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actuallysaiyan · 2 years ago

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You Can't Hurry Love(Android 17 x Fem!Reader)

warnings: smut, love confessions, Android 17 getting his life together, use of his real name "Lapis", oral sex/cunnilingus, unprotected sex, mentions of drinking alcohol

word count: 1.5k

a/n: don't own the artwork. This is for my good friend @scrumptiouss007

“Are you finally going to confess your feelings, brother?” Eighteen asks as Seventeen begins packing his things. He’s planning to spend the weekend with you, and considering it’s your birthday weekend, he’s more than excited to be with you.

Seventeen blushes, “Nonsense. I don’t have to do that.”

Eighteen laughs, “oh? Is that so?”

Seventeen rolls his eyes and he just shrugs it off. He’s got a place to be and he won’t keep you waiting. Eighteen thinks about her own marriage and how things came to be with Krillin. She wonders if maybe you are the special person for her brother and she hopes he finally has the guts to confess his feelings for you. She hopes that he can come to terms with the way he feels about you.

All the way to your place, Seventeen wonders about what his sister teased him about. He’s liked you since he first met you, and you really bring out the best in him. He never thought he’d be happy in this life. He figured it would just be violence and rebelling against people. But you keep him so grounded and make him feel like he can have a real chance at life.

Once he gets to your door, he finds himself feeling so nervous. But it’s that gorgeous smile of yours that brings him back down to earth. You invite him in, and he’s absolutely thrilled to be with you. You lead him into the kitchen and you open a beer for him. He puts his bag down on the table, and he smirks when he notices you eyeing it.

“I’ve got your gift,” he says as he moves closer. “Don’t worry.”

You giggle, “sorry, I’m just so excited.”

The two of you make your way into the living room and you turn on the radio for some background music. Android 17 is very much happy to be here with you. When you told him you wanted only him to be here with you on your birthday weekend, he was ecstatic. He’s been thinking of a way to confess his feelings to you.

“So you really just wanted it to be me and you?” he questions, and you smile sweetly.

“Yeah, I know Bulma would have thrown me a party, but I just wanted it to be me and you.”

Those words just make him feel like you’re asking for him to kiss you. He stares at your pretty lips, and he has to look away when your eyes meet his. It’s almost embarrassing how much he likes you. You probably wouldn’t want a guy like him anyway. He barely has his life together at this point.

This turns into a comfortable chat between you two. The whole time, Seventeen cannot keep his eyes off of you. His hand comes down to yours and caresses your fingers softly. You both sip on your beers and eventually, he gets up to get something out of his bag. He finds your gifts and he brings them to you.

You excitedly open them up, and you’re so moved. The first one is your favorite movie, the next one is a perfume you really love. It’s the final one that really is touching to you. It’s a photo of you and Seventeen when you first became friends in a beautiful frame. You coo softly at the sentimental gift.

“Oh, Lapis!” You hold the gift to your chest. “This is the sweetest gift I’ve ever received in my life.”

He blushes at your use of his real name, “y-yeah? I had it made especially for you. My sister helped pick out the frame.”

You get up to move some stuff around on your mantel. And then you place the photo where everyone can admire it. It’s a sweet picture because it really signified a change in his life. He was so lost after everything that happened with Cell, but you came into his life and showed him unconditional friendship. And he’s hoping you can show him unconditional love.

You’re so excited when you pull him in for a hug, and suddenly, you feel his lips on yours. It’s so soft and sweet, and when you pull away, he’s blushing. It’s such a sweet thing for him to do, considering you had no idea he felt this way.

“Listen to me…” he says before taking a deep breath. He exhales shakily. “I…love you.”

Your ears are ringing and the room feels hotter than usual. You shake your head softly, and tilt it to one side. You’re so confused right now. There is now way that Lapis has just confessed his love to you. You’ve been pretty much in love with him since the moment you met him. You always found him so sweet, and maybe that was just his side solely for you, but you still enjoyed him so much. He was your best friend.

“Y-you love me?”

He grasps your hands and looks down shyly, “Yeah, I do. I have loved you for a while now.”

You chuckle softly, “I wish you would have said something.”

You’re so quick to lean in and kiss him. This kiss is more passionate and has so much feeling and emotion behind it. His tongue glides against your bottom lip, and you’re more than happy to welcome him in. As soon as your tongues meet, it’s like heaven. There’s a low moan that rumbles through the two of you.

Android Seventeen is slowly guiding you into the bedroom. Once the door is closed, he gently pushes you onto the bed. You’re a little surprised by his sudden show of affection, but you aren’t mad at all. He climbs on top of you, resuming the make out session you were having out in the living room.

“I love you too,” you say breathlessly when you pull away.

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Lapis.”

The words make his heart flutter, but he isn’t surprised to find that they make him hard too. He slowly removes your shirt first, pressing all kinds of open-mouthed kisses on your tender flesh. He wants to leave love bites on all the sensitive places of your body. He wants you to remember the feeling of his teeth sinking in to mark you up.

You shudder as he unclasps your bra and throws it aside. The air from the room makes your nipples stand erect. Lapis takes a moment to admire your half-naked body on the bed below him. He never thought that he’d be in this position in a million years. But he is more than happy to finish what he’s started.

Your lips meet in a frantic and hungry kiss as his fingers begin tweaking your nipples. You let out the softest and cutest moans between the wet kisses you share. Lapis is more than happy to provide such wonderful stimulation to you.

Then he lets his hands wander further down your body, smoothing down your sides and making you break out in goosebumps. He attacks your jeans with ferocity, wanting you to be completely naked under him. You whine when he finally has you down to your underwear, and he is between your thighs.

“Let’s see how excited you are for me.”

When he peels off your panties, he greedily sniffs them. Then he shoves them in the pocket of his jeans. The smell of you is completely intoxicating. He’s glad that he finally confessed his feelings to you. If he would have known that it would have ended up like this, he would have confessed so long ago. Before long, he leans down on his stomach and licks a stripe from your hole to your clit.

“Oh fuck,” you whine before tangling your fingers in his hair. This makes him even harder than he’s ever been in his life.

His tongue laps at your slick languidly, savoring every drop of nectar that comes from your hole. He swears he’s never tasted anything as decadent and sweet as you. You make his brain go dumb with lust. Slowly, he begins rutting against the mattress for a little relief.

The greedy slurping sounds only add to your own arousal. When you look down at him, you realize that he’s crazy for you. It doesn’t take much longer for him to sit up on his knees. He looks almost feral with your juices dripping down his chin.

“Gotta have you,”

Without much more thought, Seventeen pulls his jeans down past his ass and he strokes his hard, leaking cock. You gasp as he penetrates you, and you shudder as he slowly sinks into you. His lips meet yours once he bottoms out, and you wrap your arms around him. He’s just so in love with you, he can’t even properly remove his own clothes. His need for you grew too much, and now you’re connected.

“Pretty little baby,” he teases softly as he begins to fuck you. “You thought I gave you all your gifts. But this is the most important one.”

#bacon.writes #android 17 #android 17 x you #android 17 x reader #android 17 x y/n #android 17 smut #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball super #dragon ball z x reader #android 17 x fem!reader #dragon ball x reader

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textfromthelookout · 2 years ago

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Super is a horribly made cash grab. Something like the Dragon BallZ multiverse would've been a lot more interesting to watch.

Especially the early chapters were we see universes with diffrent "what-if's" like Friza taking over, Planet Vegeta still around, Cell or Buu winning, Goku being raised as sayin, introducing the games etc.

I especially hate how super ignores Vegeta's already established character development and makes him regress. Either they just didn't know how to write a Vegeta like that or simply didn't care.

And god Gohan got the worst treatment ever. I understand the man doesn't fight, it's not what he does and that's a great point to his character but not keeping up with his training especially after cell and buu? Is out of character. The man is smart and knows that a bigger threat can come in at any moment.

Just wanted to leave that, drink some water

Perfectly valid opinion! Nevertheless, I disagree with you, and you’ve given me an excuse to ramble on at length about Dragon Ball, so ramble on I shall.

Super is a horribly made cash grab.

I think you’re thinking of the Z movies (which, for the record, I like). A cash grab’s supposed to be something you make quickly just because you know it’ll sell, and while I’m no economist, I do know you have to follow appreciably current trends when you’re trying to make one. While you may be right, it’s hard for me to feel that something is a cash grab when there was a ten year dry spell between GT ending and anything important that was DB-related coming out—and it wasn’t even Super, it was a little festival special that a bunch of people don’t know about because it never came overseas. Battle of Gods didn’t drop until five years after that, after the first half of DBZ Kai had already wrapped up, and Super didn’t start properly until the second half of Kai finished two years later. You don’t spend seven years feeling out if people are still receptive to something after a ten-year hiatus if you’re trying to make money quickly, is all I’m saying.

Something like the Dragon BallZ multiverse would've been a lot more interesting to watch.

I’ve never read Multiverse so I leafed through the first 400-ish pages to see if I agreed with you, and I don’t. A common complaint about the Tournament of Power is that it’s the most dragged out 48 minutes in existence, and from the looks of it, Multiverse is like if Super was nothing but the Tournament of Power. To me, one of the best things about Dragon Ball is that it doesn’t have to be all high-stakes head-to-head all the time. You get things like the Orange Star High arc, or the filler episode where Piccolo and Goku have to get their driver’s licenses, or the one where Goku doesn’t quite have control over his ki for a day or so because he essentially shorted out the wiring fighting Hit (which is a cool fucking concept that I wish they had done more with). It’s just fun. It opens the door for questions that are more entertaining—and more importantly, more varied—than arguing until you’re blue in the face about who would win in a fight between X and Y.

Sure, I’ll give you that, Multiverse does knock that concept around a little. The problem is it doesn’t do much of anything with it. The setting is a character too, in its own way—arguably the most important one, since it’s the one that every other character has no choice but to interact with. You’re right, all of those what-ifs would be interesting—if they were set in the what-ifs.

Here, I’ll share one of my favorite what-ifs as an example to try and explain. What if, instead of being able to retreat back to his lab, Dr. Gero was destroyed along with 19 by Vegeta’s attack? There would be no reason to go check his lab out if the android threat is eliminated, so 17 and 18 would still be asleep. Cell would grow unhindered for 17 years, and when he hatches, he could simply go up the ladder and attain perfection without a fight. Goku wouldn’t have died at the end of the Cell Games. There would be no training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for anyone. Does Vegeta become an issue again, since his character arc stalls at the part where he’s reveling in his own power? If so, how does that resolve? How would the struggle against Cell play out if they had no warning at all that he even existed? What role would Gohan play in it—or Goten or Trunks, since they’d be old enough to be a factor? These questions and any number of others you could pose don’t even account for the fact that it entirely upsets the timeline—Buu arc would occur before Cell, if it occurs at all. Assuming it does, would they stand a chance in hell against Buu without the power they gained in Cell arc and the seven year gap? Could Cell somehow end up coming into conflict with Buu? In short—how does this change things?

Multiverse answers this with ‘who cares, where does it put you in the power-scaling?’ and that’s not compelling to me in the slightest.

I especially hate how super ignores Vegeta's already established character development and makes him regress. Either they just didn't know how to write a Vegeta like that or simply didn't care.

Define regress. If you’re referring to Vegeta retaining his determination to get stronger than Goku after the ‘you are number one’ speech, that’s. Pretty integral to his character, frankly. Just because he’s learned and accepted it’s not the end of the world if he isn’t stronger doesn’t mean he has to drop the competition entirely. I read it less as a set-in-stone declaration of Goku’s superiority, more like a concession of his own defeat. ‘You’re number one forever because you’re better than me’ vs ‘You win for now, but when the next fight rolls around, I’ll outdo you’, you feel what I’m getting at? He does show up to fight Goku in the tournament during the very end of Z, after all. My point is that it shows Vegeta’s worldview and perception of himself is more malleable now—and so, confines him far less.

As it turns out, that concept of ‘freedom’ is the direction Super chooses to develop him in, and I feel that it pairs very well with what he goes through in Z (spoilers incoming). In Z, Vegeta is restricted by The Way Things Are Supposed To Go. In Super, especially later on during Moro and Granolah, this has a natural continuation in how his past actions in the name of TWTASTG weigh on him in ways that hamper his growth. This has been one of his biggest stumbling blocks for forever—he thinks so goddamn much, he can’t get out of his own head.

His defense of the Namekians and Earth against Moro is motivated in part by Vegeta feeling obligated to right the balance, so to speak—and he says as much, even going so far as to ask Moori if he bears a grudge against him for his actions. He still considers himself a villain bound for hell. In effect, this idea that he has to atone for his sins via being the one to save the day (which essentially amounts to being stronger than Goku on some given day) has snuck in and made itself into the new Way Things Are Supposed To Go without him realizing it.

Beerus realizes, though. I couldn’t think of a way to eloquently get across what Beerus does for him short of copying down the dialogue wholesale, so fuck it, that’s what I’m gonna do, since not everyone has access to the official translation. (From ch 69)

BEERUS: How many planets have you Saiyans destroyed? VEGETA: ? Hard to say. Fighting was the only way of life for my people, so we had a way of racking up sin after sin. B: Sin, huh? V: However, it wasn’t until Freeza’s clan came along and began using us that the destruction and invasions became business as usual. B: You trying to lay all the blame for your wicked ways on Freeza and his people? V: Not in the least. In his pursuit for power, my father built his own kingdom atop countless deaths. Freeza’s clan taking control didn’t help, but the seeds of the Saiyans’ destruction were sown before that. B: So it was the Saiyans’ destiny to be wiped out, then? V: I’d say so. B: Hmph… Ridiculous. V: But never mind that. My people’s problems aren’t your concern. B: I’m saying it’s ridiculous! V: ! W-what? What do you mean? Weren’t you going to show me a technique used by Gods of Destruction?! What could that possibly have to do with the history of the Saiyans? B: Plenty. […] As long as doubt weighs down your soul, this power’ll never be yours to wield. V: D-doubt, you say? B: Your own crimes aside, you’re feeling guilty for the sins of all Saiyans. That’s awfully self-centered of you, mortal. Here’s a fun fact. The one who suggested that Freeza eliminate the Saiyans… was me. V: W… what? B: You still think it was destiny? You’re just gonna accept that? […] Everything those Saiyans did in the past… what’s it got to do with you now? As long as you’re trapped by the past, you’ll never manage to grow past this point. My mind’s always on destruction and nothing else. That’s why there’s no limit to my power. Listen. If you really want this power, you’re gonna have to destroy any stray thoughts and recreate yourself from scratch. Before creation comes destruction. Get it?

Yeah. He takes this and he intentionally divorces his efforts to get stronger from his tendency to dog Goku’s heels in leveling up. Ultra Instinct isn’t a power suited to him, so he gives it up instead of torturing himself over it and works on what eventually becomes Ultra Ego instead. Here’s the thing though. The biggest indicator of Vegeta’s growth to me is that he can’t tap fully into that power because he’s no longer callous and unfeeling, and he knows it. He identifies too much with Granolah to simply destroy him. And he tries to lead Granolah off the path that ruined him for so much of his life. That doesn’t sound anything like regression to me.

The way things stand with Goku and Vegeta right now, the next step seems to be adapting their Ultra forms to them personally, so I’m curious to see how Vegeta will bend that power to the person he is now.

You could be right, but no amount of kvetching is going to change what the writer wrote, so you may as well stretch your critical thinking legs and ask yourself why the writer thinks this is in character. Speaking from the perspective of a person who makes a hobby of examining these pieces and spackling them together into something cohesive (fanfiction. I write fanfiction, in case that was somehow unclear), this is the more fun option for me. I’m not saying it’s really That Deep (‘don’t put more thought into something than the creators did’, yak yak yadda yadda) or that my personal interpretation is correct and canon or anything, I just know that writers rarely write something a certain way without a reason.

Because you’re right, Gohan is a smart person. I don’t think he did stop training after Buu in the way you’re thinking of, for two reasons. First, he mentions at the end of Super Hero that he’s been practicing the Makankosappo in secret, and the Makankosappo took Piccolo presumably several years nonstop (between OGDB and Z) to make from scratch. Gohan may have prior knowledge to base his experimentation off of, but he has a lot less free time too, between his family and his father’s tendency to one-track-mind the things he’s passionate about—Videl says he’s been in his room working on his ant project for several days. So how long has Gohan been practicing it?

That’s rather theoretical though so, second, Gohan was ready for the Tournament of Power with 48 hours of training, which I don’t think would be possible if he wasn’t at least keeping himself physically in shape. Indeed, when Piccolo is training him (DBS episode 88), his problem is not with Gohan’s practical technique—it’s with his attitude. Freeza notices this and mentions it earlier in Resurrection F as well, that Gohan is going out of his way to leave the people he beats alive. Piccolo describes it as a failure to ‘close the deal’, in the sense that Gohan needs to be able to win in a way that leaves no room for a rematch or a sneak attack at the last second. This doesn’t necessarily mean killing, mind, especially since the Tournament of Power has a no-kill rule. What Gohan has let go to rust is his willingness to be ruthless enough to remove an obstacle that has to be removed. That, I think, is the true meaning of the ‘training’ that everyone in universe harps on him for. Gohan’s always been softhearted, after all.

I will concede that it is very stupid that he apparently doesn’t recognize Piccolo’s ki when by all rights he’s probably the person most familiar with it. I consider that ‘out of character’, in that I have no clever explanation for it, but given that it isn’t load-bearing so the story functions, I mainly shrug and ignore it. That’s the healthy thing to do.

completely forgot to say... I *hate* how bulma is now. Nothing to the bulma we saw in Z, even at her most vexing she was never like the one we see right now. Genuinely massacred her

Personally I would be angrier about Videl in your position, because boy does she just not exist in Super. More to the point, I don’t know exactly what you mean by this. Unless I’ve misremembered/misread something, Bulma is still doing what she’s done from day one. She’s still smart. She’s still willing to try using her charm to get what she wants. She still builds things that are plot-crucial (Goku Black arc couldn’t have happened without her replicating her own time machine! Which she couldn’t have done had Future Bulma not counted on her and left her own notes!) She still wants to get a look at every would-be destroyer of Earth du jour, even though it’s really not a good idea. If you’re referring to her occasional shallowness/bitchiness/pettiness, that never went away, you know. That’s a pretty big part of Bulma.

Just wanted to leave that, drink some water

Cute, but I’ve been on the internet too long to get upset when a random stranger boos something I enjoy. Thanks for the opportunity to write way too many words about it though! 2500 of them, in fact! I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts on them.

#vegeta #son gohan #bulma briefs #dbz #dbs #dragon ball z #dragon ball super #text from the mod #long post #i'm not being sarcastic either tell me what you think #i swear i don't bite

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aurumacadicus · 8 months ago

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It's that time of month again, friends! And for June, we're doing something special: Queer-themed books, both a fiction and non-fiction selection! We'll be reading both over the course of five weeks. Tumblr will vote, and the book club will then vote among the top three in Discord. If you'd like to join the book club, send me a message and I'll send you a link to the discord! Keep an eye out for the other poll, and check out the books' summaries under the cut!

My Deary Henry – A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron

London, 1885. Gabriel Utterson, a 17-year-old law clerk, has returned to London for the first time since his life—and that of his dearest friend, Henry Jekyll—was derailed by a scandal that led to his and Henry’s expulsion from the London Medical School. Whispers about the true nature of Gabriel and Henry’s relationship have followed the boys for two years, and now Gabriel has a chance to start again.

But Gabriel doesn’t want to move on, not without Henry. His friend has become distant and cold since the disastrous events of the prior spring, and now his letters have stopped altogether. Desperate to discover what’s become of him, Gabriel takes to watching the Jekyll house.

In doing so, Gabriel meets Hyde, a strangely familiar young man with white hair and a magnetic charisma. He claims to be friends with Henry, and Gabriel can’t help but begin to grow jealous at their apparent closeness, especially as Henry continues to act like Gabriel means nothing to him.

But the secret behind Henry’s apathy is only the first part of a deeper mystery that has begun to coalesce. Monsters of all kinds prowl within the London fog—and not all of them are out for blood…

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense.

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth, first in The Locked Tomb Trilogy, unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap off the page, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without the cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.

Compulsory + All Systems Red by Martha Wells

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid – a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

Sophie Chi is in her first year of college (though her parents wish she’d attend a “real” university rather than a liberal arts school) and has long accepted her aroace (aromantic and asexual) identity. She knows she’ll never fall in love, but she enjoys running an Instagram account that offers relationship advice to students at her school. No one except her roommate can know that she’s behind the incredibly popular “Dear Wendy” account.

When Joanna “Jo” Ephron (also a first-year aroace college student) created their “Sincerely Wanda” account, it wasn’t at all meant to take off or be taken seriously—not like Wendy’s. But now they might have a rivalry of sorts with Wendy’s account? Oops. As if Jo’s not busy enough having existential crises over gender identity, whether she’ll ever truly be loved, and the possibility of her few friends finding The One then forgetting her!

While tensions are rising online, Sophie and Jo grow closer in real life, especially once they realize their shared aroace identity and start a campus organization for other a-spec students. Will their friendship survive if they learn just who’s behind the Wendy and Wanda accounts?

Exploring a-spec identities, college life, and more, while perfect for fans of Alice Oseman’s Loveless, this is ultimately a love story about two people who are not—and will not—be in love!

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.

Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.

Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places by Claire Kann

Lucky Hart has a special affinity for the supernatural but almost no one takes parapsychology seriously. She's estranged from her family, lost her friends, and has been rejected from graduate school. Twice. But her big break finally arrives when she gets insider info about a troubled production company. Every actor on their new show mysteriously quits after spending three nights inside Hennessee House, an old Victorian with a notorious reputation.

After scheming her way onto the show to investigate, Lucky meets Maverick Phillips and chemistry instantly crackles between them. He tempts her in ways no one ever has, challenging and supporting her, and making her finally feel seen. Their connection is so palpable everyone notices it—including Hennessee House.

Now Lucky and Maverick’s relationship has a challenger: the lonely, sentient house desperate for her undivided attention. As love begins to clash with career, Lucky refuses to choose one over the other because everyone deserves a happily ever after, even houses with haunted hearts. But when all her plans begin backfiring one-by-one, she realizes that if she wants to have it all? She’ll have to risk everything.

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.

Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop's owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.

But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.

When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

#polls #book club

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mcschnuggles · 8 months ago

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20 Questions For Fic Writers

Thank you @agerefandom for the tag!

1.) How many stories do you have on A03? 247 and counting!

2.) What's your total A03 word count? 961k! If all goes well I should break 1 mil by next Regressuary

3.) What fandoms do you write for? It's probably easier to list what I DON'T write for lol. I'll try everything at least once. I don't know at what point that became my brand but now I try to lean into it

4.) Top 5 fics by kudos? The Android Left Behind, Down Came the Building, Gods to the Rescue, Please Don't Take Off My Mask, and A Blessing or a Curse! The sad part is I don't think I like any of them anymore

5.) Do you respond to comments? I try to respond to every one but some definitely slip through the cracks and I feel guilty about it every time

6.) What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? That would have to be Queensguard. And yeah I did get rude comments because people didn't read the author's notes

7.) What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? If I had to pick one, I guess Taakito? Something about that tentative forgiveness, of moving forward together, has a special place in my heart. Also silly crack pairing. Good for Merle.

8.) Do you get hate on fics? Sometimes but not often. I've been called cringe before, I've been harassed, but most of that is all years ago at this point.

9.) Do you write smut? Absolutely not

10.) Craziest crossover? I don't really write crossovers, so it would have to be the P5/TUA crossover I did a couple years ago

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen? Oh dear what a week that was

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! A couple of my MCU fics were translated into Russian. The translator was very kind :)

13.) Have you co-written a fic before? Stuffkin and I collab on series but that's the closest I've gotten haha. I don't work well with others

14.) All-time favorite ship? Maxie/Archie. It's been 10 years at this point I think I've earned my gold card

15.) What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? I try to finish everything I post so I have a lot of P5 WIPs that I never posted and I can't see myself returning to. A fic about Joker's Palace, the New Mask Strikers fic, 2 vamp au fics, and the Akira and Ren as twin fics will probably never see the light of day :(

16.) What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, I think? And imagery, maybe. I don't really know anymore.

17.) What are your writing weaknesses? I feel like my writing is very rote and repetitive. It's missing something and I still don't know what.

18.) Thoughts on dialogue in another language? I try to avoid it if possible. I just know I can't do it well.

19.) First fandom you wrote in? We don't say its name.

20.) Favorite fic you've written? Oh jeez this is a hard one. I'm kind of in that limbo where I don't like anything I've written, but I guess I like heart of a pokemon, heart of a child best. At least, other people have told me it's good

#snug speaks #tag game

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dbfandom · 2 years ago

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Alright, characters and emojis.

As you know, the Japanese fandom really likes to use symbols to talk about characters, it's a way to code the language without showing up in search functions. These are usually used for shipping, but not always.

Some characters are more obvious than others, but for those who may seem a little far reached, I will write a small explanation.

Some are established fanon-accepted, but they're not really strongly claimed, so some artists will use the same emoji for different characters. (And as always if you like what I’m trying to do, consider buying me a drink or a doujin with ko-fi) (twitter version btw)

So here's my list for Dragon Ball (🐉) :p

Saiyans and half-saiyans:

Goku: 🥕 (Kakarot -> carrot) or 5️⃣9️⃣

Vegeta: 🥗

Broly: 🥦

Raditz: 🦔 (the hedgehog hair lol)

Turles: 🥬(Tullece -> lettuce) or 🍎 (because of the fruit obviously)

King Vegeta: 👑 or 🔱 (they aren’t super common)

Bardock and his squad: no established emoji that I've noticed, but 🍅 should be for Toma (Tora in English). 🌿 should be for Fasha (Selipa in Japanese, which are the syllables for parsley (pa-se-ri). I’ve seen someone use 🦀 or 🩸 (the headband) for Bardock.

Gine: 🧅 I’ve seen this one once!

Cumber: 🥒

Caulifla: I haven’t seen an established one that, but 🔥 works for her hair.

Kale: 🥬

Cabba: 🥬 yes Cabba (cabbage) and Kale (.. kale lol) share the same emoji. Context!

Gohan: 🍚 ("fried rice" as lunch; the term rice is used as a way to talk about the entire meal, even if it does not contain rice); for Future Gohan, you'll find it with the kanji 未 mi, from mirai (future). 5️⃣8️⃣ sometimes too. Add in 🐺 for the beast version!

Goten: 🍤(TENpura) sometimes 5️⃣🔟. Tenpura (tempura) is a type of fried food, and it's used for Goten because (go)ten(pura) (he's nicknamed "ten" by Trunks).

Trunks: 🐯(tora(nkusu); Tora means tiger); for Future Trunks, you'll find it with the kanji 未 mi, from mirai (future).

Bra: 👙 usually. Sometimes 👸

Pan: 🍞 (bread, obviously)

Earthlings:

Chichi: 🥛🍼(her name means milk; both are used)

Ox King: 🐂 (only seen it once, but that’s because I don’t see many drawings of him lol)

Bulma: 🩲(bloomers) but she sometimes gets 💙

Yamcha: 🐺 (wolf techniques)

Krillin: 🌰 (kuririn -> chestnut). Marron sometimes gets the same emoji

Videl: 😈 (Videl -> Devil)

Mr Satan: 🥇or 🏆. He’s the world champion!

Tenshinhan: 👁️

Chaozu: 👲(not super common but I did see it twice)

Launch: 🔫 but I’ve also seen 🎭

Roshi: 🐢

Farmer with a power level of 5: 🌽

Uub: I did see 🌴 used ONE TIME..

Maron: 🩱 I’ve seen it once.

Androids/Artificial humans:

Android 16: 1️⃣6️⃣ or 🤖

Android 17: 1️⃣7️⃣ or 🤖

Android 18: 1️⃣8️⃣ or 🤖

Cell: 🦗 grasshopper or cicada due to his first form. 🆑 and 🧬 have also been used.

Android 21: 🧁

Gammas: 1️⃣ / 2️⃣ or 🍓 (ichigo which is also number 1) and occasionally Γ or γ sometimes (not emojis but still lol)

Aliens:

Piccolo: 🅿️ or 🍏 (he gives apples to Gohan early on). ピ is also super common (it’s the first katakana of his name), but it’s not an emoji. 🍊 for orange piccolo obviously.

Nail: 🐌

Dende: 🫑 or 🌱 (seen it once..)

Frieza: ❄️ I’ve seen this one a couple of times. 🧊 and 🥶 are sometimes used too, for him, King Cold or Cooler.

Tapion: 🗡️

Gods and Kais:

Zamasu:🍵 (the tea he drinks)

Goku Black: 🌹 (a rose by any other name..)

Chronoa: 🕛 or any alternative like⌛️

Shin: 😏 I’ve seen this one used twice, but nothing definitive.

Fusions:

Gotenks: 👻 has happened a couple of times; (Ry has told me 🍩 is also used)

Gogeta: 🥐 (because of the jacket)

Vegito: 🍬 (because he's the strongest candy in the world in the Buu Saga).

Merged Zamasu: 🌀or ❇️

Kefla: 💥 (seen it a few times but not definite either)

Others:

Buu: 🍫

Janemba: 👺 (not super common)

Beerus: 🍺

Whis: 🥃 (😇 has also been used it seems)

Champa: 🍾 or 🥂

Special thanks to Whirly for nudging me to compile further and to Popo and the twitter folks for using those emojis religiously haha

#japanese to english #dragon ball #dragon ball Z #dragon ball super #emojis and emoticons #fandom help #fandom #db fandom #please RB and share <3

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marezablr · 11 months ago

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i just read your future gohan fic and it made me feel horrible both emotionally (as one does about him) and physically. your character writing is great and you absolutely nailed gohan's inner monologue and how he works. however im very curious as to how this 17/gohan thing occured to you, and why you decided to explore that? it took me by surprise and i even considered stopping reading (im glad i didn't tho) at first. future gohan's life and self-perception is already so awful so i wanted to know why you'd add to that in such a specifically unnerving way? specially since you clarify at the start that it's not a shipping thing, im really very curious on your thought process here. but yes great writing

thank you so much for reading! i very much understand the reservations, and i appreciate that you were willing to give it a chance. this answer is a bit long, because i wanted to try to fully, properly respond to what you're asking. so, here we go!

1) how it came to be:

i'd just played the dbz:kakarot dlc, and i had seen some art that made me feel some kind of way about future gohan, so i was browsing ao3 for fic, as one does. i encountered basically this premise in the summary of an explicit fic, and i… was very unnerved by it! a lot. fics will be what they will be! but this concept unsettled me.

but because of that, it stuck with me, and i ended up talking about why with a friend, to help me understand my own response. and in that discussion, i noticed that if you took that element of SA as a premise for a different type of story, a lot of concepts around agency and bodily autonomy that are relevant to the characters come up: gohan as a child soldier, with his right to decide the fate of his own body taken from him and, in this timeline, forever lost; the androids as victims of human experimentation, who had not just their bodies stolen but whose very minds were warped, so that the delight they have in their violent power over others is also the result of violence done to them—of their own minds ripped away and remade to someone else's design.

that resonated with something. so i started exploring ideas, and i ended up getting some concepts for a story that i liked, a story that felt like it was saying something about how people maintain integrity and assert agency in situations that try to take those things from them.

but i was still hesitant about the core premise, so i tried to find ways to write it out of the outline. i tested some things, but ultimately i realized i couldn’t get rid of that part of the story. it just didn't work without it. and it felt somehow cowardly for me to turn away from it? disrespectful, somehow, even? like…

there’s a way that 17 talks to gohan in the dbz:kakarot trunks dlc's english dub. 18 and 17 are both over-familiar with him, but 17 is mock-affectionate in a way that made me want to slap him. it made my skin crawl. and the type of violence addressed in "good loser" is not so distant from the violence that the androids and gohan both experience in canon: it's all violence that happens when someone decides that another person's body isn't theirs to control; instead, the body will be put to the perpetrator's purposes (for the androids, dr. gero’s plans; for gohan, piccolo’s vision of his potential vs the saiyans). (ofc there is a difference between piccolo and gero, which in "good loser" 17 refuses to see, but there IS also a similarity, which gohan refuses to see.)

and there's a link between those canonical violences and the uncomfortable way 17 talks to gohan. as a consequence of those experiences, the androids and gohan were set on a path where 17 and 18, in the bodies and minds that their abuser remade, would treat gohan as theirs to abuse and break, over and over, until they bored of him. and gohan could never back down, because of what he was made into—but also because of who he chooses to be

and that, i think, is 2) why i decided to explore it.

because the premise created a scenario where all those interrelated violences could be addressed, even if the characters resisted facing them. it pulled the uncomfortable truth of their experiences, and the situation they were now in, to the surface. if i wanted to tell a story that looked honestly at the way gohan's agency over his own body has been stolen from him by violence, and how that related to the androids' own loss of bodily and mental autonomy, i couldn’t run away from the idea that let me see it. i had to face it directly.

but if i was going to deal with it directly, i'd have to do so in a way that felt right to me.

so i decided on not doing any explicit content. aside from not wanting to write it, the absence worked better for the story i wanted to tell: 1) it reflected how gohan dissociated away from and repressed the experiences, and 2) it gave gohan a kind of meta-level agency. this is his story, in his pov, and he doesn’t want to share how he was victimized. so he gets to have that refusal.

i also knew i had to take seriously what this kind of violence means for the people involved. to take seriously what it would mean for 18, who was once a teen girl runaway, to see her brother perpetrate the type of violence that she was almost certainly threatened with, violence she may not be able to remember but that sticks deep in her subconscious. to take seriously 17’s mindset as a perpetrator, how he could justify and excuse it and not see what he was doing for what it was—how he could act like he and gohan were both contenders in a shared game, while at the same time enjoying how much he outclassed gohan, how he could differentiate himself to himself from the type of perpetrator his sister is trying not to see him as.

and most of all, i’d take seriously gohan’s experiences: not just the trauma and violation, but also the integrity and unflinching compassion, the deep love he has for the people he protects and for the people who protected him, the will he has to keep fighting even when it feels like a lost cause, because he believes someone else can build on his resistance and that one day that person will win.

that—gohan with his integrity and hope, doing all that he can to stop violence from happening to anyone else, if not now then tomorrow—that felt like the only way i'd feel right about writing this. that was the story that was meaningful to me, enough that, even in my discomfort, i wanted to tell it. i wanted to write more than resilience: i wanted to write gohan's resistance.

in the end, i had to accept that it would be unnerving as a premise, and i couldn't run away from it. all i could do was try my best to write it with care.

thanks again for reading, and for asking this question! it means a lot to me that you were willing to give the story a try. i hope this answer explains how it came to happen, and why i took the approach i did. if you want any clarifications or have any other questions, definitely let me know!

#peridotite #asks

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canyoufucksoniccharacters · 11 months ago

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ilvr

Our favorite boy!! I think this is a good way to start talking about the heavy hitters for this blog, and gets us on our way to talking about the blue blur himself.

Unfortunately, I'm probably gonna be breaking a lot of hearts on this one, probably. Let's get to it, why don't we?

Can you fuck Silver The Hedgehog?

Alright, let's get started. As always, we're gonna look for an official source- and Sonic Channel is the only official source on this matter. I've got to clarify, again- these ages are no longer listed. They were removed around the time of Frontiers' release; around October of 2022, specifically. So, these are taken from the Wayback Machine.

Alright's let's see here...

This is... Our youngest yet! Or, well, allegedly youngest, anyways. Again, these ages no longer hold any weight (if they ever did, anyways, which they likely didn't.) since they're unlisted. Unlike the other ones, this one doesn't seem to be sourced from anywhere. I could check every single manual for every game Silver has been in, but that's way above my paygrade. I checked 06, and ages are listed absolutely nowhere. However...

I can tell you for sure that this age is actually not baseless. Let's quote Shun Nakamura, game designer for Sonic Team. Before the release of Sonic 06, The Sonic Stadium conducted an interview with Nakamura. One of the questions was this;

"Silver is young and a little immature, but that's also what attracts me."

Silver was, from the start, written and designed as a young and inexperienced character. It really does show, too- in just about all his depictions, he's much less mature than both Sonic and Shadow, the characters he resembles the most. He's just about always depicted as a rookie, still learning; which is admittedly not inherently a trait of a young person, as even adults are still learning every day and can be inexperienced in whatever field they're thrown into, but it's very clear Silver's youth is meant to be linked to his inexperience.

Additionally, this isn't an outdated statement at all- after all, IDW can help us out here!

This is repeated again in Issue 64, the one right after the one this is sourced from, Issue 63.

Note the different background color... Despite everything else being the same.

These profiles are used on the start of Issue recaps. Although you might question me using IDW as proof, there's good reason to believe it's either canon or pretty damn accurate to the source material. In the form of...

youtube

Confirmation from Ian Flynn himself! Reminder, he's the main writer for these games now! He wrote Frontiers, and likely will keep writing Sonic Games going forward. He also writes most of the stuff for IDW, so that's worth taking into account. So either IDW is canon, or it reflects the canon of the games.

To top it all off, a personal point that I'm bringing up purely for my own nerdy reasons- Silver's inspiration.

Here's a quote from the leaked script of Sonic 06;

"He possesses some special powers which can draw upon the Emeralds. It is unknown how he got these powers, though. Essentially, think Trunks from Dragon Ball Z."

The character being talked about here is Future Trunks, a time traveler from the future who goes back in time to warn the cast about the Androids that destroyed his future, so they can train in preparation for the invasion, as well as giving Goku medicine for a heart virus he succumbed to in the timeline Trunks comes from.

Trunks, much like Silver, is young and inexperienced- being 17 years old at the time of his arrival in the present. He does later go into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, a space where one year inside the chamber equals to one day outside of it, so by the end of the arc he's older, but still- he's young, most certainly underage, inexperienced, rash, and has a very strong sense of justice. Trunks is the direct inspiration for Silver, it's has been stated as such. So, with all this, it makes sense that Silver would be younger than everyone else around him, as was the case for Trunks.

So, with all this, Silver is undeniably younger than everyone around him, and it can't really be by a slight amount, otherwise it wouldn't be considered an important part of his character. This still holds true to this day, if IDW is anything to go by. Although he does have one slight saving grace- the passage of time. Time absolutely does pass between Sonic games, with at minimum a year and a half having passed since the modern series began (1 year due to Sonic's birthday in Generations, 6 months from the Forces timeskip) as well as, less verifiably but still worth taking into account, the PSN description for Sonic Heroes saying the game takes place 5 months after Adventure 2. There's some leeway for him to be of age in modern day, and it will get more likely as the series goes on, but it's a small margin.

Conclusion:

Silver is, most likely, underage. He's seemingly the youngest non-child character, he's consistently portrayed as inexperienced and naive, and overall, it's very very unlikely he's an adult. The chance isn't 0%, admittedly; again, the passage of time in the series gives him some leeway, and that leeway will only get larger as the series continues, so there's some small chance that he's an adult, aka able to consent, but it's small. You would be playing a risky game, and I could not possibly bring myself to endorse it.

So, the verdict is;

You, most likely, cannot fuck Silver The Hedgehog. There's a small chance that you can, but it's very small, and I would not recommend risking it.

not sorry for the Dragon Ball side tangent. it's good. really good.

#silver the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #sth #status: likely unfuckable

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artikgato · 1 month ago

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Long post about Dragon Ball ahead!

Today I went to an actual movie theater and watched a screening of the first three episodes of the English dub of Daima. It was a lot of fun! And very nostalgic. Spoilers and reminiscing under the cut.

I was around when Dragon Ball Z was airing on Toonami back in the day. I didn't have regular access to cable so I didn't get to see any of it as it actually aired. I didn't watch the Saiyan or Namek stuff at all until much later, borrowing some friends' DVDs. I did, however, catch reruns of the Trunks - Androids - Cell sagas in the summer of 2001. That summer I was staying with relatives who did have cable. I was enthralled; I don't think I missed a single episode. I was actually pretty bummed when I had to go back to not having cable in the fall, because I knew they were going to be airing the Buu arc (it was very heavily advertised, and was probably the reason they were rerunning the Cell stuff in the first place). After that summer, though, I was hooked. I used chore money to buy some of the movies on VHS (Lord Slug and Cooler's Revenge for sure, kinda wish I still had them) and a substantial amount of the Buu saga either on VHS or DVD when VHS got phased out. So, even though it was not nearly as well written or paced as the earlier parts of DBZ, the Buu arc holds a very special place in my heart. It was what I watched through high school. (I was also the same age as Gohan, so that was fun.)

So, Daima taking place shortly(?) after the end of the Buu arc hit me in the nostalgia in a way I wasn't really expecting. I went into this knowing very little other than everybody got turned into little kids for Reasons, and the animation is very pretty. I assumed it was going to take place during or post-Super, because why wouldn't it? So, seeing that familiar cast of characters and hearing those familiar dub performances sent me straight back to my high school days (which was over 20 years ago now, get off my lawn, etc.), spending lazy Saturday afternoons watching any episodes I could get copies of on my old ass, tiny ass CRT TV. (I watched a lot of anime that way.)

Also within the first ten, fifteen minutes of episode 1 I was slapped (metaphorically) with a reminder that I had an embarrassingly big crush on this little nerd back in the day:

(did I choose the least flattering possible picture of Shin? Yes.)

To be fair (or maybe unfair) to me, I was Weird with a capital W back in high school. I had female friends who also watched DBZ. They all had sensible taste in men: Future Trunks (I mean, yeah, of course), Vegeta, high school age Gohan, Goku, even Android 17. I was the one going "okay but Piccolo is kinda hot, right?" to which they replied "the green slug man??" So I'm in high schooI and watching the Buu arc and this purple-skinned, perpetually anxious loser nerd shows up and I go "Oh??? Sign me the fuck up." And then 20 years later (I'll admit, I did not watch Super. I guess I need to fix that) I'm watching this and then I go "oh, right, Shin is hot, I forgot."

This had been, of course, after staring at his younger brother Degesu for like 10 minutes during the intro of episode 1 and going "oh no he's hot oh no he's hot oh no he's hot". And then also his sister Dr. Arinsu (not sure if she's the eldest sibling or younger than Shin) and going "oh no she's hot too oh no she's hot too" and etc. etc. But I mean, come on, can you blame me? (You can. You should, you should judge me for my weird taste. I'm not going to call it poor taste, because you know I'm right.) I mean, look at them:

(High school me would not have been going "oh no she's hot". I've come a long way.)

But, okay, y'all didn't come here for my apparent bias towards characters from the demon realm (oh, right, it turns out that Shin's people are from the demon realm and are actually demons and not gods. And Namekians are also from the demon realm and are not just alien slug men. Actually everybody with pointy ears is from the demon realm or has an ancestor from the demon realm. Go figure.).

Anyway, I've only watched the first three episodes, but so far it is really good! The action sequences were very well choreographed and animated (the fight with the burgers was SO GOOD THOUGH), the dub voice acting was stellar, and seeing all the main cast turned into kids was phenomenally entertaining. This is what GT should have been. I'll never get over realizing I was looking at a like 12 year old Master Roshi, who continued to speak like an old geezer even with the voice of a 12 year old. 10/10. (Also he has to be related to Krillin, the resemblance is uncanny.) Angery little kid Vegeta was amazing. Teenage-ish Piccolo was great, too, because we got to see him as a little kid in Dragon Ball and as an adult in DBZ, but never in this inbetween teenage stage. I wish we'd gotten to see more of the more secondary and tertiary characters, maybe that'll be in later episodes. Normally I would hate this, but it was hilarious. In GT it was just weird and off-putting to only have Goku as a little kid, but with everyone else as kids he just fits right in.

I'm definitely going to track down episodes 4 and up (I think Japan is up to 6 this week?) and keep watching. I don't think I can patiently wait for the dub like I did for the first three, so subbed it is for now. I don't typically watch DBZ in Japanese because I grew up with the dub, but I'm too interested to see where this plot is going. (And if they're going to give Degesu and Arinsu more screen time. Shin's already getting a lot, which I am very happy about.) I'm also very interested to see if anybody else got turned into a kid. Like Gohan. Are we getting Cell Games age Gohan? I hope so. But also, what other characters were included in that wish? Tien and Chaotzu? Launch? Android 17? Yajirobe? Videl? Ox King was kid-ified, but Korin wasn't. I need answers. Also we were robbed, Korin should have been a kitten.

Also also, I think they should have kept the kids who were already kids the same age they already were. Imagine little kid Vegeta being physically the same age as kid Trunks. Imagine it. I fully get why they just turned them into babies, but imagine.

#dragon ball #dragon ball daima #i'm old okay

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measuringbliss · 4 months ago

Text

Spider-Man Read-Through 077 Vulture, Wings of Vengeance (ASM 240-243, Ann 17)

MASTERPOST

Ah, my favorite moment: going to sleep at 9pm and waking up at 1am. Welp, I guess it's Spidey time!

You know, when I think of the Vulture, two stories come in mind. The first one is the murder mystery in the middle of the Harry Osborn New Goblin saga, and the second one is a more recent one, when the Vulture is at a care home and gets influenced by Nathan.

Which type shall we see today?

Vulture backstory! I don't know if I'm fond of this cover or if I hate it. The blue is gorgeous though. Still, in this post, the Vulture slays 💅 And he's not the only one. Everyone's bisexual here!

Also: the return of Mary Jane! Which is a problem, given that Spidey has just entered a relationship with Black Cat...

Aww this is a really cute way to credit the team! (+ colors by Bob Sharen and Shooter as editor in chief).

When Toomes gets an offer to play gin rammy with fellow old people, he thinks, "Gin rammy? I wish my generation displayed a little more ambition." Like killing people and stealing stuff.

Learning that Gregory Bestman, a guy he doesn't like, is working in NYC, Toomes is pissed off and asks for a flight. So he won't use his suit? That's surprising, but oh well.

Meanwhile, Peter's having a nightmare.

I like how his hair's drawn!

Amy Powell wants to get a hold of him, but he's already left.

The Vulture thinks to himself he would have been just as fast flying to NYC alone, which, yup, absolutely.

After a nostalgic trip near Midtown High, Peter learns that Anna is about to visit May. Yay! Nathan's elated because he finally has cable TV. Ah, technology! And this is how Peter learns that the Vulture is back. Tired of letting all his foes (him, Ock and the Hobgoblin) get away, he very much intends to fix things.

The fight is nice, and it ends with Spidey being shocked and Bestman being an idiot.

Oh I love that panel.

The comments tell me this issue had "Lonesome" Pinky's last appearance, which is sad because he was a real highlight.

In #241 (already!), MJ's back in town with Anna.

Meanwhile, Spidey steals a radio from Keating to track the Vulture, and track him, he does...

What does he find?

OH. He's Toomes's ex! I had a feeling and almost made the joke, but I didn't expect so much closeness. Hell yeah, we love to see it.

In his flashback, Toomes says "The months of slaying have paid off!"

...Okay, he says "slaving", not "slaying", I misread that. But still!

The backstory isn't anything special, Bestman betrayed Toomes, Toomes got his revenge, but now he wants more revenge because Bestman being successful is outrageous.

Interestingly, the issue features a lot of low-ground action; it's on Staten Island, and then there's this:

You don't see Spidey on that level that often.

The Vulture is caught, Keating decides Bestman will be investigated, all's well that ends well.

Later, at the Bugle, Amy speaks to Petey.

Yeah, let's deal with that!

In the letters, everyone's enthuastic about Monica Rambeau (as I am!) and praises the Romita team-up (me too!).

In #242: "The menace of the mad thinker and his awesome android"! I'm never fond of robots in Spider-Man comics...

Today's the day Peter finds out if ESU will still have him! But the final results are posted for everything, except biophysics...

Sloan gets antagonistic again (I'm starting to think I preferred Miles Warren!), but he explains that since Debra's no longer here, he doesn't have a secretary and needs another day to correct the exams. Peter asks if Debra's alright (that's a first!) and Sloan answers that it seems so, but she has a lot of things to think about.

I'm annoyed that we don't get to see Peter's date with Amy (it's still not clear why he would even entertain her...), but I love those dice on Lance's car.

Peter's so gorgeous.

So he's clearly on a date with Lance, because Lance takes him out in his car, he buys him a drink and confides his deepest desires.

Dear readers, I'm kind of digging their relationship and might ship them. I'm happy that Lance's not so antagonistic and actually asks for Peter's help (kind of). If it'd been written earlier, they would have come to fists.

Relatably, Peter doesn't care about these mind games and decides to settle the thing right here and there.

HAHAHAHAHA. Peter's faces are priceless.

Peter leaves and thinks, "I thought Amy was just a sweet lady" hahaha you dumbass. Come on.

In Chelsea, MJ asks Ms. Muggins if Peter's home, and leaves unsuccessful.

In his cell, the Thinker, a F4 foe, has been doing some thinking and has decided to confront Spidey for the lulz with his psychic robot commanding power or whatnot.

That last bubble... Hahaha.

Spidey stops the robot, wonders about who commanded it, meanwhile the Thinker is now certain Spidey can sense incoming danger.

Later, at Peter's appartment...

Peter's top is kind of nice.

Oh.

And then...

Oops.

MJ looks snazzy. Is there something to say about gender here? It's not the first time she has a semi-masculine outfit...

What a stellar issue, it would have been even greater if the villain was more compelling but it's alright.

In the letters...

Awwww!

Dear readers, I'm here for whatever messiness we can see in #243!

I mean, were they? MJ didn't accept the proposal, so...

Amy's pissed off that Lance's here, so she storms off.

Lance is SO funny hahaha

When MJ asks if she missed anything, Peter answers, "not much". Which is true. Not a lot has happened in six years of publication...

Anyway, Peter quickly explains the situation and she's amused. Still, she only came here to tell Peter she was back and give him his keys back.

Amy didn't take back her basket of food, which has a "Château Armando" wine from 1966. The year is vaguely significant for being when Romita took over Ditko, but aside from that...

Anyway, Spidey ends up going out (the narration says he's the "Spectacular Spider-Man", which is usually kept to its respective magazine, and ditto for "Amazing Spider-Man"...) to ESU to find Connors (haven't seen him in a while!) to get more info about the piece of the robot he retrieved last issue. Connors can only say it comes from a robot (no shit, Sherlock), then Sloan arrives, Spidey says they did meet (in SSM 34! I sure didn't remember before he mentioned it) and discreetly checks out his grade. It's an A. He passed! Good for him.

Thanks to Roger Stern, Spidey's consistently funny again. This is excellent.

You know, I'm happy that Connors hasn't been the Lizard in years, it feels great to know that at least some evolutions have staying power.

In a café, Lance and Amy rekindle. Aww!

Because we need action in Spidey comics (I can do without, but not the audience apparently), some goons attack a church or something.

I couldn't get a confirmation, but it looks like the same church as the first page of ASM #153. Anyway, the right panel is great.

Hahaha.

After a quick visit at the Bugle, Spidey goes to see Felicia (remember most of their story has been in SSM, so it's surprising!).

Oh, MJ's positively hideous here.

I have a feeling I'm developing something for that kind of kiss. Not sure what does it. Look, I'm even gonna have to make another post to review the annual, can you believe it?

Such a great panel, once more.

As Spidey swings, we get all kinds of reminders that time exists, which doesn't sound good because this is very TASM2-like. Spidey's worried about the usual, + Black Cat's medical bills. Maybe she should return to thievery...

Later, at ESU, fellow student Roger Hochberg finds Peter...

It's hilarious how ugly the faces can be suddenly, but also... poor Roger, he looks so sad :( We basically never saw him, but baby did nothing wrong.

Such a good idea, what the hell. I love this page's composition, and the close-up in particular. Extremely solid.

In the letters, everyone loves the Hobgoblin (unsurprising!), and one letter lists every clue... and concludes it must be Jameson. Hahaha, I don't think so! (Watch it being him and me being blindsided.)

In the comments, I learn that the robot question is dropped. I'm fine with that.

For Annual 17, Bill Mantlo and Roger Stern write together! Stern plots, Mantlo scripts! How interesting.

For Kingpin lovers, we see him in a tight G-string, if that's your thing.

So Peter's invited at a Midtown reunion, and who else is there but Harry and Liz, yay! And Liz is pregnant. Ooh, here you go, little Goblin Jr.!

Everyone at the party looks like they're 50 or 60, which isn't exactly encouraging.

You can bet your ass people will stay similar things to me when I'm thirty. "Still translating video games?!"

That barista is not only gorgeous, but also very likely bisexual.

Peter thinks they admire him, but I'm not so sure.

Flash's here too. He and Peter are besties now, yay! They reference a future plot (SSM 85, haven't gotten there yet).

C.J. Vogel arrives, and Peter remembers him as his first gay crush his classmate who would distract his bullies with jokes. He may have inspired Spidey's constant joking...

Later, Peter sees C.J. and Louie Minelli chatting very mysteriously about one Remington Colt... Hmm!

At the Bugle, Ned and Betty helpfully inform Peter that that name is actually a pen name used by dozens of writers of... unchristian stories.

Also, Milton Farr was abducted by the mob. Farr is the publisher of the raunchy stories.

No way I'm summarizing that.

Spidey saves C.J., and when C.J. wakes up, he explains the situation to Peter. He wrote under the Remington Cole pseudonym, but he's now about to write for a children's TV show, and Minelli knew about the previous fact. Minelli threatened C.J. to tell people if he didn't take the package to the warehouse.

C.J. soon leaves Peter's appartment, and thinks that Peter, being "a newshound", might betray him. Consequently, he decides to get Farr's evidence on him by himself.

Spidey finds the file and leaves, but C.J. gets there and is held at gunshot by Louie. Turns out Louie was also a Remington Colt and was tired of hearing praise about his predecessor.

C.J. ends up burning the files, to Spidey's dismay, who wanted to use them to get the Kingpin in prison. As if! He gets faux philosophical about it.

Later, at the reunion, C.J.'s jokes make his classmates uncomfortable. And while Minelli gets arrested for the murder of Farr, Peter calls out C.J. in the backstage.

Lmaooooo Peter, you look frankly ridiculous. Bill Mantlo, that issue was oddly preachy and unsubtle.

The concept was neat but I wasn't very fond of it in the end.

Oh well, they can't all be winners!

#peter parker #spider-man #comics #comic books #amy powell #mary jane watson #lance bannon #the vulture

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radellama · 5 months ago

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20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @kanonavi , thank you!!

1. How many fics do you have on AO3?

Five on main, one and a half on the side lol

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

Main: 60,314

Side: 5,776

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Basically just chrono trigger atm. Written for legend of Zelda and Castlevania in the past, but they're dormant/hiatus until I have time and insp again (and a one-word fic for NBC Hannibal lol)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Well. I only got five lol. The one with the most is my hylink one soooo. Niche of niche

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes!! I try to respond to all of them, especially if someone's taken the time to write a detailed comment for me. I really appreciate it, and have fond memories of making friends with some of my fave authors because I was a regular commenter!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Haven't finished any lol. Unless you count the one shot/drabble stuff but like. I don't lol. I love angst and I'm sure half the lost fics I would've written as a teen that I barely remember were angsty to a comical degree, but if I had finished my hylink fic that might be the angstiest 😏

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Talking planned endings since I haven't finished... My ct uni au, cause it's not meant to have an ending LMAO. It's basically a drabble collection haha. Otherwise... Idk... Maybe my st au ending? It's not sunshine and roses, but it has a nice ending that gives me a similar satisfying wrap up that various star trek finales have given me.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not that I can recall... There's some pushy and rude people I've had in the past but nothing enough that I can remember lolll

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeas 😏 I'll write anything now I've kinda overcome the juvenile feelings I had over it... I'd just get embarrassed and didn't know how to unpack that lolll. I don't think I have any published atm but that's why I have the side, I've def drawn stuff tho 😏👍

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've written?

Not really. The closest I get is stuff like my star trek au, where I've made a universe heavily inspired by star trek and have the ct characters play a certain unique to that world.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hope not 😑

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

13. Have you ever co written a fic before?

Yeah!! One of the vague memories of my early teen years writing I had this cool android dystopian fic for some characters I made with a friend, it was super fun but we never finished cause we both progressively got busier through the end of high school... Oh also I had this one fic I'd write with my sister and it was one of the rare times we got along growing up, aaand this one 'fic' that's grown into its own thing that I've had with one of my besties since we were 14, we've talked about adapting it to be it's own original thing so it didn't come to mind at first cause it's now it's own thing and not a fic lol.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Magland lmao. Specially crafted to be an all time favourite, what can I say?

15. What's a Wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I'm hoping to get to all the big ones I wanna write eventually... I don't wanna write off anything just yet... I won't finish some of the old shit I never published cause it wasn't finished enough LMAOOO

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think that it's characterisation and world building. They're what I enjoy a lot and put huge amounts of effort into behind the scenes so I can confidently obscure it for the reader in ways that are fun to reveal without it feeling like bullshit made up on the fly

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I wanna say dialogue but I've had compliments on it in the past.. it's just hard making sure it all sounds like them and not just me saying shit through them haha. Otherwise, I think I get stuck in scene transitions or when things need to have more added or cut out stuff to have a more natural feeling end. I'll get there eventually if I have the time, but..eh

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Depends how it's handled, I think! If you're writing a bilingual character, or the scene takes place in a location that isn't the language the book is primarily written in, that can be kinda fun. I think I'd be more interested in knowing if and how the reader will get translations, whether the characters in that scene get translations or just understand that language, ect. To be picky and snooty about it, I don't think I've ever come across good styles of this in fic, cause there's not the same guidelines and such for traditionally published books, but like. Whatever lol. It's interesting to me, especially when you get to the territory of made up languages. Depends on the world, the setting and the scene for me I guess

19. First fandom you ever wrote for?

Probably Loz or CT when I was a kid lol

20. Favourite fic you've written?

So far, my st au. Sorry Harland

I've just put so much effort into it and it's been years in the making, it'll take years to continue, but I'm still working on it slowly so. Can't wait to finish it, got massive plans

Not tagging anyone cause I can't be bothered, but if you wanna do these, just say I did!

#tagged #kanonavi #thank youuuu it's fun talking about my fics #i need to work on them some more soon...

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paraemu · 8 months ago

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ok like i said on twitter here's a bullet point list on my dragon ball yaoi opinions

Goku/Vegeta: i know this is most popular for obvious reasons but this is a classic case of fujos deluding themselves. im not gonna say vegeta hasn't experienced some level of attraction towards goku but like he fully does love bulma and i genuinely dont think goku is capable of romantic or sexual attraction. that said i think their relationship as it is in canon is pretty interesting even without putting on the yaoi goggles

Gohan/Piccolo: this one i kind of get. people want gohan to have yaoi and he does have a pretty special bond with piccolo but this bond is explicitly a father/son thing. piccolo literally says in the show that gohan is like his own son. "piccolo is technically around the same age as gohan" he was obviously mentally an adult when gohan was a toddler so dont even try honestly

Gohan/Dende: if you REALLY need to ship gohan with a man this is your only real choice. its cute and had a lot potential pre-saiyaman saga but after videl i can only see it being one-sided. poor dende

Gohan/Trunks: ok this one needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis so lets break it down

Future Trunks/Future Gohan: after everyone else died gohan probably had to help bulma change trunks's diapers and keep him entertained and stuff so trunks was like a little brother to him. for trunks though gohan was this really cool masculine ideal that he was chasing after and i think its not a stretch to say those feelings took on a distinctly non-plantonic tint during puberty even tho he knew gohan would never see him that way. its safe to say gohan was future trunks's first (and only?) love

Future Trunks/Present Gohan: the roles have been inverted, now trunks is the cool powerful adult and gohan is the kid trying to match his strength. i think if they had been able to spend enough time one-on-one gohan might've developed a similar crush but with how little they saw each other and how high tension the situation was he was just left with the feeling that long hair really suited him...

Present Trunks/Present Gohan: we know canonically gohan was on babysitting duty for goten and trunks both. they have a brotherly relationship and trunks thinks gohan is kind of lame for being a nerd but he still looks up to him at times. no yaoi to be found this time around

Goten/Trunks: NOW we're talking! this is the crowning jewel of dragon ball yaoi. they grew up together, they're best friends who spend all their time together, they're the poster boys of fusion, they're literally attached at the hip. its got everything you could ask for in a good ship. case in point: gt and super both tried to make them het and they still haven't managed to put a single dent on their popularity. i hope they get married and have full saiyan babies

Whis/Bills: i love this one. they're such old gay queens who have been married since the down of time. im surprised its not more popular tbh, i think their involvement is blatant. couldnt have picked a better duo to relaunch the franchise

Whis/Goku, Whis/Vegeta: ok the way whis keeps checking out goku and vegeta is INSANE. he's not even trying to be subtle. that said i dont think he actually wants to fuck them hes just a muscle fan and they both remain oblivious

Android 17/Piccolo: ???? this is popular on twitter and idk why. ik they fought each other but nothing remotely bait-y happened in that fight. im chalking this one up to 17 is the only twink in db and ppl are desperate to have someone to ship him with

Yamcha/Tenshinhan: another pair the spares type of situation. its valid ig i just don't give a fuck about either of them. also i think tenshinhan is married to chaoz

Mr. Satan/Majin Buu: I SEE NO DIFFERENCE LOVE IS LOVE!!! ok jokes aside this one is literally canon. look at this figure and tell me it isnt

#ill come back to this if there are any relevant ships i forgot but thays it for now #db posting

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duhragonball · 2 years ago

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Dragon Ball GT 42

✨GT Stands for Gero’s Teammate✨

All right, so we’ve reached the final leg of GT. The series began with the Black Star Dragon Balls and then changed course into the Baby Saga, and now both of those things are in the rear-view mirror. The big question is, where does GT go from here?

Unfortunately, the answer is “not very far.”

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

All right, so let’s get this out of the way, since this is easily the most creatively bankrupt part of the series.

In DBZ, Dr. Gero created Android 17 as part of plot to kill Goku.

In DBGT, Dr. Gero and a second Dr. Gero create a second Android 17 as part of a plot to kill Goku.

That’s what we’re doing.

Let’s dive a little deeper here. So Dr. Mu was killed in Episode 22. As you may recall, he was the Machine Mutant scientist who thought he was the evil mastermind behind Baby, the Machine Mutant army on M2, and the Luud Cult, but then Baby revealed that he had created Mu, and not the other way around. So Mu seemed to be a clueless puppet, someone who thought he was important, but then turned out to be nothing special.

And yet, after Baby, Mu is pretty much the top bad guy in GT. I think the logic was that they needed to dip into the GT Rogues’ Gallery for the next arc, sort of like how Batman will fight the Joker in one story and the next one will have him fight Riddler or Penguin. Except GT’s “Rogues’ Gallery” sucks eggs. It’s Baby, then a bunch of idiots who worked for Baby, and then Ledgic and that one asshole who predicted earthquakes. Dr. Mu’s kind of the only choice, here, but I can’t overstate how weak this is.

Like, okay. So Mu is dead, and Dr. Gero approaches him in hell and says he says he needs his expertise in Tuffle science. That makes sense, except Mu isn’t a Tuffle. I don’t think he even knew what Tuffles were, because he seemed to have no idea what Baby’s true nature was, or that all of the science he knew was given to him by Baby. So why doesn’t Gero just go find Baby instead? He’s dead too, right? Goku blasted him into the sun. And don’t tell me Baby went to heaven.

Also, unlike Mu, Baby has a grudge against Goku. I mean, sure, Mu probably doesn’t like Goku either, but Goku didn’t kill Mu. Baby killed Mu, and Goku killed Baby. So you’d think Mu would be writing Goku a thank-you card.

Actually, while we’re at it, let’s talk about Dr. Gero. In DBZ, he wanted to kill Goku to avenge the destruction of the Red Ribbon Army. This was later retconned to a more personal grudge. Gero had a son, Gevo, who was killed during Goku’s attack on Red Ribbon HQ. And that made perfect sense in DBZ, when Gero was still alive. But now he’s dead, and it wasn’t Goku who killed him; it was Android 17. So you’d think Gero would now be more angry at 17 than Goku. But he’s not trying to get revenge on 17. No, he’s making another 17. Somehow, Dr. Gero has been in hell for 23 years and he seems to think that his fatal mistake was in not having enough Android 17′s.

Anyway, the two doctors somehow build a copy of 17. He even has all the same clothes he wore in DBZ, which is oddly specific. Somehow, this duplicate 17 is in contact with the still-living original 17 on Earth, and the two of them can produce some sort of energy that opens up a portal connecting Hell with Earth. How did Gero and Mu pull this off? We never find out, because they did all this off-screen.

Phase 2 of the plan is to send a bunch of dead bad guys through the portal to attack the Earth. So we’re not just ripping off the Androids Saga. We’re also ripping off the B-plot of Fusion Reborn.

Phase 3 will be to get the original 17 and the duplicate 17 to merge together, which will produce an invincible Super 17. Sort of like DBZ Movie 7, where Android 13 combined with parts from his comrades to become Super 13. So for those of you keeping score, this arc is now ripping off the Androids Saga and two of the DBZ movies.

So, this arc is off to a pretty weak start. Don’t get me wrong, this could work. Ripping off all these old DBZ stories is cheap, but it does make a pretty solid premise for an action-adventure story. In the hands of a great creative team, this could have turned out to be a lot of fun. But it’s Toei, and it’s GT, and by now I think we see their track record for this sort of thing.

Again, the point I’m trying to make with this segment is not that GT isn’t allowed to borrow ideas. The point is to poke holes in the idea that GT “had some good ideas”. It didn’t. There isn’t a single new idea in this whole episode. It’s just a mashup of stuff we’ve seen before. And that could still be okay, but it’s that “poor execution” that damns the series.

✨Positivity Page✨

How can combining 17 with himself make him stronger? Well, this is the one part of the plan that they bother to explain. According to Gero, he had designed 17 to be the ultimate android, or cyborg, or whatever you want to call him. He even says in this episode that 17 was meant to be even stronger than Cell turned out to be. But 17 never achieved his true potential. Gero blames this on his failure to completely erase 17′s former identity when he rebuilt him into a cyborg. I’m not sure I follow that logic, but we do know 17 was never truly loyal to Gero, so maybe what Gero is saying is that he had to leave out certain powers from 17′s design, because he couldn’t be trusted.

But the way Gero says it, it sounds like he means 17′s disloyalty made him weaker somehow. Anyway, Gero seems to have solved that problem, because the duplicate is completely under his control, and he original 17 seems to be doing what they want him to do. And the duplicate contains special upgrades and enhancements that the original lacks, so when they merge together, they’ll finally become the ultimate artificial warrior that Gero had intended from the start.

And you know, I guess that does sort of add up, now that I think about it. I’ve always balked at this explanation for Super 17, because the whole point of Cell was that he was Gero’s “ultimate weapon”, except he kind of wasn’t. Cell was a failsafe, something Gero gave up on because it was taking too long to finish.

So I guess the narrative here is that Gero planned to achieve the ultimate android in #17, but he couldn’t suppress 17′s personality, so he had to nerf 17. Then he made 18, perhaps as a second try, and she had the same problems, so he put both of them in storage, for fear that they’d turn on him. He ended up designing 19, using some different powers that weren’t included in 17 and 18, but given what we know about Super 17, it seems like the idea was to have one android with all of those powers, and some more besides.

Anyway, since 17 didn’t work out the way Gero planned, he tried to create Cell as a way to salvage the project. But Cell would only combine with 17 by literally consuming him (and 18). He’d become incredibly powerful, but not necessarily as powerful as the original Super 17 design. But Gero had to settle for that, because it was the only way to approach Super 17 power levels while also eliminating 17 as a potential threat.

But now, with Dr. Mu’s help, and 23 years in hell to consider the problem, Gero thinks he can finally build Super 17 the way he wanted from the start. And that kind of makes sense too, because it took Gero’s computer about 20 years to finish making Cell, and you have to figure that Gero could improve on that in the same amount of time, especially when he has the completed Cell available for reference.

So I don’t know, it’s not all terrible. But it is mostly terrible. Also, I like this mad scientist toast that Gero and Mu share.

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

This episode is pretty much focused on setting up the plot, which is a good thing in principle, but it takes a really roundabout way to get there. I just explained Gero and Mu’s scheme, but I had to jump back and forth across this episode’s runtime to do it. Let me run through these scenes in order to give you an idea of the problem here.

So we open on Goku’s house, I think? It looks like Mt. Paozu, except there’s a town around them. Anyway, the Son Family is having Bulma, Trunks, and Bulla over for dinner. Trunks is running late, and then he shows up and collapses in Pan’s arms. He says “17″, and passes out.

Then the good guys notice the giant hellhole in the sky, and King Kai contacts Goku to tell him what that is. He doesn’t know how it happened, though. Also, King Kai has a cold for some reason, and I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a plot point, or if they just wanted to do something different with his visual.

We get a lot of panicky Earthlings reacting to the Hellhole, and then we find out Mu and Gero are behind it, and they explain their plan, which I’ve already covered.

Then Trunks wakes up at Goku’s house, and he explains what happened to him. He was on his way over for dinner, when the original 17 ambushed him, beat him up, then told him about the Hellhole. Note that a lot of this information has already been explained elsewhere, but this is how Goku finds out about it. The only new detail in this scene is that 17 told Trunks to send a message to Goku, challenging him to face the bad guys in hell.

After Trunks tells his story, the gang sees a news report about all the dead villains invading, and Goku decides the only thing to do is take the fight to Hell before Cell and Frieza come to Earth. Again, we’re just sort of rehashing the basic problem. King Kai told Goku about this Hellhole problem early on, so we didn’t really need 17 and the news media explaining that dead bad guys could come through it to get revenge.

So we can finally move on to the real meat of the story, except most of the episode was spent over-explaining the situation. Goten and Trunks kill Pui-Pui, Yakon, and Android 19 while Palace watches. I guess fans of Bisexual Goten really did this shot? I don’t have much of a head for this sort of thing, but it seems like something they’d like.

And Pan wipes out just about all of the Red Ribbon Army guys. Wait, why did Staff Officer Black get to keep his robot suit? It’s weird enough that No. 19 and Sgt. Metallic are in this episode, but I can sort of buy into the idea that they had souls. But Black’s mech was just a machine. Did Gero build him a new one? Or did Black come to Earth, and then he went to an old Red Ribbon storage facility and get a new robot suit just like the one he used when he died?

As for Goku, he flies into Hell by himself, like an idiot. When he finds Gero, Mu, and the duplicate 17, they just nope out there and fly through the hole, closing it up behind them. Goku stands there like a dummy and just watches them escape. So now Goku is trapped in hell, while Gero and Mu are free to wreak havoc on Earth with no one to stop them.

Mostly, Goku’s pissed because he came here to fight Cell and Frieza, and he’s worried that it was all a lie, but then Cell and Frieza show up, and it looks like they stayed behind to keep Goku company.

And this is presented like a terriffic cliffhanger, but... it really isn’t? The idea here is that the Earth is besieged with dead villains while Goku is trapped in hell. But... we already know there’s a way out, since Gero and Mu just used one. Sure, the trick will be for Goku to find his own escape, except.... no, Goku can just turn into a Super Saiyan 4 and use Instant Transmission to leave. We’ve seen him do this before. He teleported back and forth between Earth and Otherworld during the Buu Saga. The only limitation seemed to be that he couldn’t move freely while he was dead, but he’s not dead this time.

Then there’s the dead villains. Well, they could cause all sorts of problems for our heroes, except... no, they can’t. Goten, Trunks, and Pan just took out a bunch of them already. Most of the bad guys in this arc are so outclassed that they’re not even remotely a threat. Cell and Frieza might be able to cause some trouble for the weaker heroes, but they stayed behind to fight Goku, who... Well he’s a Super Saiyan 4 now! Frieza died to a Super Saiyan 1, and Cell died to a Super Saiyan 2. Do the math.

The only real tension to any of this lies in the pair of 17′s, but they don’t really become a threat until they combine together. So this whole arc is really just a one-villain deal, but we have to wade through all of these small fry just to get to that part, which is a waste of time. And as we’ve seen, GT loves dragging things out.

So yeah, this is worse than “The Roaming Lake”, because of the way it sort of repeats the explanation of the conflict, rather than giving the audience any reason to care about it.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

That android is toast!

Yeah, more like... burnt toast... again!

And again... and... a--

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textfromthelookout · 2 years ago

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Any character analysis stuff or notes or what have ya for any of the Earthlings?

I wouldn't say I have analysis as such, not to the obsessive nitpicky scale that I have on Vegeta. I love Bulma's refusal to be laid aside by the plot around her, how she's a tether to normality (ok... relative normality) for so many other characters. She has a completely different strength from the raw power that most Dragon Ball characters have. I love the way Krillin matures over time, how courageous he is; he never loses his fear, but he never lets it keep him from acting either. I love Android 18 (Yeah, the androids are earthlings too! even if they're not 100% human anymore.) and her even keel, her frank honesty, and her unwillingness to play around. Tien stands out to me because of all these people who are ostensibly martial artists, he's the only one who consistently keeps to a respectable level of the asceticism associated with a monk. It says a lot about his character, I think. This is a world where people fly and shoot lasers out of their hands and regularly fight aliens, zombies, dinosaurs, and gods. Tien is strange for his lack of theatricality, given that. I like the people who are slightly out of place. One day I'll comb through the story and focus on Tien and put together something proper for him because I really do enjoy him.

But you wanted some form of meta, so let's talk Android 17 for a little. Of the Earthlings, he's my favorite (albeit by a very narrow margin) sheerly because he's so... strange. And not strange in the same way that Tien is strange given the setting he's in, but in a way that's kind of hard to read. The android twins are both less social than the average Dragon Ball character, in that they're not very wordy people whenever there's a Group. You know what I mean, when characters all get together like for Bulma's party or something, and there's different integrations of interaction that are happening? Some people are actively talking, some people are just hanging out in the vibe? They're the people that hang out in the vibe. Where they differ though is that 18 might be quiet but she's at least there, starting in Buu arc. We didn't even know for sure that 17 was ALIVE until like, a handful of chapters before Z ends. He fucks so far off from the rest of the group that he ultimately ends up on an island populated only by himself and a menagerie of exotic, rare beasts and monsters. We don't even know if he was in contact with his sister at all during that time.

I suppose what I'm trying to get at here is that 17 lands uncannily well in the sweet spot between human and nonhuman machine. Solitude agrees with him (in fairness, that's not uncommon in Dragon Ball: hello Piccolo Tien and Vegeta), but he has a wife and three kids. He's completely fine with the possibility of the universe being destroyed because nobody gets special dispensation--everyone goes, be they king or servant--but he joins the Tournament of Power anyway because he wants to get a huge boat and spend time with said family. He's the type of guy who straight-lacedly punches out someone in the middle of a transformation sequence for practicality's sake, then gets melodramatically hammy for the hell of it later (HIS ALLEGEDLY COLD AND UNLOVING FISTS). I like to describe him as a cryptid--fitting, considering his chosen profession.

I enjoy reading too much into things, so take some food for thought: 'Monsters are wildlife too' is just a step removed from 'Androids are people too', isn't it? One thing that stuck out to me most when I was watching Z is how, the moment there stops being a reason to fight each other (i.e. a common enemy in Cell), 17 seems to kind of soften up, in a way, to Piccolo. He's not overtly friendly, but he's not begrudgingly allied and abrasive about it like, say, Vegeta on Namek. Like he sounds legitimately upset when Cell blows a hole in Piccolo and leaves him to drown.

It kinda does lend some different perspective to the idea that 17 (and 18 too) is a misfit kid just looking for a good time by any means necessary. What does 17 even know about Piccolo at this point in time? Nothing, save for a few small things: he's not human, he doesn't belong; fighting him is the best challenge/most fun he's had since waking up; Piccolo will without hesitation turn around and help someone he was only moments ago trying to put in the dirt.

I don't know. Maybe there's something there. Maybe I just want to believe that they found a friend, or at least a kindred spirit, in each other.

#android 17 #a17 #piccolo #lapis #text from the mod #dbz #dbs #i also like to think that goku comes to monster island and has a drink with 17 every so often #just to catch up have fun shoot the breeze #love when people ask me for analysis and give me an excuse to share Wild Speculation instead #<3 thank you for the ask!

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