember the sweetness of the chocolate bar and the feeling of how it slowly melted in my mouth. When I reached adolescence, however, hearing tall tales like if you eat too much chocolate you get acne, gain weight, etc took me in, and I left chocolate behind for a while.

Now, though, I eat chocolate nearly every day. It's just a little bit of high cacao chocolate, but it's my dessert at lunch.

I choose chocolate anywhere between 80%-90% cacao. It's bitter, but I love the sublimity of the bitterness mixing together with the sweetness that comes from behind.

Especially when spinning a tale about boys, I eat more bitter chocolate. That was the case when I wrote "Battery" and when I was tackling the world of No.6. Why, I wonder? Even I don't know. It may just be a matter of preference. But when I try and draw out a stronger, denser relationship between two boys, or face individual differences that won't be reconciled, I always end up wanting chocolate that is more bitter.

When the protagonist of the novel is a girl, this becomes strangely unnecessary. Even if I eat it as an after-meal dessert, I don't feel a strong desire for it. It's really strange. Compared to strong girls who shape their world to their will, boys carry a certain peril somewhere behind their toughness. I wonder if that's just me feeling that way, though. Hm, I'm not sure. I wonder how that boyish peril is tied to the flavor of chocolate. I really don't know.

essentially, the uchiha clan is a nightmare financially. they’re a mercenary clan, so all their income is from jobs that people have hired them to do and there’s never any guarantee of consistent work, or consistent payment. there’s very little variance in the way they dress, unlike the senju: the dark uchiha robes with the high collars are pretty standard throughout the clan, regardless of gender. also they all wear their hair pretty long, even in battle. during the flashback with madara and hashirama as teenagers, hashirama wears several different outfits! they are all really cute!! Madara just wears the one. (still cute.)

then, much later, when they have that alliance ceremony, all the senjus are in their fancy pinstriped kimono pants and their nice haoris. madara?? he’s wearing the same shit as usual. lmao

anyway, here is the main telling detail that the uchiha clan is far from well off: they don’t wear armor. in fact I think the only instance in which an uchiha wears armor (during the flashback anyway; i hc that madara’s Iconic™ red armor is actually hashirama’s old armor) is the confrontation at the riverbank when both tajima and izuna have armor on (though izuna was VERY young at that point and maybe tajima wore it too to convince him to come along??? idk). whereas, if you look at the senju, everybody is wearing full armor all the time. the senju clan also has significant access to crops (hashirama), shelter (hashirama), and healing medicine (hashirama). the uchiha…does not have this advantage. another thing: the senju clan was ALREADY famous at the height of the era of warring states; the uchiha clan rose to fame with madara as its leader partially because of all the interactions it had with the senju. madara definitely realized this.

madara’s fighting style is weirdly contradictory: he’s very shrewd and practical, and he expends as little energy as he can, but he ALSO makes a show out of it, depending on the circumstances. i think it depends on who he’s fighting: when he first takes on the shinobi alliance, he’s using just taijutsu, fighting with just his body (and he’s very good at it; he snaps somebody’s arm with his hands). as the fight escalates we see him dancing from enemy to enemy, taking their weapons and slashing people to pieces with their own swords. madara is not wasteful. he divides a paper bomb/kunai combo thrown at him into the paper bomb and the kunai parts (two equally deadly weapons) and dispatches two shinobi with them at once. then there’s the split kick he does where he’s taken out 3 different people by the time his feet hit the ground.

madara is good, and he knows just how good he is. but it’s only really when he’s fighting hashirama (and when he’s testing the limits of his edo body, e.g. the mokuton) that he gets VERY flashy, and even then, he fought hashirama for years and years during the warring states era and neither of them sustained any serious damage. which leads me to believe that they were only going through the motions due to external (internal?) pressure from their respective clans and feudal lords and all that, and were not actually giving it 100%.

Patroclus: claim her

Achilles: ???? We're gay, but

Patroclus: exactly

Achilles: men of Greece, great old & creepy fucker of a king, I'd like this girl as my own

Odysseous in the background: since fucking when???

The old king: smh teenagers - fine

Patroclus: *gesturing to their tent*

Achilles: yeah uh... guys take whatever you think I'll like. I'm gonna take her. Now.

Odysseous: uh-huh.... ssuuuuurree

Briseis: *assumes she's about to be raped*

Patroclus: Oh for fucks sake - *kisses Achilles*

Briseis: Oh you're both gay, thank fuck

Achilles: *collects the other girls from the camp & gets Briseis to explain that they're getting adopted by the gays*

The other men: huh, didn't know you liked girls

Achilles, with 11 girls trailing waving pride flags for him & Patroclus: yup, love them

Then I had a thought:

What if Hob Gadling is just super fucking insufferable to other immortals?

See, Dream is... difficult for mortals to get because he's got his whole eldritch thing going on. But while he's not particularly popular with them, I imagine other immortals at least get and respect his whole deal. Like, he's the Dreamlord. Of course he's weird. But they understand the laws and principles he's referring to at least when he's being weird. He seems to at least have a pleasant relationship with the Faerie Court. It's mortals who can't really connect with Dream and find him exasperating as a result.

Whereas Hob gets along great with mortals, just swell. He's Just A Guy who happens to live forever and people get along with him. But immortals? We don't really see it much but immortals positively loathe this guy.

Dream's reaction to the whole, "I've made up my mind, I've decided not to die!"? Hob tossed out in 1389? That's the teeth-grinding level of irritation Hob engenders in every immortal he comes across (before they have centuries to get to know him) and it is exactly why Death just had to make this man immortal because it would be hilarious.

Why doesn't Hob hang out with other immortals besides Dream? Because the minute he opens his mouth about how great life is and how he's never had even a moment's doubt about how much he wants to live, every immortal in the room starts to make the gagging motion.

You're an immortal just trying to have a bit of a kvetch about Kids These Days and how much times have changed and how it was better in your day, and there's Hob fucking Gadling again ready to throw down about how amazing antibiotics and automobiles and the latest iPhone number whatever are and like, sure, but you were just trying to say back in your day things were better, right? Not objectively maybe but you're just trying to indulge in a bit of immortal nostalgia and Hob fucking Gadling is not having any of it and is ready to argue you into the dirt about it.

You're immortal but haven't quite kept up on today's slang? Hob Gadling will absolutely call you out and he's a teacher now so he's going to be super nice about it but you know he's judging you for saying groovy unironically and thinks you should get with the times already.

You're a vampire living off centuries of generational wealth? Hob keeps talking about how you should get a job and get out of the spooky mansion more, and maybe you wouldn't feel so much existential angst. You like your existential angst!

Hob doesn't have a single ounce of patience for immortals who want to wax poetic about wishing they were mortal again. Diseases, he says, have you ever had diseases? Like even a cold? It sucks. It really fucking sucks. The Plague? The fucking worst. You don't need to be mortal to get involved in mortal life, Hob fucking Gadling keeps pointing out at the monthly eldritch coffee meetups. You can just live as a mortal and share in their problems and enjoy the fact you don't have to deal with the shit parts like getting sick. Completely missing the point of the futile lamentation of regretting one's lost mortality is something you enjoy.

Hob harshes the vibe of every single immortal out there. They are so goddamn sick of him. There's a reason he has no apparent immortal friends or connections to the supernatural world despite (in the comics) seeming to have met other immortals and having the occasional supernatural encounter that he immediately brushes off as dull when compared to what the normal, every day world has to offer.

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

 In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before. 

Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)

Example medieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of as “denim colors.” There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldn’t afford the really good fixatives.)

More examples and explanations here: 

Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red

Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice

Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldn’t - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.

The tl:dr; version of my usual complaint: I love Terry Jones’s work, but he (and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL) have a lot to answer for in the “Medieval Life Was Irredeemably Mucky / Everything Was Drab” department. In the wake of that film, practically all the everyday color of Non-Royal medieval life got washed out of public perception. And it makes me cranky.

The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.