#anyway the show had all of this that could have made an actual interesting storyline out of for jon

[undertheknightwing]

Am I the only one who thinks it's strange that after Clois found out Jon was inhaling x-kryptonite they didn't once be concerned that the kryptonite was harming him somehow

They treated the x-k like it was a normal drug when it definitely wasn't. I expected Clark to freak out when he learned his half-Kryptonian son was inhaling the thing that kills them

You would think after Lois said "Whatever can affect Clark, can also affect the boys" they would have been more worried about Jon's health (but they don't care about his mental health so ig it's not a surprise they don't care about his physical health)

And you could argue "it wasn't green kryptonite" which would be a good point if x-k was a completely known type of kryptonite but it's not, all we know about it is that it gives humans powers. Even if it was truly harmless to Jon, the characters in-universe wouldn't know that because it's an unknown type of kryptonite. They don't know how it affects Kryptonians or hybrids

And kryptonite can be so specific at times, x-k could have granted powers to humans, not harm Kryptonians, but kill hybrids

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

I love jack so so much he's perfect but tbh I do think it would've worked much more with the show if he was a destiel baby instead of lucifer's. and I'm not just saying that as a shipper or whatever I mean narratively it would've been a lot cleaner- and actually, I think it would've been super funny to no-homo them creating a baby together, like, literally all they would have to do is say "oh, when cas rebuilt dean after hell he accidentally left some grace tangled in his soul, and every time he's healed him since then it's been growing stronger until a nephilim was born". like yes the studio is homophibic etc etc but all the jokes they'd make about dean being spiritually pregnant would be very funny for me personally.

but ANYWAY, jack's story gets messy and convoluted and I think this would've been like...a simple fix. them worrying about him going dark side could be because they're worried how demon!dean and lucifer!cas affected him in development, the show LOVES bloodline drama, chuck's wanting abraham and issac 2.0 would've worked better this way, dean's storyline with him would be improved, bc rather than 'oh no I slowly but surely emotionally adopted the antichrist' like I think he would've had an easier time clocking his john-behavoir if it wasn't a question whether he was jack's dad or not. plus last time dean actively raised a kid he went to great lengths to keep the supernatural away from him, so it'd be interesting to see how he handles a kid he CANT possibly hide from this part of his life. it would make more sense why michael wanted jack as a vessel- yes obviously he wanted the nephilim power boost but also having him as part of the winchester bloodline, making him a PERFECT vessel he doesn't have to worry about burning up would add a lot. we could also use this argument for why lucifer is so interested in him if anyone actually liked that plotline in season 14 lmao. we know chuck hated cas and dean's relationship, could you imagine if he checked in and found out they made an unauthorized baby together💀 like that really would've given better context for why he hates jack so much. cas wouldn't need that whole weird brainwashing arc to wanna protect unborn jack, PLUS it could've been an interesting source of angst for him- he feels like he's failed once again, creating an abomination and putting dean in danger, but also still loves jack immensely. it'd be so good! also imagine how fucking stressed out heaven would be to find out a mini castiel is on the way. they wouldn't even wanna exploit that kid for power they'd be preemptively treating the headaches they know they're gonna get lmfao.

also. the casting directors literally put jensen and misha into a face morph app and cast the first actor they could find that matched the results. which would've made more sense if,,,,he was just Theirs. the comedy of dean and cas making a baby before either of them managed to admit their feelings to each other would be more fun then the "dude adopted a kid and pawns him off on his unwilling roommate's all the time and they eventually warm up to the kid" storyline we actually got. we also could've replaced some of the jack-dean angst from the show with "dean wants to connect more with jack but he feels shut out whenever cas is around bc he can't relate to any angel stuff so obviously jack's going to cas for help more!", which I think would be interesting!! how AWFUL dean and cas would feel that jack didn't feel safe enough to be a baby. dad!sam is still in full swing but he cares for jack right off the bat instead of trying to use him for his powers at first. lily sunder talking about how cas killed her kid bc he thought it was a nephilim and dean, who's already fully aware he's (spiritually) knocked up by cas is like 👹 inch resting cas-tee-elle tell me more. mary having a 'my baby has a baby' crisis. cas insisting jack looks nothing like him is a running joke but then at some point he explains its bc jack's 'true form' looks just like dean's soul....

ALSO- in a show where, canonically, the very first act of free will was cas falling in love with dean...the physical manifestation of that defeating chuck and taking his place as god? come ON.

[gh0stofstarman]

A Ramble about X-Men

I’m a pretty big Marvel comics fan. I’ve had a Marvel Unlimited Subscription since the pandemic and I’ve pretty much run the gamut of heroes. Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Fantastic Four, Peter Parker Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Quasar, Thor, Eternals, Hawkeye, Howard the Duck, What if?, Deadpool, I could go on forever. And I can pick a run for each of these characters that I specifically clicked with a certain author and the themes they chose.

Except X-Men.

Which is ironic, because I love the X-Men shows, the characters, their major themes, their designs, their movies. Heck it’s not like I haven’t read most of Claremont’s run and beyond.

But I’ve never had a run that actually fully clicked with me, and I kinda wanted to ramble about why. No idea if this will be a series or whatever.

Chris Claremont

Admittedly I’ve never really been one to seek out every single spinoff of a series so most of my experience with the “golden age” of X-Men is with the mainline Uncanny X-Men rather than stuff like the New Mutants. I know it’s sacrilege in some circles not to go in full chronological order with the spinoff series bouncing between but I’m just not that way.

Anyways while Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the blueprint for what would define X-Men on a fundamental level, Chris Claremont would be the author who made the heroes popular. Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Banshee … Sunfire, Thunderbird … okay not all of them stuck. But Claremont would write iconic stories that are beloved and I love as well such as the OG Giant Size X-Men comic, Proteus, Days of Future Past, God Loves, Man Kills, and the Dark Phoenix Saga. Stuff that truly gets to the heart of the X-Men fighting against discrimination and hate, proving they deserve a chance to live as they want.

Then that should settle it! I like Chris Claremont, then! These are the most iconic storylines that means I love the most iconic incarnation of the X-Men.

Not really.

Chris Claremont founded a lot of good ideas that would be the springboard used by other authors in years to come. But it’s not as though his stint was as brief as Lee/Kirby or Roy Thomas.

16 years.

And most of what I mentioned is spread far across the first 8.

So what about the bits in-between?

Well, if I had to describe the majority of Claremont’s writing as X-Men outside of these storylines is that it’s kinda a roulette wheel.

This was back in the day where you had to have some bonkers concepts to hook the reader in. Vampires, sci-fi tech, aliens, gods, demons, etc. And most of the time Chris chose a random one to analyze the X-Men under and reevaluate how they can be used for the X-Men’s explicit purpose of fighting against discrimination and promoting equality and diversity.

Which often leads to those aforementioned storylines where they build on this very well. X-Men vs Televangelism does go out into creating weird devices to mind control people but it’s all in service to the team’s message. The bad future the sentinels create in Days of Future Past can easily be seen as a dystopian future where discrimination is normalized.

However sometimes Chris can’t help himself and adds more layers of insanity to the plot, to the point the message kinda gets lost in the mix.

Here’s an example.

X-Men go mysteriously missing, only for Beast to find them working at a circus freak show. Interesting. Leads back to the idea of them being demoralized and treated as freaks rather than real people.

Beast does some snooping around, finding that Magneto is the mastermind behind this. Perhaps he’s trying to humiliate the X-Men and get them to give up their hope for equality seeing how humanity makes fun of them while also getting revenge because he’s the bad guy.

They fight Magneto but are bested in combat. It’s then revealed that Magneto, after being turned into a baby in a previous comic did want revenge, so he took the X-Men to his Antarctic base to … mentally regress them into babies and torture them with a nanny bot.

Huh?

And I’d be lying if I said this sort of weird progression isn’t a repeating theme.

X-Men go to space to fight aliens; makes sense because all the other heroes were fighting aliens so they gotta prove they’re on the level. Alien fighting leads into them meeting Xenomorph-like aliens that slowly transform the X-Men into them; drama is created. X-Men escape but still are transforming, so Storm befriends a space whale and then becomes one to cure everyone; buh?!?!

Like I feel like some of these stories increase the insanity progressively but they go a little step too far. Sometimes it’s just out of nowhere like when demons kidnap the X-Men even though they were never hinted before to care about them, and somehow age up Magik to an adult. Or just Storm becomes a vampire suddenly even though last issue there was nothing even slightly referencing vampires.

It’s kind of a curse because X-Men is constantly trying to get bigger and bigger under Claremont but sometimes you’d prefer it just to take it slow and get back to the more straight forward connections to fighting oppression and discrimination.

Ironically it causes me to appreciate the more mundane moments that aren’t trying to be huge plot twists one on top of each other. Stuff like Kitty Pryde and Storm hanging out, going to Japan and getting to know Wolverine better, Nightcrawler trying to socialize more, and just Beast’s witty banter.

But even that can be a little fumbled at times because well,

Chris Claremont is a straight white guy.

And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But you can tell he has hang-ups trying to write about race or women because he doesn’t really have those experiences. Therefore, sometimes when he tries to write soliloquies and romances (which is pretty common), sometimes it can fall flat because of his perspective.

There is a lot of romance and relationship drama in X-Men, which is understandable and needed for the narrative. But so much becomes either bland, unintentionally problematic, or just too brief to make any true impact.

I’d say the biggest exception is Jean/Cyclops because they’ve been established for years and it’s very clear they care about each other. However, Jean dies in Dark Phoenix (at least that was the intent of the time) so a lot of the time the series bounces between other couples.

He later meets and then marries Madelyne Pryor, who is noted to look nearly identical to Jean. However that just makes things awkward as Madelyne often plays the role of “Not-Jean.” It at least has an interesting through line of him working through his grief, but little time is actually given for Madelyne’s own agency to break out of “Not-Jean,” which makes it really awkward when it’s revealed she’s a clone of Jean and Jean was alive all this time. So … what was the point?

Charles Xavier has so many love interests but often times he comes off as a jerk. Moira MacTaggart, Liliandra … even at one point Jean herself but everyone buries this for good reason. He comes off as very manipulative both to his partner and the X-Men. Charles is very unsympathetic to Moira’s predicament in raising Proteus. Liliandra he’s willing to bend over backwards for even if it means that he’s breaking his own morals in the process. And we don’t talk about Jean. However this would mostly be used by other authors to analyze how good of a leader Charles is, and more of his flaws. Meanwhile, Chris Claremont normalizes his behavior and rarely calls him out on it.

Colossus and Kitty Pryde.

What can I say about them? Colossus is an adult, Kitty Pryde is still a kid. It’s gross, but Chris wants you to really know they love each other more than a brother-and-sister relationship would. And they even point out it’s creepy, yet they still do it anyways.

Wolverine is entirely a whole other can of worms that I could write about separately.

Ironically some of the relationships that aren’t confirmed because of the times but are implied like Mystique and Destiny or Storm and Stevie are actually a lot better and written with much more nuance. However again nothing is confirmed and could be left to interpretation such as with Storm and Stevie. After all they do try to pair up these characters in straight couples … problematically but still.

Ultimately I feel like Claremont does have a lot of good ideas but the execution of them is where the ball is dropped. I would never call his run bad but I’ve never really felt compelled to return to it. I can’t deny the impact it’s made by any measure. However, returning to the originals just makes you wonder, how did some of this lead to Claremont’s X-Men being held up as an absolute gold standard comic?

I don’t know this was a long rant and I dunno if I’ll do it again. If you liked this let me know

[meta-squash]

I'm so irritated by the entire Ian and Mickey get an apartment storyline because it's just so inaccurate on like every count. I know this is fiction and also the show's been over for ages but still. The last few series had such terrible writing and made no sense.

The map location that Ian looks at when they first find the apartment is like in the UIC/medical district area, almost in the loop. But also like. There are not a lot of apartments in Chicago with pools. You want a pool in your apartment complex, you're gonna be paying a lot more than $900 for a 1 bed 1 bath apartment. I mean, you're gonna be paying more than $900 period in that area. Plus like their income is better but not stable-stable from the security gig (and isn't it mostly under the table?) so I seriously doubt landlords there would even consider them.

(Not to mention the whole bullshit about Ian signing the lease without talking to Mickey about it first. (And Mickey would have to also sign the lease before it went into effect, unless everything is in Ian's name? So Mickey could have just said no.) Like that's such shitty behavior in terms of relationship stuff.)

But anyway, most of the actual west side is barely better off than the south side in terms of poverty. If they'd moved to the north side area or even north west it would have made more sense to have all the drama about bougie apartments and quiet and blah blah blah. (But then they absolutely would not be able to afford rent.)

My headcanon is that they move to the Hermosa/Austin/West Humboldt-ish area because they can actually afford it, and Mickey gets a mechanic job and Ian goes back to school at Malcolm X to get some medical-based associates degree or something that will let him do some sort of helping people job. Mickey actually learned Spanish while he was in Mexico (because he's not stupid and because how else was he going to get respect in the cartel) and ends up making friends with the old Puerto Rican guys that hang out in his neighborhood. They have an apartment that's not amazing but it's better than either of the falling apart houses they grew up in. They actually communicate and talk to each other and are friends and shit like that.

I know it's nitpicky as shit and the Shameless writers gave up realism and emotional interest for bullshit comedy in like series 7 or whatever but it's just so frustrating that not a single part of that storyline made sense or was at all interesting or compelling.

[thorias]

SEASON 2 WISH LIST:

-Madelyne is resurrected as a Horseman along with Gambit: I think there's a better story to tell with Madelyne being brought back (at least temporarily) than staying dead. The X-men having to fight her too would give Cyclops and Cable a more personal stake in this Apocalypse storyline, not that they really needed one, but still...

I said in another post that I wouldn't want to dilute the "Saving Gambit" story by making a bunch of other X-men Horsemen as well, but if it's just Madelyne, then I think it's okay. And I wouldn't expect Madelyne to survive this story anyway, since, aside from tying up a couple loose threads with the Summers family, her arc is basically finished now.

Plus, I just kind of like the idea of giving Deathbit a buddy in the spurned lover department; that could be fun.

-----

-Sabretooth returns. Logan (sans adamantium) has to fight him... and loses: I've always liked the idea that Sabretooth would probably beat Wolverine in a fair fight, (dude is like 3x Logan's size after all) but it's never been a fair fight since the adamantium basically made Logan unstoppable. But take the adamantium away and suddenly Wolverine is the underdog for a change, which makes the match-up a lot more interesting. And what's even the point of doing the bone claws story if it's not to see how Logan deals with being in a weakened state like this?

Granted, I want to see this for selfish reasons since Sabretooth is one of my favorite villains, but come on! Victor is long overdue for a W against Wolverine, and if he can't get it now, then I'm calling BS lol.

-----

-Mystique returns, working for Apocalypse: I think Demayo shot down the Val-Cooper-is-Mystique-in-disguise theory, (correct me if I'm wrong about that) but it would be pretty ridiculous if we didn't see her in season 2 since she worked with Apocalypse in XTAS on multiple occasions.

Plus, there's a ready-made story there with her and Rogue. In the 90s cartoon, Mystique wanted to get Rogue back as her daughter so badly that she was even willing to turn Rogue into a Horseman to do it. So just imagine if Mystique had a hand in convincing Apocalypse to resurrect Remy as Deathbit, or at least helped him pull it off, because she saw this as a way to get back into Rogue's good graces. That would add some really interesting pathos to a story that's already super emotionally charged.

-----

-Costume changes: I get that Marvel has toys to sell, but the different suits the team got in season 1 ain't it. Sorry, they're just not. The only one who pulled it off was Storm. Everyone else got a serious glow down. I actually felt low key embarrassed for Scott and Jean trying to make those retro costumes from the 60s/80s eras work; there's a reason those designs stayed in the past, you guys.

And I even like Rogue's green & white suit in the comics, but in the show it just looked awkward with the gloves being a different shade of green than the rest of it. I'd take just about any of her other costumes over this one.

Either change the suits again or go back to the old versions because I'm not feeling these current ones at all.

-----

-Magneto has a reunion with his kids... and it doesn't go the way he wants: We saw in the season 1 finale that Mags' separation from his children is something that's at least been bothering him, (though not enough for him to lift a finger to save them from being killed along with everyone else on Earth if he succeeded in destroying the planet's electromagnetic field, but I guess we're blaming that on bad writing) so I want him to meet his kids in season 2... only for it to go as horribly as it possibly could.

It would be both ironic and hilarious if Magneto is hoping to patch things up with his kids, only for Pietro and Lorna to try to fight and arrest him the instant they see him (X-Factor doesn't seem to be a thing anymore, but let's say they're still government employees and have the authority to arrest criminals/terrorists) because he did after all murder millions of innocent people with that EMP AND try to murder every other living thing on the planet, including them.

I mean, let's not kid ourselves, there's no way this family reunion is going to be a happy one after what he did. SOMEBODY has to hold Magneto accountable for that, and his own children doing it is about the most fitting thing that I can think of.

-----

-A big story arc for Gambit: Romy fans got gipped in season 1, and even if you're just a Gambit fan, you still had to settle for scraps with him only playing a major role in one episode, which coincidentally was the one where he got killed off. Yes, the stage is set for Deathbit to have a really compelling story in season 2, but that's going to depend on how it's done and frankly, after I got burned so many times in the first season, I'm skeptical that the writers will give this the care and attention it deserves.

Demayo said it was "key" that Remy died thinking he didn't deserve to be a hero and that Rogue had chosen Magneto instead of him. These things have gone unaddressed in the show since then, so I'm going to assume they're being saved for the Deathbit story and THE PAYOFF FOR THIS BETTER BE DAMN GOOD.

I want to see all of Remy's low self-esteem, self-loathing and resentment over the Rogneto debacle get twisted into a dark rage that Deathbit throws back in everyone's faces. AJ himself said that Remy didn't feel valued by the X-men or Rogue when he died, so use that! Make it part of the story! Make them own up to it. Force Rogue to confront her own feelings about how she handled that situation, (so far, she's been avoiding doing this) so it can factor into how they bring him back.

I know a lot of us assume that freeing Remy from Apocalypse's influence is going to come down to Rogue finally telling him that she loves him. And, yeah, that should be a big part of it, but it shouldn't be the only part. That's fine as far as Rogue is concerned, but Remy needs an arc too, and I just want it to be worth the wait after they put us through all this.

-----

-Deathbit vs Magneto: This needs to happen. Aside from the fact that Romy fans will have been clamoring for it for a long time, frankly, both characters are going to want it too. Mags will no doubt view Deathbit as the reason why he can't get Rogue back, and Deathbit... well, we all know what his reasons are; he'll likely want to take Magneto apart just for the pure satisfaction of it.

Now since Magneto's so OP, Gambit wouldn't stand much of a chance in a straight fight under normal conditions, but we know Apocalypse evolves/enhances mutants' powers when they become Horsemen, so imagine if he unlocked Gambit's Omega potential, so Remy has his New Son powers now, or at least a heightened version of what he had before. So Magneto goes in brimming with confidence that he's going to wipe the floor with his rival for Rogue's affections, but then in a shocking twist, Deathbit breaks out his newly enhanced power set and turns the tables on him.

Do I really want to see Mags get taken down a peg and humbled by Gambit? Sure. But narratively, this makes a ton of sense to do. Since Demayo loves Magneto so much, I highly doubt it will happen, (certainly not with this outcome at least) but I think it would be super satisfying for fans.

[ladyloveandjustice]

So, about two years ago there was a post that claimed that the only time Stephanie's house was ever depicted as looking rough was immediately after Cataclysm and it was a huge misunderstanding because the reason for that was because a huge earthquake had just happened. And that this was proof her family didn't struggle financially and everyone had misunderstood.

I knew this wasn't accurate, that there were other comics that depicted this, but I thought at the time I'd have to pore through a lot of comics to find additional examples and it wasn't worth the energy. However the post came up again recently and I'd recently seen a counterexample (the pages above) so I decided to take a quick look and it was actually ridiculously easy to find additional examples, I barely had to make an effort and likely could have found more.

So, since that post got a lot of notes and contains misinformation (not just about the house but some other stuff too, but that'd take time to go into and require linking the post directly which I'm not comfy doing, I already responded on my blog), I thought I'd unleash this into Stephanie's tag to correct it, in case anyone was indeed using it as a resource.

The first panels are from Secret Origins 80 Page Giant. It basically focuses into Steph' origin story, all flashbacks, and shows her house looked rough throughout her childhood and teen-hood. This is an issue that directly states the Brown's financial issues, stating that whenever Arthur comes home he uses up all their money. This stopped happening when Steph busted him, but that's a huge financial hole to dig yourself out of, which probably explains a lot of the financial struggles, If you blow all your money, that's not something you magically recover from, it takes a lot of time.

Our next example is Robin #41 which was before Cataclysm (the huge earthquake storyline):

This is actually the same artist (Staz Johnson) that did the issue during the aftermath of the earthquake that was used as an example, actually, casting doubt that the cracks in that one were actually supposed to be because of the earthquake, which I honestly doubted:

Anyway, then we have yet another example in Batman Chronicles #22, a full two years after Cataclysm:

Anyway, so the repeated instances indicate that yes, Steph's house was very much intended to look rough as a (kinda lazy) way to depict the financial struggle/poverty, even if Dixon wasn't interested in exploring said poverty all that much because he's a weird conservative.

(also the clumsy recolor is because Steph's hair is miscolored red this issue, and this apparently bothered me so much as a teen I badly recolored the hair before uploading it to my little Steph wiki)

One other fairly direct implication of Stephanie's status as 'poor' is in Steph's Batgirl series, and there are likely more, but this post's evidence is already thorough enough imo. People can, indeed, live in the suburbs and struggle financially.

A good example of the need to do your own research when there's a claim made on Tumblr about comics. And if you would like to do that, I ran a Stephanie Brown wiki as a teenager. I've long since abandoned it like I've largely abandoned reading superhero comics, but there is another user who updates it regularly, and he put together a painstaking chronology of all Steph's appearances in comics, linking to a lot of my uploads and descriptions of appearances I did back in the day. And there's a lot more on the wiki too!

Stephanie Brown Chronology

[the0maski]

Oh look! I escaped containment! Update Entrance | part 2

So normal dungeon size. Would be cool to see what the different floor look like and for what reason the temple had been used in the past. Could there be references to one of them? An old inscription telling one of the Link’s legend?

-

Oh yes the reason Hyrule Warriors isn’t a canon Zelda game…and my personal one-sides beef with Aonuma! The timeline would be so much easier…

Anyway, Hyrule Warriors features some dungeons, but you just run and fight the hoards of monsters.

Love the their shock faces! And then there is Time. Don’t know if the side eye is because Time is the most stoic 3D Link, or because my boy is going through high level stress?

-

Interesting piece of LU lore! Either that or Wars purposely mentions Ganon.

Cause, technically, Cia started the War of Ages. Yes she was under the influence of Ganon, but it was her obsession that also lead to the events in HW.

And that, snuck under Ganon’s snout is not true for all of them.

Time literally played into Ganondorf’s plan in the first half of Oot. (In MM, if you look at Skull kid with the telescope. Majora will always look at you, what means they know where you are)

The same goes for Legend, in a Link between Worlds. Hilda had asked for his help, only so she could have the Triforce of Courage. Meaning that they had to be watching him somehow to make sure everything was going according to plan.

And also, I think that Zant had an eye on Twilight, not sure if from the very beginning or at some point in the game.

-

Yes recurrent items. I wonder if Hyrule has already left something hidden somewhere, for a future hero to find? The hero to follow would be Warriors so, has he any items of Hyrule?

Interesting enough, Twilight’s hero’s clothes are often said belonged to Time, because Ordona made the comment that the green tunic belonged to an ancient hero. But it makes more sense that there actually belonged to Sky, since Time isn’t an official hero in that timeline.

(Some other example of what Hyrule said, would be:

Four’s Gust Jar -> Sky’s Gust bellows

Four’s Mole Mitts -> Sky’s Digging mitts/ Mogma mitts

Four’s Small Shield -> Wind’s Hero’s shield

Four’s Cane of Pacci -> Legend’s Cane of Somaria/ Cane of Byrna

Twilight’s Ball and Chain -> Warrior’s Ball and Chain

Time’s Hero’s Bow -> Twilight’s Hero’s Bow)

-

Twilight saw the opportunity to bite War’s ego and took it! Meanwhile, Four worries about some enemies only found in dungeons, why is he the only one who cares about his brother getting badly hurt?

Wind is clearly screaming inside.

-

Nice call back to when LU hasn’t had a storyline!

This part could be also mean that some of the doodles can be taken as Slice of Life parts, though some of them still hadn’t taken place yet.

-

Hyrule knows that it is important to know the enemy and be prepare. Like that about his character, as much as he likes to goof around and get lost in the world, he knows when to take things serious.

(He might quote this even from his game? His text does read like something an NPC in game would say.)

-

Legend‘s little prank here is a good way to show the captain how it’s feels to be grabbed by a Wallmaster. So no blame to the Vet, this might be even good.

More on part 3

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Manga ch.91-93

Last time, we covered the "prequel" story of Goten and Trunks adopting superhero identities and capturing Dr. Hedo. Now we get into the events of the DBS: Super Hero movie itself. I already liveblogged the movie extensively in September (here, here, here, here, and here), so for the manga adaptation I'll be focusing mainly on whatever changes Toyotaro made to the story.

First off, Chapter 91 opens with Piccolo picking up Pan from school, and when she talks about wanting to be a superhero like Goten and Trunks have been doing recently, Piccolo offers to train her just like he trained Gohan in Dragon Ball Z.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing we can expect from this adaptation. It's mostly a straight retelling of the movie, and the little extras that get added in don't really add much to the story. I mean, the movie established that Piccolo has picked up Pan from school in the past, but there was no need to show it. Also, the movie didn't really explain why Piccolo started training Pan, probably because it didn't need to. I think the manga pretty much proves my point, because it attempts to tackle the question, but only comes up with a fairly pat answer. She wanted to fly and shoot hand energy like Goten and Trunks, and so Piccolo offered to teach her and she said yes.

Then we get to this scene, where Krillin's boss in the West City P.D. holds a briefing on the Red Ribbon Army and their plans to recruit Dr. Hedo. This takes the place of the flashback montage that opened the movie, and it sucks.

That montage was awesome, and Toyotaro could have drawn his own version of it here, but instead he did this. We could be looking a Goku punching Tao Pai Pai, or 17 killing Dr. Gero, or Cell smirking like a boss, but instead we're in a boring conference room reading walls of text.

Look at this fucking page! It's awful! A lot of this one serves as a stand-in for Carmine's report to Magenta about Dr. Hedo. I get it, this is a lot of information to go through, and Toyotaro probably wanted to move on as quickly as possible, but part of what I loved about the movie was the way they showcased the characters and visuals during the infodumping. Carmine's report is pretty dry in the movie, but Magenta's office is interesting to look at, and Carmine and Magenta themselves are visually compelling characters. While they talk about Hedo, Carmine shows off his video editing skills and Magenta keeps screwing up his snacks

This police briefing, however, sucks all the fun out of it. This place looks like a hotel conference room with hardwood floors. All of the cops look exactly the same, and why the hell are they wearing helmets and sunglasses indoors, anyway? Krillin's boss, Sergeant Nutz, has some potential, but she has nothing to do with this story, so featuring her so prominently here is just a waste of time.

What really irks me is that the next scene shows Carmine and Magenta talking about Dr. Hedo, just like in the movie, except there's not much for them to say because Krillin and Nutz already covered it all! That's really dumb! We have two scenes designed to set up the plot of the movie, and one of them was in the movie, and actually features the main antagonists. But Toyotaro chose to emphasize the other scene instead.

So the idea here is that the police are already aware of Magenta's scheme to revive the Red Ribbon Army, and they know he plans to recruit Dr. Hedo once he gets out of prison. They also know that Hedo had that disc containing data on Dr. Gero's bioweapon, although I don't see how they could know that, since Trunks couldn't access the data on the disc and it was destroyed before anyone else could try. Hedo told Krillin in Chapter 90 that he memorized the contents of the disc, but he never said what it was that he memorized. This also goes against the storyline in the movie. In the film, Magenta had Gero's data on Cell, and the reason he wanted Hedo was because his own scientists couldn't do anything with it.

Anyway, the police seem to know everything about the Red Ribbon Army already. The only thing they don't know is where the Red Ribbon base is, so they send Krillin to follow Magenta's limo and spy on him. So we get the limo scene from the movie, except Krillin's clinging to the side of the car the whole trip, and then Hedo spots him and sends his cyborg bee, Hatchimaru, to attack him.

The gag here is that Magenta and Carmine don't even know Krillin is out there, and Hedo doesn't particularly care. The scene plays out almost exactly like it does in the movie, but with Krillin spliced in like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars Special Edition.

Of course, Krillin gets shaken off so the base's location remains a secret, so this whole bit is completely pointless. It's just so dumb. I assume Toyotaro needed to pad out the story for one reason or another, or maybe he just wanted to add some new details so he wouldn't get bored retelling a movie like this. But if this is the best he can come up with, why bother? So far, this manga keeps "expanding" on the movie by answering questions nobody asked, like "Why did Piccolo start training Pan?" or "Why didn't the authorities stop the Red Ribbon Army?" or "Why is Gamma 1's cape red?"

From here, it's a pretty faithful retelling of the movie, which kind of makes the "filler" scenes even more conspicuous. It's refreshing to see the actual story move along without all these pointless diversions. On the other hand, it's kind of dull, because I already covered the movie and there's nothing else to talk about here.

There is some extra stuff in the Gamma 2 vs. Piccolo fight. Piccolo loses an arm, but then he grows a new one and makes it all long to catch Gamma 2 off guard. It doesn't slow him down much, but it's something we didn't get in the movie. I do find it a bit strange how Gamma 2 notes Piccolo's regeneration ability like it's this new data to add to his files. Shouldn't the Red Ribbon Army have all of this intel programmed into Gamma 2 by now?

Moving on, when Piccolo infiltrates the Red Ribbon base, he gets stopped by his superiors, who remind "94" that he isn't assigned to this area, but another soldier offers to switch assignments so "94" can gain some valuable experience watching Hedo eat cookies.

Again, what is the point of this? We're just derailing the story so Toyotaro can waste a page explaining how Piccolo managed to get this far into the base. In the movie, nobody notices or cares that "94" is in the command center instead of the hangar. That's because they're all faceless, interchangeable henchmen. They wear masks and refer to each other by numbers, for crying out loud! This is why Piccolo disguised himself in the first place! If Toyotaro wrote Star Wars, he'd do a whole scene where Luke Skywalker has to rewrite the Death Star's duty roster just so "TK-421" can get reassigned to prison detail. Nobody cares!

Okay now this is more like it. We get to the part where no one can reach Goku and Vegeta because they're training on Beerus' planet, and so Toyotaro gives us a little more of the sparring match Goku and Broly had in the movie. It's not a lot, but this is the sort of thing filler is good for. Toyo also does a whole montage recap of the DBS: Broly film, which is perfectly serviceable, but it annoys me because it demonstrates that he could have done the same thing with the Red Ribbon Army flashback in Chapter 91, but instead he did the briefing scene with Sgt. Nutz. Ugh.

We see the same scene where Vegeta explains the importance of mental training, although when he talks about all of their recent opponents, he adds manga-only characters like Moro, Gas, and Black Frieza. And that's fine, although it's strange when he talks about Jiren and Black Frieza in the same breath like this. In the manga, Vegeta has gotten pretty good at "Ultra Ego", his answer to Goku's Ultra Instinct. And Goku's learned to tap into UI at will. So I'm pretty sure Jiren and Moro aren't really an issue for either of them anymore. I mean, the only reason Goku couldn't defeat Jiren by himself at the Tournament of Power was because he lacked experience using UI, and now he's much better at it.

The point I'm getting at is that in the manga, Vegeta doesn't need to do "mental training" to defeat Jiren because he's already surpassed him. And he might need it to surpass Broly and Black Frieza, but he speaks as though that's their secret, and he needs to learn how to do it himself. I'm pretty sure Broly isn't "relaxed" between attacks when he's using his full power. He was kind of freaking the fuck out back then. Black Frieza might have been doing something like that, but he only hit Vegeta once, so I'm not sure how he could be certain.

So then we move on to the part where Piccolo wishes for a power-up from Shenron, and we just skip the part where Dende upgrades Shenron to do that. The implication here is that DBS-manga Shenron always had the ability to make Orange Piccolo, and no one bothered to ask before. Kind of annoying.

Anyway, while Piccolo and Bulma are getting their...ahem... enhancements, Trunks sees them and calls Goten. They make plans to sneak out and play superheroes again, even though Goten's grounded and he really doesn't need to run up a bigger bill with his mom. I guess this is the throughline for Goten and Trunks in Dragon Ball Super. No matter what happens, Dragon Team tries to keep the boys out of it. It's not just Chi-Chi wanting Goten to study. Back in Resurrection F, Bulma tells the others that she doesn't want them fucking around during the battle with Frieza. And Vegeta ices them out of the tournaments with the other universes because he doesn't want them turning into Gotenks and being dorks the whole time. The Saiyaman X-1 and X-2 caper probably didn't do much to convince anyone that Goten and Trunks have matured.

But they still crave the excitement of being in the thick of things. They know the adults are trying to keep them out of it, and that just makes it more exciting. I suppose this is the legacy of the Buu Saga, where they had to get involved because there was no other choice, and they've had the bug for DBZ mayhem ever since, but their parents said no.

And maybe that's why Goku and Vegeta were so determined to train the boys in the End of Z episodes. Sometime after Super Hero, they came back home, heard about the Saiyamen costumes and the battle with Cell Max, and decided that they needed to be toughened up. Like, okay, you want to go fight bad guys like we do? Stop doing the poses and quit relying on fusion and learn how to do it right. And if the sparring sessions are too hard for you, you can always go back to doing your homework like your mom wanted."

That's why Goten's so frustrated in DBZ 289. He just wants to go on dates or screw around, but his only options are a) homework and b) fight for-ev-er *clap clap clap-clap-clap*.

And now that I think about it, this is where GT dropped the ball with Goten, because he doesn't really seem to have gained anything from that. Hitting the books and getting hit by Goku should have made him a bit more serious about his life, but instead he's just constantly talking to girls on the phone, because that was the only thing GT's writers seemed to think of for him to do.

I mean, they kind of got it right with Trunks, who went into GT with a lot of responsibility and skills. He didn't enjoy his position, but you could tell he'd grown a lot as a person since the end of DBZ.

So yeah, maybe I'm beginning to appreciate Big Goten more than I did before, but this newfound perspective still doesn't do much for this part of the manga. There's just a lot of nothing happening here, and throwing more Krillin, Goten, and Trunks at it doesn't help matters.

[depressedbloggerwrites]

i feel like writing an essay on why jeffannie is a horrible ship

disclaimer before i rant: you are completely entitled to your opinion on whatever ships you prefer! this is just what i think :)

i'm going to begin with the most obvious problem with jeffannie: the age difference. at the start of the show, she's eighteen (a TEENAGER, guys) and he's in his thirties. they are at vastly different stages of life. he has way more life experience than her.

even if we ignore that, they just make no sense together. they already have that father/daughter dynamic, and the chemistry community reddit is constantly on about is nowhere to be found. all the kiss scenes felt forced (maybe not debate 109, but i'll talk about that later). also, jeff having two awesome women competing for his love, and then going after the teenager with a boyfriend...interesting.

i don't think jeff is necessarily predatory; he is very clearly not exclusively attracted to girls as young as annie, but that doesn't mean his attraction to her isn't at least slightly iffy.

i saw someone say annie and jeff, a recovering addict and someone who currently has an addiction, would not have a very healthy relationship in the long run, and i agree. as the original poster said, annie worked so hard to put her addiction behind her, and being with jeff wouldn't be good for her.

also, whoever made that tumblr post saying every jeffannie episode would work better with jeffbritta or abedison was 100% right, which is why i'm going to discuss the problems with each jeffannie episode.

jeffannie began in debate 109, when annie and jeff had to argue the point that man is inherently evil on the greendale debate team, and the debate ends in a scene where the leader of city college's team launches himself out of his wheelchair; jeff instinctively catches him, and the leader uses this to support the point that man is good. annie proceeds to grab jeff and kiss him, which makes him drop city college's leader, which wins them the debate, because 'he dropped him because he was horny!'

god.

obviously, you can see why that made me uncomfortable to watch, but i guess you could look past it in the comedy and chaos of it all. anyway, jeffbritta would have made that episode so much better. britta would definitely be on the debate team, and since she and jeff actually had a normal age gap, which would make everything far less creepy.

next, let's talk about the worst thing in the world:

pascal's triangle revisited.

actually, the episode was fine. i enjoyed it. but that kiss at the end makes me so angry. jeff, you have these two beautiful women who you have been pursuing this whole season, and you go and kiss the teenage girl. THE TEENAGE GIRL. jesus fucking christ. and she had a boyfriend too. you know what would have worked? abed convincing annie not to transfer instead. infinitely better chemistry, and an abedison kiss that actually impacted the plot would have changed my life.

the conspiracy episode was excellent, but jeffbritta would have made it perfect. i don't think it expanded on anything problematic jeffannie-wise though, so that's a win.

and then you have intro to political science. i haven't really seen anyone talk about this, and it's once again not a bad episode, but i really think the writers just didn't want britta to have a storyline that actually developed her character, because she would have devoured in annie's place during this episode. jeff's dynamic with her is already perfect, and it would make so much more sense for them to run against each other, as opposed to jeff and annie.

all those alternate timeline jeffannie scenes in remedial chaos theory already sucked, but i didn't care too much because i knew they weren't going to push it into anything too serious, but then you had annie tell jeff he reminded her of her father mid-makeout and it's just...wow. so the creators knew they had this very obvious father-daughter like relationship, were fully aware of it, and still forced the ship. cool.

now, don't kill me for this, but i'm one of those people who actually genuinely, really liked season 4. and one reason why i liked it was because the one major jeffannie scene they had was the imaginary alternate timeline one, which acknowledged that jeffannie would not be good together, and was hilarious. so thank you season 4, they can never make me hate you <3

introduction to teaching was also great because there was a plotline centered around jeff and annie that never tried to force any sort of awkward romantic chemistry (at least that's how i remember it), which seems impossible in community. honestly, this episode just proved that platonic jeffannie is superior to romantic jeffannie.

but that period of bliss where there was no romantic jeffannie didn't last long, because then you have g.i. jeff.

i love g.i. jeff. it's one of my favorite episodes, and was phenomenal for jeff's character. there was just one line, where animated coma dream jeff tells animated coma dream annie, 'look at the rack i gave you.' that was just kind of gross and didn't sit right, especially since a major plot point of this episode was jeff turning 40 and having a crisis. annie was *checks notes* 23-24 during this episode. the age gap is still very concerning here, and was made worse because of the fact that it really highlights how jeff is aging.

and then season 6 got so close to leaving jeffannie behind, forever, and then they had to ruin it with the series finale. i'm just saying, we couldn't have a platonic jeffannie goodbye like we got with jabed (speaking of which, the jabed goodbye arguably hurt more than the jeffannie one)?

anyway, i am desperately hoping we get jeffbritta/abedison (or trobed!) in the community movie, even though i know that's probably not going to happen, i do not like jeffannie at all, and thank you for reading my explosion of angry thoughts!

[bridgertonandchocolate]

Still living in my Polin era. Not leaving anytime soon. But since they announced Benedict will be the focus on season 4, which came as absolutely no surprise and didn’t really probably warrant an announcement at this point in time since we’ll be waiting forever for the next season, I decided to start making a list of potential spin offs that Shondaland and Netflix should take advantage of and make for us.

I hope they have something planned similar to Queen Charlotte but who knows. Queen Charlotte is definitely very different because it was more based off actual history and to me it still feels very separate other than bringing in Violet and Danbury that sticks more to the Bridgerton side of things.

Anyway here’s some ideas that could be added to the Bridgerton collection:

1. The Featherington story. I’d love to see Portia’s origin story. We got a big glimpse of it this season and I’d love to see her originally as maybe a very carefree debutante and realizing just what is expected of her and the choices she made. And maybe combining this with current timeline with a new heir. This would be more dramatic. I also wouldn’t mind seeing the Featheringtons in a comedy because they’re hilarious.

2. Edmund and Violets story. We know how this one ends and honestly I don’t know if this would ever be explored now because we have seen Edmunds death and we saw a young Violet so it just might not be an interest. Or it would’ve probably be a very long series. I think they could draw on the aunts and uncles of our Bridgerton siblings. We know Francesca stayed with her aunt in Bath and Julia Quinn does have her whole prelude to Bridgerton series so…I’m not opposed.

3. Bridgerton Christmas. I stole this idea from a few people I saw on TikTok. It wasn’t anything I had thought about before but it would be an easy way to keep production costs low. Would be more of a movie than a season with multiple episodes. Very similar to what shows like Downton Abbey have done that they have where they have a special I think this could be something fun to hold people over.

4. Lady Whistledown. Something. Season 3 had the opportunity to delve into the origin of LW and have some flashbacks and didn’t do it. They did explain why Penelope started the column but I think it would have been interesting to see more to see how in the world she created this empire. There was also mention of other gossip columns in the first episode of season 1 so the competitiveness of this. The danger Pen put herself in could lend itself to something. There probably isn’t enough here for this idea to become a spin off.

5. The servants. Anyone love Footman John? Yeah we all do. Want to know more about Varley or Wilson? Or season 3 MVP Rae?! Taking a note from shows like Downton Abbey this could be an interesting story to tell from the servant “downstairs” point of view. This would be unlikely. They haven’t delved much into this side of things so not many people probably do care about these side characters plus if they stick with Sophie being a ladies maid for season 4 that probably wouldn’t be likely at this point. Maybe after season 4 but they’d have to dig more into these side characters and bringing them into the more prominent storylines.

Kudos to you if you made it through that list. Mostly I just want more Polin so they could get their own spinoff, a film series, a travel series. Or just cast Luke and Nic in some rom coms for me so they can go on more press tours that’d be great.

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Boo Frank Miller Scrooge jumpscare

Now that i’ve got your attention:

Here look ifnonity dime thoughts im so quick whatsoit spoilers under the cut

It was first just thoughts quickly typed but then it became more of a review so enjoy the first infinity dime review on blumber i guess

So my main gripe with the comic (aside from that its short as balls) is that they skip the most interesting part. The actual traveling through the multiverse. That was what I thought me and everyone was looking forward to. To see Scrooge traveling through the multiverse and meet his other selves and react to that. But Aaron just went nah bitch: “a few weeks later”.

We have a prologue beautifully drawn by Paolo Mottura (who even though he greatly did the atmospheric dark Christmas should have done the action sequence imo) that is available to read in the previews anyways. Then chapter 2 which is half available to read in the previews as well. Little confrontation between Scrooge and evil Scrooge or whatever which is nice and all. Then we skip to the real ‘meat’ of the story and its just a really long action sequence…. Greatly drawn by Alessandro Pastrovicchio, but still just a very long action sequence. Maybe this is very usual for Marvel, i don’t know, i haven’t really read enough Marvel comics to know what is usual, but we have what is basically a 12 page long prologue, fight fight punch punch (insert don rosa reference here) and then epilogue.

And like this could mostly be due to the short page count, but had it been longer, i wonder if we would’ve just gotten a more drawn out action sequence instead of more actual story development. Because there was a very deliberate choice made to skip ahead to the fighting and have that be the main attraction. Such a fight scene should be a nice reward at the end after a buildup that makes us feel like this action-packed climax is deserved. After we see Scrooge struggle through time and universes to get to work together with himself, we see the result of that hard work in the fight scene. We can’t just skip over the build up and plop us in a “and then they punched each other for the rest of the chapter”. The action sequence would have probably been quite nice at the end of a longer story, but right now it feels like it’s taking the place of an actual storyline.

Because the entire thing is literally: there is a bad Scrooge (very well set up though). He steals from everyone including the Scrooge we know. They find a way to get to bad Scrooge. They get to bad Scrooge. They fight bad Scrooge. They defeat bad Scrooge. It’s just, they go there, they fight him, over. Everybody clap.

Bad Scrooge himself is great. Really well set up. Is it a dumb fucking Rosa thing? Yes it is, I’m my country’s biggest Rosa stan (aside from Diederik Jekel probably) whatcha gonna do about it?

“What if? Donald and the boys never arrived on Bear mountain…” is an immaculate premise. Which, though it has been done better before, is still really cleverly utilized here. It’s also a very good showing of what we mean when we say that comic Scrooge is always one step away from being a villain. He is no different than Glomgold. One is not good and the other is not evil. One just got lucky with family. The other did not.

Then the ending needed to be wholesome and redeem bad Scrooge and uhuhejshsh but sure

rosareference.cbr loaded

You have the literal multiverse at your fingertips. Then you decide to reference Don Rosa and Don Rosa only. Which I mean wasn’t a surprise I literally predicted it in that long speculation post of mine, but it still feels like a missed opportunity. When the army of Donald’s gets send in, there isn’t even one wearing an all black and white suit. Would it have been really so difficult to get a small DT17 reference in there?

What annoys me, and I find surprising considering the enormous talent of the artists, is that all the multiverse characters look the same. Like on the last page, all the Donalds look exactly the same. There is no sense of individuality for even one of them. They give more the sense that they all came out of a cloning machine.

Even Scrooge. He traveled the entire multiverse and only got one guy who isn’t himself from a different point in time? Or maybe it’s future him, could be! Why not make it a time travel story where a Scrooge from the future has gone mad with power? Because the Scrooges we see are almost all the same. It’s a fun reference of course, but this ain’t showing multiverse. And it’s not like there aren’t already established AU versions of Scrooge. Even then, a little creativity would have still been nice. For an example of such a multiverse story I would like to point to Crisis On Infinite Darkwings, which does a phenomenal job at showing multiverse diversity. Infinity Dime wouldn’t need to do all the pop culture references Crisis does, but again, a little more creativity in the designs would not have hurt at all.

And now that i’ve been yapping for long enough anyways, let’s talk about the length too. It’s not even 30 pages. It’s 29. The artists do a good job at making it feel big and grand. No matter though how epic and great they made and could have made it. If your comic is shorter than the average Donald Duck gag comic, it’s gonna be difficult to make it feel like “his greatest adventure yet”. Then comes with that the irregular layout. There are a few double page spreads and almost all pages are just a few ‘panels’. Instead of an usual 8 or 6 panels per page (and so 8 or 6 panels to develop your story) it is usually 3 or even 1. The amount of panels make the comic even shorter than it already is. Christmas on Bear mountain will likely take you longer to read through.

Not that irregular layout is bad. I love irregular layouts! I love seeing them. Usually they really help elevating my enjoyment of a duck comic! But when you know you have a big story you want to tell, and a limited amount of pages, it is a risk to spread your story even thinner by having many big splash pages where the pretty drawing takes front and center instead of the story.

Then it makes it EVEN SHORTER because there is not a lot of dialogue. Mostly because half of it is action without that much talking. There is a pretty fun way of using the narrator boxes. They are quite melodramatic but I like em.

Jason Aaron’s introductory page was very sweet.

Regardless of the quality of this story, I really, really hope that these kinds of releases continue. It was very fun and special to read something like this.

If these do continue, I would absolutely love an actual comic series. A longer continuing story please! Pretty please? This page count is just not enough to tell stories like these and more pages to properly flesh out things would be absolutely wonderful. I’m personally not that looking forward to the upcoming Marvel parodies, but if original stories continued, it would be the first American comic series I followed.

I cannot overstate enough how much I want more Marvel Disney comics actually. I need them. I get what people mean now on here when they say “going absolutely feral”. I feel it.

Oh and apparently I have 100 followers now on this blog so that’s nice. Consider this the celebratory post! My review of my most anticipated comic. To end it look at the only Mangiatordi pages in here because looking at Mangiatordi art makes all well

Damn actually this one isnt even that good what happened Vitale- sorry no great comic more please marvel disney

[ranbling]

Sending this anonymously bc i don’t wanna get the b/t stans attacking me for saying my observation, but this is in regards to your post about tommy not being enthusiastic about buck

for starters i completely agree w everything you said so this is just my own blurb i wanted to add

this plays into my theory of tommy paralleling abby in s1 who was never looking for anything serious w buck, but saw him as a younger man who could be used as a play-thing meanwhile buck jumps in head first only to learn a lesson about what love actually is along the way after being hurt…. and ik a bunch of people are like “i don’t want buck to get hurt by another relationship” but i genuinely think he needs to be burned a few more times because he obviously still doesn’t realize that his own interests should be celebrated by his partner and not put down— buck hasn’t had something BIG happen to him since the coming out arc and that was a mostly positive arc, aside from the gaslighting from tommy but whatever… it’s time for him to go through another hurdle, not as a side player in someone else’s arc [bobby’s injury/eddie’s breakdown] but as his own arc in which he realizes he is worth more than just being a pretty boy who is only valuable when he’s being kissed. I hope that bobby and eddie’s storylines will show him that in the finale and we can end this whole buck/tommy fiasco before s8, but im scared they will drag it out further into s8 and we will get either retconning from the writers, or we will get the fandom backlashing against tommy being used for his original intended purpose which was to be a PLOT DEVICE…..

we also have seen buck’s interests and excited demeanor subdued and looked down on by taylor often during their relationship. i already have iffy feelings on how the writers handled her character and her relationship arc with buck but aside from the treasure hunt, we never really saw her propping up buck’s interests and often tried to subdue his “golden retriever” personality (something the buckley parents also did)

(this is also interesting bc Taylor Kelly and Tommy Kinard…. T-K and T-K, idk it feels very hmmm to me on top of Tommy kind of repping all of Buck’s past major relationships into s ball)

and i feel like the diaz parents and possibly whatever happens with the will could be that catalyst for him to finally be like “oh… i am worth more thsn just being a side piece” which would hopefully lead to a b/t breakup

bc think about it, who IS the only one (besides bobby/maddie) who is always trying to tell buck he is worth more than just what he is at face value? DING DING DING it’s eddie… and if we get that feelings realization of “oh this is what i need from a relationship and i get that from eddie” we can open the door to buck facing the “im in love with my straight best friend who is going through shit” crisis while eddie could have his own “i am projecting my feelings towards buck onto my dead wife because he is what i want and she is who i thought i was supposed to want”

also for eddie’s side of things, it could also be a sense of realizing that he’s projecting and this further idea of “i’m broken�� and then realizing who has been there to help him patch things up in the past as he realizes that everything he has looked for in a partner (mainly someone to be a second parental unit for chris) he already has with buck.

anyway i am so sorry for the long ask i just wanted to put this out there and say that i fully agree w you and share my thoughts that coincide with yours

Hi anon!

I love long asks and I agree with every point you made! Buck is still very obviously stuck in the hamster wheel (but only this time with a guy) and the whole "I don't want him to get hurt" is such a weird thing to say. Like except for Abby, Buck wasn't really upset by his breakups and rn his relationship with Tommy is not deep with a lots of buildup, it's just some dates (one of them failed) and two kiss so not a situation that will cause him a lots of heartache

And Eddie is the one who really matches Buck's energy and not only always hypes him up, but he's just as ready to get into the those situations

The pining arc for them is gonna be soo good, but I really hope they won't make it too long, I think a half season for it is more than enough (but I am an impatient girlie and we had enough slowburn now), I just want them to be domestic

I honestly believe we'll either have bt breakup in the next episode or in the first episode of s8. They did nothing to develop their relationship past e6, but introduced many points that could he grounds for a breakup (all coming back to Tommy's behaviour).

[glorious-spoon]

As someone who is, I believe, also not a fan of the cheating storyline for Eddie, have you thought about other ways the show could have shaken up Eddie? We know Eddie doesn't learn Big Things unless something Big/Dramatic happens to him. My initial thought after 7x7 was, "why didn't they have Eddie break up with M, then immediately jump into dating the doppelgänger?" Still messy since they want mess.

So, at this point I'm kind of withholding judgement until we see how it all shakes out in the end, but my issue with the cheating arc isn't really the cheating, per se.

(Cut for length and some negativity re: Eddie's current arc.)

It's the way that both Marisol and Kim (and to a great degree Shannon, through Eddie's memories of her) have been framed as these complete nonentities who only exist in relation to Eddie. Marisol is the cardboard-cutout Girlfriend (tm); Kim is a therapy doll to work out Eddie's Shannon-related issues on. Neither of them seem to have any internal life separate from him, so far.

One of the things that made Shannon an interesting character, and her relationship with Eddie a compelling one, was that she didn't smoothly and passively slot into his plans; she had desires and problems and goals that conflicted with his. She didn't always want what he wanted; she didn't always play the role that he'd placed her in. She was, for better or worse, willing to blow up their marriage because she was unhappy in it. But in Eddie's memories, she's either silent or cheerfully compliant.

Now, if it turns out that this is all because of Eddie's warped perspective and part of the fallout is him being forced to confront that both of these women are actual people whom he simply hasn't bothered getting to know, I'll be okay with it. But Marisol's passively pleasant non-reaction to him jerking her around in 7x05 has me wary on that front; I'm not yet convinced that the writers have actually thought through the implications of the storyline they've given us so far.* On the other hand, we have had some interviews indicating that Eddie's rosy view of his marriage is inaccurate and incomplete, so hopefully that's the thread they decide to follow through this arc.

Anyway, as far as other ways to shake it up for Eddie, I really would have liked Marisol to get pissed off and dump him after everything that happened in 7x05. I think it would have been a nice reversal after he spent the whole episode debating whether or not to end the relationship only to decide that he wasn't ready to do that yet, and it would have left him unbalanced and out of sorts about romance in a way that I think would have made his pursuit of Kim feel more organic.

But like I said, we shall see!

* side note: this was also something that bugged me about BuckTaylor: the way her backbone completely vanished once they got together. I think they set up a lot of situations that could have had much more juicy conflict had she not turned into a wilting flower.

[horsetailcurlers2]

Please ramble about Tedstina I’m a total truther lol. Their chemistry was SO intense and palpable from the second Teddy stepped on screen and I agree about them not getting together whilst Teddy was mentoring her but I always thought the Henry plot was a perfect lead in to them developing something long term. Like in my head Cristina dumps Owen after he makes her lie about Henry and in Teddy’s grief and Cristina’s guilt they get closer, eventually sleeping together and then dating. Out of all the couples something about them both being so stubborn but also so clear eyed, ambitious and somewhat cold makes them the most likely to last in my opinion. A little line with Burke but this time they actually know and like each other lmao. And it would definitely be a little twisted since Cristina technically ‘killed’ Henry and then dated his widow but also it’s no darker than other weird romance plots on greys lol. Plus they would’ve been hot as hell 😭

yess you get it. okay but be forewarned this is a true ramble- it may only be vaguely coherent as i’m just going off the cuff.

exactly the chemistry is genuinely insane!!!! the thing about greys that bums me out in the early seasons is that they had an aversion to making any of their main female characters canonically queer. like, i get it, bc getting the callie storyline out there was an uphill battle. but it’s like they want to be explicitly clear all the time that cristina and meredith are both very very Straight. and that’s a whole other thing i could go on about. all this to preface that i think if the show aired now, cristina would be canonically openly queer right out the gate.

by the time teddy came along, it was still pretty early in the owen/cristina and so he hadn’t really done anything yet to make him quite so hate-able. and after hahn there was a big gap left where cristina was sorely lacking in a good mentor. burke was almost a good mentor but then you know they started canoodling and he eventually got frustrating. hahn just straight up refused to teach cristina despite her clear enthusiasm and untapped talent. then teddy comes in and it’s like…. she’s brilliant, she’s not put off by cristina’s cristinaness and she actually seems to be interested in the teaching aspect of working at a teaching hospital (which was fucking rare at that point). so i was immediately drawn to the teddy-cristina dynamic. especially with the complication of owen being the common link.

i could go on a whole other ramble about teddy and the long lasting effects that stemmed from allison’s death and the guilt about that infidelity but suffice to say by the time we meet teddy she’s pretty messed up about love.

and as we know, cristina has a long history of being attracted to mentor figures.

i think that with teddy’s infatuation with owen being shut down on his end pretty early on (despite him doing a total one eighty in the later seasons and claiming to have always loved her 🙄) it opened the door for her to realize WHY she was attracted to him in the first place (a best friend she made in a war zone shortly after the allison tragedy, him already being in a relationship).

SO anyway teddy meets cristina. they’re both in love (?🙄) with owen, they are both passionate about the same specialty, they both have tragedy and failed romance in their pasts.

and i see what you mean about them being very similar. but they are also opposite (and therefore perfectly complimentary) in a lot of ways. i personally think teddy is a lot more optimistic than she appears. she’s not easily discouraged. i also like that right off the bat she recognizes cristina’s talent, takes a liking to her, and is kind of just impervious to cristina’s dislike/wariness of her. i think it’s so funny how almost everyone but meredith is at first really put off by cristina’s bluntness or outright offended by her but teddy is just like “i respect your skill, i’m not gonna take any shit, i know i’m great at my job so let me do it and we’ll be chill”

i think that the conversation about teddy wanting to leave and cristina begging her to stay and yelling that teddy can have owen was a turning point for both of them. i think they both had a lot of revelations.

AND THEN i think the saga of henry’s death was also a major turning point for their relationship. i don’t think this would make their relationship that twisted tbh bc i don’t think teddy ever saw it that way. i think if she blamed anyone other than herself, it was owen (which, yeah bc the way he handled that was fucking bonkers). and i’ve seen a lot of frustrating stuff (mostly on tiktok lol which i have to stay away from bc there’s rarely any nuance on there when it comes to fandom/media discussions) about how teddy repeatedly grilling cristina about henry’s death was the worst thing she ever did and she was punishing cristina or something. but i think that that isn’t true at all in the slightest. it was fucked up and brutal and it was a grief response that was terribly unfair to cristina, but i think it actually showed the two of them being on the same wavelength in a lot of ways. cristina isn’t fazed (at least visibly) by teddy’s need to hear it over and over. bc i think she understood why teddy needed to hear it. they both deal with grief by making it about the facts and about the medicine. teddy needed to know that there is nothing anyone could have done to save him so that she doesn’t feel like she has another death on her hands. and i think cristina gets that because of her backstory with her fathers death. AGAIN i think they just get each other in ways that owen never got either of them.

AND HOW COULD I NOT MENTION THAT TEDDY HAS ACTUALLY SAID “i’m in love with cristina yang”

ANYWAY i personally have this AU idea in my head where they cross paths in europe and reconnect.

[phoebepheebsphibs]

Yet another Lou Jitsu's Kids ramble because uhhhhh y'know wut just cuz

I had initially wanted the AU to have absolutely nothing to do with magic or ninjas or anything cool like that. The Foot Clan didn't exist. Draxum wasn't really evil, just grumpy. The boys were not ninjas at all, and in fact they all had like their own things going on! Raph worked as a stunt double, but was generally interested in law enforcement and wanted to go to the police academy when he was old enough. Donnie had pretty much skipped high school and was taking advanced college classes and I think even taught a few coding and computer courses himself, also earning his own money on a sweet side gig for fixing laptops and stuff. Leo was an up-and-coming actor, starring in some tv shows and even a few movies! Mikey took professional ballet and gymnastics and did some work as a dancer in music videos and a few stunts in Lou Jitsu movies with his dad.

I changed my mind about the "no cool ninjas or foot clan stuff". There are definitely ninjas and foot clans. The boys (plus April and Cassandra who works as a double-agent) formed a vigilante group called "The Mad Dogs". They were known as the Blue Ninja, Red Ninja, Orange Ninja, and Purple Ninja. When April joined their fights, she went by Yellow Ninja. They mostly fought against the Foot Clan and sometimes got mixed up with Big Mama, but never actually met her or saw her, so they never knew that their surrogate mom was actually a crime boss. There was this one other mysterious vigilante that they kind of had beef with, and I think he was called "the Splinter Ninja", but nobody knows who that is ooooh what a mystery!

So there was this unimportant plot where the only thing I wrote down was that Leo got shot in the shoulder but that definitely doesn’t matter for later

So a while ago I mentioned this one storyline where Leo got word of a cool festival in the mountains was made to take Mikey with him. On the way there, the two had a fight and Leo wished that Mikey wasn't his little brother. Before either of them could say anything about it, they got run off the road by a truck, knocking Leo out cold and sending Mikey spiraling over the cliff railing. While unconcious, Leo had a dream that Mikey was never in their family and went on a mad search for him or any evidence that he existed. Leo eventually woke up and discovered that Mikey had fallen down the side of the cliff they were driving on and he called 911 and the two were taken to the hospital and Mikey was in a coma for three days and then woke up and he and Leo made amends.

Anyways so immediately after they make up, Mikey tells Leo that he saw the truck that almost killed them both, and it was a delivery truck for the Foot Shack. So the boys realize that they meant to do that, but not only that, they knew they would be on that road at that time. So they try to figure out why and how... Donnie notices Leo keeps scratching at the wound in his shoulder and he checks it out and lo and behold he finds a tiny tracker. He quickly takes it out but realizes that the Foot Clan will be arriving any second to finish the job.

So the Foot Clan start to secretly invade and search the floors of the hospital for the tracker. The boys manage to defeat them all and keep their identities hidden, but one lone foot soldier finds Mikey sleeping in his room and searches through his stuff and finds the orange mask and puts two and two together. Fortunately Cass subdues him before he can do anything, but now they have a problem.

The Mad Dogs take the foot soldier to a secret hideout and interrogate him, but discover quickly that they are at a stalemate. The Foot solider knows who they all are now, and just as bad, he knows that Cass is a double-agent. They can't let him go, but they can't keep him prisoner. With no other choice, they tell their dad about everything they've been doing and the mess that they're in. Which is when SUPRISE SUPRISE, Yoshi Hamato reveals that he was the Splinter Ninja?! WHAT WHO SAW THAT COMING??? And he is a part of the Hamato Clan and that the Foot don't just have gangs in NYC, they're all over the world and the Hamato clans have been sanctioned all over as well! He tells them they can send the foot prisoner to a Hamato group that will know what to do with him. So they contact one of their cousins which I was gonna make 2012 Karai lol because EASTER EGGS AND REFERENCES EHEHE

Anyways I think that's it

[eddiegettingshot]

okay. mourning s1-s4 tim minear anon here. just finished my season 3 rewatch and ohhhhh boy oh boy. honestly I could write so much about that finale alone because s6 and s7 have made me forget what a good finale can be (athough I will say that the s3 finale has me thinking a wholeeee bunch of insane things about the s7 finale like buddie things and how the writing choices are were insane (complementary) that I will not elaborate on here because Im already rambling too much about how good s3 is). but genuinely all the character arcs were SO GOOD this season its insane. athena (hate the copaganda here but the general emotional journey with athena and athena/may): establishing what being a cop means to her -> showing that not even the murder of her fiance could sway her from policing and finally arresting the man that did it -> experiencing something traumatic first hand that makes her question her ability to do the job again. and then may: hating what her mom does, going as far as to write her college essay about it, then insisting on taking the pictures with her mom for prom despite her injuries from policing/not being ashamed of her. and also appreciating it to the point of also wanting to help people but as an acab truther pursuing a different way of doing it (911 operator. also imagine they made may a cop thank god that didnt happen lmao). michaels feeling of loneliness and isolation leading up to his diagnosis, then ending the season by meeting his endgame and knowing he gets to live. buck starting the season being insecure about losing his place with the 118 and being the person left behind again and ending the season confronting the last person who left him + feeling secure in his relationships with the 118. bobby's refusal to let buck do anything at the beginning of the season due to his injury + general recklessness vs doing buck's suggested rescue to save both victims. both the henren IVF/fostering arc AND the hen arc were great and thank god because the henren of it all was seriously lacking before this season. but hitting the girl with the ambulance -> reconnecting with her first rescue -> introducing her issues with Drs and their ability to listen and help patients to their full ability -> pursuing med school SO GOOD. and remember when madney used to get character arcs UGHH soooo good. developing chim + his mom/albert/his dad more. having maddie actually confront what happened with doug via therapy (btw maddie stalker plot good example of how to do an insane storyline well!!). this leading into the love confession and also the conclusion/start to the pregnancy arc they set up in !!! episode 1 !!! them not just dropping the josh arc completely after the heist trauma he suffered and seeing it through to a satisfying conclusion. and like I do have one nitpick in hindsight like the eddie arc was so good up until he got caught in the fighting ring and he cried about the divorce and then it was just never brought up again in favour of doing the mini chris stories in 3x10/3x12/3x15. like you literally had a chance to address and conclude eddie's mourning shannon arc in eddie begins or the episodes surrounding that and just didnt LMAO idk maybe they had plans and it got scrapped for the buck/red/abby arc because connie agreed to come back because really it was the only thing that did not feel concluded relative to literally every other character arc this season. anyways where is this tim. TIM WAKE UP!!! come back and give your characters arcs!!! one thing that is super obvious from rewatching the early seasons is there is still SO MUCH interesting stuff to explore with these characters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am begging please give eddie a story with a satisfactory conclusion please give maddie and chim stories please stop torturing hen and karen via fostering/adoption please conclude a buck plot in satisfactory fashion please have bobby and athena explore his past properly please make ravi a main

ohhhh my god THIS MADE ME MOURN S3 TOO 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 what the fuck COME BACK TIM 😭😭😭😭😭 i want him BACK 😭😭😭😭😭