#but from what we've seen he does appear to be fucking insane and great

[asterrrrion]

I know very well that Slip narratively and logically could've never lived but GOD I wish we'd gotten the chance to explore his character a bit more

Like he's a genius chemist street orphan who's goal in life is to design non-addictive drugs because he started using drugs when he was a child, he stopped using because his crush (that treated him like shit) basically yelled at him that he endangered every one he met and was going to die, the aforementioned crush he hadn't talked to in at least five years became a terrorist and he went "you know what, I'm gonna help you run away", he tests his own potentially dangerous experiments on his fucking self, he has absolutely nothing to his name to the point that he could bet everything away which makes him a poker master except for Peter (which is what ultimately damns him), he's larger than life, he's a seventeen year old boy, he ends up dying of an overdose and I don't even want to think about the fact that while Peter was sleeping he 100% knew he was gonna die of the very same thing he's fought against for half his life, he's weirdly balanced and emotionally intelligent, he's confident around literally everyone except the guy he's in love with, and when coming out of a twenty years long coma and in unimaginable pain, unable to talk, as soon as he got a grasp of the situation he decided to let himself die in less than thirty seconds to save the love of his life.

Truly the character of all time™ of the Penumbra, died like a king as he lived

[gartenofbanny]

Striker was one of my favorite antagonists in Helluva Boss. He's a (mostly) thought-out character with an understandable motivation, has a great personality, is a threat to IMP and Stolas, conflicts with Blitzo moreso than Moxxie, and his design is cool. Well when Western Energy was released, you can tell that Striker's character has been changed, and not for the better. While I still consider him my favorite antagonist (because he's the one with the most depth), I can't ignore the character change he had in Western Energy, and believe me they did change a lot about him. So this is going to be a simple comparison of both versions of Striker, some of the topics I'm going to be talking about are listed in this meme I made. Anyway, let's get started.

Show vs Tell

Helluva Boss has always had a show vs tell problem, but it was very apparent in Western Energy. For this example I'm going to bring up the Ballad of Striker.

The song is insanely catchy, but my problem is that they just describe traits or stuff about Striker that we already know about or we're going to know about later on. We know he's fast and strong and tall and mean because he already expressed those traits in Harvest Moon, we're told that he's the best assassin in the Ring of Wrath despite him failing to kill Stolas twice, they say that he's this famous assassin even the cacti know his name but Blitzo, Moxxie, nor Millie never heard of him before Harvest Moon and there was no foreshadowing that he even existed.

The only things we know that's new when it comes to Striker is that he likes to eat Pâté for lunch and he likes to ride on the choo-choo train. So yeah those are the only two new things we know about him, the rest of those traits don't make sense or were things we already knew and we have Harvest Moon Festival to thank for that.

Striker is fast because and strong and tall because he's Blitzo's physical equal and he overpowered Millie swiftly. He's mean because we've seen him insult and hate on Moxxie just because he's weak. None of that was told to us, it was shown.

So not only did the writers implement tell instead of show this song that's telling us all this stuff just regurgitating information that we already know or stuff that doesn't make any sense. It's just a catchy song with no meaning.

Striker also mentions that Demonic Royalty took away everything he had, but it's very vague and not even brought up again in the episode. Stolas doesn't even know what he's talking about and doesn't even care lmao. This could've been a good opportunity to flesh him out a little especially considering that he's the second major antagonist to make a second appearance as an antagonist.

Voice Acting

Now this is going to be a bit controversial, while I do like Edward Bosco's voice, Norman Reedus' voice acting is just on another level. Simply put it, Norman Reedus is a more experienced Actor than Ed Bosco because Norman has been in the game for well over 10 years at least. Edward Bosco from what I've seen only does voice acting for cartoons meanwhile Norman Reedus does both acting and voice acting and has been doing so since the 1990s.

Norman is just better, but that doesn't mean Edward Bosco is bad. I will say that Vivziepop should've had Edward Bosco voice Striker from the beginning because in all honesty, whenever I see or hear Striker I immediately think Norman Reedus until I remember Edward Bosco also voiced him. Having a big actor voice an antagonist leads to the audience identifying that antagonist as the actor.

And when that big voice actor gets replaced by a lesser experienced one it'll be difficult to fill those shoes, I'm not blaming Ed for this, moreso Vivziepop because I don't know why she decided to hire Norman fucking Reedus for this role and could've known that Norman Reedus most likely wouldn't be back for it.

Personality Change

So Striker has had a personality change in Western Energy, while remnants of his personality in Harvest Moon remained (like his hatred of Overlords & Demonic Royalty) there's more stuff that was added and removed that made his character a bit worse.

One of the things that they added to Striker was the fact that he has a statue of himself with a stick poking out between his legs. Obviously not going to share the image here because of reasons. While he was pretty narcissistic, it wasn't to the extent that he would literally make a fucking statue of himself with a hard-on. It's literally something Chaz would do and you all know my opinion about that guy. Not to mention it's yet another male character that's obsessed with dick so yeah.

Striker all of a sudden is also more sensitive to insults compared to his Harvest Moon version. He gets triggered whenever Stolas insulted him which is weird because before when he did get insulted he just didn't care and bit back with his own insults. Now he's just an angry goofball.

Striker gets disgusted to sexual remarks to the extent that he'll literally stop what he's doing. Whether it be stop torturing Stolas or stop choking out Moxxie because sexual jokes and cries are oh so disgusting to him. Remember when Blitzo essentially flirted with him in Harvest Moon and Striker didn't have a reaction to it? Yeah, me too.

This sensitivity to an extent also makes him less intimidating because now if you just insult Striker or say something dirty around him, he'll all of a sudden stop what he's doing to look at you disgustedly or gag. "Greatest Assassin in the Ring of Wrath", but he can't take insults or dirty jokes, fuck off with that.

Reckless Actions

Time to list Striker's reckless actions in a single episode alone

1. He attacked Stolas in public in a café where possible High Ranked Demons dine at

2. He has a wanted poster yet is in public

3. Is well known and possibly famous despite being called "The Greatest Assassin in the Ring of Wrath"

4. For some reason he lets imps be aware of his hideout which is what literally caused Moxxie and Millie to find him

While Striker in Harvest Moon was a bit reckless (Like why did he leave his door open to for Blitzo to find him assassinating Stolas and why was he immediately hostile towards Moxxie when Moxxie found his gun), but he wasn't reckless to this extent. I can also explain why Striker decided to snipe Stolas. It's because there were a bunch of Imps around and once Striker instantly kills Stolas it actually leaves a lot of suspects instead of one. And due to the fact that Imps are the bottom of the social hierarchy, it would lead to many members of Demonic Royalty just hating on Imps which can become a problem for Moxxie, Millie, and Blitzo because they are all affiliated with Stolas.

So if Striker just straight up killed Stolas in Harvest Moon, he probably won't face the consequences. That would be an interesting conflict, but it's definitely not gonna happen.

Conclusion

Anyway, Striker as an antagonist has really changed for the worst in Western Energy and it's such a shame because he was my favorite antagonist. He still is, but it's just not the Striker I liked. Oh well at least the DHORKS Agents are still around, hopefully Viv and her writing team don't fuck them up.

Thank you all for reading and I hope you all have a nice day! ❤️

[gidakata]

DPR Ian is a comedic genius simply for the fact that like. ok mr insanity is this joker/harley quinn type. got it. great happy aesthetics, unsettling smile, having fun causing chaos and wrecking things (THAT HE SET UP) and then like. just dragging this faceless green dude around. ok. got it. that's his shtick that's what he does.

and then mito, who we've seen have some pretty serious moments in MVs up until now, but in like a more emotional kind of way, is all of a sudden like. dressed like a cowboy out of a sci-fi western and every time he appears in this mv mr insanity just has this little cartoon "uh-oh!" moment and a delayed reaction while everything goes to shit and it brings me joy because why do you give the "oh we're fucked" look while ROBBING A BANK... and then immediately go shooting the only entity that could hurt you EVEN THOUGH he just took even MORE power from one of the objects in that bank!??!

LIKE!?!? ALL OF A SUDDEN THE MV GOES HARD AND FOR A SPLIT SECOND MR INSANITY LOOKS PETRIFIED AND THEN HES LIKE :D NO ACTUALLY. I LIKE THIS. (which is hilarious considering not even 5 seconds later he and his faceless bank robbing husband dip like??)

OR WHEN THEY GET IN THE CAR AND THEY REALIZE THEY'VE MET MITO FOR THE FIRST TIME?? ITS SO FUCKIGN FUNNY LIKE

MR INSANITY GOING. WE DONT HAVE THE KEY?? WE HAVE MUFFINS?? THEY TRICKED US AND NOW WE HAVE A BOX OF MUFFINS!?!? :( oh wait nvm I see the key. AND THEN MITO FUCKIN. COMING OUT OF NOWHERE AND STARTING A TORNADO TO GET HIM BUT THE DELAYED REACTION KILLS ME BC WHY DOES HE JUST STARE AT THIS DUDE CLEARLY CALLING UPON THE DARK FORCES ON A MOUNTAIN TOP???

like im so. im so fond of these two in particular. mr insanity who does not at all register the actual threat mito poses and MITO who goes so hard the MV changes visuals and the music changes its tone and rhythm completely like this is so fucking funny to me please. I need more content of just this pure emo tom and robbing-a-fucking-bank jerry

[keepsmagnetoaway]

X-Men 129 (January 1980)

Chris Claremont/John Byrne

It's late September in this one-comic-a-day project and the dawn of the 1980s in the actual publication timescale of these comics: it's the moment we've all been waiting for. It is, finally, the Dark Phoenix Saga.

It's good to be back. I'm going to try and resist the temptation to rehash in great detail the plot of all these issues, but this is what so much of the last few years of Claremont has been leading too: a ten-issue run of unparalleled high stakes that changed the X-Men forever and is usually regarded as their finest story ever. We'll see at the end if that's true, I guess. One great thing happens right at the beginning, though: Banshee fucking leaves.

I'm being a bit harsh, but I just never liked Banshee. All the begorrah-bejesus stuff is exhausting, his leprechaun castle backstory is insane, his powers are baffling, and his role in the team was...what? "Older sensible guy"? That's never going to be a particularly interesting position. So, farewell Sean, and hello again to Xavier, who has finally returned from space bullshit and appeared right in a panel with some clashing patterns that are giving me a migraine.

Meanwhile we get our first real look at our antagonists, though they've been lurking around for a while (including in some retroactively inserted stories), and one of them - Jason Wyngarde - has now appeared a couple of times to psychically send Jean back to a Regency romance novel. But now we finally properly see the Hellfire Club.

"Regency-themed sexual deviant Illuminati named for the actual Regency deviants' club and heavily inspired by that one Avengers episode" is a totally fucking bizarre idea for a villainous group, but it works. It's unlike anything we've really seen before for the X-Men and it instantly brings a kind of spooky, literal cloak-and-dagger quality that feels very exciting and mature, even when it's all basically silly. That's not all for introductions this issue, though, as Claremont has another piece to put on the board (this is a very Hellfire Club-inflected metapor, sorry) as this storyline kicks off.

It's Kitty Pryde! She's here! Well, she's in Chicago, as you can see, but still. It's remarkable to realise that, although the revival had been going for five years at this point, Claremont had not yet introduced an actual new character to the team, playing in the sandbox of the existing characters and the ones he created for the initial Giant-Size relaunch. Kitty - though of course we don't know it yet - is here to change that with her instantly recognisable and distinctive features (loosely based, apparently, on Sigourney Weaver) and with her various key differences from existing team members: most notable, she's only thirteen (and also, Jewish - note the necklace). Kitty, as you can see, is being courted by Emma - but the X-Men are also onto her, and she likes them a lot better.

God, I love this panel (uh, slightly insane comment from Kitty about skin colour aside): the layout, the use of colour in the background, the facial expressions. Note Peter and Logan back there: Logan's reading a porn magazine and Peter's eyes are popping over his shoulders. And on the next page, he gets called on it, before things kick off.

Right, anyway, Kitty. I'm well aware that there are Strong Feelings about her and various things that have happened to her since, but this is a banger of an introduction and I adore her. The audacity of droping her in like this and then having the three actual X-Men get owned is brilliant, and this is how the issue ends.

There we go! It feels like whole vistas have suddenly opened up: the Hellfire stuff is suddenly so adult and intriguing, but then we also have plucky teenage Kitty showing up for what seems like a Saturday morning cartoon. It shouldn't all work but it does. And we haven't even gotten to any Jean stuff yet!

[fydream]

Almost an entire week of school goes by without any form of communication Hyuck. You didn't really expect to see him in the morning before school started so you planned on talking to him during lunch, the day after Chenle texted you. But when you saw Chenle and Renjun sitting together, without the missing boy you knew something was up.

The start of your day was a little awkward. You expected Jeno to actually have a conversation with you during history but he was too caught up doing god knows what on his phone to even realize you were trying to talk to him. "So the boy does have his priorities then.." You thought to yourself. "I wonder if he knows anything I should know."

At the end of the class you decided against asking Jeno, because maybe, just maybe it was a little too early to be asking such questions that would possibly just make things worser than they needed to be. Instead you decided to go on your day in hopes that Donghyuck would contact you in any form.

It was only until your last class of the day when you finally got something. An email, from no one but Lee Donghyuck himself. Confused, on why he would send you something so late in the day you decide to open it. Upon opening the email you read:

Welcome!

Club representative Lee Donghyuck here!

Are you tired of the heartbreak, lies, and untrustworthy relationships in your life? Have you been cheated on one too many times? Then this is the place for you! Welcome to the DNYL Club here at NCT High! Where the heartbreakers become the heartbreakees!

Interested in joining us? Great! You’ll just have to follow a few rules.

rule #1: you’ve got to have fun.

rule #2: always look your best, we don’t want anyone to catch you slipping now, do we?

and lastly, rule #3: don’t wear your heart on your sleeve, unless you want to end up like one of them.

so, will you join us?

Rereading the email over you notice the same four letters on your notebook being mentioned once again, even more confused you check to see who it was sent to, turns out it was sent to just you.

"What the fuck?" You thought to yourself. "All of a sudden Chenle tells me things are going on and Hyuck thinks that instead of explaining things he should send a cryptic email instead.."

The bell rings, snapping you out of your thoughts. You blink twice before looking back at the email that you had opened on on your phone, then back up at your classroom where your classmate seemed to be leaving.

"What the fuck happened?"

Walking out of the now empty classroom to the student parking lot you find yourself in the backseat of Renjun's car. You asked him for a ride to Hyuck's house because you didn't feel like walking all the way over there, plus you decided that the company would be nice. He accepted your request as you told him you were going to check up on Donghyuck and that he and Chenle should come as well

The car ride from school to the Donghyuck's place is mostly quiet with the background noise of the car’s fan and Chenle’s giggles due to him watching some sort of video on his phone. It stays like this for a few minutes before you decide to break it.

"Renjun?" You ask, looking at him through his rear view mirror.

"Yeah?"

"Uh- Hyuck um, sent me this email last period.." You start, and Rejun suddenly hits the breaks in his car, giving both you and Chenle a scare. "I- Sorry." He apologizes. "You can conintinue."

"Um.. Okay.. Well it was about how DNYL was a club at our school?? I recognized the letters from the journal you guys gave me, oh and um- why is it about heartbreakers?? Is this something related to Jeno?" You ask quickly, now getting Chenle's attention as well.

"You'll find out soon enough, y/n." Renjun sighs, parking his car along the sidewalk. "We're here anyways, Hyuck might as well do the explaining himself." He mumbles.

With the three of you exiting Renjun's car, Chenle runs up to the front door to ring the doorbell. Upon ringing the doorbell, no one but Donghyuck himself opens the door, clearly surprised to see the three of you here. "What are you doing here?" He asks as if he were confused on what he did to get all of you to show up at his house.

"You've got a lot of explaining to do." You say pushing past the two boys once you see the door open to reveal your best friend. "What the fuck was that email about? Also who the fuck still emails people?"

"What email?" Donghyuck asks, taken back at the sudden aggressiveness.

"This one?" You say, shoving your phone towards him.

"Oh.. That one." He sighs. "I didn't expect you to ask so soon."

“Why?”

“I thought you might wanted to think about it before asking.”

“Well, clearly I’m here now. Along with your other two friends, and I suggest you tell me if you’re going to explain anything or not so I can leave if you aren’t.” You scoff harshly, getting ready to leave if he did happen to say no.

Donghyuck sighs.

"Come in then, all of you."

"I guess I should just start from the top then, huh?" Donghyuck starts, laughing nervously, earning a glare from you. "So, if you didn't already know.. Lee Jeno, the boy in your history class? Well, He and I dated, for a while in fact.. and well.. it didn't end well." He pauses for a second, and before he can speak again you cut him off.

"Is that it?" You ask a little too harshly, "You see me and your ex, who I didn't even know you dated hang out, and then all of a sudden you don't show up to school, ignore my texts, and just send me a cryptic email? Really?"

"No.. That's not all."

"The reason why we broke up was because I found out one of his friends, who I'm assuming you already met, Park Jisung, dared him to ask me out." He says quietly. "And I guess they found me acting like a fool in love was entertaining.." "Oh." You whisper, feeling guilty that you just snapped at him. "I'm sorry... I didn't know and I shouldn't have assumed.."

"No it's fine. We broke up last June after school ended, so, almost three months ago." He sighs. "I should've known too.. I was warned. One of my upperclassman friends, Mark Lee, warned me about them and I still went on and dated Jeno.. I guess love really is blind then, huh?" He jokes.

"Well.. anyways, Mark was part of the DNYL club also known as the 'Don't Need Your Love' club and when he graduated he made me president. He told me the same stories that his older friends experienced and he saw the difference between the two groups grow. They would continue breaking hearts, and we'd continue trying to get back at them.. but as the years went on we started losing more people."

"So many people quit after all the upperclassmen graduated.. I still don't understand why.." Renjun explained. "The whole concept of the club was just to get back at those who hurt us, in a way that they would understand."

"People have said it's just because the three of them would make you feel so special, when in reality you were just a pawn in their games." Chenle added. "And I guess Hyuck getting his heart broken by Jeno was enough for everyone to quit."

"So.. Who's in the club now?" You ask, trying to keep up with all the information being given to you. Honestly, you didn't expect to learn everything all at once, all you wanted to know was what that email was about, you never expected it to be because of your new so called "friends."

"You're looking at them." Chenle jokes.

"You're fucking kidding."

"There's nothing to kid about y/n."

"Why'd they quit?" You ask.

"Like I said. I guess Hyuck's downfall was just too much." Chenle shrugs. "To be fair, we haven't done anything either. The most we've done so far is cut off ties with Jeno, Jisung, and their friend Jaemin. We're not taking any chances."

"I see.." You sigh. "Okay but what does any of this have to do with me?" You ask.

"Well.. You see.." Donghyuck starts. "We were wondering if you would like to help us out." He says an innocent smile suddenly appearing.

"What?!" You exclaim. "You want me to do what now?!"

"Help us out." Renjun adds with a nod. "You don't have to do anything extreme, we just want them to go through the same pain we did." "Isn't that um.. morally wrong?"

"What? Leading them on just to crush their hearts afterwards?" Donghyuck asks in that playful voice he always uses.

"Uh, yeah?"

"Only if you're looking at it that way." He says smiling. "We're just teaching them a lesson."

"So are you in?" Renjun asks.

Trying to process all the information that had just been given to you, you decide to think about what to do. "So basically. You want me to help you get back at your ex and his friends because they're assholes to not only you, but other people as well. And you think the most sane way to do that is to do the same thing they did to you, to them."

"Yeah pretty much."

"No!"

"C'monn!!!" Chenle whines. "It'll be fun!!"

"Yeah for you! Not me!" You exclaim. "What happens if I end up getting played then, hm?"

"You won't." Renjun defends. "We'll be here for you, plus, considering all that time Hyuck and Jeno spent together we could probably tell you what to do."

"That still doesn't make up for the fact that you're doing the same thing they did." You argue back.

"Well what I've learned is, is that they won't stop until one of them experiences it." Donghyuck retorts. "I know I haven't told you everything but you just need to trust me on this one. They don't care about anyone but themselves." Donghyuck says sincerely, thinking about what Jeno had told him the other night. "Please."

This is the most vulnerable you've seen Donghyuck in a while, and part of you can't tell if this is genuine or if this is just a way for him to get what he wants.

"Okay." You sigh, while the three boys cheer. "But on one condition."

"Of course there's a catch." Donghyuck jokes, rolling his eyes.

"You have to at least talk to Jeno again." "Are you fucking insane?!" Donghyuck asks. "There's no way in hell I'm talking to that bastard, you do not know the hell he put me through."

"And he doesn't know the hell you're about to put him through." You defend. "I never said you had to like him, I just said you have to talk."

"So do we have a deal?"

He sighs.

"We have a deal."

A few days later you were meeting up with Donghyuck at his house where he would be telling you what to do. Currently you were laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling in Donghyuck's bedroom.

"Am I really going to do this?" You think to yourself.

"This is your target." Donghyuck says, handing you his phone with a certain someone's instagram pulled up.

"Target?"

"That's just what we would call them." Donghyuck shrugs. "This is Park Jisung. I'm sure you've already met him."

"I thought you were mad at Jeno." You say scrolling through the boy's feed. "Why am I going after Jisung?"

"He's the one who asked the dare."

"And I guess I was thinking about what you said. As much as I hate Jeno, I don't think I could do that to him.." He adds quietly.

To his luck, you weren't listening. You were too caught up in stalking Jisung's instagram to even notice that Hyuck was still talking to you. "Sorry, what? Did you say something?" You ask, handing his phone back to him.

"Hmm? Oh, it was nothing."

"So why Jisung?" You ask again.

"You're perfect for him." Donghyuck bluntly states. "The new girl who just moved to town, who also happens to be a sweetheart and a smartass? I don't know about you, but if I were in his position I'd definitely try to shoot my shot, especially if no one knew anything about me." He shrugs.

"He's always goes for the 'soft-innocent' types. The ones that would pretty much never expect it." He adds. "Like I said, he's an asshole."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I dunno. Break his heart? Crush his hopes and dreams?"

"Donghyuck, seriously." You scold.

"You're no fun." He pouts. "All you have to do is get the boy to fall for you, then break his heart before he can break yours."

"Y'know that sounds a lot easier said than done.." You mumble. "How do you even know that I'll be able to do it?"

"You're the new girl, right? He barely knows anything about you, he can only assume based off of your social media and how you act in class."

"Okay and? What is that supposed to mean?" "It means he wouldn't know if you were putting up an act or not. You'll be fine, you just need to watch out for yourself."

"Okay now what is that supposed to mean?" You ask, wondering if it's too late to back out now.

"Don't catch feelings." He shrugs. "If you find yourself catching feelings for Park Jisung then you need to tell one of us right away. I'm sorry y/n, but as much as I love you I can't put you through that hell."

"So are you up for the challenge?" He asks.

You sigh before sitting up to look at him. "Let's do it."

19 | previous | next | m.list | main m.list | 

✰ how to be a heartbreaker

↳ so what happens when park jisung, the school’s infamous fuckboy runs into the new girl at school? out of boredom he decides it’ll be fun to have someone new to play with, but little does he know, she’s learning how to be a heartbreaker.