Would you believe “they have to go undercover at a circus” is also a major arc in Black Butler?
It was already published — both the manga, and the anime adaptation — by the time I wrote this omake. So maybe I’d even heard of it by this point, and was making some subtle foreshadowing — Sparrow and Miranda have similar tastes, like sister like sister.
Definitely no other extremely on-the-nose BICP foreshadowing in this here Q&A bonus. Nope.
Pretty sure this is the one and only full-face shot of Bennett’s ex-wife.
…if I wanted to really double down on the Colbert parody, I could’ve called her Lorraine. (The real actor Colbert is married to an Evelyn, but Stephen Colbert the fictional pundit refers to his wife as Lorraine. Which is handy for those of us who wrote fic about the character, and would like to keep a safe, well-marked distance between “fic about the in-universe troubled marriage” and “making insinuations about the actor’s home life.”)
Bennett conflates “exaggerated fighting on sitcoms for the jokes” with “healthy conflict and disagreement that good couples work through together” with “bad conflict between two people who are just plain not good for each other.” Poor guy.
Quick, readers who are actually up on their Pokemon, construct Miranda’s dream team. (Tiny!Miranda, present!Miranda, or both!)
Honestly, Miranda just isn’t the kind of fan who ships herself with characters. Or even the kind who ships her totally-original not-her-at-all OC with characters.
She’s moved on from the “it’s stupid to ship non-canon couples” judgment she was so adamant about at age 9, though.
Most of the battles in Sparrow’s vicinity have involved Patrick, so it’s not too off-base that her theory is “I get pulled into nearby battles” and not “I get pulled into Patrick battles.”
When it comes to the more distant ones, she wasn’t involved in the Blake-Cub battle in DC, and she isn’t involved in any of the Blake-Lightning or Blake-Kara Lynn battles in Chicago. And readers might remember how she didn’t show up in the Cybele-Reseda battle in chapter 2, even though it was happening in the next room.
So, yeah, nothing standout about Lightning, here.
We had technically seen Lightning’s Master at this point in the story, but only as “a figure in the background with Lightning narrating over him,” so I can’t fault anyone for not remembering him yet.
A while ago, I wrote about early, scrapped plans to have Cohen build himself a new Being from scratch. (A black-and-white species, obviously.) His guilt here is a big part of the reason why.
It also ties in with the reasons why a Being-powered society isn’t a great idea. You don’t want to make a bunch of complex AIs with feelings and emotional needs, and then waste them on, like, basic infrastructure. Mass-produced and interchangeable machines — or mass-produced and interchangeable spells, if you can get those running — are a way more effective approach.
Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) started running in 2006, so from Miranda’s POV here, it’s only been going for about 5 years. Just imagine.
Her favorite elements are the traumatized but ruthlessly-competent child protagonist, all the people around him being wildly-competent in different ways that work in harmony, the suave and elaborate costumes, and the mysterious forces that cross the veil of death.
She’s not into shotacon specifically, she just reads a lot of power-dynamic-laden fic about older Ciel and Sebastian.
Not a mistake in the numbering — I’m saving a few of these for after we post chapter 20.
Cub will be fine, don’t worry. “Cute bonk to the head” is barely an injury, he’ll recover easy.
It’s very possible the Bear has never had a Park-approved reason to talk. And I haven’t decided what he would sound like if he did. I just know that — for reasons of not bringing back bad memories — he wouldn’t sound anything like the teacher whose physical appearance he mimics.
Annotated Q&A will be posted M-W-F for the next few weeks!
Patrick’s shows, in order:
Inspector Spacetime is the Community parody of Doctor Who. No surprise Patrick finds the Doctor expy relatable, even if it’s on some unusual levels. He also understands that Doctor/Master shipping is a thing, and hasn’t really grasped the details.
Whee! is a parody of Glee, which I also watched for a few seasons before dropping, for similar reasons. Although I got invested enough to follow the Autostraddle recaps (with all their refreshing snark) through to the end.
Slander is a parody of Scandal, which billed itself as “what if The West Wing with the cast of Leverage?” And then you slowly realize that all the politician characters are corrupt, all the “expert” characters are just passing the idiot ball around between themselves, all the wonderful heroes keep trusting and/or falling for the schemes of blatantly evil characters, when they don’t turn out to be secretly evil themselves…
I stopped watching after an arc where main characters imprison and torture each other. Then, uh, started watching again after I said to myself “what if I watch it with the expectation that everyone is terrible, and there isn’t a single TWW/Leverage-like character in the whole cast that I’d want to root for?” And then it was entertaining.
Camp Pining Hearts is a possibly-anime show-within-a-show on Steven Universe. We don’t see any full episodes, but from the way the SU characters describe it, it sounds cute.
Plus The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, which I watched religiously, but that doesn’t mean Patrick would.
Guest comic by fireheart1001! (Favorite the original on dA.)
“One custom comic” was a reward in an art contest — I used to enter a lot of those on Deviantart, would sometimes win one of the prizes, and very, very occasionally, would actually get it. Props to this artist for delivering.
So the basic prompt was mine, and the execution was theirs. Really appreciate the attention to detail — the right sigils! the subtle color glow around the big zap! the faithful proportions of the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots!
No transcript for this one, just Patrick and Poe having an epic showdown…ranging from magical and physical attacks to Uno, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and a bake-off.
Guest strip from 2012, brought to you by Animikean! Also posted here on dA.
I was around from the ascent of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and watched a couple episodes. And just…couldn’t get into it. No matter how big the hype got, it never clicked with me.
But I sure do love a good dollmaker — plus the ability to choose and assign Meaningful Symbols to a range of characters — which is why I made so many BICP characters in the My Little Pony creator. Eventually, I had a full set of Beings and a full set of humans.
Ponification isn’t a canon ability of Patrick’s, but if it was, would Bianca do this? …Probably.
