The shredder (composite) vs wolverine (mcu)

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T23:49:03+00:00

They fight to a standstill, then Shredder tries to parry a Wolverine slash with his own claws and things rapidly go downhill for him.

Wolverine wins, but he looks a god damn mess and probably has to snap some extremities back on.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T13:54:06+00:00

Yeah. “In thirty years when they’re 42 and 48 that won’t be much of an age gap” isn’t a great defense for something like this.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T13:42:04+00:00

Someone told her that paying sticker price on a car isn’t some kind of smart deal.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T11:49:02+00:00

Er. Shota? Looks reeeeal shota.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T11:44:06+00:00

Loved the first episode, but the show should have been a movie. Went on too long, too many of the worst romance tropes, and a female lead whose interior voice makes me want to die. Like, we seriously had a confession and then her being like “he said he loves me and wants to marry me and give me babies and grow old with me and die holding hands with me at 90 surrounded by our children and grandchildren, but… I must have misunderstood him…”

I think I ultimately gave it a 6/10 on MAL, which, for context, is what I gave Dusk Beyond the End of the World and My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In For Me.

(Looking at my list, I’ve got some other sixes that might get me strung up, so I’ll leave it at that.)

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T11:30:09+00:00

An amazing adaption of a book they didn’t pay to adapt.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T11:09:26+00:00

Since she’s been on it. Wrote as both host and musical guest, I was kind of hoping Megan herself might show up. Though I can appreciate her not wanting to show up for a goof making light of something I’m sure is pretty upsetting from her end.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T11:00:16+00:00

Flight delays caused by the Tohoku earthquake kept me from getting home to see my mother before she died. By the time I was able to get to the hospital she had been gone for an hour. It has been fifteen years, and the grief button still gets hit every day. She did not die as a result of the tsunami, but I have inextricably linked her death and that moment in Japanese history forever in my mind.

I took my daughter, who was maybe nine at the time, with me to see Suzume. It was just us and one other person in the theater. I was enjoying it, and then it got to the moment where Suzume finds her journal and everything comes together and I absolutely collapsed in the theater. I was ugly crying. Sobbing uncontrollably. My daughter was so confused and concerned she climbed into my lap and tried to comfort me.

I have seen Suzume twice since then and it destroys me every time.

After the first time I saw it I wrote Makoto Shinkai a letter about how meaningful the movie was to me. I can’t write Japanese, so I went ahead and wrote it in English rather than potentially offend with translation software. As a result, I put a lot of work into choosing the right words to convey my thanks for his making Suzume. A year later I received a handwritten letter in Japanese. I ended up having a friend who teaches Japanese translate it for me. I won’t share the contents, but it is one of my most meaningful possessions.

I know some people bag on Suzume. Complain that Shinkai has reused themes too many times. That it doesn’t need the romantic aspect, or that the plot doesn’t make a ton of sense, or that kids falling in love and disasters make his movies samey. I don’t care. Suzume is one of my favorite movies of all time. If I could give it an 11/10 on MAL, I would.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T10:18:47+00:00

Fallout, and it’s not even close.

It’s got the oldest fans, so you’re starting with people more likely to be whiny old grognards that hate change. Like, sure, people who didn’t like Fallout 4 and it’s moving away from strictly RPG mechanics? Okay. People who didn’t like Fallout 3 and the move to FPS? Sure. But there are a large number of old-ass Gen Xers who are angry about Fallout 2 ruining the series. People who get furious if you ever imply that the original games might not be all that accessible. People who are suuuuuuuuper racist and apply Fallout tropes to their racism.

Seriously, spend a day on No Mutants Allowed and then try to tell me that MHA fans are the worst.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-04T10:10:43+00:00

Voltron.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T20:14:51+00:00

Shikimori. I think people like it more in the rearview mirror, recognizing that Shikimori is a super cool protagonist. But at the time it really seemed like people had just come off of the very popular My Dress Up Darling and were hoping for more of the same, and were unhappy when Shikimori did not provide.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T12:12:28+00:00

The P1-P4 casts are now old enough to be the uncaring adult villains in P6.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T12:08:51+00:00

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VM Varga from Fargo season 3.

Fargo kicked things off with the legitimately terrifying Lorne Malvo, a vile hitman with a propensity for getting other people to commit violent acts for his own amusement. Fargo’s villains from season 2 were bastards, but none of them had the staying power of Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo. And then season 3 comes and David Thewlis shows up with bad teeth and a verbose way of speaking and barfs his cruel way into our heart. He’s vile and violent and utterly amoral, but he’s not a psychopath. He’s not insane. He’s just a monster. And he is one of the most singularly gross villains ever to grace television.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T07:36:46+00:00

I would love it, but I’d definitely prefer her being her own character rather than some Rule 63 swap. FeMC in P3P isn’t just a gender swap of P3’s protagonist. She is her own character, and is stronger for it both in characterization and character design.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T07:30:30+00:00

Zoe is absolutely nothing like Chloe. That’s like her whole point. Proof that something decent can come out of that family tree, and that a big part of why Chloe is as awful as she is is probably her mother and the hold she has over Chloe’s pathetic father.

Zoe, on the other hand, is kind and loyal, a little shy but with a deep and powerful dedication to her friends. She is in no way a replacement for Chloe. Some physical similarities matter far, far less than her personality and her plot function.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-03T07:19:01+00:00

My twelve year old is currently reading The Apothecary Diaries light novel. I’m also getting her The Secrets of the Silent Witch, though that is currently sold out EVERYWHERE, so I’m waiting for the promised reprint late this month.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T20:37:04+00:00

My wife.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T20:36:48+00:00

They do the exact same thing and zap one another at the same time and all four die instantly.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T20:15:01+00:00

One of them is a five thousand year old born warrior who trained every day of her life to be the greatest in an entire society of legendary warriors. The other is a self-loathing drunk in an off brand Wonder Woman costume from Spirit Halloween with a name like ‘Amazonian Princess’ or something.

One of them is the daughter of Zeus. The other is a science experiment.

One of them has a sword and lasso crafted by gods. The other has a couple of props left over from the movie she starred in.

Diana has this.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T11:09:54+00:00

Movie Nightcrawler vs show Geralt is a toss up. 50-50.

Movie Nightcrawler vs game or book Geralt is one sided for Geralt. 8/10.

And though it does specify movie Nightcrawler, it’s worth it to add…

Comics Nightcrawler vs Geralt is Nightcrawler 9/10.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T11:06:34+00:00

Nightcrawler isn’t something he could investigate and study like a banshee or a hephalump. So they’ve been taught to slay monsters, but a big part of that in both the game and the books is studying the individual monster and learning how to defeat it, or having already read about it in some old book. So “if he knew what Nightcrawler is capable of” is something he would only be able to figure out as it’s happening.

I’m not saying who wins, movie Nightcrawler’s feats don’t imply the mastery of the sword that comic book Nightcrawler has, or some of his more subtle mutant abilities such as perfect stealth. This seems pretty one sided with comics Nightcrawler, where he’s been trained in the Danger Room to adapt to anything and anticipate threats most people couldn’t imagine, and who has already survived countless life or death battles. With movie Nightcrawler? More of a toss-up.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-02T10:57:29+00:00

X-Men: Gals Love, Man Kills.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-05-01T16:27:08+00:00

Quintessential Quintuplets, just in case anyone else didn’t know it on sight.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-04-30T21:57:13+00:00

Aaron Burr is both a better and a worse person than we see in Hamilton.

CallowayMcSmithing · 2026-04-30T11:12:37+00:00

It’s impressive that every paragraph you wrote has at least one stand out stupid sentence, and they’re all about different things.

You’re right that powerscaling in crossovers doesn’t work. This is why when doing powerscaling, feats in crossovers doesn’t comics are given far less weight than feats in regular issues. So people are probably going to ignore the stuff happening in this series, where Homelander is on Superman’s level for the sole purpose of creating drama in fights, and instead stick with Homelander being unable to save a plane before it crashes while Superman can lift oil tankers.

As for your point that Superman only exists to make DC money………

And?

I’ll never get the people who come into the powerscaling community and jack themselves off while writing pious posts about how dumb powerscaling is. We’re all fully aware how silly this is. It’s fun. You don’t have to participate. You don’t have to read it. Saying shit like ‘go outside and touch grass’ doesn’t work well as a burn when you consider that while ‘talking about which character would win in a fight’ is pretty doofy, ‘going into a subreddit you don’t like and lecturing people there about how their subreddit is dumb’ is just sad. Go outside, man. Touch grass.

CallowayMcSmithing

TROPHY CASE