#and they retconned the start of the saiyan arc with that too

[blushinggoku]

Been watching some dbs related videos and I'm sosoo glad I gave up on that anime because oh my god the story gets worse with every arc. Wtf are they even doing anymore

[stevie-petey]

As painful as the Jonathan phone call was I like how many problems it fixes with the stancy moments in season four. Nancy and Steve's flirty reconnecting scenes now feels like he's relating to her, and they're becoming friends. You said awhile ago that Steve and Nancy never got to be friends and you're right. Their relationship was based on intimacy, that's how it started. (And that's how her relationship with Jonathan started too, I could use this time to talk about the differences between Nancy and bug and their relationships with the boys but maybe later). Steve and Nancy started out by sneaking around and making out, it wasn't until later that they became an actual couple. Even if it was only Steve who fell in love.

Anyway, now that Steve knows about Jonathans feelings (for the most part) and knows how badly it's going to hurt Nancy because he's felt that hurt. He has felt someone being chosen over him, even though he didn't resent Nancy for her feelings or Jonathan's but it was still his first major heartbreak. He knows what it's like to love someone who loves someone else. Now that he knows that Jonathan at some level wants Bug back he's reminded of Nancy wanting Jonathan. He knows what it feels like to not be enough for someone and at some level he wants to protect her from that. He's a loving, nurturing guy. It's in his nature.

I'm not sure if Steve's gonna tell Robin about what bug told him but it works to change the perception on some scenes. Now instead of Robin trying to poke around Nancy and Jonathan's relationship to see how Steve's chances of getting her back are, she's poking to see if Nancy knows about Jonathan's feelings, if they have been having problems. Now it isn't disrespectful and crossing boundaries, it's curiosity about the other side of the situation.

And when they're in the upsidedown after going through the water gate, him and Nancy's talks aren't flirting or Steve trying to show Nancy how he's changed. It's just them becoming true friends and Steve letting Nancy know she has someone to lean on if she needs it. That Steve isn't the immature ass he used to be and he's reliable now. Of course there are gonna be some comments that come across as flirty ( like the " you almost shot me with that one" & " you almost deserved it." ) but now it feels more like a divorced couple kidding around. They don't have feelings for each other, but the dynamic is still there you know what I mean? Which can easily be misconstrued as something else.

Sorry this is so long but my brain likes to go super Saiyan at night so here we are lol.

my only goal for season 4 was to retcon the whole steve nancy jonathan arc again because i HATE IT so much it drives me insane. so when i got the opportunity to change/fix it ,,, i was READY !!

i cant say much, but i changed a lot of steve/nancy centric conversations and added my own to make them more friendly/understanding of one another. i will also delve more into nancys feelings later - but as of right now: steve simply cant think about jonathan and nancy. all he has the energy to focus on is bug. thats it.

its where bug and steve are so similar. while bug is spending all of 4 trying to save max and ignores everything else, steve is spending all of 4 protecting bug. hes blinded by his love for her, bug is blinded by her love for everyone else, and this is ultimately where they misalign and become a tragic tale. its gonna take a lot of growth and conversations, on both ends, to absolve it !!!

[thewebcomicsreview]

Wait, has Jade seriously been possessed or dead literally since Cascade?

Not literally, literally, but it’s kind of a running theme, and there’s two ways of looking at it. Here’s one:  

Starting all the way back with her chronic narcolepsy which was retconned as to be Vriska’s fault (because the best way to have a disabled protagonist is to retcon away the disability). 

After Cascade, she spent three in-comic years (and a real life year and a half) on the boat to the Alpha session, during which she didn’t really get a lot of focus.

Once she arrived in the Alpha session, she was immediately possessed by the Troll Empress.  

Then a house falls on her and she dies

Then there’s the retcon, and in the new timeline Jade is still on the boat but now John and Davesprite die pretty much instantly and she has to be alone the whole time.

Then she arrives at the alpha session, and is immediately possessed again offscreen, before being put to sleep by Vriska. 

When she finally wakes up, she sees a note telling her to take care of Bec Noir and PM. She tries to get them to stop fighting, but PM punches her out and chops Bec Noir’s arm off to defeat him.

To give a sense of how disconnected Jade gets from the rest of the cast, she and Rose are the two main female protagonists, and in the post-retcon continuity Homestuck ends with them never having a single face-to-face interaction (a streak yet to be broken onscreen in the epilogues or Homestuck 2!). This incarnation of Jade has never heard Rose’s voice.  

Jade doesn’t get much focus in the epilogues, either version, and gets possessed by Calliope, which lasts into Homestuck 2. 

That said.

One of the reasons Homestuck’s bullshit is worth putting up with is the gulf between what it’s about and what it’s about.

Davepetasprite straight-up explains the themes of Homestuck to Jade: Everyone has different versions of themselves, which they often don’t like, but the true, ultimate self is the sum of all these parts, and once you understand that, you have the power to be free of your ordained role and can do what you want. The epilogues take this super literally, with the Ultimate Self being a Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan thing. But take a step back.

Self-loathing is a major recurring theme in Homestuck. Everyone deals with it, and thanks to the sci-fi premise of the story, characters are able to literally face, confront, and beat the shit out of parts of themselves they don’t like. Jade hates parts of herself. She hates how much she just wants to fuck around when there’s serious stuff to be doing. She literally kills this part of herself in order or save John in EoA4, and then spends all of Act 5 in srs business mode. Act 5 Jade Harley is no-nonsense, goals driven, and a successful 1980s businesswoman who does all her quests like she’s supposed to. And she’s not a joyless robot during Act 5 or anything, but there’s a very clear distinction between the Jade Harley of Acts 1-4 and the Jade Harley of Act 5.  

And her possessions, deaths, KO’s, and other get-out-of-the-plot-you’re-too-powerfuls of Act 6 could be seen as a continuation of this trend, metaphorically. From a “very silly girl” to a take-charge plan-focused leader to someone who never gets to have fun with her friends because duty keeps calling. And the culmination of this is that Jade, not Dirk or Rose, is the one to reach an understanding of her Ultimate Self, and realize that all parts of her, even the ones she hates and lets herself forget, make up the whole. 

Act 1-4 Jade is a very silly girl who can’t focus on anything. Act 5 Jade excises this part of herself, and Act 6 Jade lets her duty take her to sadder and more isolating places. Re-reading Act 3, it’s frankly bizarre that the Jade whose first major on-screen act is to squeal like a piglet and fertilize some plants has to be told to try to loosen up. 

And Jade playing with the dogs isn’t just a way for her to relax after a long day’s getting possessed. It’s the culmination of all the different Jades we’ve seen, into an Ultimate Jade who’s as capable of having fun as Act 3 Jade, but is able to get the job done like Act 5 Jade. And when Jade combines and uses all the aspects of herself...

There’s no rule she can’t break.

And in that sense, Jade’s story is the most satisfying arc in all of Homestuck, a better realization of the story’s core themes than Homestuck itself is, and while her getting possessed again in the epilogues is kind of a kick in the teeth, it makes her breaking possession so soon in Homestuck 2 sweeter. Jade’s been possessed a lot, and we had a whole arc about it. We’re done. She’s done, because she’s moved past it, and she’s going to solve problems her way, no matter what any rules are, no matter how much everyone is disdainful of her sleeping around, no matter how many authors or gods have a better idea for her.

[duhragonball]

Hey, have you kept up with the Super Manga at all? The newest chapter (released a few weeks back now), well... it seems like Toyotaro decided to take a page or so out of your fic 😂

First of all, thank you for reading my fic.   I saw you working your way through the last twenty-odd chapters and I was impressed with how quickly you got through them.   

I’ve never read the DBS manga, but I did look up Moro the other day to find out why people on Twitter were pissed at Goku, so I bet you’re talking about this:

From what I gather, Moro’s whole arc in DBS has been gathering and stealing other people’s powers through magic or whatever, and then Goku finally turned the tables on him, and I think he ended up in a situation where he recovered some power, but his body couldn’t contain it, so he had to merge himself with the Planet Earth to handle the load.   I think this is a sign the arc is nearing the end, because this seems to be a desperation tactic, and the real cliffhanger isn’t “how will Goku beat Moro?” but “how can Goku beat Moro without destroying the Earth?”   More of a hostage situation than a power-up.  

I like the visual here, because something in Moro’s eyes makes it look like even he isn’t entirely sure of what he’s doing.   I reminds me of the look on Cell’s face when he started swelling up for his self-destruct sequence.   

I get the feeling they’ll settle this fairly soon and wrap up the arc, but honestly, what I’d much rather see is some sort of standoff, where Moro’s stuck like this and no one can do anything about it, so the world has to deal with Moro being merged with the planet, whatever that may entail.   That’s how Toriyama would twist the plot in the original Dragon Ball manga.   I was sure Cell would be defeated soon after reaching his perfect form, just because there didn’t seem to be any other way to end it, and then Cell beat Trunks and threw a tournament instead.   And then I was sure Goku would beat him, but he didn’t, and so on.

This was kind of neat to see, because every once in a while I’ll write a fanfic with some idea or interpretation or something, and then the source material will put out a new story that sort of validates what I did.   I guess Caulifla is the most recent example, since she resembles Luffa in a number of ways, so it was reassuring to see that my idea of a female Super Saiyan aren’t too far off from Shueisha’s.    With Moro, I guess you could say Toyotaro had the same problem I did, where the bad guy needs to get a radical power-up.   And we know planets are a big deal, because Goku beat Kid Buu with a Spirit Bomb made from all life on Earth.   Buu destroyed the Earth easily, but that’s only because it couldn’t fight back. 

I’m guessing that’s what Toyotaro is aiming for here, unless this is all a pathetic setup for another retcon about Goku not knowing how sex works.   In the meantime, I can at least talk about my version, which I’ll do behind the cut...

Early on, I wanted the central conflict to be Luffa vs. the Saiyans, with the Saiyan King as the main villain.   So the battle we see in Vegeta’s flashback, where the Super Saiyan fights a bunch of teeny guys with spears, I wanted those teeny guys to be Saiyans.   Why are they fighting her?   Because they’re jealous and salty, just like how Vegeta was jealous and salty towards Goku.  

A lot of the fic was designed just to set up that moment.  I wanted King Rehval to be a giant hypocrite.   The Saiyans hate Luffa for being different, but Rehval is also different, and he’s trying to turn the Saiyans into something different as well.   They’re so resentful of her that they’d follow him just because he promises to stop her.    But by following him, they end up losing their freedom, and becoming little more than slaves.   They’re so frightened of Luffa and her message that they just can’t see the danger they’re in.

So a big challenge was trying to figure out ways for Rehval and his followers to be much of a threat to Luffa.   Early on, I imagined him as sort of a pastiche of all the big DBZ villains.    The connection to Vegeta should be obvious, but he’d also be a wizard like Babidi, and a genteel monster like Frieza.   I considered making him a cyborg to tie in with Dr. Gero, but then I read something somewhere about how it’s in bad taste to give a villain prosthetic limbs and such.    So I dropped that idea because it would have been cliche.  But the basic premise was still there.    Rehval doesn’t train to get stronger, he uses magic, or biotechnology, or political maneuvering, or anything else that will serve his purpose.    He doesn’t care if it’s dishonorable or if it makes him less of a Saiyan, because he doesn’t care about being a Saiyan, he only cares about ruling the Saiyans, and he’s willing to sacrifice his identity to secure his power.  

I think I might have been inspired by the Darth Vader comic that was running in 2015, around the time I started getting serious about the fic.   The main antagonist in that series was a scientist named Dr. Cylo, who came up with all these transhumanist and cybernetics experiments.    He cloned multiple bodies for himself, so that if you killed one of them, another one would wake up with a backup of his memories.    He had a Rodian eye instead of one of his human eyes, presumably because he found this useful.    And other stuff like that.   This was a guy who was willing to become anything to achieve his goals, which made him a worthy adversary for Darth Vader.   So I tried something similar with my own villain.   We know Luffa’s Super Saiyan form is totally natural, but everyone acted like it was unnatural, and then you have Rehval looking natural, when in fact he’s anything but.

The problem was, I still didn’t think he was quite powerful enough.    I wanted the final showdown to be on that planet in Vegeta’s flashback, and I wanted Luffa to destroy it in order to stop the bad guy, but why would she need to go to that kind of trouble to kill one man?    Why would she bother fighting on the planet’s surface, when she could blow it up from orbit, like Vegeta did with Arlia?  Why wouldn’t the bad guys run away at the first sign of her?   For that matter, why should Luffa bother fighting these guys at all?   She can just hunt them down wherever they go.   Or she could ignore them, since they’re no direct threat to her.  

One way or another, I came up with the idea of Rehval using the planet itself as his power source.    That would level the playing field, so that she would need to destroy it to finish him off.    And once I had that in mind, I came up with the bit where he could send proxies of himself to other planets.   So that way Luffa couldn’t just ignore him, or fend off all of his attacks, because they would just keep coming.    She would have to take the fight to him, and blow up his planet, while standing on it, because that would be the only thing that would kill him.  

And Rehval would never see that coming, because in his mind, everyone’s as cynical and unprincipled as he is, so he would never conceive of Luffa sacrificing her own life to defeat him.  He would expect her to eventually accept defeat, and betray her principles to be part of his new order.   But no, she’d rather die than let him win.   

I guess that was what it was all about.    In the Funimation dub, Vegeta said that she was “destroyed by her own power” because she was “too primitive to control it”, so I really wanted to flip that around and show that she blew herself up to achieve a strategic purpose, and that her “rage” was entirely justified.    Hers was an act of stubborn, defiant heroism, rather than a caveman throwing a temper tantrum.

Maybe I lost track of the point I was going for.   Moro’s power is pretty similar to Rehval’s, at least as far as I can tell, but the dramatic purposes are different.    The cool thing about using the Earth as his body is that Moro can use Goku’s home against him.   I don’t know if he’s strong enough to beat Goku this way, but it almost doesn’t matter, since Goku can’t hurt him without hurting his home.   With Rehval, it was more about him creating an invincible stronghold.   He can’t leave, but he can send his followers anywhere, and no one can defeat him.    Luffa’s an irresistible force, but he’s an immovable object, or so he thinks.  

So it’s a cool thing where a similar idea can be used in different ways.

[luimnigh]

Common Misconceptions In The RWBY Fandom

Because this kinda needs to be made. There’s a lot of lines in this show that have been interpreted in strange and weird ways that I feel we need to clear up the misconceptions about. So instead of scattering them through various meta-posts, let’s clear them all up at the same time. So, if you’re willing to come along, let’s begin:

“Bad Father Taiyang” Part 1: Yang raised Ruby

The Misconception:

Now, this is probably the top one I see around the place. And I’m not trying to take anything away from Yang here, she definitely took on a Mothering role in Ruby’s life, a lot of people take this to an extreme. I’ve seen people thinking that Yang would “obviously be good at cooking, having to cook for herself and Ruby” and various statements to that effect.

To put it simply, when Yang says that Taiyang “shut down” in Burning The Candle, they think it meant a full-on, Apathy-like cessation of willpower. That Yang had to take on primary caregiver role.

The Proof Against It:

But that’s disproven only a few lines later. When Yang left the house with Ruby to find her mother, she explicitly says that she “waited for Dad [Taiyang] to leave the house”. Taiyang was still clearly taking care of them, physically at very least.

And even beyond that, Yang and Ruby hold no ill-will against Taiyang. Their relationship is clearly a loving one, with Taiyang falling asleep at Ruby’s beside in Volume 3. And before anyone says that this is a Retcon, in the latter half of Volume 2, we’re shown this good relationship when the girls speak of him after he sends them Zwei in the mail. A package from him is considered something to “cheer her [Ruby] up”.

Do you really think they’d have such a relationship if he was emotionally or caregiving-ly absent? No, because that would be an abusive relationship, which is kind’ve RWBY’s speciality in recognizing.

Even on a meta-level, they cast Burnie Burns, a man who epitomizes a “good father” to the RT community and to the company itself as Taiyang. That doesn’t seem like the casting they’d do for a bad father.

What The Line Really Meant:

For a period of time, Taiyang shut down emotionally. He became depressed. While he cared for his children’s physical needs, he neglected their emotional needs. This is something that clearly has affected Yang, putting the burden of Ruby’s emotional needs on her (a burden she has still helped shoulder since then, though is clearly learning to let go of recently), but not really affected the two girls’ relationship with their father. Taiyang recovered from his depression, and has been an admirable father since then. Like every parent in RWBY, he’s a person, and he’s made mistakes in his parenting, but that doesn’t make him a bad parent.

Yang was Retconned!

The Misconception:

This, technically, can also fall under “Bad Father Taiyang”, but is usually mostly addressed at Miles and Kerry.

I’ve seen people saying that Yang’s fighting ability was retconned into “uses her semblance too much” and “dumb fighter who relies on her power”. People dissecting the pre-Volume 4 fight scenes for evidence of Yang being a smart fighter. Calling this a “retcon” (Retroactive Continuity: when a previous established fact is altered by the writer later in the story).

This all stems from a conversation Yang had with Taiyang, in which he says ��Do you realize that you used your semblance to win every fight after the qualifiers?”

The Proof Against It:

Holy crap is this taking Taiyang out context.

Straight up, the lines directly before this were:

Yang: “Let me guess: ‘I was sloppy.’”

Taiyang: “-laughs- No. You were predictable. And stubborn. And maybe a little boneheaded.”

It’s pretty clear from the preceding lines that Taiyang isn’t talking about her fighting style. After some talk about her semblance, and how it won’t always save her, the conversation shifts into one about Raven, her stubbornness, and her similarities with Yang.

During which, Taiyang says that “You both act like the easiest way to tackle an obstacle is through it. That strength is all that matters in a fight.”

Which leads us to:

What The Line Really Meant:

I plan on making a post about this, but Strength is at the core of Yang’s character arc. Not just physical strength at that, but the word that  most people would use here is Power.

Yang is person who was born strong. Not just physically, even. Her core character trait, beyond anything else, is that Yang Xiao Long might get knocked down, but she’ll rise stronger than before. It’s her semblance; her connection to fire is evocative of phoenix motifs; hell the song “I Burn” calls her a Super Saiyan, who have “get stronger from being beaten down” as actual trait of their species.

But Strength, Power isn’t everything. We hear this in one of the first lines of the show, from Salem herself: There Will Be No Victory In Strength.

And that’s the point of the conversation with Taiyang. He explicitly compares her to Raven, who thinks Strength, not just physical and magical but also strength in skill and intelligence, is everything. And Yang has kinda been following that philosophy. She’s been using her strength to try and brute-force situations. We see this in the Yellow Trailer, as she grabs Junior by the balls in order to try extract information from him. We see this in the fight with Neo, when she switches up her fighting style multiple times, but can’t actually beat her. We see this in the fight with Mercury, where Cinder predicted she’d counter Mercury’s fake attack rather than dodge or block.

But this is where Taiyang hammers home the point that Yang’s strength isn’t everything. There are times to use strength, and times to find alternate solutions. And Yang has taken that to heart. The point of the Bandit fight is that while she predicts it, she doesn’t start it, giving her opponents the option to walk away. When Mercury grabs her arm, rather than attack him and get caught up fighting, she lets it go. When she arrives down in the Vauilt, she deconstructs Raven’s motivations so completely that by the time she shoulder-checks her mom on the way past, Raven’s already been defeated.

And when she goes up against Adam, someone who believes in strength just as much as Raven, she ultimately beats him by not using her strength until she’s taken away his.

“Bad Father Taiyang” Part 2: Moping

The Misconception:

Taiyang tells Yang to “stop moping”. This means he isn’t taking her PTSD seriously/he doesn’t understand her true problem/he’s a bad father/Miles and Kerry think PTSD is just moping.

The Proof Against It: See my first point on why Taiyang isn’t a bad father and why he wouldn’t be given such a harsh line unless there was some truth to it.

But on the Miles and Kerry interpretation, they have honestly been doing a fantastic job at portraying what PTSD is actually like. Some credit goes to Barbara as well, but PTSD in RWBY is portrayed as something you have to learn to live with, not overcome or “get better” from. Sure, you can mitigate it, but it’ll unfortunately always be with you.

Yang didn’t “get over” her PTSD by being told to stop moping. Because Taiyang was not referring to her PTSD.

What The Line Actually Meant:

Yang was moping.

See, Yang’s not just suffering from PTSD in Volume 4. She’s also suffering from heartbreak.

Her best friend, the person she was closest to outside of her family, the person she may even have realized that she was in love with, had just left her like Yang feared she would.

Like we’ve established, Yang is all about getting up when she gets knocked down. That’s at the core of her character. I honestly don’t think the missing arm and the PTSD would have kept her back home as long as it did on it’s own. Because we all know how a Xiao Long reacts to heartbreak (See: Taiyang “shutting down”).

But also because Adam straight-up told us that Blake leaving hurt more than losing an arm did.

What do I mean by that?

See, the whole point of the Adam fight is to explain to Blake what Yang wants to say but knows she can’t. The person Adam pretended to be is Yang, even if he doesn’t know it. Every line he says after he takes off the mask is something that actually applies to Yang’s feelings towards Blake.

“People hurt me long before we met” = Raven’s abandonment, Summer’s death

“But no-one hurt me quite like you. You didn’t leave scars, you just left me alone” = Blake left Yang after someone else had left her a scar (the arm)

“She made a promise to me once” = Literally paralleling the promises Blake has made to both people

Blake knows Yang and Pretend!Adam are alike. In semblance, in personality, it’s why she fears Yang going bad at the Vytal Tournament. And it’s why Adam saying that “no-one hurt me quite like you” triggers Blake’s realisation of why Yang doesn’t want Blake to protect her. Because it would leave her alone.

Yang can handle anything life throws at her besides Blake leaving. So when Yang was left moping after being left behind by the woman she loves, who better to point out she was moping than the person who’s been through the same thing twice?

The Birds

The Misconception:

And finally, the subject that began this rant of mine. The revelation to our heroes that Raven and Qrow can turn into birds.

People, quite confusing, take this to mean that our heroes are rendered suspicious of Ozpin because… he gave Qrow and Raven magical powers? They decry it as not really making sense, a false way to create tension between our heroes and Ozpin.

But maybe there’s a reason why it doesn’t make sense?

What The Line Really Meant:

Just look at the wording people. "What you did to Qrow and my mother", "What Oz did to my brother and me".

Raven implied that Ozpin gave them magic, placed this burden on them, without their consent. And Yang was rightfully pissed at the idea of such a thing. The rest of the group are taken aback at such an idea, because if it can happen to Ozpin’s previous generation of followers, it could happen to them.

You see Yang only reacts when Qrow firmly states that "We made a choice, we wanted this". It’s a look of shock. Raven lied to her.

And that’s why she tells Ozpin “No more lies, no more half-truths”. Raven has placed doubt in her mind, but both sides have lied to her at this stage. The only way to make sure she’s on the right side is if one of them isn’t lying to her, feeding her half-truths and lies of omission.

Which is why she takes it so hard when he omits the truth again. Down in the Vault, Yang made her choice. She chose Ozpin over her mother, permanently. There’s no going back from what Yang said to her. And then Ozpin omits the truth again, about the Relic, and this not only makes Yang question if she made the right choice, but reminds her that if she’s made the wrong one, she can’t go back on it. That’s she’s sacrificed any hope of a relationship with her mother for Ozpin, a man who can’t stop lying to her.

Conclusion:

I hope I’ve helped clear up some misconceptions for you guys, and made your RWBY-watching experience less confusing and misinformed. If you liked this, please reblog and share these corrections, so that the fandom no longer gets caught up on these moments.

These are just the misconceptions that I’ve been to dredge up from my memory on a Sunday night, so if I spot any more I’ll add them in later reblogs.

[digitaldog1o1]

Relationships I Want Explored More in Dragon Ball Super

*and by relationships, I don’t really mean romantic (unless specified) - I more or less mean their dynamic

**there is no particular order, just when I think of them

***many of these assumes that the Universes will not be permanently erased as well as there being the possibility of travel between the Universes without the assistance of the Gods

Caulifla & Hit :: Caulifla is a character who needs to be shown why she should respect someone before she gives them any sort of deference. Yet it seems like she has taken to Hit. We don’t get a chance to see them meeting (like with Cabba and Goku) and I imagine she was just as rude to him, but Hit’s colder demeanor probably made Caulifla know to at least take caution, if not back off. But they don’t have a cold relationship. We see in small bits during the tournament that there is a respect between the two of them and I wonder if it can go past the Tournament of Power/Universal Destruction arc.

The Universe 7 Saiyans & the Universe 6 Saiyans :: so I find it interesting that there is a parallel between the three Saiyans fighting for Universe 6 and the two whole Saiyans/one half Saiyan fighting for Universe 7. Caulifla and Goku are both carefree individuals who love a challenge. While Vegeta started as a villain, he has developed into a character with his own sort of honor code which makes him like the honorable Cabba. Some people have made parallels between Cabba and Gohan, but I see more of Kale as Gohan’s Universe 6 counterpart. She doesn’t seem to enjoy fighting, revering her more aggressive “sister” (kind of like how Gohan has always looked up to Goku (and Piccolo)), but she has a hidden, raw potential that gets drawn out of her by rage. I would love a future arc where they all have to team up (and maybe even include Goten & Trunks) and their similarities and differences are on display.

The Universe 6 Saiyans :: I would love for a filler episode where we see kind of “a day in the life”-style scenario with Cabba, Caulifla, and Kale. Do they go back to their normal lives or do they start training together to get stronger or maybe there is a “villain of the day” thing where they teamup. Maybe it can be a mini-filler arc (like the Jelly-Vegeta episodes earlier in the series).

Universe 6 :: speaking of which, maybe just have a mini-filler arc with Universe 6. I would love for Vados to train Caulifla, Cabba, and Kale like Whis trains Goku and Vegeta. But while Whis took up training them of his own volition, Vados is probably forced to train them by Champa, who sees what Goku and Vegeta can do with god-like training and wants to see if his Saiyans have the same potential. And Hit and Botamo and Magetta and the Namekians we haven’t seen yet and that boar-guy can all be there too. But not Frost. never Frost.

Piccolo & the Universe 6 Namekians :: this is for-sure coming soon... why the hell would we have Universe 6 Namekians in the Universe Survival Arc/Tournament of Power would be to have Piccolo interact with them. My prediction is Piccolo & Gohan tag-team vs the two Namekians. My other prediction is that Piccolo will only be 1-1 against them - he will eliminate one, then get eliminated himself by the other, and be avenged by Gohan.

Piccolo & Pan :: I just need more of this.

Piccolo & Chi Chi :: no I don’t ship it (hardcore Gochi since I first watched original Dragonball here)... but it is interesting that by the Cell Games in Z, she seemed to just accept that Piccolo was a big part of her son’s life and during the Buu arc, she wasn’t mad that Piccolo was training Goten (and Trunks) so much as how hard he was pushing them. And while she gets freaked out by Goku and Satan’s fighting/martial arts love wearing off on Pan, she doesn’t seem to mind that Piccolo is Pan’s guardian when Videl & Gohan are away. I just want to know more about what dynamic the two of them have that makes them tolerate each other.

Piccolo & Goten & Trunks :: if their fathers won’t train them, then Piccolo should get them in on Gohan’s new training. Those poor boys are being left behind when they are shown to have so much potential.

Goten & Trunks :: can we just have more of them in Super please? and I want more them as individual characters (especially Goten), not just Gotenks.

Goten & Trunks & Marron :: if we don’t get a “what happens why 17 is away from his island” episode, I will be so mad. And if Marron doesn’t have a moment to shine, even if it is inadvertently disrupting a poaching, I will be just as mad as if the episode never happened. Also, maybe 18 (and Krillin... and Piccolo, trainer of children [albeit, half Saiyan children]) can start training Marron so she can take on her dad’s mantle as strongest pure human? While the Tournament of Power is introducing many female fighters/humanoid fighters with a feminine appearance, it still doesn’t know quite what to do with the female characters it has (aside from Bulma, I think Bulma has always been utilized well). Marron, Pan, and now Bulla gives them the opportunity to show how women are an integral part of the future generation, but since Pan & Bulla are infants, Marron is the only one who can be immediately fleshed out and making her a third option in the Goten & Trunks dynamic is a good start (kind of like how Piccolo, Krillin, or Bulma is used as a character to balance out the Goku and Vegeta dynamic).

Goku & Goten and Vegeta & Trunks :: they need to train their sons. Goku has actually shown interest in training Goten but Chi Chi has stopped him but has been more open to Goten training in the past. And with Goku and Vegeta possibly exploring different universes in future arcs, Goten and Trunks need to be prepared to hold down the fort with the remaining Z warriors.

Beerus & Shin & Old Man Kai :: I want to see more of the dynamic between the Gods and what kind of relationship makes for a successful universe. While all the other Kaoshin & God of Destruction pairings seem to have some working dynamic, Beerus and Shin are clearly dysfunctional, as they were both quick to blame each other when they found out Universe 7 is the second worst Universe amongst the 12. Also, apparently it was Beerus who sealed away Old Kai after they got into a fight, so Beerus does not play nice with his Kaioshin counterparts. This meant Shin never had a mentor in how-to-be-Supreme-Kai until Gohan unleashed Old Kai and his lack of experience shows. But Beerus does not seem to be well-liked by anyone. The other Gods of Destruction don’t even seem to care for him, including his own brother, Champa. And since Shin was never properly made a Supreme Kai, the other Kaioshin seem to largely ignore his existence. Thus for Universe 7 to be successful moving forward, they need to build a working relationship as they have isolated themselves from being able to have allies across Universes (though Goku’s natural ability to turn enemies/rivals to friends may make this impossibility possible). And I want to know more about Beerus and Old Kai’s past relationship.

Beerus & Bulma :: she just does not back down and neither does he. And while he could just destroy her or the whole planet, he seems to understand Bulma holds status amongst Earthlings, therefore can get him whatever delicacy he desires. I also wonder what Beerus would be like with Bulla. Gohan doesn’t really have a relationship with Beerus to warrant him having to interact with Pan, but considering Beerus visits the Briefs a lot, it provides for the comedic opportunity of Beerus (and Whis) holding a baby.

Android 17 & the Kamikaze Fireballs :: if there is ever an arc where the Universes have to team up, I hope there is a sequence where the Fireballs have to tag team with Android 17

This is it for now. I may think of more later. Overall, I am immensely enjoying Dragon Ball Super. Z was never a great show, but it is the first show I can remember being enthralled by (and great by kid-me standards) and I can still watch any episode with my nostalgia goggles tight. Super is just a reason for me to continue fangirling and find new things to fangirl over. Even when it is less than Super. At least it is not GT (I watched the first three episodes and decided I didn’t need to watch anymore -- I am definitely one of the people praying GT is retconned/proven not to be canon).

[tigerlover16-uk]

So, according to Toyotaro, Toriyama and Tori are going to be steering Super into EoZ territory soon. Do you think the show should go past EoZ then?

YES! Dear God, yes!

Honestly, while I’ve enjoyed Super so far and it’s been plenty of fun despite the dumps in the road, I think we’ve reached the point with this saga where it’s not really in the show’s best interests to keep going in the in-between space between the Buu Saga and EoZ. For one thing, it would probably help Goku’s character a lot at this point if he were finally allowed to move onto the established next stage of his character development (Becoming a wise master to Uub) since his character has been very hit or miss since the Future Trunks saga at least. If we throw in him training Uub as his successor, that would give the writers incentive to have him mature again and hopefully fix his image a bit with the fandom.

On top of that, the EoZ period and beyond is brimming with boundless potential, especially for the next gen characters like Uub, Pan, Bulla, Marron, etc, none of whom are given a chance to get any development or plot relevance in their current states. Goten would probably benefit too, since I’m convinced that a big part of the reason he’s constantly being sidelined in Super and why Chichi has been so strictly against him being a fighter is part of the plan to explain why he ended up moving on and deciding to find other interests than martial arts.

And it would just generally give Toriyama and the writers more freedom to do whatever they want and go all in with the world building, character development, and just the kinds of stories they can tell, since they wouldn’t be stuck with the issue of having to maintain some semblance of consistency with the EoZ chapters (Even if it feels free to retcon some minor things, like Goku and Vegeta’s families not seeing each other for 5 years, from the looks of things, which I never cared for anyway so I don’t care about that specific detail).

It’s no wonder there’s considerably less tension to most of Super’s sagas when we all know for a fact every character we’re familiar with from Z is going to survive until the EoZ period, most of them relatively the same as we last saw them in the Buu Saga, only older and more mature. And while that hasn’t stopped characters like Krillin and Gohan from being given character development, I reiterate that other characters like Goku and Goten are ultimately worse off given the show’s placement in the timeline.

I REALLY want to see stories set after EoZ. I want Uub and Pan and all the younger characters to get a chance to tell their stories, and do it right this time after GT didn’t give anyone a fair shake the last time around. I want to see Pan become a super saiyan, heck maybe Bulla too. Make Marron a fighter while they’re at it. Have all the characters move onto the next stages of their lives. And also, really get to explore all the other universes, flesh out their pantheons of Gods, and just have all kinds of crazy, awesome fun with new adventures. There’s a ton of untapped potential that would make for some amazing stories, and I think it would really help to win over the still skeptical parts of the fandom and truly bring the Dragon Ball franchise into a new era.

But who knows what they’ll ultimately end up doing. What I’d personally like is for the current saga to have a great second half and end on a high note. Then have some breather episodes to further flesh out several of the Z fighters further (More stuff with Tien and his new dojo, maybe bring Launch back in relation to that, meeting Android 17′s family and having them all interact with Krillin, 18 and Marron, some development for Goten and Chichi, etc) and also expand a bit on some of the other universes (Assuming they’re all still around, and they better be) like the Pride Troopers, and FINALLY having Vegeta and Goku and probably some other characters visit planet Sadal in universe 6 on Cabba’s request. and then we could have a mini arc with Goku and Vegeta challenging Beerus, finally putting their pride aside and working together to actually beat him in an epic fight to help provide a sense of closure to Super and have things come full circle from the movie based arcs. And then either have an extended recreation of End of Z setting up a second sequel series officially going past it, or simply end it before that and have that be the start of a potential new show.

But who knows. that’s just how I would do things, I don’t have any clue what Toei and Toriyama are planning. Maybe Super won’t go past EoZ, but I’d be disappointed if it didn’t. It just seems like Super opened up so much story potential with the expanded mythology it presented, and that on top of stories set past EoZ would bring about so much amazing story potential that it would be a depressing waste if say they were to end Super after this current saga and NOT go past EoZ. Let’s see what the future holds, but for now I’m crossing my fingers and hoping we’ll finally get to see a proper follow up to End of Z that I and I’m sure millions of other fans have been waiting to see all our lives.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 078

Last time, Vegeta wanted Frieza to transform and show his true power.    In response, Frieza caused his armor to shatter into pieces.   Vegeta mocked this joke of a transformation, but Frieza’s just getting started.  

Frieza laments that Vegeta has to die this way, when he could have just obeyed.   Vegeta says that he only pretended to submit the whole time, and he was waiting for a chance to betray Frieza from the beginning.  And that brings us to a flashback.

The Frieza Saga is pretty heavy on flashbacks as padding.  The Saiyans and Namek Sagas had their fair share, but I think Toei really went all out on this arc, perhaps because they sensed things were coming to a head, and they wanted to get as much drama as they could.  Also, their options were limited on filler scenes.   In the Saiyans Saga, you could have an extra episode of Goku meeting someone on Snake Way, or Gohan having an adventure in the wilderness, or Nappa buggering off to terrorize the Earth’s military.   Here, the whole point of this leg of DBZ is that it’s just Frieza beating up all the other characters, so there’s not much you can do at the same time.  

Anyway, the flashback shows King Vegeta executing one of his men for reporting a delay in the conquest of a planet he had promised for Frieza.   Frieza then shows up in the palace and says the delay doesn’t matter to him.    How did no one know he was there?   Anyway, Frieza’s real business here is to discuss King Vegeta turning his son over to Frieza.  

After he leaves, one of KIng Vegeta’s men--the dub calls him Zorn--expresses frustration with the idea of giving Frieza custody of the prince.   King Vegeta doesn’t give a shit about his son’s life, though.    Instead, he’s upset that Frieza casually demands these kinds of things, as if the Saiyans were all his slaves.  

I’m wondering if this is a “methinks he doth protest too much” kind of thing.   King Vegeta says he doesn’t care about his son, and then complains about something else that’s somewhat related to the situation.  It’s almost like he really does care about his son, but he can’t admit it directly.   Similarly, Prince Vegeta would often claim to care nothing about his own father or people, but it kind of makes you wonder why he brings them up as often as he does.

So then King Vegeta tried to assemble a band of elite warriors to take the fight to Frieza.   This looks a lot like what Dodoria was talking about when he revealed that Frieza destroyed the Saiyan homeworld. 

I’m not sure how the Saiyans made it on board Frieza’s ship, but Frieza allows them into his quarters, whereupon all of Vegeta’s men lose their nerve.  King Vegeta’s “aw, crap” is a good example of cool lines you won’t see in the dub.   Funimation kind of romanticized King Vegeta a little too much, at least in this episode.   

Frieza kills King Vegeta with one hit, blasts his men with a single shot of eye beams, and then gloats that he didn’t even have to transform to do it.    I’m wondering if Toei only had him say this to explain how Zarbon knew about Frieza’s transformation ability.  

Then Frieza goes outside to blow up Planet Vegeta, including Bardock and all of the Frieza soldiers who went out to stop him. 

So yeah, this whole flashback is kind of confusing.   Apparently, we’re supposed to think that while the events of the Bardock TV Special were happening, King Vegeta led a squad of his own troops to attack Frieza.   Except Bardock tried to warn the Saiyan to rise up against Frieza, and none of them would listen.   So did King Vegeta plan all of this in secret?   Why wouldn’t he have mobilized his entire kingdom against Frieza?

More importantly, this whole flashback implies that Vegeta was on board Frieza’s ship when the destruction of the planet took place.   But in the Bardock Special, Vegeta was out on assignment, light years away.   

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s not worth getting too up in arms about the Pre-Dragon Ball continuity.   Toei was stacking retcons on top of other recons way back in 1991.   It’s not too surprising that Akira Toriyama started from scratch with Dragon Ball Minus.  

Then Vegeta points out that if Frieza were afraid of the Saiyans, he was a fool to destroy the planet, while leaiving him, the strongest Saiyan, alive and in his custody.  This argument sort of works against Vegeta when you think about it, but whatever.   I suppose this is the big contradiction of Frieza’s character.   He hated and feared the Saiyans more than he cared to admit, and yet he kept Vegeta around, and seems to have taken a liking to him.   My best guess is one of the following:

1) Frieza feared a Saiyan uprising, or a possible Super Saiyan, but he never expected Vegeta alone to be a threat.

2) Frieza bought into Vegeta’s feigned submission, and convinced himself that Vegeta was truly the one exception that made him the only Saiyan worth keeping alive.

3) Frieza was terrified of the Super Saiyan Legend, but was too proud to admit it, and so he sought out the strongest Saiyan he could find and kept him around to convince himself and anyone else that he had nothing to fear.  

Meanwhile, Bulma gets chased by dinosaurs again.  

At last, Frieza does his thing, and transforms into... a bigger version of his first form.   I remember when this saga aired on Cartoon Network in 1999, and I skipped around a lot at the time because I wasn’t too interested.   But I did see the DBZ action figures at the store the following year.   I’m pretty sure they had one for this version of Frieza, and they just called it “Frieza II”.   I found this kind of dumb, because I thought it was King Cold.   I must have missed the Second-Form Frieza episodes because I didn’t remember him ever doing this.

In this form, Frieza claims to have a power level of one million, and then he blows up a bunch of the terrain to prove it.  

Then he charges at Krillin, and impales the guy on his horn.   Krillin might have had a chance to avoid this, but he was holding Dende at the time, and he tossed him out of harm’s way instead of saving himself.   You know, a lot of people talk about being a badass, but Krillin’s out here really doing it.

Oh, then the blood starts running down Frieza’s face and he starts lapping it up.   Holy shit.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 020

This is the Knife Lady episode.    I mean, there’s other stuff in this one, but come on.    I’m not gonna bury the lede here.

Okay, so last time, Goku had to get used to the higher gravity on King Kai’s planet, so King Kai had him chase Bubbles around until he could catch him.    The last episode made it look like it only took one afternoon, but in this episode the narrator says it took him like three weeks, which seems fishy to me.   I feel like Toei messed up, one way or another.   Of course, there’s really no good way to mark the passage of time on this planet, so there’s no telling. 

Anyway, the Bubbles exercise was in the manga.   This time however, it’s a filler episode, and Goku’s next challenge is to chase a cricket-looking creature named Gregory.   Gregory is a filler guy, but he appears in just about every King Kai scene from here on out.   It’s weird how seamlessly they worked him in, and then you read the manga and he’s just not there.  

King Kai says that the idea here is to improve Goku’s speed under the high gravity, so I’m pretty sure the only thing different about this exercise is that Gregory is faster than Bubbles.   Also, Goku has to hit him with a big heavy hammer, which will only slow him down more.  What could go wrong?

Yeah...

Meanwhile, on Earth, Gohan’s still improving under Piccolo’s training, but he gets knocked down a cliff anyway, and Piccolo orders him to climb back up.   For some reason he starts shouting random nouns at Piccolo and tells him to do the next one.   I guess this is some sort of game? 

On Kami’s Lookout, everyone has to wear weighted training clothes like Kami made Goku wear.    Krillin looks awesome in his, Yamcha looks a little off, and Tien and Chiaotzu look really weird.  

Why are they letting Chiaotzu take a breather?  

Yajirobe bites Krillin on the ass.  Hey, save that for the Saiyans, tiger.

Later, Kami just tells the boys to leave and pursue their own training down below.  This whole thing feels like a total ripoff.   They had a year to prepare for the Saiyans and it took like four months just to get everyone up here, and then he tells him he won’t teach them anything, and now he’s sending them back with like three months to go.

Elsewhere, Master Roshi asks his sister, Fortuneteller Baba to look into the future and tell him how things turn out after the Saiyans arrive.   Baba gives it a go, but she can’t forsee anything, good or bad.   In the dub, she tells him “The Earth has no future!” which I always liked because it completely flies in the face of what she foresaw in the finale of Dragon Ball, when she peeked ahead to DBZ.   Things looked pretty rosy before, but now all bets are off.    The fate of the world is balancing on the head of a pin.  

Okay, that covers all the other stuff, let’s go back to Goku.    King Kai has them all break for lunch, and these two guys look adorable.   Not sure why Bubbles is wearing a hat... oh, wait, yes I do know.    While Goku was chasing Gregory one of them zipped right over the back of his head and shaved a stripe up his scalp, so he must be wearing the hat to cover it up.  

Goku asks King Kai what he knows about the Saiyans, on account of he is one, and he’s fighting two more later, so he kind of needs to know all he can.    King Kai offers to tell him the story, so Goku pulls up a chair for him.

This whole account was filler, so some of it has been retconned or just plain contradicted over the years, but it still forms the basis of a lot of Saiyan lore.   For example, this episode introduces the Tuffles as a second intelligent species that shared Planet Vegeta with the Saiyans.   The Tuffle concept would be used later in the OAV “Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans” as well as the Baby arc in Dragon Ball GT.   

What never seemed to catch on, on the other hand, was the idea that the Tuffles were much smaller than Saiyans (or humans for that matter) due to the intense gravity of the planet.   The implication here is that the Saiyans are only as big as they are because they’re so strong, although I think later sources established that they emigrated to this planet from somewhere else.    At any rate, the Tuffle characters in GT and “Plan to Eradicate” always looked full-sized to me.  

Basically, the Tuffles ruled most of the planet, and they had all sorts of advanced technology to sustain their larger population.  

On the other hand, the Saiyans lived in primitive dwellings, with a smaller territory and a smaller population.

King Kai’s flashback also puts them all in animal skins.   They sort of look like a cross between B-movie cavemen and artwork depicting early figures from the Bible.   

Here’s Knife Lady again.   She doesn’t do anything, but she looks awesome, and this episode is really the first solid evidence that female Saiyans existed.   That may seem silly to younger or newer fans, but I’ll bet there were a lot of fans in 1989 who figured female Namekians were going to show up, and that got shot to hell.   You just never know.

At some point, the Saiyans got strong enough or bold enough to start attacking the Tuffles outright.  Again, note the size difference.

The Tuffles invented weapons to fight back, so they weren’t completely helpless.   I always find this guy kind of ironic, because he looks a lot like Gohan in the Buu Saga, and he’s wearing a scouter, so he looks way more like a Saiyan than a Tuffle here.   I think the intent was to suggest that the Saiyans got their scouters from the Tuffles, but that won’t hold up in future episodes.   Besides, how could the Saiyans make use of Tuffle scouters?  They would be too small to wear.

The problem for the Tuffles was that the Saiyans would turn into giant apes at the sight of the full moon.   This only happened once every eight years on Planet Vegeta, but it was often enough to turn the tide of the war.

Now, I feel like a dope, because this is the first time I ever watched this story in the original Japanese, and I see now that a lot of things were different when the story was translated to English.   The dub implied a relatively short war, lasting maybe a few years, or a generation at most, and ending on a single full moon.   The Japanese version tells of a much longer transition from Tuffle to Saiyan rule, with the Tuffles barely able to hold the line and the Saiyans steadily gaining ground every eight years.   This makes it sound like it took a long time for the Saiyans to take control of the planet, and that would explain the fuzzy booties, among other things.   I always found King Kai’s story a little unsatisfying for only covering the last decade or so of Saiyan history, but it looks like he was actually going back a little further than that.

Also interesting: the term “Arcosian” was a dub-ism.   I just always took it for granted that these robed aliens had a name in the Japanese script, but they don’t.   Fans have adopted “Arcosian” as a name for Frieza’s species, although the terms “Ice-jin”, and “Frost Demon” have also been used, along with others I’m probably not aware of.    It makes sense, seeing as how these “Arcosians” are basically doing in this flashback what Frieza and King Cold actually did.   

On the other hand, now that I see the context of this flashback, I start to wonder if it makes more sense for the Saiyans to have overrun the Tuffles a long time ago.   Let’s say 100 years before Goku’s birth.   These robed aliens gave them the means to travel further into space, and the Saiyans operated as an independent kingdom for a while until they finally fell under King Cold’s influence.   I’m not sure how well that gels with some of the other lore, but I think I like that better, since it gives Saiyan history a chance to breathe.   It always irked me how they beat the Tuffles and got taken over by Frieza almost immediately.

The biggest flaw in King Kai’s tale is the part where he explains the destruction of Planet Vegeta, which Raditz attributed to meteors.   King Kai says this was done by the Kami of Planet Vegeta, as a way to punish the Saiyans for their evil deeds.   You’d think he would have stepped in a lot sooner, back when the Saiyans were killing all the Tuffles, but better late than never.  

Really, the idea of the Saiyans falling victim to divine justice was a cool idea, but the problem is that it suggests that King Kai really knows what happened here, and as we’ll later learn, he has no clue.   But Toei has him speaking with great authority on this subject, like he witnessed this happening.  

On the other hand, this is sort of true.    According to Battle of Gods, Beerus chose to have Planet Vegeta destroyed, and he tasked Frieza with doing so.  Who’s to say that Beerus didn’t ask Planet Vegeta’s Kami to handle it first, and then he went to Frieza when the Kami botched the job?

King Kai also states that only four Saiyans survived the planet’s destruction, which again sounds kind of weird because it implies that he went and counted them personally, except he ended up being wrong.   I’m not trying to nitpick here, I’m just saying that this can be the trouble with filler scenes.   The writers need to leave themselves a little wiggle room in case things get changed later.    Essentially, King Kai is just reinforcing everything that Raditz said in Episode 2.   Well, Raditz can be misinformed, but it’s a little off for King Kai to have his facts wrong. 

Anyway, Goku gets all fired up and wants to get back to his training right away.

He catches Gregory and gives him a little tap on the head.   Gregory brags that he’s tougher than Goku gives him credit for...

... but he’s still got a bump on his head.

King Kai is encouraged by Goku’s rapid progress, and believes that Goku might be good enough to learn the Kaio-ken, a technique so advanced that it’s just a theory he invented.   And he has another technique even cooler than that, but we’ll learn about that one another time.

[duhragonball]

So how do you feel about the interpretation that team U7 are actually the VILLAINS of the Tournament of power, or at least morally worse than some of the other universes?

I think these people are taking it too seriously. The characters from the other universes certainly feel that Goku and his team are the bad guys here. And that's kind of understandable since he put them in this situation, but Goku never invented the rule about erasing all the losing universes. What's going on here is that all these characters are *really* upset with the King of Everything, and they're taking it out on Goku because he's a safe outlet for their frustration. The truth of the matter--so far as we know-- is that KOE has every right to erase universes as he deems fit. It's not just that the gods are afraid to complain to KOE; they know it would be pointless to complain because KOE isn't abusing his authority.The problem is that some fans have taken this subtle deflection and chose to interpret it literally. They think that if multiple Kais and Destroyers are saying Goku is a villain, then he must really *be* a villain. I think this is partly wishful thinking. The idea of an evil Goku has been a popular fantasy for a long time, probably since the retcon about Goku banging his head as a baby. If Goku had been raised among Saiyans, would he be evil? If Goku's childhood memory loss were reversed, would it change his personality? What if a bad guy mind controlled him, like with Majin Vegeta? I think there are fans who want the Tournament of Power to indulge these ideas. They're probably going to be disappointed, but who knows?I think there's one guy on the AV Club website who occasionally points out that he thinks Dr. Doom is the real hero of the *Fantastic Four* mythos, which necessarily makes Reed Richards the villain. This has actually been explored in the comics before, with alternate versions of Reed being completely evil. I've been reading a lot of X-Men comics, where the stories are often more about internal conflicts among the heroes than external battles with their enemies. So you end up with heroes complaining that Professor X or Cable are heartless bastards, even when they're supposed to be leading the good guys. And fans take this to mean Professor X is a total slimeball who's worse than the villains he's trying to stop. They fail to appreciate the nuance.My big pet peeve since the ToP started had been this fan theory that the Great Priest is somehow the villain of the arc, which is dumb because he's only doing what KOE tells him to do. But he kind of has this inscrutable look on his face, and he seems awfully chipper about universe-erasing, so people think he's up to something. And maybe he is, but there's been no hard evidence to make me suspicious. Again, it's people casting a wide net, looking for a bad guy where there's only shades of grey. KOE can't be a villain because he's apparently omnipotent. Jiren looks mean, but everything he's done so far had been in self-defense. Frieza's evil, but he has no leverage here. So it must be Goku or the Great Priest, only they're following the same rules as everyone else.And I like a strong villain, don't get me wrong, but I learned a long time ago that not every story has one, or needs one. I think this is one of those stories.