#Ninjago crossroads

[rainofthetwilight]

everyone here talking abt other realms while my social worldbuilding obsessed ass has been staring at the crossroads ever since I first saw it

like, just listen to me for a second. do you notice the satellite dishes? the cables linking the houses together?? that's point-to-point networking right there!!! the people of the crossroads depend on their neighbors to get internet and it's just so. augh. that's just one of the many indicators of the close community the crossroads is. I love how people from different realms and places all live here, causing such a beautiful mix of cultures that doesn't clash but instead just makes the community grow even more. and the way the people there wouldn't let anyone kick sora and arin out of their penthouse because it was once arin's home?? oh my god??? 😭

the mixed-use urban design is also just absolutely incredible, and it's walkable too?? hello???? the worldbuilding here is just soso good, like, do you see all those apartment buildings linked next to eachother? all the shops? the fruit sellers on the streets? the small notes left on poles? all the benches and the lanterns and the fun decorations and the colours of it all which give it such a pretty and energetic vibe?

and not to mention how they literally have an annual carnival where EVERYONE attends, a carnival where everyone from the merged realms celebrate their traditions!! their culture!!! they have an entire carnival just for that!!!! they celebrate w/ food, games, parties, everything!!!!! a carnival which brings the people of the combined lands closer to eachother, which makes them learn more about the other's culture and traditions!!!!!! it's just so awesome and soso heartwarming and I never see anyone talk abt it. plus not to mention the mech race, the amount of people attending in the audience just proves it's popularity and I love it man. speaking of the mech race, I wonder how money works in the crossroads? I assume it's the same as ninjago city's system? I mean the crossroads is next to ninjago city so that would make sense

ough. crossroads I love you crossroads I need to talk about you more

[ashyart]

Remember when Arin told the barber he wanted "The Zane"? The barber got tipped well that day.

[legokingfisher]

the only reason Sora and Arin were able to afford their flat in the Crossroads with how little they made (let’s be honest how the fuck were they living off mech races they seldom won) is because it is at the top of a building with no staircase or elevator and they were the only people willing to scale a building every time they wanted to go home and nobody else wanted that shit which lowered the hell outta the rent

[toastingpencils37]

Just a collection of various Ninjargon translations from DR S1E1 so I can keep them all in one place.

Also, just a warning, some of the shots on this post have pretty bad quality so that you can't see what's on the signs, but I'm using a different screen for the actual translations that I can't really just screenshot.

The wall painting right below the garage thing:

Fresh Fo-

I'm assuming the "Fo-" part is supposed to have a "od" after it, spelling out Food, given the Fresh.

And then the banner thing to the right of Sora:

J4- PK-

Less likely real words, given the letter placement and the numbers. So probably either some sort of store advertisement/sign or just some random tag sign of some graffiti artist.

(Had to get two shots of these signs in order to be able to translate everything in the second shot)

The Green sign with the Dragon on the building:

Dragon House

The orange sign with the bowl right next to it:

Fresh

Again, likely food. Especially since right below it there's a menu

The menu below the orange sign:

Specials Fish.......Fcs Soup.........vfd Chicken........Yjr Noodles........Fcs

There may be some mistranslations with some of the red letters on the menu, as they were hard to figure out.

The string banner below the Specials menu:

68392047

Yeah I have no idea what that means. Because I don't think it's a set number of sorts because a) too long for a regular set and b) i don't think there was a polybag thing for this either, even like a LEGO City one.

Also, this menu and string banner appear at least four more times in the episode, with the string banner sometimes being blue rather than red.

For this shot I'm actually just going to translate the neon pink sign, because I can't get enough focus on the smaller things such as the papers taped up to tell what I'm looking at.

Also the cut off large blue "S" in the planter is part of a much larger sign that appears earlier, spelling "Crossroads"

Neon pink sign:

Forward

Only translating the white paper in this shot, which have some pretty bad handwriting (and i'm pretty sure a couple of the letters might be actual English or just nonexistent Ninjargon letters as well)

White paper:

**a*** am*fg mf** a*** fhl 5****

I was going to translate the blue paper as well, but one close look at it, I decided it's not worth it and that I don't have enough brain power for this shit.

The Specials chalkboard and the blue string banner right next to the green fish sign says exactly the same thing as the previous Specials sign and string banner, so I'm not translating that.

Purple vertical lamppost sign with an arrow pointed to the right:

Somewhere

Thank you street sign that really cleared things up /s

The blue sign:

2828

Probably supposed to be an address sign, but like many of the signs around the Crossroads, it pops up multiple times on different buildings. So who truly knows.

The box shown between Arin and Sora:

It appears to be flipped upside down, so if flipped the right way, it should spell:

Kgbdy

Also translating the poster because it surprisingly has some interesting stuff:

Mechmaster Mechma Reward Track Pie

The second line is cut off on the poster design itself, so that "Mechma" is the whole thing it says. Also not sure if the pie is something actually involved as a reward for winning the race, or if the people on the actual Ninjago team making the poster just decided to put it on for another reason, possibly even foreshadowing of what'll happen in the next scene.

Sign of cat:

Deals

This sign also pops up quite a bit in this episode.

The orange sign right behind Sora:

Sale

I noticed it appear once more towards the end of the race as well.

Sora's Mech:

SA-Mark

Orange sign above Frohicky:

Mec- Mast-

Obviously it's supposed to spell out "Mech Master" but it's cut off

Yellow letters below the black screen above Frohicky:

Register

The front of the mech:

Fast

The arm:

So

There's also a brown mech shown earlier that appears to have this also written on it, but another mech in front of it cuts it off so you can only see the "Fa" and the dash part of the "S"

Kreel's Mech:

Speed

The blue, black, and yellow graffiti:

Htja

The orange/brown shop sign to the left of Riyu:

It's the same as the one behind Sora, but now we can see that below the "Sale", there is also some Ninjargon.

So the full translation is:

Sale 98

Then the yellow sign with the red dragon to the right of Riyu:

Great deals

The graffiti with the fish:

Pux4

Of the graffiti, this tag makes the most sense word wise.

This same graffiti also popped up earlier on the race track, but I couldn't make out some of the letters there, so I put this one with the more clear letters instead.

Also, I think the "x" is an "x". Only letter that really seems to fit that shape.

Graffiti with shuriken star:

Dfg

Graffiti with hamburger:

Tddhfj

However it appears to be mirrored so it should actually spell:

Jfhddt

And then the little piece of graffiti in the bottom left corner:

....cy

Which is all we see of the graffiti there.

So, that's it for translating stuff from episode 1. And yeah, for quite a bit of the stuff, it's just gibberish.

[user-without-a-cool-acronym]

Since a bunch of places from Chima are apparently now part of the merged realms, I choose to believe that this chasm in the crossroads is what happened to the gorge of eternal depth

It's just that no one in Chima ever thought to build a bridge

[cable-salamdr]

Their album drops next week y’all better be ready to hear the bangers of these four mentally ill and traumatised teenagers (Click for better quality because tumblr hates me)

Individual shots (click for details? Idk):

[roselock22]

Character lineup for DR chars! Mostly did these to have fullbody references and also for height

[geoxstxrs]

why does pinterest have so many pale Arin's??? Like where the hell is his melanin...

[icy-watch]

Oh this hurts

This hurts a lot

[dr-ninjago-ships]

Tangerine (Arin x Frak)

made by: @geoxstxrs

[penofwildfire]

There was probably a shit ton of people who got violently ill after the Merge from all the brand new diseases that just got introduced to their realms.

[general-yasur]

And what if I just start tagging my Sora posts with Sora Garmadon? What then?

[agenericplaceholdername]

Without the Blood Moon, Ras would've succeeded

"The Blood Moon rises once every few millennia in the Wyldness. And on this rarest of events, there is an arcane ritual that can be performed to resurrect... the Forbidden Five." -- Suetonius, Shattered Dreams

Coming out of Dragons Rising S2P1, it seemed like the Blood Moon's arrival was quite fortunate for Ras. It happens only once in thousands of years, and could have easily happened long before the Merge or long after. Instead, I will argue that if the Blood Moon was not happening soon, but Ras' overall goals remained the same, he would have succeeded.

Let's examine Ras' end goal in DR S2. He wants to bring the winner of the Tournament of Sources to the "Cauldron of Realms" (S2, E19) and from there, he can use the stolen elemental powers to create dragon icons. Then he can summon and capture Source Dragons (S2, E16). Working backwards, he wants to put together a team of elemental masters who will win the Tournament. In the canon timeline, since the Blood Moon is coming, he decides to try to free the Forbidden Five to use them as his Elemental champions.

(Side note: Given how threatening the Five have been described as, the equivalent to recruiting the most deadly Elemental Masters in history to win a tournament would be assembling the Ninja to defeat a single robber, or recruiting the Council of the Crystal King to defeat Dareth.)

However, let's say the Blood Moon isn't coming. Ras will have to put together his own team from the Elemental Masters he can recruit by himself. Cinder will work for Ras the same as he did originally. Through Jordana's source dragon energy, Ras can still open the Shadow Dojo and acquire the wolf masks, giving Cinder access to Shatterspin. While Cinder is easily bested by Rising Dragon (and even by Sora without it), given how easily Cinder defeated the Ninja in their first encounter, he might be able to handle the non-Ninja elemental masters at the Tournament with Shatterspin alone.

This does raise a question. If not for the Blood Moon, will the Ninja even learn Rising Dragon? After all, they only do so after Ras invades the Cloud Kingdom, Euphrasia goes to the Ninja and tells them what happened, they go to the Cloud Kingdom, witness Shatterspin, and then Lloyd calls on the Source Dragons and receives a vision directing the Ninja to Egalt and Rontu. But Ras only invades the Cloud Kingdom to translate the Theroxian scrolls for the Ritual of the Blood Moon, which he now no longer needs.

That being said, I'm still inclined to think Ras wants to learn the secrets of the Forbidden Five, if nothing else than to improve Cinder's Shatterspin and help Jordana learn sorcery. So the Cloud Kingdom is still invaded and the Ninja still end up seeking out Egalt and Rontu. It might be even harder to convince the Dragon Masters to teach the Ninja Rising Dragon, since the threat of the Forbidden Five is absent, but let's say the Ninja learn it. In fact, let's say that because the Blood Moon never happens and the Dragon Masters aren't turned to stone, all the Ninja learn Spinjitzu (if they didn't know it already) and Rising Dragon.

It doesn't matter.

Without Nokt and Rox being freed and killing various Arch-Dragons, the Source Dragon of Motion never directs the Ninja to the Tournament of Sources and Ras still works with Bleckt, who makes sure the Ninja don't receive their invitations. Thus, the Tournament occurs and Cinder and whatever other Elemental Masters Ras recruits -- probably Frak and maybe even Jay -- win. We don't know how Ras found Jay in the canon timeline, but he already didn't like working in the Administration. Ras can simply manipulate him whatever way he did originally. Ras now has the combined Elemental Powers, and his plan succeeds.

And to preemptively respond to a potential counterargument -- no, Ras didn't need the Ninja's elemental powers for his plan. Remember that originally, he tried to prevent the Ninja from showing up, tried to assassinate Lloyd, and then tried to get the Ninja kicked out of the Tournament.

[legokingfisher]

Does anyone think about how many geckles and munce there are in the crossroads but not a single skyfolk. What happened. What happened. What happened. What happened. What happened

[toastingpencils37]

Fuck I love the Crossroads. Especially at night

[user-without-a-cool-acronym]

since those two influencers in s2 ep1 call them "new ninja", does the general public in Ninjago know who Arin, Sora and Wyldfyre are? Or do they just think the new ninja from crystalized rebranded or something