#[[ replies tag ]]

[maxwell-grant]

So is Worm good from what you have read

"Yes" doesn't begin to cover it but yes. Worm is a brain-rewiring mobius strip disguised as a bible disguised as a superhero web serial that either cured your cancer or shot your dog or both depending on who you ask, and it has many extremely dedicated, brilliant scholar priest surgeons publicly dissecting it on this platform on the regular to the point I don't think I have much to add to the conversations surrounding it, even if I do have some The Thoughts about it. I had never even really seriously thought about superhero prose before and Worm isn't a thing I go back and reread frequently but it did a complete and total 180 on the way I think about superheroes and even fiction, and I've never stopped thinking about it since I've read it.

It is a monumentally impressive story with completely absolutely incredible characters that I cannot stop thinking about. No matter where it was going, even past stretches that were less interesting or more of a slog to read or worse, I could not put the story of Taylor Hebert down for one minute. Tattletale fascinated me every step of the way, I had to keep up with her. Rachel Lindt was a character I feel like I'd been waiting my whole life for. What was I gonna do, not see them through? I feel like Worm easily loses you if you don't particularly connect with the characters enough to justify to yourself the amount of time you'll spend with them, but man, I could not unglue my eyeballs from these people enough (I love all the core Undersiders, to be clear, I'd say it's Rachel > Taylor > Tattletale > Aisha and Alec and Brian, there are very small gaps between these, I just don't go berserk for the last three like I do for the first three, I'm taking Bitch and Skitter to the grave I'm dead serious)

Worm irreparably destroys your ability to engage with superhero fiction the same way ever again, as evidenced by the fact that it destroyed the author's own ability to engage with his own superhero fiction ever again. And everybody who read it has one or several gripes with it with some major dealbreakers in the mix. Tumblr's kinda the only place online where you can really talk about them at length without the spectre of John Wildbow hanging over the discussion, which enables discussion to the point where yes, maybe it does look like to outsiders that nobody can agree on whether Worm is good or what is it even about or whether it even has worms in it (it has at least one, although it's a very big one).

And it is good, it has the Undersiders in it and the Undersiders are one of the greatest groups of characters ever put together, but everyone has at least one major point of contention with Worm whether it's the timeskip or the length or the racism or the gross fatphobia or aspects surrounding the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus and etc. I'd say it has maybe the most racist vision of Latin America I've ever seen in a superhero text a hair short of pro-colonial tracts in Golden Age comics and that is a tall fucking order by any metric (part of why I started WEON4 as a project was motivated by spite, to try and make my own stories about non-American superheroes even if just as practice). It is Complicated, and that winds up making it so fascinating to talk about.

Worm has self-sustaining ecological systems of posts up here, far away from the Spacebattles and Reddit battlegrounds where it has different ones and that's not getting into Weaverdice or the sequel or Wildbow's larger body of work, which I haven't gotten to and probably will not any time soon because Worm was enough of a commitment as is. Do I recommend Worm to everyone? It is certainly not to everyone's tastes and I personally find it difficult to describe it simply enough to make it sound appealing or not like a pyramid scheme. But yes I do think it's good, in fact great, in fact, amazing, except when it isn't, and except it Plainly Sucks, but then something like Taylor vs Mannequin or Kevin Norton's interlude or "You needed worthy opponents" happens and it fucks harder than anything has ever fucked before and you don't walk away from it the same, so yes I guess "good" will have to do now.

It's certainly a lot but I definitely found it worth my time to read and then read the texts written about it here. You'll have to take my endorsement of Worm as proof of it's quality and proof of how deranged it makes it's readerbase, they're not mutually exclusive. If you can make it, Worm and the wormosphere has layers and layers to wade through and talk about and enjoy, despite how we're all so very small in the end *gunshot*.

[highdio]

Pleeease, write your thoughts about the musical lol. I really like your Dio meta posts <3

Just a disclaimer: this is really opinionated but I don't like to drag media for its own sake. There were lots of things to like in the Phantom Blood musical, just ... Dio wasn't one of them. Also, Mamoru Miyano threw himself into the performance he was asked for, so it's hardly his fault. It's just always amazing to me that people feel the need to rewrite Dio into someone else when the way Araki's written him is already perfect, complete and a lot of fun.

So, where to start? Basically, the Phantom Blood musical re-writes Dio, giving him a different personality and different motivations through OOC stage direction along with a bunch of original dialog and scenes. What results is a version of Phantom Blood where "Dio" is just a normal guy without charisma who had a bad childhood and spends most of the story being miserable. Dio as he's written in canon has an uncommon charisma and appeal that's allowed him to remain relevant as one of those 'all-time great' villains. Scene after scene in the musical prove that its creative team either didn't read the manga or just really didn't like Dio.

fwiw Araki wrote Dio as thoroughly fleshed-out, with consistent traits and behaviors and consistent motivations behind his actions. He also left a paper trail of interviews and author's commentaries that develop Dio even more fully beyond the manga. So there's really no excuse for media that treat Dio as some sort of empty vessel waiting to be filled by narrative cliches we already know and expect.

It's annoying too, because, along with its OOC content, the musical is peppered with occasional manga-consistent moments. It's like the musical is camouflaging its Very Bad Take on Dio by having Mamoru Miyano periodically re-enact the canon character's most famous panels. The musical wants simultaneously to take credit for bringing Araki's vision to life on the stage, while at the same time completely undermining its most important element: a capital V "Villain" who, according to Araki, "accepts and embraces his evil nature, and follows his dark path without hesitation." This is the biggest change the musical makes to Dio: musical!Dio has none of the confidence that allows canon Dio him to move so decisively and destructively through the narrative.

Musical Dio is introduced by a scene where he's bullied on his way home, before breaking into a song about how terrible his life is, where "everything is always taken from [him]" ("it's hell …I feel nauseated …[I'm] under a cloudy sky.") The song is alternately tearful and hopeful. "I'm going crazy from being robbed!" he laments and then pollyannaishly muses, "hey, Joestar, can you turn my [cloudy] skies to blue?"

If Dio being introduced as a sad sap and self-described perennial loser hoping for any break sounds attitudinally unfamiliar that's because it is. Araki went in the opposite direction: he started his story by subverting the cliche - wide-eyed poor boy victimized by circumstance leaves his sorrow-filled life hoping for a new start - and instead gave us a kid with surprising, even sinister agency. Dio is not just given a hero's upward narrative arc (something Araki crafted very deliberately), he's introduced improbably in his first scene from a position of control. This fact is important because in the manga it's a position he won't lose until four chapters and nearly 100 pages in, when Jonathan finally fights back. From the time young Dio is introduced - reading a book with his back turned to his bed-ridden father who he's secretly poisoning -

- to the time he's systematically broken down his adoptive brother's spirit by alienating him from his friends, taking Erina's first kiss, and of course kicking his dog, Dio is shown as being in control and on top (Erina drinking the muddy water is the only exception). It's OOC to imagine 12-year old Dio feeling sorry for himself because at the time he's introduced, he's already made a habit of getting what he wants. By the time he sets off for the Joestars after killing his first dad, he's already developed full confidence in his abilities and the inevitability of his rise to riches (something Araki has him explicitly state and then underscores with a panel illustration of a steam train signaling the rise of Modernity).

But the writers and director of the musical don't find this characterization interesting enough or something. So they lose the canon entirely and in its place they invent a version of Dio who's despondent. And they didn't get Araki's steam train memo so they miss the Modernity theme (even though Araki's tied Dio so tightly conceptually to the idea of the Modern that he has him "use a 20th century boxing technique in the 19th century"); instead they double down on class difference being determinative. It never occurs to them that Dio is written specifically by Araki with the freedom to move outside of his social status because he sees it as artificial (the "evil elite" monologue later reveals Dio thinks of the whole social contract thing is arbitrary and voluntary).

Throughout the musical, Dio (although it's not fair to Mamoru Miyano since he isn't responsible for writing this mess, let's use mamoDio from now on because it's easier) seems to idolize the Joestars for what he calls their "beautiful blood." Not "beautiful" because usable calories for the vampire he will become but "beautiful" because noble. The Joestars' noble status and the honor that's apparently behind that status become the shining "star" toward which mud-bound mamoDio flailingly, failingly reaches. I don't need to tell you that in canon Dio doesn't have respect for nobility.

"Mud and stars" is heavy-handedly introduced as a dominant theme of the musical. According to the play, Jonathan, noble and bright, looks to the stars while human Dio, pathetic, conflicted and even confused, can only see life as a mud-soaked prison.

Now, the mud and stars thing was only used in Part 1 as a single text element on a Volume 1 illustration but, in spite of its marginality, it's becomes a liturgical text for some fans looking for an explanation for Dio's actions beyond what Araki gives them in the actual narrative. To this sort of fan, a guy who embraces his inner talent for evil and never had the misfortune of developing a moral compass isn't the right type of villain because he's unapologetic. If the villain doesn't have excuses how can you apologize for him? So they need Dio and by extension Araki to give them a "good enough" reason to accept Dio's ever-escalating atrocities. If the reasons Dio has for doing the things he does lie outside of what's considered good or acceptable, they are simply rejected and new reasons are invented in the hope of making Dio much less objectionable.

Now, like I said earlier, Araki's repeatedly told us in his writings that Dio has an upward narrative trajectory, not a downward, "mud"-bound one. The mud and stars duality fails to describe the narrative journey of the two main characters: both look upward to transcend their circumstances and travel along a shonen manga hero's rising path. (In fact, it's Jonathan who needs a good push to realize his potential, something Dio happily provides). And it's Jonathan, not Dio, who Araki first gives a downward arc, being handed defeat after defeat for those first four chapters before gaining his footing and progressively rising to Dio's challenges. "Mud and stars" isn't just a bad choice of metaphor, it's a misleading one.

Back to the musical, mamoDio is the exact opposite. An air of sadness and insecurity haunts his performance. An original scene where George presents the mud and stars dilemma as a lesson highlights Dio's lack of confidence and the depression that lurks behind it, as Dio bemoans how people doomed to "struggle and die" cannot possibly summon the hope it takes to look up to the stars (he's talking of course about himself).

Likewise, and here's where mamoDio's failure as a character really comes into full relief, seven years after this, when Dio's machinations are revealed and he's about to be arrested, before he uses the stone mask, mamoDio drops to the floor and spends the better part of a musical number in tears, bemoaning his sorry life ("I'm trapped in a prison covered in mud… no matter how hard I struggle I'm crushed…") and his lack of noble blood.

(btw this is after the manga scene where Dio fake cries; here, mamoDio is genuinely distraught).

Contrast this to the actual scene in the manga. His expressions in these panels are memorable because of how assured Araki draws him. Dio's entire world - his poisoning scheme, his grab at what one can assume would have been the entirety of the Joestar estate - is about to end but instead of despairing, he launches into a philosophical soliloquy. His body language is haughty: this isn't mamoDio crawling on the ground and decrying his upbringing and lack of noble blood, instead this is a man who apparently, almost irrationally, perceives himself as noble. When he uses the mask, Dio is smiling widely. Metaphorically speaking, he's looking at the stars.

When mamoDio uses the mask? He's on his knees. He's in tears. On one night he interjects, "Mother…" In short, he's conflicted.

One of these depicts Dio. The other does not.

Now obviously the writers and director of the musical must think making these seismic changes adds something to Dio's character. But (and I feel like this is a theme whenever I write these things) I'd argue it only makes him more basic. It makes him predictable and formulaic, someone we've seen in countless other stories.

(Oh! and did I mention mamoDio repeatedly calls himself "useless"!! Because he does this.)

Now, because mamoDio has no confidence and as a human acts out of desperation, when he becomes a vampire he still isn't Dio. Mamoru tries to make his vampire Dio evil and scary by expending a lot of energy, running about the stage and sticking out his tongue ad nauseum. When you look at how Araki has Dio move physically throughout the manga, it's the opposite of kinetic. Dio is a point of fixity who's charisma draws others toward him (ask me for more on this if you want because there's enough here for its own post).

Now for the worst of the worst: at the very end of the production, after the manga ending that features Jonathan's death and Dio's (presumed) defeat as a head imprisoned in Jonathan's arms, the musical takes an original twist in which, following a finale number featuring most of the cast, mamoDio is lead offstage by Jonathan. You read that right. mamoDio is hunched over, resigned, and Jonathan seems to take on a paternal role. Although the lyrics would have you believe this has something to do with "two fates becoming one," it's clear from the stage direction that any embers of Dio's ambition are being tamed and extinguished as Jonathan takes Dio's grasping hand, subdues him, and leads him docilely into the darkness.

It turns out Dio's vampire arc was just a phase, a hurt and lonely child lashing out and making a mess for attention.

His body language here is obscenely out of character. Consider the following because, as I said in the opening, in spite of what all these re-writes of Dio would have you believe, Araki crafted Dio with specificity and consistency: Araki only draws Dio (with very few exceptions) 1) standing tall, looking down at you; 2) back turned, looking back and down at you; or simply 3) back turned, (performatively?) ignoring you. Dio is never on the ground except when he's knocked down (think, young Jonathan finally fighting back in the Joestar home or, much later, Jotaro stopping time and landing those punches). By constrast, mamoDio has spent an incessant amount of time of the ground, crouching, kneeling,, bowing, hunched down. Who is this guy? So his hunched-down exit in the final moments of the production, literally being led by Jonathan (controlled??), is so amazingly stupid that if I didn't have a gif as proof, you might think I'm just making this stuff up:

There's plenty more to unpack that I won't address here: ghost Dario. The lack of grave-spitting. The complete absence of true joy or leisure expressed by Dio especially during his vampire era: no woman eating her baby, no owlcats, no Poco's sister. No chaise lounge. No roses(!). No fun. Not for Dio. That would be too manga-consistent. That might mean Araki wasn't giving us the appropriate message that bad guys are actually just sad guys.

tl;dr Dio isn't in the Phantom Blood musical. He's replaced by a normal guy who's motivated by a lack of self-esteem and despair that he wasn't born into an upper-class household, or something. He's boring. The result? There can be no Part 3 in this musical's world (and presumably no Parts 4, 5 or 6, no Giorno, no Jolyne, … you get the picture) because mamoDio just gives up. It's a nicely produced little tale about Jonathan Joestar and some random other guy who at some point gets a funny green coat.

[pitynostars]

[ID: The 6th Doctor with his mouth open in shock labelled "Died 1986" and the 15th Doctor with his mouth open in shock labelled "Born 2024", underneath captioned "welcome back 6th doctor cliffhanger face" /End ID]

pikachu meme whomst....

[luobinghelovebot]

good evening kind tumblr user luobinghelovebot, i have devoured svsss this week and consequently fallen into bingqiu hell. i was wondering if you would be so kind to give this lowly one some fic recs? preferably modern aus as i'm in the mood for those rn but rly if there’s anything you think someone MUST read i would be happy to receive them 🙏��🫡

oooh my lovely i am absolutely honoured u came to me for this !!!! I dont rlly read a lot of modern aus bc its not my vibe BUT i do read some occasionally and so here are some of my recs !!

Assume its bingqiu unless i say otherwise but also i love so many ships in this fandom so just included them all 🫡:

Asmr artist!binghe my beloved

Cumplane forum au...

This retransmigration fic oh my god

And this one

Hannah montana au (just trust me)

bingyuan...

Another cumplane one

f/f/f bingliushen pwp

another retransmigration fic

bingliushen but lmy&lqy 🥺🥺 i love siblings

Cumplane were married before transmigrating

Moshang arranged marriage....

sqq makes a r/relationships post

binghe/sqq/he xuan/xie lian/hua cheng from tgcf

Florist binghe/librarian sqq

Another retransmigration 🙈

Aaand one more

Not a modern au but this is my fave sv fic at the mo, or maybe this

also i do bookmark literally every fic i read, mark them by recs and favourites SO i can give u this link for all my faves of faves for sv. And this one for all the recs. Or feel free to sleuth all my bookmarks ofc! Happy reading 🥰

[dailydrwhopolls]

wait I don’t think I understand the question: “is your favourite doctor the main character of your favourite series?” like…did you mean are they your favourite character of your favourite series?

no i mean is your fave doc the current doc/main character in your fave series? E.g. If your fave series is series 10, your fave doctor is 12, or your fave season is s1 and your fave doctor is 1, then yes. If your fave dr is 9 but your fave series is series 5, then no. I am curious how much your fave doctor impacts fave series or vice versa 👀

[coelenterata]

1. Your YOTP is great, I'm so glad I found it, and you're absolutely correct we need more Robin/Vickie

2. Prompt: You pick, either Steve and Robin reminiscing about a day at Scoops OR Robin and Erica painting their nails together

Thank you! I'm glad I got to do yotp for everyone else who wanted Robin/Vickie fics!!

Also I love Erica, but you say Steve and Robin and it's gonna be Steve and Robin —

+

"Top three things you don't miss about Scoops," Robin says, when Steve collapses against the counter, free finally of trying to recommend movies to the weirdest-smelling old lady in Hawkins, and he groans again, and she pokes him, says, "go, go, you invented this game—"

"The stickiness," Steve says, immediately, then pauses, touches the counter, grimaces, but Robin doesn't get to deduct points before he leans back to look at the ceiling and continues, "the mopping, and the hat, and that you hated me, remember when you made me clean up all that blue ice cream—"

"First of all, I didn't hate you," Robin says, because they've talked about all their secret pettinesses and also she loves him too much to make him think that she could ever at any point in the timeline hate him, and secondly, "and also I made you do it because it was your kids, I'm pretty sure it was Dustin who had an argument about the blue ice cream with that guy—" and thirdly, something, she knows there was a third point, but Steve groans loudly and then the door opens and he groans again quieter and gets himself upright and polite again, and back they go to their slightly less sticky work at Family Video.

[astariicn]

This has become something of a ritual. He feels the pangs of hunger, the weakness, the exhaustion his curse causes....and he goes to Alkas. Tonight's feed had been no different in that sense, but this time, after a particularly delectable sampling of Alkas' blood, Astarion had locked eyes with the other. It was only brief, but he'd not been able to resist the pull of temptation and had leant in again,lips grazing cheeks, corners of mouth and then. . .

Astarion revels in the moment Alkas' goes in for more, the feeling sending sparks flying through his entire body. He presses closer, tongue running quickly over the other's lip to taste the blood on lips other than his own.

Then they part, and he's left a little dazed but very definitely happy. He spies the blood seeping from the wound on Alkas' neck, reaches a hand out and brushes it away with his thumb. He's half tempted to lick the digit clean, but he's pleasantly full and isn't inclined to tease (not too much, at least. Not yet. )

" Undeniably." He answers, lips tipping upwards as he uses a finger to attempt to lift Alkas' chin, wanting a better look at him. " dessert was wonderful, darling. "

@bhaalswn from x

[fullbottles]

wait that's fucking crazy. i assumed they were discussing the upcoming 2nd drb but now that you mention it you're right. what in the fuck is this anime going to be about then

[prncefinn]

do u have zorii thoughts

honestly head empty zorii hot.

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[ebi-noodle-doodles]

Miku art compilation

Commissions open: xixiriima.carrd.co

[maxwell-grant]

HEROFY: Annhilus.

A weird thing about where Annihilus stands nowadays is that, his original defining motivation was a complete and total fear of death, right? He was completely obsessed with preserving his own life to the extent of angling to murder everything else in the universe just so that nothing could ever possibly threaten his life ever again. But then after his major stint as a big bad in Annihilation and I think starting in Hickman Fantastic Four, he is instead defined as someone who is wholly incapable of dying (not just him, but everyone from the Negative Zone apparently) and who even actively wants it, still obsessed with death and slaughter but in an almost directly opposite way from his previous reason for it. Honestly, I love both approaches, I love Annihilus in general he's a very easy cosmic monster to love if nothing else because of the design, it's just it doesn't seem like they've ever conciliated these wildly different motivations. That's where I'd start, I think. Conciliating these two together.

Annihilus as a mutant spore who emerges near-fully formed as the first intelligent being born in the Negative Zone, completely incapable of getting answers to his existence and dealing with the creatures around him that keep trying to attack and hurt him, until this little nerdy cockroach stumbles on an alien spaceship and is brain-blasted with all the knowledge of his creators turning him into a near-immortal powerful new being who goes on to create new lifeforms, essentially ruling the primordial Negative Zone by default. Not out of any desire for conquest, but because it's the safest place to be, he figures. He doesn't yet know what it's like to want things, he is just fiercely obsessed with protecting himself from injury and death as a remaining defining primal instinct and so he creates the Cosmic Control Rod as essentially just a tool to protect him via combat, and then the Fantastic Four steal the rod from him.

They give it back after they're done with it, but in subsequent excursions to Earth, he learns what they were using it for. Over early attempts to attack this planet and the people that invaded his home the first time, so they may never invade again and never endanger him again, he learns what it feels like to die and come back. It feels nice. It feels good. It feeelssss sssssweet, ssssweeet death that brings resssurection. His greatest fear comes true and it's the first time he discovers joy. He learns that, not only is he immortal, but he has ways to prolong or save the lives of others. Death isn't scary at all, in fact it only made him stronger. He doesn't even need the rod anymore, it's basically just an Excalibur at this point to determine who rules the Zone. Hero Annihilus is driven thus by a desire to simply let everyone else in the universe join in on how awesome it is to live in the Negative Zone with him in charge, because on your boring mudball, you die, but in the Negative Zone, you can live.

It might take a few tries to convince him that the rest of the universe very much cannot come back from dying and very much does not share his enthusiasm about death and resurrection, but that in turn further drives him to share it. He will step up to prevent multiverse destroying catastrophes and refrain from murdering people not in his jurisdiction, but really, if everyone was in the Negative Zone, being slaughtered would just be a fun time that improves your life when you get it back. Skill issue on everyone else's part. The Negative Zone is great, guys, nobody has to die in it! His worms can bring you back everytime, if you don't just outright morph into something that molts and revives itself, like he did! We got trillions of bugs and technology and gladiator sports and tons of squirrels ever since Squirrel Girl's clone moved in, and if it's good enough for her it's definitely good enough for you.

There's at least 14 trillion and counting Negative Zoners already of the opinion that Annihilus is great and awesome and should rule everything forever, so democratically speaking, he's already a hero to more beings than the vast majority of Earth superheroes.

[highdio]

DIO and the Plan for Heaven

I've received a lot of asks for my take on how the "plan for Heaven" in Part 6 relates back to Dio as a character. Some of these included theories and asked whether I agreed with their points. The best way to for me reply is to walk through some misconceptions I've seen repeated about the Heaven plan and at the same time give my own views on how the Stand ability that Pucci enacts in Part 6 can be reconciled with what we know about Dio in canon. Spoiler: IMO the form that the Heaven ability ultimately takes - a universal reset that grants all of humanity knowledge of their preordained fate in advance and down to the micro-level of individual occurances - is not necessarily the outcome that Dio predicted or even desired.

1) The "Heaven" that Pucci enacted in Part 6 is not derived from a subconscious psychological need for security or safety on Dio's part.

This seems basic but I've seen this in comments: the belief that the Stand ability Pucci unlocks through Dio's "heaven" formula relates back to Dio's own need for security and peace of mind. This panel specifically gets talked about, in both discussions regarding Heaven and of Dio's larger worldview:

Of course here Dio is describing "human" needs. Dio doesn't consider himself human and doesn't include himself among those seeking these comforts. Importantly, neither does Araki:

"From perspective of the world in which living creatures naturally prey upon the weak, what DIO is doing is the correct thing. It's out of line with society's norms though, which were created to make it easier for humans to survive. Considered from the worldview of the "Law of the Jungle" [弱肉強食], DIO is acting normally. …People might say I'm anti-social when I say this, but, in a sense, DIO is someone I admire (lol)." (Jump Remix Vol.11 (March 2002), my translation).

Asked to describe his feelings on Dio, Araki heads straight into setting up a direct opposition between "society" - which provides the security, comfort and safety for its participants that Dio describes in the above panel - and Dio, who lives by what Araki calls an "anti-social" code unconcerned with these comforts. It's central enough of a character trait for Araki to say all this unprompted in response to a general ask about DIO.

So anyone claiming that Dio's Heaven plan came out of a need, conscious or not, to allay his own insecurities and for his own peace of mind ignores the fact that Araki wrote Dio with an entirely contrary mindset.

It's also worth considering the context of the panel, since it will relate to a discussion of whether Dio even wants a world where people know outcomes in advance. Dio is describing humankind's need for comfort and security in an attempt to convince Polnareff to submit and to continue to serve him. Araki ties all of this to fear: Polnareff must either give into his fear and resign himself to a comfortable life of submission or he must overcome his fear and reject those comforts.

ofc Dio is playing a game with Polnareff at the same time, using time-stop assisted sleight-of-hand to convince Polnareff that his own body is physically submitting, unconsciously descending the same two stairs. This game, where fear and submission are directly tied to the promise of comfort and security, presents choosing the comforts of society as the weaker, non-heroic path. tl;dr, accepting the security that Dio describes in that panel is a bad thing. Keep this fact in the back of your mind.

If Dio isn't motivated by a need for security, and instead lives according to rules of the natural world, maybe Dio wanted a universe where all of humanity knows its fate in advance for practical reasons, i.e., it would make humans resigned to their fates and simple to rule over?

Again, we need to consider what, exactly, this would mean for Dio.

2) Dio did not intend to create a world where all of humanity became resigned to its fate as a means of ruling over mankind, because this would remove all the pleasure of accumulating and exerting power.

I've discussed this before: Dio actually likes people who take the most arduous path, seemingly rebelling against their own security and comfort. While it is possible that Dio wanted humans to be more docile, this would definitely take away one of Dio's favorite hobbies: subjecting humans to extreme psychological pressure to see how they react, something Dio indulges in regularly. The Heaven achieved by Pucci (a universe where everything is known in advance by its participants) would mean that everything - from that lady sacrificing herself so her baby could be spared in Part 1 to Hol Horse trying to shoot Dio in the back - would be robbed of all dramatic tension. A knowable universe is a boring one. Dio as an immortal would be highly aware of this. And we know that Dio loves a good fight (Araki draws Dio at his most alive and expressive during direct physical confrontation) and loves an opponent who fights back (it's the reason he moves from disdain to respect for Jonathan over the course of Part 1 and the reason he "realizes he likes" Hol after Hol's rebellion). A known universe changes the very nature of "fighting back." When opponents know the outcome of a fight before it starts, combat is reduced to simply going through the motions.

In short, Pucci's universe makes it too easy for a guy who is all about the drama of testing and transcending limits. It would take all the pleasure out of being Dio.

This is where the value judgment I discussed earlier comes in, the one where the comfortable path is also the easy one, and where choosing security means choosing resignation and cowardace. How is it possible then to assert that Dio wants a universe, an eternity, where everything is resignation? It isn't, and he doesn't.

(Here I should point out the obvious fact that the Dio and Pucci flashbacks in Part 6 take place, from a timeline perspective, concurrent with Part 3. While it's surprisingly often that people attribute what they perceive as a difference in Dio between Parts 3 and Part 6 as an easing or maturing in Dio's outlook over time and reflection, there can be no evolution or softening in Dio's thinking between Parts 3 and 6 because there is no time gap. Dio's words in Part 3, if we take them at face value (since sometimes he lies), reflect what he's thinking at the same time he's devising his plan for "Heaven.")

Instead, there's a telling scene early in Part 3 where Dio discusses that "standing at the top of the World" means overcoming fear:

Now consider the Heaven ability that Pucci unlocks at the end of Stone Ocean within the context of this monologue as well as the Polnareff stairway scene. Knowing your fate - the ultimate goal of the universal reset - isn't overcoming fear, it's having the hardship of fear removed. "Fear" in the above passage results from the experience of failure and the reflexive bodily reaction during future struggles to the possibility that one will fail again. When all is known in advance, this fear is removed. The possibility for "conquering" fear that Dio describes to Enya is likewise removed altogether.

Additionally, in Part 6 and while discussing "Heaven" with Pucci, Dio directly states that "true happiness cannot be attained… by being the ruler of the human race," contrasting this with the true victory of "getting to see Heaven." This dialog yet again gives the lie to an assertion that Dio wants universal precognition as a practical means to easily dominate all of humanity.

3) IMO Dio did not know what form the "Heaven" ability would take, just that it would be an OP, transcendent power.

I've talked about this before too but one of the coolest elements to the Heaven formula is how gnostic it is. Some people just ignore this fact, but it's critically important to look at how Araki chose to characterize the "formula for Heaven." 14 cryptic words, the "souls of 36 sinners," a specific latitude and longitude, the phases of the moon. This is esoteric, occult-type stuff. Add to this Dio's own description of how the destruction of his stand will "give birth to something entirely new":

This language is extremely important. It seems the critical detail that's missing from the formula of heaven is what shape exactly the "heaven" ability will take. The outcome of Dio's heaven plan is missing from the formula because that outcome - "whatever is born" - will be revealed through the process. This is precisely why "courage" is needed: this is a leap of faith into the unknown.

It stands to reason that Dio himself would be uncertain what power would be unlocked through the formula. After all, this theme is a throughline throughout Dio's life: Dio constantly does stuff where the outcome is both unknown and radical. Using the stone mask, taking and assimilating Jonathan's body, powering up on Joseph's blood: Dio's pursuit of power consistently leads him to make "leaps" where the outcome is knowable only as "something new" and something transcendent. So it's not just plausible that Dio didn't know what new ability would emerge with the destruction of his Stand, it's in character. And of course, unknowability and the need for "courage" in the face of an unforeseen outcome directly mirrors Dio's assertion in Part 3 that "the one to stand at the top of the World" is the one who "conquers Fear."

4) Pucci has as much a role as Dio in shaping the form that the "Heaven" ability ultimately takes.

If you ignore all of the above and instead assert that Dio had his plan fully mapped out and specifically envisioned a future where he and all of humanity were disavowed of the illusion of free will - comforted by going through the motions of a fate they had already lived through - then Pucci himself becomes unimportant. The character gets reduced to a simple cog or a lackey, carrying out the gruntwork of an absent master architect.

Instead, imo the specific backstory and worldview that Pucci brings to his and Dio's relationship is the key element that shapes the form that "Heaven" eventually takes. After all - this point is not debatable - it's Pucci himself, not Dio, who seems most in need of the comfort, the certainty and security, that a universe in which all know their fate would provide. Pucci's entire backstory is built around the trauma of unforeseen consequence. The reset universe really is, then, the realization of Pucci's own personal "Heaven."

Please keep in mind that Dio did not expect to die and fully expected to be the one to enact the Heaven formula himself. Of course Jotaro had something to say about this, so instead we get Dio's disciple and "trusted friend" executing the formula.

(Add to that the obvious, meta fact that Araki developed the "plan for Heaven" specifically for Part 6. The plan (or even the notion of "getting to Heaven") isn't mentioned in any prior part, and isn't part of Dio's story anywhere prior. In the true "meta" sense (e.g., the real-life production conditions surrounding the fictional work), the Heaven plan is written by Araki for Part 6 and as the major driver of Pucci's story, inseparable from the character. Araki tightly tailored Pucci's backstory around the idea that bad twists of fate sow profound misery and that knowledge of what fate has in store can allay inevitable suffering, the premise of the universal reset. Even Pucci being a priest has obvious synergy with the concept of "Heaven." Without Part 6, without Pucci, the heaven storyline never gets written. And within the story itself, without Pucci the formula to get to "Heaven" is never enacted.)

All of this is to say that discussions that try to link the reset universe and resultant universal precognition too closely to Dio's own personality, his backstory and his philosophies ignore the fact that Heaven was enacted by the gravitational convergence of two individuals who each brought something to the formula. Dio strongly shaped the course that Pucci's life took and Pucci in turn shaped the form that "Heaven" took.

[pitynostars]

Okay, asking as someone who generally had a lot of fun with this ep: what did you dislike about it?

i did have fun i guess i LOVEDDDD the scene w the toymaker in unit but also felt like it slipped back into generic tennant being an asshole characterisation in a few moments. The pacing felt so rushed it was wack. Why waste time on the meep and some monster of the week ep just to rush what shld be the grand finale of the 60th anniversary.... why repeat the tentoo/rose happy life off to the side w the tardis AGAIN rather than doing something new (and in doing so, i feel like they 100% overshadowed the new dr !!!!! gatwa doesnt get his own tardis or intro or Win or even outfit) Like. Idk. As i say my tv crashed twice so maybe i missed something that would flip me but i just feel so dissapointed. Tennant wank my beloathed.

[luobinghelovebot]

#and just started getting obsessed with beefleaf#do they have other ship name?#can't stand this one

@orchidblacktea yess ive also seen people use shuangxuan (i think it means two/double xuan from their names)!

[dailydrwhopolls]

Hi, Sutekh Anon here! Love the additions! :D

Awesome, great to hear !!!! 🥰