#Reasons like this is why i loved Samurai Jack so much

[crystallizedday]

HELL YEAH!!

Gonna use this as an excuse to ramble a bit cause I love this lil fella so much…

Like I keep saying

Fusionfall has the BEST version of his character. It is NOT even close.

There’s just

SO much more to his character.

He HAD a bit of character in his debut episode

But Fusionfall makes him so much more well-rounded.

Yeah, you’ll occasionally have the world third person talk for some reason

But he’s like

Actually smart.

He actually STUDIES stuff related to magic.

He KNOWS his shit.

He is portrayed as THE most knowledgeable magic character in the entire game

Which

Says a LOT considering the roster.

He’s also incredibly crafty

Kinda being on par with the likes of the KND with how he utilizes average materials to benefit himself (even if uh… it most likely doesn’t work out for him since he’s trying to make himself look intimidating, but he’s trying, & that’s all that matters to me).

He’s incredibly snarky & smug, to such a pathetically adorable degree.

He keeps throwing around names like “child,” “human,” & “mortal” to make himself look like the tougher presence, even though he’s completely powerless in this point of Fusionfall’s story & he KNOWS it.

He copes SO hard, & it’s just adorable OQMWOSMSOXMMWOX

Not to mention

Just

I love when he genuinely gets invested in shit

Like his fuckin one sided beef with Billy.

Bro wants that kid DEAD, & it’s hilarious.

He FEELS.

He will try to be strictly logical & focus on the task at hand, but he STILL lets his emotions get to him.

Hell

Jack can’t even talk to Demongo himself cause Demmy is SO FUCKIN PETTY about his loss to the samurai that he doesn’t wanna even hear a PEEP out of the guy.

He’s so emotionally driven

& it’s only emphasized in his nano lines.

He isn’t like Aku, who is only fueled by hatred, pleasure in the suffering of others, & the occasional fear from getting killed by the samurai.

No.

When Demongo panics

He PANICS.

When he’s heartbroken

He starts SOBBING.

He can even get romantically attached if the stars ever aligned in his favor.

That’s not me being biased.

That’s just what his nano lines directly imply

& considering each nano is written to speak in a way that’s pretty much canon to their og counterpart (including Aku)

Any implications from the nano lines can apply to the original counterparts as well

& that is AMAZING to me, ya know?

That this DEMON

This guy who was birthed from the PIT OF HATE

Is written in a way where he can actively express a wide variety of emotions

But only seldom lets them show to ensure he can keep up appearances, just as he’s trying to do for at least 1/3rd of all his missions in-game.

He THINKS with his HEART!!

THIS is Fusionfall’s take on Demongo

& I LOVE him so much…

He is SUCH an adorable & interesting character that I wish we got to see more of.

I would’ve loved to have seen the original devs flesh out his character a bit more.

Like

Could you imagine if the og game touched upon the idea that he wasn’t working for Aku anymore?

That he at some point decided to be his OWN villain once Aku wanted nothing to do with him anymore?

& it makes him double down on keeping up appearances & growing stronger up until the invasion happened?

That would’ve been SO COOL to see such a concept unfold…

& maybe see Demongo be conflicted about whether he should return to Aku or not since he had some vital information on the resistance that the Shogun of Sorrow would have absolutely rewarded him for offering up, hence why Demongo did not confirm or deny working for Aku when the player & Jack question him on the subject.

Cause he legit doesn’t know his stance at that moment.

He’d love to have his safety ensured by Aku, but he had also grown to value his independence as well.

GOD, this game should have never been cancelled, bro…

The POTENTIAL!!!

I've been seeing alot of hear me out cakes so I've decided to make my own

[daftdrac]

If you were in a conversation, what topic would you like to talk about? :D

Something X-Men related, probably specifically anything deadpool or wolverine (Deadpool isn't exactly X-Men but I'm counting him cause he's also a part of this hyperfixation) anyways I LITERALLY GOT THIS NOTIFICATION WHILE IM WATCHING THE WOLVERING AND THE XMEN CARTOON LMAOOO Yeah I'm super into. X-Men shit right now because I watched Deadpool 3 and my brain said YES. THAT. I am absolutely taking this as an opportunity to rant by the way cause there is so much random shit about this show that has me giggling. Errrmmm spoiler warning I guess ?

FIRST OF ALL LOGANS VOICEEEEEVEVEVDBDBE 👹👹👹 I'm not one to simp for fictional characters (lie) but I'm down bad JUST because of the voice (also lie im down bad for a lot of reasons)

ALSO THE FUCKING AMOUNT OF LOVE INTERESTS HE HAS IN THIS. JEAN, (KINDA-ISH) WHO DOESN'T SHOW UP UNTIL EPISODE 23 OF 26??? SOME RANDOM JAPANESE WOMAN WHO'S MARRIED TO A SAMURAI?? SOME ALIEN-MUTANT-THING WOMAN WHO WORKED WITH HIM AND WAS HIS GIRLFRIEND BEFORE HE LOST HIS MEMORIES OR SOMETHING ?? Emma kinda but not really she's not an explicit love interest but you can kinda tell it's a little implied at some points. I definitely am forgetting a few my memory is still shit but A BISEXUAL CHARACTER AND NOT A MALE LOVE INTEREST IN SIGHT <3 thats why Cyclops is here. He's supposed to be kind of a romantic rival to Logan kinda (cause they both like jean or whatever idk it REALLY doesn't seem like Logan likes jean all that much but I guess he does) but it really just ends in them having tension that feels less like they despise each other and more like they're waiting for everyone to leave them alone so they can go at it so I'm counting Scott even if he isn't like OFFICALLY a love interest he basically is

Oh also gambit is a thing for like 2 episodes. All he does is cause issues which. Gambit core I guess idk much about him 💀 all I know is he is REALLY like. Cunning and confident and shit. Tryin to think of the word. CHARMING yeah he's charming. Or supposed to be I guess he looks a little funny so he just makes me giggle looking at him. Honestly if he wanted to fuck Logan he could probably convince him to buy he's in love with one of magneto's daughters or whatever?? That he met for like a few hours and kissed once?? Before being thrown in a cell for kissing magneto's daughter??? And then abandoning her after promising to take her away from genosha with him?? I don't even know man.

Anyways I'm a complete noob X-Men fan I literally didn't know jack shit about anyone but Logan before I started watching this. Already a hardcore wolverine/cyclops fan they're gay to be fr with you. I should read some of the comics huh. Anyways here's my live reaction to Logan and Scott interacting like normal people:

Also silly goofy images from this show no I'm not sorry 3/4 are Logan he's BABYGIRL in this okay

Here have a poolverine meme to end this post

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

please tell me about the headcannons for the First Ninja 🙏

!!! ;D Since you asked so nicely! ;3 uuuuhhhhhh lets see...some of my personal headcanons for First are:

He is baby of Norisu Clan, aka the Youngest child.

He barely remembers his parents, for they died when he was young (courtesy to Sorcerer and thus one of the many reasons Norisu Clan sought to defeat him), so he was mostly raised by his Oldest Siblings.

When he was younger (toddler-ish age), he was dotted upon by his older siblings, so he was kind of a brat, since he was used to being center of attention and being taken care of (tho he grew out of it pretty fast).

When he was younger (more teenager years) his hair used to be longer and he wore it in topknot (think Samurai Jack style).

And all of his Siblings were gone, he cut his hair off to honor their sacrifice and make a promise to finally defeat the Sorcerer (think sorta that Zuko scene from ATLA lol).

So, when we see First in Flashback of Ultimate Lesson, with his tiny ponytail, its (canonically i think?) several years after inprisonment of Sorcerer, that little tuft is what managed to grow back. (cause i think its interesting that we never see First out of the Ninja Suit in 13th Century Ninja episode)

Speaking of 13th Century Ninja episode(I both love and hate that episode so much man): I headcanon that most of First's behaviour can be explained by stress and despair he started to feel after loosing his siblings (also probably mild sleep deprivation from nightmares and ptsd). Which was why he seemingly 'gave up' so easily (like ??? ugh).

The other contributing factor is First being confronted by unrelenting dumb optimism/hope of Randy and suddenly strongly reminded First of himself, when he was younger and still believed his clan could defeat the Sorcerer and how he was that same ray of hope for his older siblings who were becoming weary from the battles. But he is older now, and no optimism or hope helped to save his siblings from the ultimate sacrifice, so he understands that darkness his family tried to protect him from much better now.

So basically I like to think younger First was a lot like Randy in many ways, especially in that assurance/confidence that any mistake can be fixed.

First is a great sea farer! Canonically, Norisu clan followed Sorcerer across the sea (according to Secrets of the 9 i think?), so they would have spent months/if not years at sea. And if First was young, it would have left a great impression on him, that expierence and time on the open waters.

That man can not cook to save his life, and he lost most of his appetite after his family's sacrifice, that's why he is rather scrawny.

First is not the best Ninja of Norisu Clan. He grew up in the protective shadow of his more talented and powerful Older Siblings, who in turn taught him everything they knew. So he might not be the most powerful of his Norisu Siblings, but he is the most rounded in his abilities and the most balanced one. ;)

hmmm i think im done for now ;D ask me later for more, maybe i'll have some more concrete ideas ;)

[tyrantisterror]

Why are Bulma and Piccolo your favorite Dragon Ball characters?

It might sound weird, but I love Bulma because of her very glaring flaws. She is loud, short-tempered, vain, self-centered, arrogant, too-clever by half, and extremely bossy, all of which are traits that are generally given to villainous women so that we hate them. But Bulma's not a villain - she's a hero, and for all her faults, she's also incredibly smart, resourceful, and resilient. Bulma never says die, never gives up, always tries to come up with a solution to whatever shit gets thrown her way, and goddamn, she manages to pull something together more often than not! In fact, most of her virtues are connected to her flaws - that arrogance pushes her to defy the odds and succeed, her tendency to overshoot when showing off her smarts will lead to situations where she can apply those smarts under pressure to more spectacular results, and you know what, she is really fucking pretty, so why shouldn't she be proud of it? Like, I've said before on a few occasions that I love it when a hero has villain coding, and Bulma has all the same villain coding as Jessie from Team Rocket - but she's a hero, she's unambiguously a hero, and a hero we need more often than not, and that's so damn cool. I love that she gets to be this loud, bossy, arrogant, vain person who's nonetheless a good friend and incredibly reliable and resourceful ally, that for all her abundant faults she's still a lovable and iconic hero. Girl characters don't get to be those things often enough! We need more Bulmas in the world.

My love for Piccolo is a bit simpler/more obvious. One, he's got a kickass character design - he and Aku from Samurai Jack cemented my love of costumes with big fucking shoulder pads/pauldrons. Two, as a person who had never seen Dragon Ball and found out about the series when they aired Dragon Ball Z on Toonami back in the 90's, Piccolo was the weirdest thing that first episode threw at me, and it threw a LOT of weird shit at me in that episode. Talking turtles, cats, and pigs, a lady with blue hair, a guy whose kid has a monkey tail, aliens, all sorts of shit. But then there's this big green guy who everyone is terrified of for reasons the episode doesn't really explain (because there's a whole series you're supposed to have watched before it) who asks the father of the monkey tail boy to team up with him against the monkey tail alien, and the green guy has these weird pink ridges on his arms and the coolest fucking outfit I had seen at that point in my life, and when he takes off his weird purple ball hat thing it turns out he has antenna under it, and his teeth are sharp like a vampire, and he blows a hole through the dad guy's chest, like holy shit what an icon, I loved him immediately.

And then Piccolo proceeds to train the monkey-tail kid, claiming he's going to use him to take over the world, but as the show goes on it's clear that Piccolo is not as evil as he claims to be, and clearly cares for this kid despite claiming to only be using him as a tool, all leading up to the big battle with Nappa where Piccolo, that ruthless green slug vampire motherfucker, takes the killing blow to save the kid he stole. Blew my goddamn mind. There were almost no other characters in the media I had consumed as a child up till that point who matched Piccolo's moral complexity- about the only ones I can think of that compare are Dinobot from Beast Wars and Hexadecimal from Reboot, and, well, I'm also obsessed with those two, so here we are.

Piccolo had a great character arc and defined so much of what made Dragon Ball Z instantly special and unique in my eyes as a kid. There was no one like him, no one who did what he did, no one who looked as cool as he did. What a fucking legend.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Since we’re talking about Death Battle again, Mod, I wonder what are your top 10 battles and top 10 most wanted battles? You can ignore if it’s too much to think about

//What's funny is that I actually talked about my most wanted matchups recently with crossover, and this list is ever changing. But to give you an answer, I think my top 12 Death Battle episodes, at least right now, are:

12. Omni-Man Vs Homelander 11. Joker Vs Giorno 10. Rick Vs The Doctor 9. Samurai Jack Vs Afro Samurai 8. Cole Vs Alex 7. Frieza Vs Megatron 6. Xeno Trunks Vs Archie Silver 5. Bill Cipher Vs Discord 4. Goku Black Vs Reverse Flash 3. Goku Vs Superman 3 2. Scooby Vs Courage 1. Bowser Vs Eggman

//And below are my Top 12 most wanted matchups, as well as why I want them (This does not include any confirmed matchups or matchups that have already happened):

12. Yuma Kokohead Vs Will (Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Vs Metaphor ReFantazio)

Reason: Okay, genuinely, this is a meme match for me and I don't ACTUALLY want it, I just think it's funny for Not Persona and Not Danganronpa to face off.

11. Xiao Vs Jingliu (Genshin Impact Vs Honkai: Star Rail)

Reason: I really like both these games, and not only were Xiao and Jingliu my first 5-Star characters for both of them, but they are surprisingly similar. Xiao, a former warrior, is heavily influenced by his karmic burden, a result of his battle against dark forces, whereas Jingliu was once a renowned swordmaster and leader who succumbed to mara and became a mara-struck murderer. Both characters share a tragic relationship with the side effects of immortality and the struggles against the dark forces of their respective worlds.

10. The Eevee Battle Royale (Pokemon)

Reason: To be more specific, this is a battle between Eevee Vs Vaporeon Vs Jolteon Vs Flareon Vs Espeon Vs Umbreon Vs Leafeon Vs Glaceon Vs Sylveon. If Pokemon ever makes a return to Death Battle, I want it to be this, because not only do I think it would genuinely be a great battle royale, but I also want Death Battle to dive into the feats of each Eevee, and find out who, lore wise, wins.

9. Luz Noceda Vs Anne Boonchuy (The Owl House Vs Amphibia)

Reason: Luz and Anne are protagonists of Disney animated series that aired around the same time, who are thrust into magical worlds that challenge them to grow. Both are teenage girls with unique quirks. Luz is an imaginative, eccentric dreamer, while Anne is a fun-loving and loyal friend. They start as outsiders but gradually develop deep bonds with their newfound families and communities, Luz with the residents of the Boiling Isles and Anne with the citizens of Amphibia. Both face moral and emotional challenges, learn about leadership, and ultimately fight against powerful dictators to protect their worlds (Emperor Belos and King Andrius respectively). Their journeys emphasize themes of friendship, self-discovery, and embracing one’s individuality, making them kindred spirits in their narratives of growth and heroism. Both these shows ended a while ago now, but I still think that they are among Disney's best cartoons in the last decade, and I still kind of want to see the fight because I do love both shows, and both characters.

8. Naofumi Vs Maple (Rising of the Shield Hero Vs Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense

Reason: They are both isekai protagonists who have an unconventional reliance on defense-focused abilities in worlds where offense is typically prioritized. Naofumi is the Shield Hero, unable to use offensive weapons, and must creatively use his defensive tools to overcome challenges in a hostile world. Similarly, Maple, through her in-game character, maximizes her defense stats to absurd levels because she's afraid of getting hurt, resulting in unique, often comedic ways to defeat enemies. Both characters are underestimated by others due to their atypical builds but gain respect and allies through their ingenuity, resilience, and unconventional strategies. Also, the track Brandon Yates made for it goes hard.

7. Solidus Snake Vs King Bradley (Metal Gear Solid Vs Fullmetal Alchemist)

Reason: Again, this is largely because of Brandon Yates' music, even though we won't actually see them in the fight itself, but I am actually familiar with both these characters. Both are charismatic yet morally complex antagonists shaped by military ideology and secretive organizations. Both are also artificially created human super-soldiers, with Solidus being a clone of Big Boss, who seeks to liberate the world from control by the Patriots, believing in a harsh but free existence, while Bradley is the Führer of Amestris and a Homunculus, who enforces Father’s plan for human sacrifice under a guise of benevolent leadership. Both are highly skilled warriors—Solidus with his enhanced physique and swords, and Bradley as the Homunculus sin of Wrath with superhuman speed and precision. Despite their power, they grapple with existential themes: Solidus with his identity as a clone and Bradley with his artificial creation and limited autonomy. Their arcs explore questions of freedom, control, and the cost of serving higher powers.

6. Bendy Vs Cuphead (Bendy and the Ink Machine Vs Cuphead)

Reason: Okay, so admittedly I kind of fell out big time with Bendy and the Ink Machine, but I still kind of want to see this fight. Especially since with the release of the Dark Revival and the Delicious Last Course, there's new stuff for both of them. Both come from indie games that blend retro aesthetics with modern storytelling, drawing on vintage art styles to create unique atmospheres, and both of them are characters rooted in 1930s-style animation, sharing a nostalgic connection to classic cartoons while exploring darker undertones. Bendy represents the eerie corruption of creativity, as his world is a decayed cartoon studio filled with monstrous ink creatures, while Cuphead’s world is a whimsical yet perilous land filled with colorful bosses and a high-stakes deal with the Devil. Both stories explore the darker side of their respective settings: Bendy through horror and mystery, and Cuphead through challenging gameplay and moral consequences. Their shared connection lies in their homage to the golden age of animation, reimagined with innovative and contrasting tones.

5. Monika Vs Flowey (Doki Doki Literature Club Vs Undertale)

Reason: First of all, I think that this could be fun on the same level that Bill Vs Discord was, at least I'm really hoping it will be. Both of them are self-aware video game characters who manipulate their worlds to achieve their goals, often at the expense of others. Both break the fourth wall, using their awareness of the player’s presence to influence the narrative. Monika seeks the player’s attention and love, altering the game’s code to eliminate her competition, while Flowey uses his ability to manipulate timelines and reset progress to exert control, often displaying cruelty and detachment. Despite their antagonistic behavior, both reveal deeper vulnerabilities: Monika yearns for genuine connection, and Flowey’s actions stem from his inability to feel emotions after losing his soul.

4. Goku Vs Sonic (Dragon Ball Vs Sonic the Hedgehog)

Reason: We've had Shadow Vs Vegeta, and we've had Archie Silver Vs Xeno Trunks. This is the only Dragon Ball Vs Sonic matchup we've yet to get, and if Goku Vs Superman was anything to go by, this one has the potential to be a spectacle and a half. Both are energetic, freedom-loving heroes who rely on speed, power, and an indomitable spirit to protect their worlds. Both characters embody a carefree, adventurous attitude, but step up with determination and bravery when faced with challenges. Goku’s martial arts skills and transformations, such as the Super Saiyan form, mirror Sonic’s speed and power-ups, like his transformation into Super Sonic, which in itself is a clear homage to Goku’s iconic golden-haired state. Both characters frequently face off against powerful enemies intent on domination, such as Frieza and Dr. Eggman; dictators who wish to rule the universe; and rely on their friendships and teamwork, whether it’s with the Z Fighters or the Sonic Heroes.

3. The Traveler Vs The Trailblazer (Genshin Impact Vs Honkai: Star Rail)

Reason: Basically the same reasons as Xiao Vs Jingliu. Traveler is actually getting a matchup against Aang soon, but honestly? I really REALLY would have preferred his matchup be this, because this has the potential to be so much more fun. Both are HoYoverse game protagonists who share the role of being interstellar explorers thrust into worlds fraught with mystery, conflict, and adventure. The Traveler searches for their lost sibling while uncovering the secrets of Teyvat, while the Trailblazer seeks their identity and purpose after being imbued with the Stellaron. Both are connected to celestial forces; the Traveler to the enigmatic Unknown God and the Trailblazer to the Aeons; and are guided by a diverse cast of allies, such as Paimon and the Astral Express crew. Both are also capable of using every element in their respective games (Traveler at this point can use the power of Anemo, Geo, Electro, Dendro, and Hydro, and Trailblazer can use the elements of Physical, Fire, and Imaginary)

2. Junko Enoshima Vs William Afton/Springtrap (Danganronpa Vs Five Nights at Freddy's)

Reason: Because trust me, this fight is a lot cooler and way more fun than the DBC made it out to be. I kind of talked about this match a little bit during the DB crossover we did, but not only am I a fan of both DR and FNAF, but these two share striking similarities as deeply manipulative and morally corrupt villains who derive a twisted sense of satisfaction from causing chaos and suffering. Both characters are obsessed with creating despair and fear, manipulating others for their own gain, and exhibit a cold, calculating demeanor that hides their inner emotional turmoil. Junko, as the mastermind behind the Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy, orchestrates mass despair to feed her nihilistic worldview, while Afton, through his involvement with the creation of haunted animatronics and the murder of children, creates terror to further his own goals. They both use their intelligence and charisma to control and deceive, often hiding behind a facade of normalcy or charm, and their actions ultimately lead to devastating consequences for those around them. Both are embodiments of twisted obsession and the destructive impact of unchecked desires.

1. Hajime Hinata Vs Izuku Midoriya (Danganronpa Vs My Hero Academia)

Reason: If you've known me for the whole time I've been doing this blog, you would know that this was my most wanted because I've talked about it before I even first started regularly talking about DB on here. They share a deep connection in their roles as unlikely heroes who rise above their perceived limitations through hard work, determination, and unwavering optimism. Both begin their journeys feeling inferior—Izuku initially lacks a Quirk, while Hajime starts as a relatively average student in a class of exceptional talents. Despite these perceived shortcomings, both characters exhibit remarkable resilience, developing into strong, dependable leaders who inspire others with their actions and ideals. Izuku is driven by his desire to protect others, particularly through his inheriting the powerful One For All Quirk, while Hajime's growth is shaped by his desire to understand his purpose, uncover the truth of his situation, and pave a better future to overcome the mistakes of his past. Both characters embody the power of self-improvement and the importance of believing in oneself, even when facing overwhelming odds, but where they diverge is that Izuku's story is that of a rising hero, while Hajime's is that of a fallen hero.

[theroachsankles]

in ur opinion, what makes a robot truly sexy? or just who are ur top 5 hot robots

WOOF well my friend, I like to be very detailed when it comes to explaining robot design! So strap in!

We'll start with a face!

A slightly or even heavily inhuman face is what really packs a punch! The fun work around with expression due to a lack of the normal human face is something fun and challenging! And I'm really into that!

I also think using real life helmets and masks are really great for figuring out a robot's visage. There are so many out there! It'd be cool to use those as inspo!

Lights for eyes are a favorite of mine! Especially if the glow changes based on intensity of mood!

Which is great if you combine that with an inhuman face!

Next is body!

Really shape language is the way to go! Pick a shape and go nuts! I do love verity in robot bodies just like with human ones, but in robot cases you can go HAM on the augmented body which is super fun, especially if you over exagerate! They don't have to have organs so again you can go HAM on design!

Referencing real life armor, just like masks, is a fun one as well! I even enjoy when a robot character pulls from human musculature systems! Especially with the idea that you can SEE each muscle at work when they move! I eat that shit up!

EXTRA LIMBS!!! This is fun in design because of the idea of how that would work with movement and also gestures when at rest! It's like a puzzle especially if you plan on drawing robots!

This isn't a requirement but a specific things I've noticed. If the robot can wear clothes, it makes them instantly more interesting. Why do they wear them? How do they feel about them? Do they even need clothes? Who cares!? It's hot XD

Lastly are just a few things that I find hot and fun!

Steam. Nothing hotter than literally showing signs of high body temp! Especially if this robot is in a fight! Talk about HOT XDD

LIGHTS LIGHTS LIGHTS! I adore the different colors and placement of things like biolights and the glowing eyes and even glowing teeth if you're feeling spicy! (Almost all my robot Ocs have glowing teeth and steam up alot)

Also I don't have to draw actual feet. I hate drawing feet XD

If they get to have a developed personality outside of just "I am a machine I do not feel" cause that lacks alot of the fun to be had with the kinds of questions you can ask with robot characters!

Augmented voices are a MUST! I wanna hear that bass! The weird electricity to the voice! It's so much fun!

As far as top five hottest robots? WOOF that's a toughy but l'd say probably in no specific order

Megatron from tfp- his design is PEAK transformers design! Just the right amount of inhuman and human so that he's readable! I love how expressive his face and really all of the tfp robots faces are! I think his shape language comes across perfectly alien, especially versus the rest of the cast! He also has scaring from his times as a gladiator and I think that's AWESOME! Also HE GOT A WALK AND WAIST WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?

The Giant from Iron Giant- while I wouldn't say he's hot and sexy, he's adorable and was my first robot crush uu. He's a true sweetie and his story is a tear jerker for so many reasons. His design is also CLASSIC and I love that about him! (It helps that he went crazy with grief and had all those weapons. Was really into that XDD)

X-49 from Samurai Jack- look him and his episode up! He's got everything I love about a robot design! He wears a cool 30's hat and coat and only wanted to find his pug Lulu! Very much loved him and his episode and thought his design was sleek as hell!

Zima from Zima Blue- while he is more human looking than the rest, I was so enamored with his powerful story and seeing him evolve from a little pool cleaner to a tall stoic artist looking for purpose! His last scene was also a favorite because of the way you could SEE how he was put together!

Ultron from Avengers Age of Ultron- To be blunt, I'm NOT a big fan of marvel movies and Ultron was the last movie I saw. It wasn't a great movie but ULTRON DUDE!? GAWD you wanna talk about HOT? He follows all my attractive robot bullet points and then some! I don't remember anything from that movie outside of his scenes and I think a character death who I didn't care about since he was under developed. BUT I TELL YA WHAT I'll watch that movie just for him.

I could go on for hours about this and honestly would've listed alot more robots but I wanted to add a bit of verity to the list!

I appreciate your time! I hope that answers some things for you! (Also if you wanna see some of my robot designs, check out my Instagram @theroachankles1997 I post alot of robots there uwu)

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

Genshin Impact

Look the literal only things I know about genshin impact is that one jaidenanimations soundbit that got popular on tiktok and the fact one of my friends got asked if they were a kinnie because they dont like alcohol like two years ago

What even IS the plot of Genshin Impact, I genuinely have no clue

After my deep dive of like 20 minutes into genshin lore below I've got some vague ideas here

Kokichi is a teenager living in Inazuma, however due to his dishonorable nature, tricks, and disrespect for the shogun, he rarely goes into town without a disguise as he is VERY unpopular. He does have a trade though, firework making! He loves making fireworks a lot, and often tries to undercut the more traditional makers with cheaper prices when he does go into town in disguise. His fireworks also make great distracts when he and Dice go to do some shenanigans!

Anyways Dice has a handful of humans but it's mostly made up of the yokai of the nation island thing, as Kokichi has found a kinship in the trickery and more playful attitudes of the yokai, often joking that he CLEARLY is an albino Bake-Danuki actually. He stole a delusion from some fancy looking boring guy who he pickpocketed from and gained electricity powers however using it makes him more paranoid that someone is going to come kill him.

He tries to use it sparingly, mostly for distractions, lighting fireworks, and whatever else he can use to buy a chance to flee. He abhors all fighting, believing any physical fight is only two wrong moves away from a fight to the death, something he utterly despises.

I feel like his main goal is to dismantle the duel system, he finds it utterly horrifying and perhaps even lost someone to it and this further alienates him from the rest of the people. Perhaps someone even tried to challenge him to a duel and he had to make a run for it and that's why he's so distrusting of people? He has some plot point where he has to let his delusion break to save someone and prove that even with his fear he still cares about people so so much and this lets him get an actual proper vision? maybe? I dunno jack shit

I don't know what the playable characters are even doing but i guess he could maybe be one? I dunno, weirdo who lives with the knock off tanukis and thinks humans are dumb violent brutes but he secretly cares so so much

Check under the cut if you wanna see me trying to figure out the plot of genshin

*some frantic googling later*

Okay he definitely a vision

*more frantic googling*

no wait he'd definitely have a delusion instead, he likely stole it, and i feel like it has a side effect of like, making him more paranoid or something? He probably has it on like a ring as a sort of "kiss the ring" mafia reference and also to magical girl pose while he fights and he probably has a plot point where after his delusion breaks he gets granted an actual vision

*more frantic googling*

okay i think when I see crossover art of this people give kokichi electro? and i see no reason to not some of these things do give vague kokichi vibes, honestly didnt even realize this was electricity it was purple so i assumed it was like dark spooky scary energy

this means he's in Inazuma

*more frantic googling*

SCARAMOUCHE AND WANDERER ARE THE SAME FUCKING CHARACTER?! i feel robbed

*more frantic googling*

Okay so its a very samurai esque culture mixed with trickster animals hanging around? I don't think Kokichi would be big about honor and all that I can see him leading a band of misfit like him mixed with some of the yokai that he's befriended by helping them pull some nonsense, he definitely has a clan "seal" he just made one day on a whim and will cry VERY LOUDLY when you point out he made that up

*more frantic googling*

oooo fireworks? Okay, I've got an idea

*more frantic googling*

I still don't know what the plot is

[thebladeblaster]

Favorite Mainline SMT Protag Poll Results

So wow the results were pretty interesting (aside from the predictable victory of Demi-Fiend):

Nanashi and the hero are tied for dead last. I am not as surprised with the hero since not many people have played SMT1…but Nanashi?! I was under the impression that Nanashi was pretty popular I guess I was reading too much Apocalypse propaganda.

Hitonari did better than Nanashi wut😨?! I’m mostly surprised because people don’t talk about him that much in comparison. I guess there’s a quite sizeable fanbase for Hitonari.

Aleph did pretty good all things considered. I know there’s definitely a few people that like him. Still really surprised he’s more liked than Nanashi though.

Flynn and Nahobino were surprisingly neck and neck. Like holy shit Flynn got second place?! I thought it would have went to Nahobino considering how many people make memes of and gush over him. Not to mention Nahobino has the luxury of being on the mind rather recently. Like dude…IV was like a decade ago. It seems I’m not the only Flynn enjoyer 🤣. Maybe I underestimate just how much people like him and IV.

Flynn beat Nanashi by 12% oof🤣…Perfect time to use this meme again because it keeps happening.

Demi-Fiend won *gasp* who could have guessed?

For those who participated in the poll I was wondering…why is the protagonist you voted for your favorite?

As for me…you see I’m a rather simple girl who likes cinnamon rolls like Flynn. Like his personality in Apocalypse certainly wasn’t what I expected, but it does fit too. Flynn is a funny little country bumpkin (just like me🤣!!!). He gives off massive dork and himbo energy. Like first off apparently he’s too stupid to bait a fishing hook, when he was high he took off his pants, his item descriptions (like honestly both his and Nanashi’s are pretty funny for different reasons), his interactions with demons (apparently he’s canonically a masochist which makes me think of Darkness from Konosuba), and his lines in Apocalypse are gold. Like seriously he’s literally the big plot meguphen that everyone wants in that game and the one feared by demons, angels, and gods, but also he’s just a dork. Also he’s got mad drip with the Samurai uniform and he’s anime Samurai Jack (he even time travels). Though also I can’t ignore that I find myself loving characters that the writers obviously hate😅(ex: Yugo from Arc V). It just gives me the urge to do them justice and give them the ending they deserve. As much as I hate Anarchy his evil voice sounds hella sexy.

[kinocomix]

I'd like to add my 2 cents here.

as someone who just saw this for the first time, despite this being an amazing world of gumball fancomic where the punchline is partially "chicken ass" I think it says something about what we value in fiction and how we could potentially use this to tell better stories.

You know how the original samurai jack ended out of nowhere? there is an entirely different conversation to have here regarding which way is the best to end a cartoon but that's not our point today. when it originally was ended after season 4, it was because the producers of the show had a lot on their plate and were also in the middle of producing clone wars, our beloved samurai was effectively the victim of being the right person at the wrong time (that's all we can really say about that without speculating)

when the show came back 16 years later, which we most probably owe to Tartakovsky's (the creator's) obsession with jack (i should clarify I'm not dissing, same really. i finished my 1000+ page webcomic last year and still feel the need to draw my characters as if they're my children; case in point the image below where you can clearly tell one area of the paper with doodles had much more effort poured into it)

my point is: part of the reason, even if minor, of why we look back at samurai jack so fondly is because it left us blue balled for 16 years before my guy finally killed Aku and got laid, one of those things being slightly more important. Now... what does that say about the chicken ass comic?

there is a value gained by something when it says multiple things at once, I'll explain this using a nice picture and a random one.

this is picture A:

and this is picture B:

A is an image of a friend of mine eating Mloukhiye at 2 in the morning when the power went out. B is an image I received from someone when they were telling me there was snow around their house. what these pictures share in common is the fact that they say more than they present, you see someone eating in the dark and you see snow from the inside of a window, but each image has characteristics that encourage you to ask questions like why is the power out? or why did someone take a vertical picture? does that mean it was done in a hurry? sure, maybe that second one isn't that interesting but if you saw it in the wild without the framework of this post you'd wonder why someone took such a meh picture.

the questions asked by chicken ass are a bit more complex. why did they not finish drawing? are they okay? did they do it on purpose? when was this made? so on and so forth

bringing this back to my point, good fiction makes you think about something. Great fiction asks you a question. This is one of the things we value in our stories. sure, spiderman is cool and awesome. But most people who like spiderman don't necessarily like him for the spider gimmick, nor marvel's totally non confusing three million versions of spiderman. They like spiderman because some of the questions asked by the story are how do you fight something clearly stronger than you? how do you balance having allies and loved ones and not putting them in danger (i.e., balancing intelligence with humility)?

so to cut it short- does your story ask a question?

[fallensnowfan]

Thinking about the roles of the Straw Hats/alliance and the Akazaya during the raid. I jump around from thought to thought a lot.

The Akazaya spent the past 20 years sparing no effort to ensure that the raid would come together. Punk Hazard, Zou, and Acts 1 & 2 of Wano are largely about exactly this, the Straw Hats understand that and are okay with taking a backseat and assisting the Akazaya however they can.

When Act 3 roles around, all of the Akazaya face opponents they have reason to hold a grudge against, doing some damage to Kaido and defeating Orochi, Kanjuro, Fukurokuju, Jack, and Perospero. All fights are given a relatively smaller amount of panels, very efficient with no wasted effort. Kin’emon didn’t wish for war though was prepared for it.

Denjiro brings up an interesting point when he asks Sasaki if the triceratops man is familiar with the history of Wano. Sasaki later explains that he doesn't care about the country’s history and is mainly focused on a personal grudge, the thing that lead to Ulti, Carrot, Oden in the past, and Luffy in Act 1 all being defeated. The lack of care about the country's history is something I take as likely true for most, if not all, of the Tobi Roppo. Over the course of the battle, the Straw Hats will go on to form various reasons to want to defeat the group, being for the sake of protecting others, being the Akazaya/Tama, if I remember.

I read Denjiro in his scene with Sasaki as him being uninterested in spending valuable time on an opponent who is ignorant to Wano's history. It's why I think the Tobi Roppo were the Straw Hats' opponents, not the Akazaya'.

For Perospero, the Minks are extremely loyal to each other and their allies, Neko wanting to defeat Perospero makes a lot of sense, despite only learning of Pedro's death during the battle. It's a nice contrast to Dog's staying behind to stop Jack, not out of vengeance but to keep him from creating new victims.

Also, I believe it was King that said the Tobi Roppo would be no match for the Akazaya, even whilst heavily injured. King acknowledges the abilities of Wano’s samurai.

King and Queen were involved in the assault on Oden castle 20 years prior so the Akazaya getting a hit or two on them would have been cool to see, though at that point most of the Akazaya had either already won their main matchup or gone down defending others.

In Kiku's case, her battles are more ideological though also involve a personal grudge. Not too different from Jinbei’s conflict with Arlong. From Kiku’s perspective, it had also only been a few months since Oden's death. After everything she'd been through, her still having such a loving heart makes her one of the most amazing characters in the series on that alone.

Phoenix man Marco recognized that, at that point during the raid, it was the Straw Hats' time to shine. The alliance formed by the Akazaya helped get them this far and many of its members stepped into support roles from then on. The major remaining opponents fell to members of the Straw Hats+Kidd and Law. It was thanks to the help of the alliance handling the fire, Big Mom's rampage, protecting or tending to the injured, stopping Onigashima, etc. that Luffy was able to uphold his promise to defeat Kaido and make Wano a place where people can eat as much as they want.

The Akazaya are the brain, the Straw Hats and Supernovas are the muscle, and the Minks are great all around support. Only because the groups worked together were they able to defeat the Beast Pirates.

As strong as Kaido and his crew are, their downfall was that they don't care that there is no "I" in team. Except like Ulti and Page One, their defeats having been mostly at the hands of someone who was a part of their own alliance.

[munohlow]

Ok real quick gonna propose an idea for that powerpuff girls reboot:

Don’t

But it if they really must (they shouldn’t!), there’s some better ways I think they could go about it, as well as what I’ve seen floating around (like don’t).

Pretty much all of these are assuming they’ll go the gritty reboot route because that’s pretty popular atm. A dark gritty take on anything is getting a bit tired, I think people are more open to weird and sincere stories, whether they’re adaptations or original. But recently a lot of comics (good comics!) 10+ years old are getting faithful adaptations (good adaptations!) and reviving that early/mid 2000’s taste for “what if Superman, but bastard?”

Aright one route they could go would be like that of Samurai Jack season 5 on Adult Swim. Written and animated by the original team and keeping to its truest nature while maturing it a bit along with the original fan base and maybe have an overarching plotline. The difference being that keeping it like the original ppg would create a stronger contrast with more mature and brutal violence, similar to Invincible’s friendly neighborhood Spider-man vibes and use of graphic violence.

This would be the second best way to adapt besides not doing it at all..... but that would also take more money and might not last beyond a season, ending with a solid conclusion like Samurai Jack did. Plus I’m semi doubtful the original team would be on board to drag out the girls’ story, especially like this.

Addressing the leaked script, a common comparison made was to the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy. Both are loose adaptations about child superhero siblings coming together after years of being apart, dealing with childhood trauma and their parent’s wrecklessness as adults.

And talking monkey.

Where Umbrella Academy made changes for the sake of depth and character development amidst the sci-fi madness, the CW Powerpuff Girls script attempted to be edgy and gross for the sake of being edgy and gross. They just want to be mature and topical while ignoring everything enjoyable about the original. It also just straight up sucks. I’m no writer but it seems like a lot of people who are writers are pretty pissed about paid professionals pushing this to the point of post-production. Well not post production, it was being filmed, but I enjoy alliteration. That’s also pretty far into development for something this bad, while it was rejected and is being reworked, it still got approved by enough people to shoot a pilot. If the leaked script itself isn’t a marketing ploy, I imagine that’s the real reason it was shut down. CW probably would’ve went through with it, otherwise. Maybe just keep it cancelled, yeah? Yeah.

This idea isn’t mine either but instead of the child star allegory, it could be more interesting to sort of see it carry on from where it left off, as the continued adventures of the powerpuff girls. Similar to the The Venture Bros. (a show I have not watched but know vaguely about, again this is someone else’s thought, I just think it sounds good) the girls can be grown up but start to realize they want to explore their lives and goals as individuals outside of heroism.

This at least appeals to me because you can keep the show’s status quo, keep the characters together, and have them grow into better more interesting characters as opposed to starting with a dour world where everyone is dead or just worse insufferable people. Instead, begin where audiences are comfortable and open to a new interpretation then let the characters realize there’s more to life and explore what kind of people they can become. (Or just don’t do it.)

Also just hear me out, but maybe, possibly? perhaps the professor was a good dad in the original cartoon? And let’s keep that? Let him remain a wholesome father figure? Is that okay? Don’t make this reboot? But if they do, keep him a nice loving parent?

Since this is the CW/ Warner bros who own DC comics, the best case scenario (cancelled) would be to make it more like the MANY SUPERHERO SHOWS THEY ALREADY MAKE. The good ones, anyway. I’m pretty sure the girls have crossed over with some DC characters in the cartoon already, why not make them canon DC characters? Maybe not. Could be cool! Better not, though. But they could still model the show after some of their better shows. Flash, Arrow, Supergirl are all not bad depending who you ask. I just finished Gotham, that was neat. Superman and Lois sounds like it’s pretty good so far. Powerpuff girls would better suit an earnest, straightforward, lighthearted take. Keep the humor, idk maybe up the violence to keep it dark and cool if that’s what people want (we don’t) and have it contrast with family drama like Invincible. All that to say that a darker, comical, well-written, DC-ish superhero thing they should look to for reference should be Doom Patrol.

This show fuckin litty. It’s like the better parts of Legends of Tommorow and Titans put together, as in it’s super weird and dumb but in a way that’s fun and moving. I recently rewatched season one as refresher before getting into season two and dammit if it didn’t get me in my feels amidst the quarantine. It’s about broken people working through their issues and pulling themselves together to help one another. Admittedly, it doesn’t have the best representation of those with disassociative identity disorder, as one character sometimes referred to as “Crazy” Jane has a different superpower with each of her alters. The character is very much a product of the 80’s but the writers of the show do their best to show that Jane respects the alters and their free will. But it also deals with topics of abuse, self-image, trauma, disabilities, homophobia, discrimination, and more in a way that gave me some catharsis while watching after all that’s been going on the past couple of years. Aside from all the comedy and action, it all flows together naturally, which is what you want in any series, not just your gritty superhero show. Doom Patrol is also batshit weird, every episode feels almost self contained/ freak-of-the-week while still following the main overarching plot, and Powerpuff Girls is very much like that, without the bigger plot or mature themes (as it should remain, let it be). Many will find it vaguely similar to The Umbrella Academy because GERARD WAY WAS INSPIRED BY DOOM PATROL TO WRITE THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY. The og comics, not the show, but still.

Also let’s address this

The hell was this about?

Anyway Idk maybe I sound like “Old Man Yells at Cloud,” but this really isn’t the way to go. Don’t do it, CW. Leave it alone, CW. Just don’t do it. We don’t need more sequels and reboot cash grabs, there’s plenty of up and coming writers with good original ideas waiting for their shot. And even with all those new edgy shows and movies, some of which are actually not bad, not everything needs to be so grim. Like sure Teen Titans Go! is a goofy reboot but it’s still just a fun dumb cartoon, it’s not bad, I bet that other ppg show was also just fine. Maybe YOU are “Old Man Yells at Cloud.” But what do I know?

And all THAT to say you should go watch all those other things I mentioned and some old ppg episodes back to back, instead. Don’t fuckin do it, CW

[ace-attorney-prison]

Hi i’m back!! Hope you’re doing well :D

Anyways, looking back to that time i asked you about the Jacques and Jack hc (which i still think about til today bc your interpretation of their relationship was so good), turns out that i like Jack even more now lmao

So, any general headcanons for Jack Hammer? Dunno if you’d consider him a villain or not (bc i do), so if you don’t have any hcs for him then you can do general hcs for Jacques instead, i’d be happy with either of them!

Ty again and have a nice day!!

(Btw sorry for the kinda long ask lol i didn’t expect it to be this long shsjsksk, also please take your time with the answers, i can wait :)) )

Hi!! I'm really glad you liked my headcanons, and thank you again for asking! <3 I love thinking about and developing these characters c:

I'll guess I'll start out by saying that-

For a good while now, I've headcanoned that Juan has looked up to Jack Hammer since childhood (courtesy of @zarla-s and @bardic-feline)

In my own HC, Juan's parents took him to a convention when he was a kid, and since Jack starred in The Singing Samurai, his parents took him to a meet and greet. Juan didn't know the guy or that movie at the time and wasn't super interested, but they talked briefly and Jack said some encouraging things to Juan (who was primarily interested in a music career), and Juan was like !!!! and watched the movies he was in later and looked up to him ever since.

One of the big reasons he looked up to him is because of similar circumstances. Like Juan, Jack didn't grow up wealthy. Didn't grow up with one foot already in the door of the industry. He just had a dream and worked hard for it until he got his big break- which was really encouraging to little kid Juan.

‎

Jack always thought of himself as a good guy. He'd treat people with respect (when he thought they deserved it), was kind to children, friendly with most people. Part of his reputation was earned by being a decent guy. He'd even consider it part of his career to take the extra mile (or half-mile) for those he networks with.

So when the accident happened, it hit him. Hard.

Dee was wrong- it wasn't on purpose. Sure, Manuel kept acting like Jack wasn't working hard enough on their fight scene- wasn't making it realistic enough, wasn't putting enough energy into the action, etc. And Jack, being a more experienced actor (in his opinion) and a more popular and successful one, felt irritated and spoken down to. So, yes, he made it a point to shove much harder. But he never meant to kill him. Didn't mean to even seriously injure him. It was an accident. A mistake.

He feels so numb and guilty that for a while, he just takes the punishment from Dee. Maybe he was never a good person, and he deserves what he's getting. All these low-paying villain roles he's been having to get into the mindsets of... maybe it's a good role for him. He's awful, terrible.

But after a while, that guilty mindset shifts slightly. And he feels a growing anger towards Dee. It was an accident, one that was traumatizing to him and he feels guilty about. He doesn't deserve to be treated like this. How dare she?

There have even been a few times that she's hinted that she may use her mafia connections to go after his loved ones. (Although she never did, the message was intentional. She wanted him to feel that fear, that pain. To have the threat of a beloved person ripped from him in turn.)

After a while, he starts to consider ending things by killing her, too. He's a monster (or so he's come to internalize), so what's one more dead body at his feet? But murder isn't exactly something he's ever entertained before. Didn't grow up thinking he'd have someone's blood on his hands. So he creates good excuses for himself as to why he should have it done.

She's part of the mafia, so perhaps killing her would save many others. She's hinted at threats towards his family and friends, so perhaps it's necessary.

But really, subconsciously his main reason is his anger and bitterness about how she's been treating him.

As for Will Powers... he doesn't hate him enough to actively want to ruin his life. He doesn't like the guy, though. Everything about Will always annoyed Jack. (Subconsciously, he reminds him of himself in some ways, and it's a painful reminder of all the promise he had when he was younger.)

But the blame has to be pinned on someone, and Will is the most convenient. The fact that he dislikes him so much and harbors so much bitterness towards him just makes it a little easier. If he doesn't pin the blame on him, then the mafia would likely get retribution by hurting Jack and those close to him.

‎

Needless to say, Juan was... shaken to hear the news. Especially since he'd only recently begun to break into the business, and had gotten to briefly meet Jack again at an event only months prior.

[fullofsunsetwhispers]

There is so little known about Chase before drinking the soup. We had only some glimpses revealed in the last XS episode but I have to admit good!Chase struck me as a character. I am aware he was on screen for only a couple of minutes but I can't help but assume he was a very nice person in general. Undoubtedly, he puts his honor in the first place but from the fight with Wuya's golems, we can also see Chase is a focused fighter, who MAYBE enjoys showing off a little too much (but I headcanon everyone from the trio as a show-offs so Boys will be boys I guess)The way he treats Omi (in the past) combined with these few interactions with the rest of the monks proves he's good with kids. I bet he's also compassionate and hospitable in nature. (that hospitality kinda stuck with him even after becoming an evil warlord - there were several instances in the show in which Chase let his enemies stay for a while, and he gave Dojo food, etc)

However, I think it is safe to assume Chase is the most naive in the past dragons' trio. And I'm not entirely basing it on how Chase fell for Bean's tricks. Guan also accepted HB's deal in the alternate timeline. I think it wasn't the case how NAIVE they were to fall for it. The main reason why Chase and Guan became evil resulted from their insecurities and fears mixed up with HB's manipulations. And that led to the decision, which turned their lives upside down.

At this moment I'm not sure how to explain why I think good!Chase is/was naive because to some extent I enforce this certain trait on him due to my desire to have more Omi-Chase parallels. We know NOTHING about Chase's childhood so it's a matter open for interpretation. That's why I do believe Chase was a lot like Omi when he was a kid. Omi tends to trust the wrong people even if someone alarms him it's a bad idea. He helps those in need (when Katnappe broke/or only pretended to break her leg Omi insisted on keeping her until she recovers). Omi is shaken by Dyris' story and provides her with support, a container with water/whatever she needs. Not to mention the countless attempts to help Jack!

So, it would be interesting to see Chase as a child, who does exactly the same as Omi. I see him as that nice kid from the neighborhood, who always helps grannies, is extremely well-mannered, and tries to resolve conflicts between his peers. Unfortunately, his good nature would be taken advantage of, especially by older boys. I would even go with the option: 'bullies made Chase do their errands because they promised to show him a cat and Chase had to learn the hard way some people use deception' or something (yes I had to include Chase's love for kitties. It's a must)

And what if that childhood naivety would even manifest in his early adulthood? If I were to guess what it would look like, I would simply recall that one scene from Samurai Jack (SJ S02E02, to be more precise).

Jack meets a two-headed worm, which orders him to guess which head is the lying one. Jack after a long moment of pondering gives the right answer, but despite his efforts, he gets eaten anyway.

that's one of my cutest Samurai Jack moments I swear

Jack isn't aware he's in a dire situation. He looks about for several seconds, awaiting excitedly for something.

Finally, he asks a simple, yet most innocently-sounding question.

'When does the magic begin?' :D

And the camera expands, showing the viewers there is quite a huge crowd of other victims of the Worm monster. Only then Jack realizes they're all trapped inside Worm's stomach.

Samurai's smile drops and he says: There's no magic, is there? The other folks give him a silent confirmation.

To be honest, the exact scene could be played off during the fall of Atlantis. Several people from the fandom have already suggested Evil Dojo at some point ate Chase so why not make Evil Dojo trick Chase the same way the Worm Monster tricked Jack?

I love this alternative because yet another Chase-Omi parallel comes to life!

During the Atlantis incident, Chase fell for Dojo's cunning and 1500 years later poor Omi experienced the same!

So, yeah the main point of my rambling was to share with you my idea to recreate that particular samurai Jack scene but with evil!Dojo (as two-headed Worm), good!Chase (in place of the Samurai) and these trapped elder people could be residents of Atlantis 😅

[belliesandburps]

First of all, hope you enjoy No Way Home! Second of all, favorite movies for some of your favorite TW characters? (We'll just live in a world where, somehow, those movies exist in the Night Raven universe as well as ours. XD )

First? Freakin' ADORED "No Way Home." It is easily in my top MCU films of all time and my top 3 Spider-Man films, just behind Spider-Verse and Spider-Man 2 (and Marvel's Spider-Man if that counts).

As for the actual ask? I think it actually works because maybe the Prefect still has access to all these films on their phone the way I do.

Leona - Scarface. He can largely connect with a larger-than-life figure who wants more than what the world is willing to offer him. Aaaaand anytime the Prefect cheekily asks him if he recalls how that film ENDS for Scarface...weeeeeell, that's a fast track down his gullet out of spite for reminding him...

Ruggie - Samurai Cop. Ruggie is the sort who loooooves laughing at bad movies. And Samurai Cop is the kind of bad movie that, every time you watch, has a new layer of badness that just makes it even better. Like the main character randomly wearing a woman's wig for the entire last act of the film because they had to reshoot the entire ending and the actor was told they were done, so he got his hair cut for a REAL movie after the fact. Or the sentence, "Now I'm telling these son of a bitches..." Forget "shishishi," Ruggie will be busting his sides at how awful the script is. He has the same reaction watching this shambles of a film that he did watching Chekha sit on Leona's stomach. Every. Single. Time. I mean, literally watch this scene and tell me he’s wrong:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvni9KbZfoo

Jack - The Dark Knight. Jack's not a huge comic book guy or anything like that...no, of course not. And he CERTAINLY doesn't think it's honorable that a man with wealth and power would actually use that power fighting for justice, and willfully shoulder the weight of the world and condemnation for the sake of the city he loves. Definitely not. He also TOTALLY isn't scared of the Joker either. Nope. Not at all...........*coughs*

Idia - My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising. He's a freakin' otaku gaming nerd. Of course his favorite film is gonna be an anime movie. And of course he's gonna watch it in the sub version whilst disregarding the dub version like a complete weab. He loves MHA to bits, and loves the journey these kids all go on, and he's very fond of the action in Heroes Rising and how much bigger the budget clearly was, especially for that insane final fight. Though, he IS a little unnerved at how...bizarrely similar his voice sounds to Shigaraki's...or how Bakugou sounds a LOT like Floyd for some reason...oooooooor how Best Jeanist sounds almost exactly like Lilia. But then he listens to the dub version for a few minutes, and very, VERY quickly goes back to the sub version and tries his best to ignore the fact that he sounds exactly like that psychotic evil gamer with blue hair and pale skin... (:'

Malleus - Count Dracula. Malleus adores the concept of Dracula as a character, the sheer power and the burden of isolation. The power of Sir Christopher Lee's performance combined with a tight, novel-accurate screenplay captivates Malleus the way one is captivated by poetry. What's more, he ADORES the architecture of Dracula's castle and greatly appreciates the fact that it was shot in a real castle...now if only that weren’t obstructed by constant close ups...

Floyd - Jaws. Floyd loves how the big sharky gives all those swimmers a nice deep squeeze he'd love to give his lil shrimpy from time to time. Jade loves the film too for the actual filmmaking and the sheer quality of Spielberg's direction. Floyd just giggles at all the presumed shark attacks and asks lil shrimp if they want him to play the sharky next time they go swimming. ;)

Azul - Godfather. Six guesses why. 'XD

Jamil - The Shining. Jamil is actually a huge fan of arthouse films with quality craftsmanship to them. He loves high detail and immaculate filmmaking. And the fact that The Shining is a film he can watch again and again and constantly find new details that he hadn't noticed the first time or re-interpret them makes it such a huge viewing treat for him. He loves films that make him think and anything Kubrick directed, maniac though he was, would always lend his mind something to ponder. That, aaaaaand he can sympathize with a man being driven to madness by someone who just won't leave him alone. :P

Kalim - Care Bears: The Movie. Because Kalim would love something where everyone gets to be best buddies and live happily ever after.

Riddle - The Phantom Thread. He understands the feeling of no one appreciating true greatness and is deeply drawn to Daniel Day Lewis' final performance. Also, all of the designs he comes up with are absolutely stunning and he's very keen on having his next dorm uniform designed in the same vein as one of those magnificent dresses.

Che'Nya - The Cat Returns. It's a film about cats set in a cat universe that's whimsical, confusing, beautiful, hilarious and full of heart. I can't imagine why Che'Nya wouldn't adore that film and find a way to faze himself into it.

Deuce - The Matrix. Deuce loves tightly crafted action and suspense, which the first Matrix film delivers in Spaaades. He's also very fond of the philosophical side of the film as well, since, like Jamil, he likes to think...buuuut he mainly likes kickass kung fu fights.

Ace - Something's Gotta Give. Ace lowkey loves rom-coms and will take that secret to his grave. XD

[crackinwise]

If I could still draw, I'd make an art series showing Taka wearing or using all the Monomono Machine gifts you can give him. But I'll have to settle for uselessly pointing and talking about them, because some are like "ah yes," while others...

LOVES:

Mac's gloves: A pair of boxing gloves infused with a staggering amount of passion and effort. Wearing them makes you want to throw a thousand cross-counters.

We know the reference (Punch-Out) but is it just the passion and effort Taka likes? Taka only mentions kendo, I think, but maybe he also takes boxing for exercise and last-resort self defense. Middle school was rough on him for unknown reasons. Whether he picked up boxing for focus or just learning to dodge a punch, it's cute picturing Mondo holding the punching bag for him or them sparring in a ring with very different fighting styles.

Red scarf: A scarf belonging to a certain masked hero. It's tattered and worn due to the countless battles it's been through.

I... don't know the reference. I couldn't find it either. Does anyone know? Strider Hiryu could fit, but Taka thinks games are a waste of time when Makoto talks to him. Red is very much a hero color in Japan as well as associated with deities and protection. Does Taka like the certain hero? Does Taka want to be seen as a hero or protector as well as a good leader?

Ya know what? I've read like two fics where Mondo is a secret superhero--where are the superhero!Taka fics and pics?! (No official art of Taka in a red scarf either makes me boo.)

Adorable Reactions Collection: A DVD that contains footage of people reacting to various pieces of art.

Your guess is as good as mine. For the culture of it? Studying reactions/expressions of others? Maybe he likes seeing people learn of things for the first time? That'd be very wholesome of him.

Chin Drill A fashion accessory that allows you to equip a drill on your chin. It is said to represent the idea of "spiral energy".

Okay. Okay, what? Either we're doing a Gurren Lagann joke--spiral power gets stronger thru generations (Taka's stronger than his grandfather) and causes people to be blindly driven towards their goals--or we're referencing spiral energy in mysticism: all stages of life and rebirth going for infinity. For spiral symbolism, there's "spirals represent evolution and growth of the spirit." But this is... Dude, this attaches to your chin. And he LOVES it. Dafuq.

LIKES:

[sakura bouquet, math problems, & handheld console cut for image limit]

Overflowing Lunchbox: A lunch box stuffed with rice, ginger, carrots, peppers, mushrooms, and more. It's meat-free, so you vegetarians out there are covered, too.

"Give the poor kid a generous meal." Just punch me in my chest. This gift is why I made the post about Taka and Mondo gifting food to each other.

G-Sick Watch: Most people consider it a "throwaway watch" due to its poor quality. Still, it enjoys massive popularity thanks to its low price.

"Give the poor kid a watch he could afford." Ya know what's weird? This watch is in Hina's Love category. Does she break watches in the pool a lot because she forgets to take them off?

Leaf Covering: A loincloth meant to emphasize one's manliness. Its simple design features a single leaf overlaid on white cloth.

I mean, it's... it's self-explanatory.

Quality Chinchilla Cover: A dark red seat cover. Its refined design is intended for only the most elite clientele.

My dudes, this is a fur motorcycle/bike seat. It's on Mondo's Love list, obviously. Why is it in Taka's Likes? Does he like soft things? Is he envious of luxury items maybe he remembers his grandpa having? Does he just want a really plush seat as he rides with Mondo? (Idk, man, but chinchilla farms are cruel.)

Cherry Blossom Bouquet: A collection of branches from a sakura tree. In the language of flowers, cherry blossoms represent "a woman of superior beauty".

Every other character Likes or Loves this too, including Mondo. As for flower language, I can't find that definition at all. I do find it meaning love, general beauty, renewal/new beginnings, fleeting life/mortality (ouch) and imagery tied with samurais because of that short life.

Berserker Armor: Donning this armor bestows the wearer with immense power, but at the cost of their soul and senses.

Uh. Ishida? Actually, even for Ishida that's a bit intense. The cost of their soul? Taka's/Ishida's whole thing is preserving his soul & Mondo's together. Unless he silently wants his soul out completely because it's causing him so much pain, and only Mondo's should live on in him. Maybe this item is leftover from the early code where you could interact with Ishida in Free Time at least once.

The only other person that likes it is Jack/Jill/Syo, so I assume this is a joke about personality switches (for two different mental health reasons) to their less stable selves, who go berserk.

Millennium Prize Problems: These seven important mathematical problems were posted by the Clay Mathematics Institute, with a reward of one million dollars for each one solved.

"Give the poor nerd a way to pay off his family's debt!"

The Funplane: The newest popular portable game system. It has a hi-def touchscreen, and can also play music and videos, making for the perfect all-in-one media machine!

Now, this is another gift you can give to everyone and they'll at least Like it. I guess Taka could use it for educational videos, or "studying" pop culture with Professor Makoto.

And just because we're here, can I just...

MONDO LOVES: sonic cup-a-noodle, quality chinchilla cover, fresh bindings, and

Roller Slippers: Slippers with a small wheel installed in each heel. They were invented to move easily around the house, but there is absolutely no demand for them.

Mondo. Mondo, your taste, hun. No. I want to see Mondo rolling by on these in their house and Taka going apoplectic.

[popculturebuffet]

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great�� at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow.