#but the idea's that the result would be the same whether it were the og or shattered or swad or molten

[humunanunga]

I've been thinking on and off about Dreamtale for months, the way it left off with the twins perpetually clashing and how it adds to their mythological vibe... and I guess my mind couldn't let it go until it came up with a way to offer their story closure.

And that's how I got stuck on the idea of Dream and Nightmare always being two halves of a whole, Dark Crystal style, until I came up with a fusion– the guardian of emotion.

Maybe Nightmare ripped the golden fruit from Dream, maybe Dream got desperate and tried to separate Nightmare's SOUL from the black fruit, but either way, after they were absorbed or absorbed by the apples, maybe their SOULs would also involuntarily absorb each other if given the chance. Like they were always meant to succeed their sacred tree.

I really like interpreting Nightmare's tentacles as roots, leaving Swap!Dream's feathered wings to be the leafy branches.

Their motif would be an eclipse to combine Dream and Nightmare's motifs, and as for a name... Wake? Dawn? Psyche? Psyche... Psyche.

[plasma-studios]

ok but Suzanne Collins made the right choice setting the prequel in/from the Capitol's perspective. Aside from giving Snow his villain origin story (i personallly think he's always had villainous traits, but if the idea of control hadn't been instilled in him by Dr Gaul, he might not have grown into a fully fledged villain) it really expands on the perspective of Capitol citizens.

It's so easy to think of such a group of characters in dystopian settings as a mere plot point to 1) back up the main big bad 2) show a contrast against the suffering of the "common people" (i.e. the districts). However, it's really easy for this to become a black and white comparison, esp since a lot of dystopian books fail to capture the nuance of THG and see dystopian setting as aesthetic backdrops, not as a way to criticise and point out real world issues as THG did.

The issue with the black and white comparison is that it often doesnt delve into the actual reasoning and factors behind how and why the Capitol became what they were in Katniss' time, and as we know, history almost repeated itself with Coin.

I'm not saying the Capitol was justifed in their actions, I'm saying TBOSAS showed how it got that far. By Katniss' time, the Capitol had become so powerful they held the "big bad" role of the villains in most dystopian worlds, but that naturally resulted in a pov that couldn't explicitly flesh out the factors behind the Capitol's moral degradation. Although by the end of Mockingjay, seeing the same things pop up in the rebellion and Coin definitely called it into question (and with enough reading comprehension one also wouldve extrapolated it from the og trilogy anyway). Whether or not there was light in the Capitol's darkness, whether or not there were those who fought against the Hunger Games, in the end their darkness still swallowed the light.

i get that people (by people i mean me) want installments of characters that we already know (e.g. Finnick, Johanna, Haymitch, etc) or even new characters with a perspective that we're used to (e.g. maybe a victor from another district, but still from the districts), but I truly think that the impact would not be as powerful as either the original trilogy or TBOSAS because, we already know the districts are suffering. It's made abundantly clear, the cruelty and exploitation. It's so cruel that one thinks, how did things get to this point?

Then you look at TBOSAS and think,

oh, thats how.

[sokkastyles]

ATLA LA Ep 6 Thoughts:

I feel like Iroh is more defensive of Zuko than he should be. In the original, Iroh does explain Zuko's side to Jee, but I don't like the implication that Zuko understands sacrifice MORE. OG Iroh never felt like he was justifying Zuko's actions.

I do like the parallel with Zuko disrespecting a superior officer, which is got him banished in the first place, and Zuko disrespecting Zhao, while Zhao uses his past as a earning, and Zuko bullying his crew in the same way he was/is bullied. All because he thought war would be honorable.

Liked the fire sages and Roku but Aang going there to ask Roku for help in saving Katara and Sokka feels strange when he's supposed to be talking to Roku about the actual plot.

Aang: you can't always have been like this. *cue flashback*

BLUE SPIRIT BLUE SPIRIT

I can totally believe Zuko keeps exhaustive notes on everything Avatar related, but of course he never wrote about what happened to him.

The problem with Aang and Zuko having a prolonged conversation here is that it saps the tension out of their relationship.

"Compassion is a sign of weakness" / "I didn't mean to hurt you." The ways we hurt people when we've been hurt.

People talk too much in this show about what they're doing / going to do.

I get the feeling they were trying to make Iroh seem more proactive here, but it kinda has the opposite effect because instead of being paralyzed by shock/horror/guilt, he just like, makes one protest and then steps aside on cue.

"He's your son." "We'll see." It's a test.

It's a test but it's still not one Zuko can pass. Ozai accuses Zuko of holding back but the literal moment Zuko matches his ruthlessness, Ozai gets his excuse to hurt him.

And listen, I've seen some discourse about Zuko fighting back. But one, Zuko is not a skinny little kid here. I do wish they had cast a child actor but at the same time, Liu is so good that I can forgive that. So we have to accept a Zuko who is a little older and does not look as visibly like a child. Two, it doesn't matter whether Zuko fought back, nothing Ozai does to him is justified, but Ozai was absolutely looking for an excuse. The only thing that changes here is the excuse itself. The end result is the same, that Ozai deliberately hurt his son.

Azula's look of fascination is pretty perfect.

Aang's actor is good here. This is the scene between Aang and Zuko in the OG. Not sure why it was necessary for Zuko and Aang to have that talk before if they were also going to keep this scene. Again, this show has a problem with the pacing because characters keep stopping to give unnecessary exposition. I know we all want more Aang and Zuko but it doesn't quite work.

I still don't think Ozai's justification works.

The idea of Zuko's crew being the 41st is compelling. The idea that Ozai punished Zuko for having compassion by making him responsible for the people he refused to dehumanize, perhaps in the hope that he would eventually come to hate them. And it seemed like it was on its way to working. What I hate is the way the show frames things here by making it seem like it's the crew's responsibility to understand Zuko, and then suddenly they all worship him. The original showed us that Zuko still had compassion, and that was what earned the crew's respect, more than Iroh's story. It's also weird to have this happen after Zhao commandeers the crew, because Jee was right, that he, especially, knows the penalty for not following orders, and knowing Zuko's story only emphasizes how little autonomy the 41st actually have when up against someone like Zhao.

[teufelsabbiss]

Headcanon: the reason for OG!SQQ's abuse of Luo Binghe

There are a lot of different takes on how and why the original Shen Qingqiu treated Luo Binghe so badly, from escalating misunderstandings to petty envy that resulted in violent outbursts.

I personally think his reason was even worse – he meticulously planned everything out as an experiment.

(Spoiler warning, trigger warning for canonical abuse)

SQQ went through a lot of traumatic events. And on top of it, every time he tried to help someone it came back to bite him. This man had so many heart demons that I think it could be said that his mental state was comparable to that of LBH while under the influence of Xin Mo.

SQQ's ruined cultivation was a major cause for his resentment towards the world and the people around him, past and present ones. Liu Qingge's jibes at his mediocre abilities obviously riled him up often enough. But the quarrel between them during the entrance test, when LQG said Binghe would have better success than SQQ, was what ultimately sparked what then happened.

What caused his diminished abilities was the mental and physical abuse in the Qiu household, a late start due to his enslavement and possible wrong teachings from Wu Yanzi. But he could never tell this to anyone who mocked him for it. And I think he desperately needed proof that circumstances like these would cripple anyone's talent and his failures were not because he was just never any good to begin with. Sadly, LBH was pointed out as potentially more worthwhile and that painted the target on him.

Maybe SQQ was still pondering whether to go through with the idea during the tea ceremony. But after hearing that LBH had a mother, yet another positive circumstance beside the talent and ideal age, he decided on exacting the experiment. That said mother was dead also ensured there would be no difficult questions nor interference from his family. Obviously no one could ever know about what he planned, but SQQ would have the proof for himself.

So he arranged everything for LBH to mirror SQQ's time with the Qiu's. Where SJ was abused by QJL and bullied by the other servants, LBH was abused by SQQ and bullied from his peers. He was given a fake manual so that he couldn't learn proper cultivation until it was too late and would also suffer qi-deviations after a time. It inadvertently became even more similar through Ning YingYing, who was a source of protection and trouble alike, just as Qiu Haitang was for SJ. The nickname she called him by certainly didn't help matters either.

But the experiment didn't give the desired results. LBH made progress, albeit slowly, despite everything. He had no qi-deviations. And the longer he didn't falter as badly as he should, the more it enraged SQQ.

Then SQQ failed in saving LQG and I think this broke him a good deal further. Not only did the experiment point to himself as the main issue for his own mediocrity and unstable foundation, his poor cultivation (in his mind) also caused LQG's death.

The three challenges by Sha Hualing looked like a lost cause after Liu Mingyan lost her match. Since they would lose anyway, sending LBH into the ring probably looked like a good opportunity to end the experiment. But LBH managed the impossible and won, thus cementing in SQQ's thoughts that he maybe was, like others said, just a loser from the start who attempted to rise to greatness and inevitably failed. More cause for hatred, obviously.

Then even more successes for LBH during the Alliance Conference. Until his demonic heritage was revealed. I think this was a relieve for SQQ. Because, in that moment, he realized that what he did to LBH would have caused him the same problems that SQQ suffered from, if he had been fully human. Therefore SQQ's own failures weren't solely on him after all.

Apart from preventing anyone from finding out he had a demon as a disciple without noticing and casting suspicion on the sect for the sabotage, I think throwing LBH into the Endless Abyss was a first tiny, minuscule act of veiled kindness towards his victim. LBH had a chance, however small, to survive and live a good life in the demon realm, where he belonged anyway. An added tragic irony, seeing how the decision to let him live came back to haunt him the worst.

I also think that SQQ knew that what he did to LBH was terrible. That's why he gave up so easily and didn't defend himself against the accusations. Maybe he hated his life and his failures enough to have lost the will to keep struggling for goals he never was able to meet. He likely expected to be tortured a bit and to then die relatively quickly to sate Qiu Hitang's, Liu Mingyan's and LBH's resentment. Instead he was tortured heavily, YQY was killed too and this broke him for good. Maybe the reason he didn't come back as a resentful spirit was that he knew he ultimately deserved punishment for his actions. If so, he possibly included his tragic failures along his actual crimes. And the abuse of LBH weighed so much heavier, because it was deliberately planned, even though he knew all too well from personal experience how awful it would be.

[lexicals]

So I'm gonna write this down partially for my own reference and partially bc I'm curious to know what other dms following me think of the concept - curse of strahd module spoilers below the cut here

So long story short the CoS campaign I was running had to be put on hiatus because of inter-group issues, and at this point my plan is that once I've finished running our current pathfinder module, I want to reboot it minus the players that will not be returning for various reasons, and plus the new players that want to join from the pathfinder group.

Now obviously the rub here is that 2 of the 5 or so players have already played this module up to lv5, but the other 3 are coming in with varying levels of knowledge (one person has DMed it, but long enough ago that he doesn't remember most of it, plus a lot of the later sections I've got for this module are homebrew, and the other two know nothing about it other that what I and the other players have mentioned to them). I don't really like the idea of subbing in 2 or 3 new characters to the campaign halfway through, as this will be a completely new dynamic that they'll have to adjust to on the fly, as well as the new players having no context or attachment to anything that's happening, but nor would it be fair to the OG players to just slap them back to level 1 and have them try their best not to metagame.

So, I am thinking. What if I just groundhog day the whole party. They get reset back to the entrance of barovia, but retain all their levels and gear that they've picked up, and the NPCs that were travelling with them (Ireena and Arabelle, in this case). My in-universe justification for this is that one or both of the party members who will definitely not be returning fell prey to the temptations of the dark powers, and tried to kill either Ireena or each other, in order to earn themselves their own demiplane domain (they've just come out of a homebrew mini-domain, so this would be thematically appropriate I think). The third player who is currently a "maybe-depends-on-scheduling-but-probably-not" happens to be a paladin of lathander, so he (in his aspect as the morning lord) and the elven god of dusk whose name I cannot remember right now work together through her to perform an act of divine intervention that results in the reset, and can remove her from play if needed due to the impact of channelling that much divine power. This would be linked to postgame homebrew plans I had linked to a couple of players' backstories (unfortunately mostly the ones that are not returning, but what can you do) wherein shar aka mother night is amassing a cult in her name whose endgame goal is to summon a beast capable of destroying the moon and thus assassinating selune, who lathander & co are allied with. They know that if the cycle begins again with ireena's death/the party falling apart and strahd remains undefeated the party will not be able to leave barovia in order to combat what's happening on the material plane, and they can't afford the loss of time that would occur (I'm thinking it has to be this particular group for prophecy reasons or something idk about that yet lmao). The party get their reset with the warning that they cannot fail again.

This also means that I can justify a hike in difficulty by removing the influence of the morning lord and the sun itself from barovia, leaving shar and strahd more powerful as it becomes a very literal land of eternal night. Aside from that, my plan is to run everything mostly the same as before, with the hope that the old players will be able to have fun being allowed to selectively metagame with their knowledge of events, which they can share with the rest of the group, who also get to experience events they would otherwise have missed. It should mean we get through the content we've already covered fairly efficiently but with room for things to play out a little differently this time, whether that's fixing mistakes from last time or making new ones lol.

I think it's hopefully a fair solution but I would be really interested to hear what other people think about it; my main worry is that it won't have the intended effect and the old players will be bored while the new players feel swept along. Genuinely would love to know what other GMs or even just other players think of the concept!

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

since apparently there is a darklina Secret History AU in the world i had a fun ask idea. what would the general premise before these various darklina aus: - vampire story, - Heathers (1988), - POTO adaptation, - The Devil Wears Prada (2006), - Star Wars. Almost said Victorian era but i think it IS the Victorian era lol

AGDJFHDGGFF see the trouble is, most of these don’t need much adjusting!

Vampire AU

This would be really funny bc the Darkling is basically a vampire anyway. And him as like a centuries old melodramatic bitch and Alina as the disgruntled fledgling from the modern era with no sense of glamor whatsoever trying to figure out how to get rid of the fang lisp and being most bummed out bc she can’t buy a fucking mcmuffin in the morning anymore would be so funny.

As for the actual premise, I could see like really leaning into the age old reincarnated wife trope, but maybe going in the OG Dark Shadows take on it, where it’s more about trying to *make her* into the old GF and kind of brainwash her into it. But she actually turns into a vampire very early on and you get the above incompatibilities in full force.

(That being said. A typical Dracula AU of the TGT gang would also be VERY FUN)

Heathers

OH MY GOD I mean frankly I don’t think this needs any changing whatsoever, the Darkling is simply JD. Alina as Veronica is a mildly harder fit but she has that same kind of sarcastic grit. I feel like the biggest hurdle is getting his characterization to a point where he’d want to suicide bomb the whole school— I do not think he’s at all typically prone to self destruction over having the chance to at all control anything. But if LB managed to make Dark Academia Darklina *cute* and actually compatible then I think Heathers!Darkling can be a messier more destructive flavor.

If we’re going way off script though. I think Darklina as the very very fucked up teacher/student serial killer duo could be INTERESTING.

Phantom of the Opera

Not going to lie, the funniest part of this is making the Darkling ugly because he’s SO vain. I think if his face ever got fucked up he’d be so wretched about it. I would like to see it!!

I think it’s actually really simple to just swap out his grand plans with the obsession over music. And there’s a fairly 1:1 similarity there of Erik’s belief that he is owed Christine’s love because he’s suffered so much in his life and the Darkling thinking Alina is like the cosmic answer to his loneliness and his rightful soulmate whether she wants to be or not goddammit! And of course there’s the mentor/protégée aspect and inherent manipulation. I think the end result of such an AU would probably just be Kay!Phantom if Christine was an angry wet cat.

Anyway literally like 75% of the reason I like TGT as a fandom source material is because it allows me to play dolls with characters that can be slotted into a POTO meets Elisabeth das Musical type dynamic with a) actual magic, b) no real history to feel weird about c) a phantom type character that is not ugly agshdf I’m shallow okay

Devil Wears Prada

I’m kind of going insane over the thought of the Darkling in the fashion world. He would kill at it tbh. I think pretty much everything would be the same as the movie except we just have Alina and him as Andy and Miranda Priestly analogues, and they shack up together lmfao. 10/10 no notes, I don’t think anything else needs changing.

Star Wars

So on principal I refuse to Star Wars AU anything but also I mean wouldn’t that basically be if Palpatine and Padme were fucking? People want to make Darklina and Reylo comparisons all the time but come on he’s 100% a Palpatine

[lizhly-writes]

cnovel shenanigans: the actual beginning of the plot, from our og fmc's perspective.

Chen Lihua didn’t expect to run into Jiang Mingxi, which made a decent amount of sense.  Chen Lihua never really expected to run into Jiang Mingxi, not even when they had been back in college.  Their majors had been drastically different; Chen Lihua did theater and film, Jiang Mingxi did business.  There was no real intersection between the two.  The fact that they’d landed in the same classes anyway had to have been sheer, dumb luck.

Fascinating, considering Chen Lihua’s luck was so very bad.

Case in point: Chen Lihua runs into Jiang Mingxi.  Literally.

If Chen Lihua was a physics teacher, she’d slow this down for the sake of her students, add some labels and arrows for clarity’s sake.  Look at this freeze-frame: two forces, A and B, coming at each other from opposite directions.  What exactly happens here?

Force equals mass times acceleration.  Force A, Chen Lihua, was going faster than force B, Jiang Mingxi.  Assuming the same mass, then the collision would result in B being diverted from her course.  However, this assumed same mass; Jiang Mingxi was in fact, twice Chen Lihua’s size, and a solid wall of muscle, whereas Chen Lihua was mostly made of skin and bone.

End result: Chen Lihua bounces off Jiang Mingxi and ends up sprawled on the ground, a victim of physics.  How tragic.

“Ow,” said Chen Lihua, just a little late.  This was one of the occasions she really wished she liked skirts less, because that would’ve meant she would have been wearing pants, and thus, probably would have avoided the skinned knees.

Jiang Mingxi glared back at her, angry as always.  “Chen Lihua.” 

The anger was maybe a little bit warranted this time, because Chen Lihua had been carrying a coffee – really just her luck – and it had splashed them both.

Chen Lihua looked mournfully down at the fallen cup.  She’d barely gotten a few mouthfuls out of it before all of it had ended up on their clothes.  It had been a shame; she didn’t buy lattes like this very often, they were expensive and the caffeine hit wasn’t high enough for her to justify it as the energy boost she needed to get through the day.  She’d gotten one this week as a little treat for herself.

“Hi,” Chen Lihua said apologetically, grabbing the cup and straightening to a standing position.  “It’s been a while.  I never thought I’d see you here.  Sorry about…” she gestured at the coffee covering both of them.

Vaguely, she contemplated whether she needed to grovel for forgiveness.  She probably wouldn’t have needed to back in college.  The fact that they had been students meant that they weren’t expected to command the same kind of dignity as a true adult, and besides, Jiang Mingxi had liked her in college.  She never said it, but Chen Lihua had a brain; if she hadn’t liked Chen Lihua, there was no way that they would have spent so much time together.

Now, though.  Chen Lihua was honestly a little surprised that Jiang Mingxi still remembered her name.  Relationships weakened if they weren’t kept up, and Chen Lihua absolutely had not been doing any kind of keeping up with anyone.  It was quite possible that Jiang Mingxi didn’t think anything of her at all, now.  

Chen Lihua felt a tiny bit of regret at that thought.

Then she decided to grovel.

“Begging Young Mistress Jiang for her understanding,” Chen Lihua said.  “I really didn’t mean to spill coffee on you, is there anything I can do…?  I’m really, really sorry!”

Jiang Mingxi stared.  Her face was stuck in dignified incomprehension.

Chen Lihua got a solid ten seconds in about how Jiang Mingxi shouldn’t wreak unholy vengeance upon her.  More nicely worded, of course.  She didn’t really think Jiang Mingxi was actually going to wreak unholy vengeance upon her, but a lot of things never actually went the way she expected, so groveling was a good idea.  If Jiang Mingxi made her pay up to get replacements – well, there was no way.  That blouse Jiang Mingxi was wearing looked simple enough, but she was a rich girl, through and through.  It was entirely possible that the blouse cost more than Chen Lihua’s rent for the month.  Or the year.

Ah.  That got her heart racing. She really couldn’t afford to pay that.

“What are you doing?  Shut up, have some dignity,” Jiang Mingxi hissed, and the response was so much like what Chen Lihua would have expected in college that Chen Lihua… acted accordingly.

“Dignity is something for rich people, Jiang Mingxi.  I’m too poor to afford something like that, I already sold mine away.”

“What,” Jiang Mingxi said flatly.

Wow.  Chen Lihua hadn’t said something that shameless in a while.

[young-daydream-comics]

Young Justice Mary Marvel Zatanna & Doctor Fate

Young Justice really went downhill from the first season which was great, but the arc that was probably the worst was Mary's (it was Zatanna's arc but I'm focusing on Mary here) with them choosing to go with the whole addiction to power and Black Mary arc which are the two most ooc characterizations of Mary there are with the comics it came from being one of the worst cases of character assassination there is (to some extent even for other members of the Marvel Family as well).

But what I found most interesting in that whole arc is that if the show chose to go with a more comic accurate Mary rather than the version that was straight up character assassination, she actually would have been a pretty ideal candidate to become the replacement Doctor Fate for Zatanna's father, more so then either of the Zatara's or Traci, not in terms of skill or knowledge but instead due to characteristics, lore, backstory, and supporting cast (obviously we all know who is going to end up being doctor fate in the end but for this arc and what the show gave us, my statement still stands).

This isn't to say she would be the best choice, nor the strongest or most effective, but given Mary's history with Shazam she would at least be a good one especially if you use some more of her pre n52 character traits. She's incredibly strong willed and can be quite reckless yes, but she also has a strong moral compass and often acts as a voice of reason being the best at using the wisdom of Solomon and is the most creative with her powers (often times not really thinking about whether she can do something or the technically part of doing it but thinking 'what if I do this' and the powers just let her. ex, healing supergirl). In the golden age, Mary Marvel and Mary also were more similar to the og captain Marvel who was separate than Billy even if for Mary that separation wasn't as major.

Another thing to note is that Mary's main motivation isn't power but instead a genuine desire to help people and taking responsibility for why they were given the power of Shazam in the first place. If Zatanna was up front at the beginning than Mary most likely would have helped her and would potential have been willing to just replace Zatanna's father permanently if given a good motivation for it even if she didn't really desire the power. And Nabu may have even agreed given Mary's connection to the power of Shazam (which even though no where near his level, is still a very unique power and the show could connect the wizard to the lords of order)

Young Justice could have still done the whole Zatanna's Students plot and even have Mary stop saying Shazam but instead of it being an addiction to power have it be the opposite. Have Billy, Mary, and Freddy share the powers once more and have one of the boys get injured while Mary is using the powers causing her to blame herself and believe using them would put the other two in more danger than necessary.

Have Zatanna plan be to make them all share the power of Fate but she only came up with the idea after taking on students with the show highlighting her teachings becoming more and more about being worthy to Nabu's. Make it so Mary who already was a powerful magic superhero question and butt heads with her with both having valid points. This is turn could cause some of the others to have doubts in Zatanna which could cause Zatanna to treat Mary unfairly and send her off.

Then Zatanna could make the same sharing the power deal but it backfires. This could result in Mary taking up the full mantle of Doctor Fate to proctect people she cares about and Nabu accepting this because of Mary's connection to Shazam. She spent years avoiding her powers out of fear she would harm her family only to be forced to take up an even greater power and responsibility to save her friends.

For Zatanna she took students under her wing to try and be reunited with her dad only to tear other families apart in the process (have Doctor Fate cause issues for the other students as well making them be at a low point). After Mary takes up the mantle, Zatanna could once again aim to continue teaching the others but this time with the true goal of helping and guiding them (as she originally planned), growing into and showing how she is a great leader and mentor in the process.

You could also take inspiration for Mary's backstory from the PoS and parallel it with Kent Nelsons story allowing for the next Doctor Fate to see why Shazam is a superhero adventure and Doctor Fate is a horror story which they can use to make being Doctor Fate better (not the word I'm looking for).

It could be a nice way to mirror each other as well as show the selfishness of both of their actions which would original be viewed as selfless (both wanting to protect their family). The biggest problem with this I think would be I wouldn't want Mary to have a super long run as Doctor Fate, just long enough to help her overcome her fear and insecurity, learning to embrace her responsibilities with the power of Shazam while also moving towards her desire to have a life outside of it (which despite enjoying being Mary Marvel, not necessarily wanting the powers and wanting a life outside of it which jas way more backing in comics then her being addicted to power).

[sketching-shark]

Not gonna lie, as much as I like that Monkie Kid deviates from JTTW to kinda be its own thing... I was kinda disappointed with who they picked as his sworn brothers, Macaque included. I do love the call backs to some villains in the original but I was hoping for his sworn brothers to be the same as JTTW or at least much closer to them (that and I've become a fan of the idea of the Macaque king not being Six Ears, or being more of a Queen than a King, during the hiatus). I'm still happy to see more of what Macaque and Wukong's relationship and hope we get more explanation as to what happened. As you said, we have yet to get Wukong's side of things and I want that CONTEXT so bad. (I am unsure if mind control had anything to do with it because of the Amnesia episode. I could be remembering wrong but he seemed like he was legit friends with Tang Sanzang and Zhu Bajie right?)

You've also mentioned before how it's very much becoming a "Wukong is a horrible person and everything is his fault" theme which, while he's not perfect, I'm really not a fan either. We need his side or all of this is just one sided bullshit. It's getting old, honestly.

I still love Qi Xiaotian, so I'm gonna watch to see how he grows. But damn. Give Wukong some joy and let him keep it, jeez.

Monkie Kid spoilers below:

aawergaerdsf YEAH @ladyzerodark every day I long for a JTTW retelling that uses the potential of the Monkey King's sworn brothers from the og classic like there is so little information about them outside of the Demon Bull King that the book is basically handing creators free ocs. As it is I've seen people go back and forth about whether the Macaque Demon King was a lady or not, but from what I understand even that might depend on regional differences in understandings of who that yaoguai was. Even the different translations of the Anthony C. Yu version present them in different ways, which needless to say makes thing even more confusing if you're trying to establish a baseline of what the sworn brothers were like. But besides that I think it would be cool to see SWK have some genuine monkey friends in the Macaque Demon King and Snub-nosed Monkey King who were actually his friends in Wu Cheng'en's work instead of his evil twin who hates his guts getting shoved into that role (X_X).

But yeah there's still a lot of unanswered questions about went down from the Monkey King's perspective buuuuut personally I still feel like this presentation of Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque being the closest of friends is giving me whiplash given that Macaque despised Sun Wukong so much that he repeatedly thrashed Qi Xiaotian for Crime of Associated With Monkey King all while Sun Wukong has given basically no sign of caring about the shadow simian like at all in any of the previous episodes. Besides the general trash-talk and contempt, Macaque, now revealed as a member of Sun Wukong's best friends forever club, literally blew up in front of him and SWK's only response was "you did good, bud" to the guy who did the exploding. But then again I guess that is fitting for the ongoing theme of "Sun Wukong is a genuinely terrible person who's hated by everyone who's known his for an extended period of time & for good reasons" so par for the course at this point. I'm probably being too mean in regards to a cartoon monkey, and hey maybe later things will genuinely re-contextualize things, but honestly I am kind of worried that Monkie Kid has now characterized Sun Wukong as so careless, so destructive, so stupid, and so routinely incompetent with catastrophic results that nothing in his backstory, not even the headband torture times, will serve as an explanation for why he acts the way he does. So maybe things will change with added context, but at the moment what's to say about lego Sun Wukong except

[vanguardangel]

Hi I saw you all right write for metal gear I was wondering if you could do something with big boss find out he was a female clone. Just a thought you can go anyway u want with it, thanks

Another Snake

I’M SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG, I ended up catching COVID last week and am still recovering. Good news is, I spent a good amount of my time awake to actually research further into the Les Enfants Terribles project and into Big Boss himself! I hope I did him justice!

Scenario: An attempt to restart Les Enfants Terribles resulted in you; a female clone of Big Boss. However, the project was sabotaged and you were rescued from the war-torn fate your genetic brothers endured. You were allowed to live a normal life and ended up pursuing a career in music, becoming an idol beloved worldwide. Little did you know, you had a few snakes watching you from a distance, debating whether to intrude upon your peaceful life.

Warnings: Spoilers for the entire MGS series, nothing explicit but there are generous mentions of common war-time issues such as PTSD and general violence.

Big Boss aka “John” or “Naked Snake”

The OG; Naked Snake himself. Considering the fact his feelings on the project disgusted him and the fact this is one of his key reasons for leaving the Patriots, he may not even want to entertain the idea of more than two clones being created from his DNA. At least at first. I feel as though the older Boss got the more he became concerned about the type of legacy he would leave behind, especially after encountering Solid Snake (and from that last confrontation they had on The Boss’s grave). So, he did some digging. It took him a while, considering how well your rescuers had covered their tracks, but nothing can truly escape the “Man who Sold the World.”

To say Boss was shocked to discover what happened to you is an understatement in the best way possible. Seeing you not only escape the same fate as he and your “brothers” but lead such a fulfilling life might just bring him to his knees. Even if you don’t sing the type of music he personally likes, he will definitely try and attend at least one of your concerts to see you in person. Maybe in the rafters so he can stay out of the crowd. You’ll eventually find a bouquet of white windflowers and a snake plushie in your dressing room. Honestly, you’re the only pop culture thing he really knows and it catches people off guard. (It’s freaking hilarious)

Towards the end of his life, there is a chance Boss may actually directly contact you, especially if he found out you wanted to know who your biological parents were. He’ll arrange a meeting and explain to you that his life had spiraled so out of control that he was afraid of dragging you into it. He’ll accept any reaction, be it scorn, hatred, or sorrow. That being said, the amount of information you draw out of him depends on how persistent you are at prying, and even then he won’t tell you the full truth. You’re innocent. You cannot be chained to the same fate as him. Not when he’s this close to ending the nightmare. In the end, your existence was one of the few lights in his life.

Should you actually become embroiled in one of the many conflicts surrounding the Snakes, I’m almost 90% sure he’d directly interfere to return you to your normal life. You weren’t a soldier. You didn’t belong on the battlefield, and dammit he won’t let what happened to Frank and Naomi happen to you. Should this occur, it's almost guaranteed you’ll find out the truth of your creation and it will devastate him. But…at the same time he would be somewhat glad he can speak to you directly. (Might turn this into a short fic! Thanks for the inspiration anon <3 )

Overall, regardless of what happens, you can be sure you found a hidden guardian angel.

Solid Snake aka “David”

This man has straight-up said in the series that he didn’t think he ever had a family. He struggled with the fact he may have committed patricide for a very long time. Combine the fact his other two “brothers” were some of his most dangerous enemies, with Liquid Snake leaving a profound impact on him, the idea of another clone absolutely terrified him. The moment he found out there was a possibility, he and Hal hunted you down.

Funny enough, it was Sunny who ended up finding you! Turns out, she was a huge fan of your music and noticed you resembled Snake in a few ways. She padded into Hal’s office while he and Snake were scouring data with a copy of one of your albums and her laptop. The three of them ended up finding all about your life. How you were “kidnapped” from the project and presumed dead from the official files. How you were actually rescued and lived a normal life as a normal person. How you rose to fame and how your music has had a positive affect on your fans. If you did any type of charity work, especially any campaigns that were anti-war or anti-nuke, Snake will appreciate the irony.

With this new information, Sunny was finally able to convince her adoptive fathers to take her to one of your concerts. Despite the huge crowd and the overall cutesy image of your band, all three of them ended up having a great time. Sunny was as happy as she could be, belting out all of your songs while sitting on top of Snake’s shoulders. (Hal got some really good photos!). It wasn’t until the end of your concert did one song resonate with Snake. Your cover of “Hell Frozen Rain.”

���A toast to the lonely souls, who never could take control of life!”

From that day on, pretty much everyone caught Snake humming your songs when he thought no one else could hear. He’ll deny it up and down, but there’s no mistaking the homemade instrumental ringtone he managed to get on his phone. (Seriously, Snake, it's so choppy and it sounds like it was recorded on an old video cassette recorder.)

Much like Big Boss, Snake will probably not want to involve you in his life unless he absolutely has to. He never wants to have to face down another Liquid Snake, even if all the facts about your life point to the opposite. But life doesn’t always do what we want it to, and should you cross paths in this way (or if Sunny and Hal manage to convince him), I think he may take a chance to connect with you. You’ll probably have some long Codex talks during the mission, and maybe even after the mission ends. He might not understand everything you’re talking about, but he’s there to listen. Sometimes, on his darker days, he may call you up to just listen to you talk. Maybe to sing.

In the end, the idea of having a family that’s not out to hurt him or anyone he loves, is such a motivational factor for Snake. He feels far less alone now, even though your lives are so different. Congrats! You now have a big brother!

Liquid Snake aka “Eli”

Ho boy. Honestly I’m not really sure if he would even be told about any other clones besides Solid Snake considering he never seems to mention Solidius. Whether this was intentional writing due to Solidus manipulating Liquid or simply due to the fact Solidus did not exist as a character just yet, I’m not really sure. So let’s go with the assumption Liquid was only ever told about Solid. (Poor Liquid, he could have had a chance if it weren’t for the Patriots)

If he somehow found out about you…well to put it simply, you’re kinda fucked. Liquid would more than likely target you, even without direct orders. He’d send Psycho Mantisto probe into your mind, infuriated with the results. You were no sleeper agent nor a secret weapon. You were a normal person.

How fucking dare you? How dare you have a normal life when his was such hell?! His overwhelming rage and hatred for his “father” may lead him to spirit you away as a sort of trophy. If he played his cards right, Liquid may be able to use you as a bargaining chip against both Solid Snake and the Patriots. (But let's be real; Ocelot would more than likely snatch you away right when things were hitting their climax.)

All in all, Eli is a very hard character for me to predict. But hey, maybe you can talk him down? Maybe form a bond with the other Foxhound members? Weirder things have happened. Sniper Wolf might want to hang out with you.

Solidus Snake aka “George Sears”

(Look I couldn’t find a gif of Solidus so have this gif of Raiden -D- )

So, quick fun fact! MGS2: Sons of Liberty was my very first Metal Gear game! So alongside my soft spot for Raiden, I also have a bit of a fascination with Solidius. An actual United States president not only hand-picked by the Patriots, but also considered the most “perfect” clone of Big Boss. So perfect, he splintered off from the Patriots just like Big Boss to form his own Sons of Liberty.

So, considering that Solidus deeply valued the idea of freedom and putting power back into the hands of the citizens, I think he would greatly enjoy you and your music. Even before he found out you were a clone of Big Boss! Bonus points if you do any type of anti-war or anti-big powers charity work. But when he finds out you are a clone? It's a delicious cherry on top.

Despite his more…”virtuous” views, this man is absolutely ruthless both on and off the battlefield. He’s a brutal strategist, and would easily sink his talons into you. He’d make you think he was the best president ever, but wouldn’t hesitate to throw you to the wolves if you so much as toe the line against his ideals. Look what happened to Raiden.

Another difficult character considering how little I have to work with, but I think most of your interactions with Solidus would be positive! Let’s just hope he doesn’t rope you into the Big Shell incident.

[musette22]

Hi Minnie! Hope you can help me settle an argument my brother and I are having about EG!Steve. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this with shipping goggles off, looking at it purely in terms of characterization, narrative, and good writing. Better hang on though, it's going to be a long ask! (sorry in advance for spamming you!) 1/7

So my brother and I were watching FatWS and once again got into a debate about whether Steve's last actions were a disservice or in line with his characterization and narrative, given that the Russos confirmed (and therefore it's Word of God/canon, even if it did sound reactionary to the immediate backlash after EG) that Steve created an alternate reality when he went back, and didn't just live in hiding in the past of the OG timeline. 2/7

Because of this, my bro argued that: 1) the total character assassination that is the idea of Steve just sitting back and letting all the shit happen happen is no longer a problem - for all we know, the alternate reality oldman!Steve came from might have become utopic already due to his presence and foresight. He played coy when talking to Sam so we don't know for certain he didn't save Bucky, get rid of Hydra, and enact social reform when he had the chance. 3/7

Likewise, 2) the accusation that Steve would rob Peggy of her husband and children is a non-issue as Steve went back to a time before Peggy and Daniel got together - I argued here that it was still wrong for him to do given that he KNEW for a fact that Peggy lived a happy life, whereas it was a gamble if he could give her the same. My bro shot back when you truly loved someone, you want them to be happy and to have what's best for them. 4/7

So if Steve chose to go back to Peggy, he had to have believed that he could give her the best life. That Steve based that decision purely on his own assessment is pretty in character (e.g. pushing to become a soldier because he thought that was how he could do his part, even though at the time, he'd have just been a danger to himself and other soldiers; not signing the Accords because he believed in his team's judgment in crises above gov't oversight that might be influenced by politics). 5/7

And lastly 3) he might have settled into the past and started to move on, but what was wrong with him choosing to be selfish and going to the past when given a chance? Why was it wrong for him to go back to a time he knew, where he was beloved by both Peggy and the public, and when he could also save Bucky early? In terms of character growth, wouldn't it be fair for him to finally learn he could be a bit selfish and choose happiness, after a lifetime of nearly suicidal selflessness? 6/7

Our debate was based on confirmed canon with shipping put aside. So I put forth the sin of leaving a traumatized Bucky, Sam, and world behind, that Steve's actions were surely the result of a man broken by grief again and again, and that choosing the past was him running away - which, I argued, was a horrible way to end his character arc. But my brother asked me why I thought so, because wasn't this the so-called 'soft epilogue' that Steve deserved, one that was most in line with canon? 7/7

***************

Hey love! Very interesting argument you and your brother are having here… I’m sure he’s a great guy but I have to say that I vehemently disagree with him (as you probably already guessed lol). Soooo many people have done an excellent job at explaining why, shipping aside, Steve’s ending in EG was absolute bollocks, and I’m certain I could never argue this case as well as all of them have. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to explain why, in my opinion, your brother is wrong :p I’m going to put my reply under the keep reading tag, because it is long.

1.      The Russos and Markus & McFeely (the writers) never managed to agree on whether Steve really did go back to an alternate timeline, and if so, how that would have worked, exactly. When they were asked, after EG had been released, about whether Steve would have just sat back and let everything he knew was happening/going to happen in the decades to come, both to Bucky and to the world at large, they came up with this ‘alternate timeline’ solution, but they kept contradicting each other on the logistics and technicalities of it (like how would old man Steve suddenly be able to jump timelines to come back to give Sam the shield in EG? And how did EG Steve attend Peggy’s funeral, like they also suggested, which would technically have been in a different timeline?). Which makes it pretty clear that this wasn’t something they’d considered beforehand or even all agree on afterwards, and therefore it can’t technically allowed to play a role in judging the rightness of Steve’s ending in EG if we’re looking at it from a ‘the creator’s word is law’ perspective. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate in EG itself that Steve knew he’d be able to create alternate timelines, so that would’ve been a crazy gamble on his part. Also, him ‘playing coy’ in that final scene with Sam really isn’t a convincing indication that he was actually, canonically, talking about anything besides marrying Peggy.

2.      Which bring us to point two: Peggy had literally told Steve she’d lived a happy life with her family, and told him in no uncertain terms to move on. If Steve really loved her, he would have accepted her wishes and allowed her the dignity of her choice (something Peggy herself, in CA:TFA, had told Steve was important to do when you care about someone) to move on from him once she believed him dead. Steve deciding that he would be better for Peggy because he believed was a better man than the person she ended up marrying originally would be the most un-like Steve thing to do, ever. Steve has never once shown that he thinks of himself as the hero or better than other people – he simply wants to do the best he can to help make the world a better place. He would never say “Peggy deserves the best and I believe I am the best, therefore she will have me, regardless of what she thinks or wants.” Steve drinks respect women juice, that’s clear from all of his movies, and deciding the course of her entire life for her, taking away her agency, whether in his own timeline or another, would be utterly disrespectful to Peggy.

3.      As for the next point: of course there’s nothing wrong with Steve being selfish for once – Steve is human, and all humans are selfish sometimes, and that’s okay. But, as Chris Evans already explained multiple times prior to Endgame, Steve had already made selfish decisions in the past, namely when it came to getting Bucky back and keeping him safe. Shipping aside, Bucky was presented in all the Cap movies as Steve’s very best friend, and was even called his ‘soulmate’ (platonically or otherwise) by M&M (the writers). So when, in Civil War, Steve was presented with a choice between duty/what was expected of him by the government versus saving Bucky/keeping Bucky safe, Steve was selfish and chose Bucky. That, canonically, made sense. Peggy being presented as the ultimate love of Steve’s life, who he loved and valued more than anyone or anything else in the world (which is what happened in EG), canonically does not make sense. 

In CA:TWS, Peggy told Steve to move on. When Peggy died, Steve buried her and mourned her, and then not long after, he canonically kissed Peggy’s niece. Then, in Infinity War, Steve saw Bucky turn to dust before his very eyes in the “Blip” (a conscious decision on the writers’/directors’ part to show how Steve once again lost what was most important to him while helplessly standing by) – and the next thing we know, Steve is leading a support group for other people who lost loved ones in the Blip, and starts talking about losing… Peggy? Huh. Also, Steve going back to a time which your brother calls “a time when he was beloved the public” doesn’t add up, either: technically, Steve went back to a time where people loved an idea of him, but also believed him to be dead. So either he would have had to have found a way to convincingly stage his own resurrection (meanwhile possibly leaving the other version to vegetate in the ice..? depending on how this timeline malarkey was supposed to work), or he would have lived his whole life hidden behind some fake persona – which does not sound like Steve at all, does it?

4.      Finally, let’s talk about Bucky some more, because I think we need to to be able to assess the situation properly. I understand that your brother may believe that shippers are often delusional and only see what they want to see etc, but there is ample evidence, canonically, of Bucky being the most important person in Steve’s life – the person he would give up the shield for, the person he would give up his other friendships for, the person he would give up his life for. Peggy may have been a recurring character in character in the three Cap movies, but she was never presented as the principal motivator of his actions, or as the love of Steve’s life. You know who was? Bucky. Sure, that love wasn’t canonically romantic in nature, but there can’t be any doubt that Bucky meant more than anything to Steve. Therefore, Steve choosing to have a ‘soft epilogue’ that entails him spending the rest of his life without Bucky – and, more importantly, Bucky to spend the rest of his life without Steve – contradicts everything we’ve learned about their relationship (platonic or otherwise) in the rest of the movies, does it not? 

Also, the Russos have said something to the effect that Bucky and Steve were now both mentally ‘well enough’ to not ‘need’ each other anymore (because as we all know, that’s exactly how friendships work…), but it’s pretty clear from EG that Steve was still traumatized by everything he’d been through, and going back to the 50s would have meant he would never be able to get proper help with that and in fact could only talk about any of it with Peggy and Peggy alone. Moreover, M&M have literally said in interviews that Bucky wasn’t all that well yet, mentally, and TFAWTS also shows convincingly that Bucky was not actually in a good place when Steve left him. So that would have meant that Steve either did not see this (unlikely, given how close they were) or did not care (unlikely, given how close they were). 

It would have meant that for the first time in all these movies, Steve decided “to hell with Bucky’s needs, I’m gonna just be selfish because I’ve earned it and claim my trophy wife because actually I am the best man for her, despite the fact that she’s already lived a happy life that I will be negating against her wishes, but that’s fine because maybe I’ll be able to create a different timeline, and maybe I’ll be able to save Bucky from all his trauma anyway, but then again maybe not, but that brings me back to my first point of to hell with Bucky’s needs” - which does not make a lot of sense to me, personally. Not to mention that, in exchange for his ‘soft epilogue’, Steve would also leave the world to sort out the post-Blip mess without him, and leave all the other friends he still had left and clearly cared about a lot to boot. I would not call that character growth, I would call that character disintegration. If your brother insists on taking the creator’s word as gospel and that we have to accept that Steve really did do what he did at the end of Endgame, and that wasn’t just a case of bad, lazy writing fuelled by greed, then to make a decision like this, Steve would have been either an asshole in disguise all along, or mentally extremely unstable.

There you have it, my two cents! I hope this helps a little in settling the argument with your brother, anon! Lots of love ❤️

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[itsclydebitches]

I have to wonder how season 2 Crosshair is gonna start with anything other than him escaping execution. Dude murdered his whole squad with one known survivor who reports it to the General, who then says 'We were gonna kill him anyway, so just let him die here'. It's not like Crosshair has any sort of bargaining chip to justify the Empire not abandoning or executing him.

It may end up being important that (I think) the surviving squad member doesn't know that Crosshair killed his team, only that they're dead. She was off looking for Omega, came back, saw her dead teammates and the clones fighting droids, and (smartly lol) got the hell out of Dodge. I think her exact words were that Crosshair "lost control of the situation," which tells the Admiral that Crosshair failed, but not that he failed because of his own betrayal. Granted, I think she's also the one who approaches the Admiral earlier, saying she doesn't trust Crosshair's motivations when it comes to his former team, so there's already a precedent set that Crosshair's loyalty may be less than perfect. Still, the actual explanation of what went down doesn't reveal that Crosshair killed his teammates and outright betrayed the Empire, just that he failed to complete the mission.

So based on what stories have done in the past, I can picture a couple of different ways for him to return:

 Using the above, Crosshair straight up hides his shaky loyalties and frames the failure as just that: a garden variety failure. Perhaps he implies, though does not outright state, that his team's death came at the hands of TBB. A "Let the Admiral think what he wants" situation that benefits him.

The above + Crosshair emphasizing that TBB escaped. You know what kind of threat they are, Admiral, and though I failed before, I'm still your best chance at capturing/killing them. You need me. Crosshair believes firmly in his own usefulness — that ego — and he's not above working hard to convince others of that.

 Between now and the time of his return, the Admiral has, for whatever reason, reconsidered the benefit of having at least a few clones in his army and is thus pleased that Crosshair survived, no matter the iffy circumstances of that. Personally, my mind keeps focusing on the weird motivations here. Namely, this push to have a conscripted army when, as far as TBB shows, that's a bad option compared to what they've already got. We as the audience know that the Empire needs to reach the point where they've got stormtroopers with terrible aim (that's the OG Star Wars), but right now, outside of that meta context, the Admiral's choices come across as rather stupid to me. Gregor and TBB point out, "These are our replacements?" highlighting that conscripted soldiers just don't have the skill of clones who were bred for war. I can only assume that the Empire was spying on Crosshair's team the same way they did TBB when they were sent to execute the "insurgents," which means they would have seen that the clone, Crosshair, was the only one originally willing to follow their order of killing civilians. Crosshair had to kill the other guy/talk the rest of the team into following that command. And of course, that's largely due to the chip, circling right back to why the Empire would have removed his when it gives them perfect control over Crosshair, especially after bothering to enhance it in the first place. So say nothing of Crosshair's crazy skills, making him one of, if not the best, shooter in the galaxy. I feel like if they want the Admiral to come across as less foolish, all these points should resurface at some point like, "Yes, having an ally specifically bred for war, with a genetically superior makeup to enhance his ability, who can be put under literal mind control and who while in that state has already proven that he'll follow our commands when conscripted soldiers won't... that's actually a good thing for us evil people to have!"

The Admiral has totally written Crosshair off. Doesn't need him. Doesn't want him. But a new character is introduced who is interested and who, crucially, outranks him. So Crosshair is let back in as someone else's evil pet, setting up conflict within the Empire.

The above, but specifically through the lens of clones now being a rare and useful commodity. We know they grabbed Nala Se, so either she (if she regains some power) or her new scientist boss could insist that they keep Crosshair around as a genetic source/experiment/whatever. Especially since they don't have Omega yet. Could even be that Crosshair becomes a prisoner again, returning to fight for the Empire, but becoming their lab rat instead.

Crosshair deliberately does something to get back into their good graces. Something, something, saving the Admiral from a legit threat, or one of Crosshair's own making. A way to show off how useful he is.

 OR we do get a near execution that results in the same basic thing: Crosshair escapes, shows off his skill, all his would-be executioners are dead, he's the last one standing, and the Admiral is like, "Well then. Welcome back." You know when Rex is on the cruiser and goes "This will do nicely," Tech points out that it's not sterile, Rex pushes back that they can go to Kamino instead, and within a second Tech is going, "This will do nicely!" too? Same idea. It's easy to accept Crosshair as the best/only option if he does something to make himself that option.

Ultimately, I think how this goes down will depend largely on whether they want Crosshair back in the Empire's clutches or not. He's told TBB he intends to stick with the big power, but that doesn't necessarily mean the plot will allow for that. If the story wants Crosshair to continue being a willing Imperial for a time, prior to his assumed redemption, then yeah, I think it would be relatively easy to get him back in the Empire's good graces. It wouldn't necessary be the smoothest transition of all time, but as we've already seen in Season One — I don't totally follow why conscripted soldiers are supposedly better than clones, don't follow why TBB isn't trying to rescue Crosshair, don't understand yet why Crosshair won't clarify things about his chip, etc. — motivations in Star Wars can be... messy at the best of times. So if they just went, "And the Empire let Crosshair come back for ___ reason, don't think about that reason too hard" I'd be fine with that. But, if they want Crosshair to start his redemption now, one of the easiest ways to do that would be to stick him with a third party. Someone else finds him on the planet, perhaps someone neutral-ish like another bounty hunter, and Crosshair is given the chance to technically be opposed to his brothers because that's where they left things, but not actively working with the organization hunting him down. Plot-wise it would be relatively simple to put him in situations where he wants to return to the Empire, but can't just now, for whatever reason — they need to travel there, he hasn't thought up a means of getting back in their good graces yet, he gets caught up in another problem he needs to solve first, starts hunting TBB himself to return with that incentive, etc. — and that time allows him to start reconsidering whether he actually wants to go back, now that he's been forced to survive without them. An in-between space that will allow him to work towards the Light side again... even if I'd personally prefer for that to come about through his brothers fighting for him.

[zettaiunmeis]

HI THANKS TO @raventrigonsdaughter LETTING ME KNOW THAT OG GAME CARMEN AND JULIA USED TO BE PARTNERS BEFORE CARMEN WENT ROGUE, LET ME PROPOSE: VILE!JULIA.

details under the cut because this got Long

jules is part of the either the same class the ~infamous~ black sheep

and they don’t? really like each other? like julia is still kinda Serious and she doesnt really appreciate the vile squad goofing around and tossing water balloons or whatever and black sheep finds julia a little too uptight even if she’s interested in a lot of the same things (history, etc.)

black sheep’s speciality is Being SLick, as we know, but julia’s is patterns (and also historical artifacts)

ok but the important part of this is that bc julia’s is patterns, she ends up being like a scout or smth along those lines bc she can analyse patterns and report back to help plan the caper

and that basically means that when she graduates, she ends up in far more long cons than any of the others

anyway, after black sheep gets in trouble for the water balloon thing, the faculty decide she’s far too mischievous, and so, they assign her a partner — julia

(side note: its kind of the same thing that ends up happening to jean-luc and antonio a bit later on, but thats more because they work well together, and less bc either one of them needed a grounding influence)

anyway black sheep and jules again. do not like each other. but that doesnt mean they dont work well together — julia’s got an eye for patterns, and black sheep has every thieving trick in the book ready and waiting up her sleeves (alongside an instinct for thievery)

slowly, as they are forced to work together more and more, they kind of reach a less tense partnership and then one day black sheep makes a history joke and thats how they become friends

like julia is still very pointedly Not friends with the rest of the vile squad bc they’re still very reckless and immature, etc

but shes sort of seen black sheep when she’s been more grounded and less hyper/feral and she?? kind of doesnt mind??

bc grounded black sheep isnt constantly trying to prove that she’s The Best and grounded black sheep isnt trying to prove that she’s more than just the teacher’s pet — she’s kind of just having fun with julia and julia’s been so serious about her training that she hasnt really made any other friends and…. its nice

its nice to have black sheep loudly slip into the seat next to her and and tease julia about whatever recent historical discovery she’s researching and pull her out of her own head once in a while

and its nice to have black sheep glance over in the middle of class when sheena — sorry tigress — whines about something or the other and roll her eyes in the same way julia feels like doing, even if something strange sticks in her throat when carmen does the same with gray

she can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but at some point, she starts thinking of black sheep as her friend and it’s an exciting enough thought that she’s got a little smile on her face next time black sheep slips into the seat next to her in professor maelstrom’s class

and at some point julia stops being just julia to black sheep, and starts being jules because we’re in a school for thieves, but we’ve already got plenty of ~jules~ right here and thats sincerely the worst joke i’ve ever heard and oh really ~jules~? bet i could find an even worse one

and like all the usual stuff is still happening in the background — shadowsan-black sheep rivalry, gray and the Squad being black sheep’s friends, the phone and player, etc.

its just that now, black sheep has a bit of a calming influence and that does help!

and they work well enough that most people assume that julia and black sheep will be partners after graduation 

even crackle acknowledges it — despite the jealousy he feels at the knowledge

so things continue and all this happens, but then comes finals.

things go the same. black sheep gets perfect scores in all of her exams, except stealth 101

julia — now the historian — can’t help but check for whether black sheep graduated too and just as she does, she hears crackle say it: she didn’t pass

and she wants to go to black sheep and ask if she’s okay because everyone knows how much black sheep’s wanted this, how much she’s been working for it, but by the time gray’s been dragged off by tigress, black sheep has disappeared and julia has no idea where she’s gone

so she waits for a bit in the cafeteria and in the dorms and anywhere else she thinks that black sheep would be and she sees… nothing

and about twelve hours after the results, the faculty pulls her for her first mission (for context, this is before the whole,,, hear the true name of vile thing) which is basically being a plant for the morocco mission, by pretending to be an archaeology phd student from oxford who’s come to study the findings in the excavation

and she’s busy enough with that that she barely gets to think about black sheep or graduation or anything other than the near-overwhelming anxiety that comes with the horrifying ordeal of potentially being Known but she just manages to figure out like,,, guard rotations, as well as the exact objects that are at the site for the vile squad to steal

and then she’s out before they even get there — julia’s pattern recognition and historical knowledge made her pretty useful when it comes to planning capers so it meant that she’s always travelling around the world ahead of each caper, but would also make her a pretty invaluable asset to vile, so they can’t afford to get her caught

julia doesnt hear about black sheep nearly messing up morocco until much later, and even then, she doesn’t have all the info

all she can do is wonder why the hell the faculty would fail someone who somehow managed to sneak out of vile island without anyone realising until much later

and yes, maybe a part of her misses her old partner, but she knows that it wouldn’t matter anyway — she was the mole, and she’d barely get to work directly with carmen so.

but then cut to a year later, when a vile counterfeit operation in boston is suddenly sabotaged

cut to the moment when, julia, despite not having seen her in a year, is still able to somehow recognise black sheep’s work

its Slick. its the Slickness that tips her off, and part of her is reluctant to tell the faculty who it is, but her allegiance demands it and she tells the faculty and she hates herself for it when she sees the murderous rage on each of their faces

and somehow, that — her ability to recognise this carmen sandiego — gets her in a new position, as a mole in interpol, passing on the information they get as they try to track the scarlet super thief as well

and then one day, in poitiers, julia sees her

its black sheep. it’s undeniably black sheep under that red trench coat and julia wants to go and talk to her capture her and bring her in to vile but her new partner ~chase devineaux~ is everything that once made her turn away from her interest in law enforcement and he orders her to call for backup while he tries to stroke his own ego

she does, of course, but maybe she delays it a bit, if only because she’d rather let carmen sandiego get away than have devineaux’s ego get any bigger

and the rest of the season goes much the same except after julia ends up in acme, she reports to vile about everything that’s going on, and they no longer suspect devineaux of helping carmen etc etc

and she can’t help but somewhat sympathise with what carmen’s doing — she’s returning invaluable historical artefacts and julia’s always loved history and- it’s just… altruistic. and that’s admirable. and that’s the only reason i feel so torn about helping vile. that’s it, that’s the only reason.

and then comes the chasing paper caper

what was originally the first real conversation between julia and carmen goes completely differently

(note that most vile operative outside of jules’ graduating class do not know of her existence bc she barely interacts with most of them since she’s more a spy/mole who’s out of the picture by the time anyone else gets on the scene)

carmen still needs to be able to spy on paper star without anyone noticing, so she still goes for the seat right in front of the cute short-haired girl sitting alo- and oh my god jules?

and its the first time julia has heard that nickname in over a year and oh God they were just friends this should Not hit this hard what the Heck

and carmen still sits down and just quietly grills her as to what the hell is going on bc she Knows that jules is a always a mole and never an active part of a caper and she doesn’t?? understand??

and jules is kind of in a daze, but she’s been Trained so she feeds carmen her cover story:

she defected from vile when she saw how they were treating historical artefacts — melting down gold, selling priceless works of art to the highest bidder, etc. etc. — and that since then she’s been silently helping interpol with taking down vile ops, etc.

and it takes a bit but carmen kind of starts to believe it — she knows julia loves history with all her heart, and she’s… well, she’s never been the kind of recruit that carmen’s expected to see in vile anyway, so. it’s not out of the realm of possibility, is it, for julia to be a defector working against vile? after all, isn’t she the same?

so she starts looking around, while waiting for paper star to make a move, and she ends up noticing the briefcase in the seat next to her, and for some reason, those initials — clearly chase devineaux — make her want to scowl

“new partner?” “oh… its… well, work. work... partner” “oh.”

uhhh anyway i might actually. write this? idk don’t count on anything lmaooo.

[consul-valerius]

It was time Donna got an updated bio/backstory! Most of this is relatively the same, but the more I’ve developed Damien, the more I've developed their family history! Undercut is their childhood history but this is also general info of how they are/behave in-game :3 For a more detailed timeline of their life pre-game, see this OG post here as the info is the same!  MAJOR trigger warnings for mentions of: attempted infanticide, childhood trauma/abuse, and mentions of anxiety/depression. If any of the names have changed from previous posts shhhh I have bad memory and lose my posts often LMAO

For someone who enchanted their hair to change with their emotions, they are not exactly the most forthcoming when it comes to their true feelings. Donna strives to always appear “put together” and carefree, but they are a very deeply anxious, insecure, and paranoid person. Their gaps in memory severely impact their confidence, and they are very paranoid of setting off migraines. Despite that, though, Donna always tries to come off as relaxed and in control. They’re almost to a fault extremely understanding and open, and many gravitate towards them to let off steam. Many of their card readings turn into mini “therapy” sessions, and they’re more than happy to be that for their customers. They are truly a mixture of the “mom friend” and “friendly neighborhood stoner” heh

While they are inherently introverted, they are very interested in having multiple partners and exploring their sexuality, and while Asra is away, they’re a frequent patron at the Raven to scope out some one-night stands. They notoriously are awful at gauging people’s feelings towards them, though, which causes plenty of conflict (whether they know this or not). 

When finally approached by the Countess of Vesuvia, Donna can’t say anything but yes: they see helping her as a means of truly showing to everyone, especially Asra, that they are a capable person, and most importantly, they cannot help but feel they are somehow connected to it all... 

Family History and Birth

Donna’s story does not have a very happy beginning at all. Donna’s father, Richard Gatti, comes from a long line of magicians who specialized in blood and dark magic. At some point in his lineage, his grandfathers began contact with The Devil Arcana, resulting in each generation trying to one-up the other essentially in their displays of devotion and deals. Many wound up completely turning as a result. Richard felt that a true display of submission would be to give up one of his own children to the Arcana to show his loyalty. His family, surprisingly, disagreed with some of his ideas, and he broke off from them entirely to pursue a suitable partner, all under the impression that he was being guided by The Devil himself. 

Insert Marisol Ortega, Donna’s mom. Another magician, Marisol was a shy and reserved woman who constantly felt outshone by her younger sister, Dominique. While her and Dominique were close, there was a level of resentment there too. When Marisol and Richard met, it was an instant infatuation. Richard really utilized Marisol’s need for company to his advantage and isolated Marisol from the rest of her family by moving often. Somewhere along the line, he was able to convince Marisol to help him fulfil his plans with the promise that by giving up her first-born, she would have an entire family of some of the most powerful magicians imaginable. It was at this time, as well, that she also was convinced she was being visited by The Devil, thus solidifying for her that what they were doing was right. 

What neither were expecting was that Dominique would find out about Marisol’s pregnancy. While she wasn’t completely in the loop, and she had an inn to run on her own, Dom made sure to keep on the perimeter of things, weary of what Richard and his intentions were. Her relationship with Marisol was also nearly non-existent, but Dom stayed close either way for the sake of the baby. 

By the time they had Donna, Richard wanted to wait to make sure that they were, by all accounts, a healthy baby, one with the potential for power. They limited how much contact they had with Donna at this time, but on the outside, things seemed somewhat normal. Dominique, though, sensed that something was not right and by chance managed to stop them right before they could complete the sacrifice. With nothing else to do, Dom ran with Donna in tow, severing all ties with Marisol completely to protect them. It was Dominique that initially named Donna, but Donna eventually changed their name as a teen. 

Childhood and Adolescents

While Dominique was a much better maternal figure for Donna, she was also very young and never wanted children to begin with. In other words, she was very ill prepared to raise a child, especially on her own. Growing up, Donna couldn’t help but think they were somewhat of a burden and did their best not to be underfoot and useful to Dom. From a very early age, they were always paranoid and anxious that their parents would somehow come back, or worse, that The Devil would come for them himself. These feelings never leave, and even when they lose their memory, they are still paranoid of something coming for them. 

As they grew up, they helped Dom run the inn and got very well acquainted with its regular patrons. Many of them also became parental figures for them (and in many ways, they were like that for Dom herself); one in particular, a professor, helped to teach Donna to read and write. While the professor was away, Donna would spend most of their free time teaching themself so that they could show off all the new words they had learned. Others taught them how to properly defend themself without magic, making them a bit more scrappy as a teen. 

However, not everyone at the inn was kind to Donna, particularly Dom’s romantic partners. Many felt Donna got in the way of things and were a moocher (despite being.... a literal child), and so they took out much of their frustrations on Donna both verbally and physically. This did nothing to help with their anxiety, and in general really messed up their confidence. While Dom always tried sticking up for them or throwing out outright abusive partners, she herself was not yet fully mature enough to really steer clear of these relationships. 

To keep themself motivated, Donna turned to magic. Dom herself was also a skilled green witch, and she taught Donna most of the fundamentals. While Donna was initially terrified of magic due to her parents, Dom showed them that it could be beautiful and helpful. Donna’s first real spell they did on their own was enchanting their hair to respond to their moods— Dom would complain often about “not knowing what Donna was thinking”, and they felt that this would better convey when they were happy or sad.

Sadly, not much changed for the better in Donna’s life. Feeling unsafe and knowing that their maternal family had an abandoned shop in Vesuvia (Dom never liked Vesuvia and never re-opened the shop), Donna ran away at the age of 17. Guilty and ashamed that they felt the need to even do this, they stopped communicating with Dom entirely, convinced she would want nothing to do with them anyway. 

The Shop

It took A LOT of time, but Donna became very competent at running the shop on their own, mainly because of all the experience they had at the inn. Just like in-game, Donna and Asra meet at the masquerade and instantly fall for each other (well, for Donna it’s platonic, but they feel Asra is their soulmate in many ways). They really grow into their own even more once they start living together; their confidence and happiness is no longer a mask but sincere. They flourish more and more, making it the perfect time to meet a certain consul...    

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

i’m an idiot. i screw everything up.

Titans 3.03

still here, still doing this. these reviews take a fair bit of time that i cobble together across days (like, ten minute chunks during breaks, etc) and i tend to struggle to keep up with episodes as they come out. this means that by the time i’m done with one, most of my stuff is jossed (or geoffed in this case? idk) or outdated and the post sinks like a stone into oblivion. so! i’m going to change things up a bit with this one and write as i see the episode rather than collecting my thoughts later. in my experience with spn, that was a faster way to get them done. 

anyway. let’s see how it goes! *shadowboxes*

SPOILERS ahead.

1. an auspicious start with some grave-digging!

digging up a grave and breaking open a coffin is some serious, back-breaking work--that dick did it on his own, likely straight after that fight with red hood, is a testament to the sheer intensity, stamina and discipline that he’s capable of. like, we like to joke about dick cooking cauliflower crust pizzas and making gar and rachel spar and memorise sun tzu--and despair at the obvious consequences of some of bruce’s parenting skills--but imagine crime-fighting almost daily without any superpowers, performing some of the most intense parkour in bulky, uncomfortable armour, doing detective work, pushing through every last barrier of exhaustion and then getting up to repeat it all over again the next day. dick probably thought he was going extra-easy on rachel and gar.

1.5. then again, dick probably had a hundred different easier ways to confirm whether jason was still buried or not, from using equipment to merely asking connor to have a quick look with his x-ray vision. but, no, he’s too caught up in confusion and terror, not really having come to terms with jason’s death in the first place, leave alone the possibility that he could be alive after all. he can’t possibly let the others know until he’s confirmed it himself, even if it means digging all through the night until his arms are jelly, thinking over and over again about jason’s eyes, jason’s voice, from behind that red mask. 

... besides, dick has good reason to believe that he could’ve been hallucinating. wouldn’t be his first psychotic episode, after all.

that just imbues this sweaty, desperate, fingers-scrabbling-in-gravedirt scene with that much more poignancy, and a fair bit of bone-chilling terror. dick is horrified to realise that jason’s grave is empty, but a part of him is also probably relieved.

1.75 (... also it’s curious that we’re never shown any of the team asking to see jason’s grave after they come to wayne manor. i guess it’s because the writers--and the audience--know that jason is actually alive, but these people don’t know that. i don’t know if it’s sad or infuriating or both that they’re barely shown mourning him.)

2. oh GOD the sheer TENSION in kory saying, “i don’t want to say it, but--” and dick quickly interrupting, “it was jason. i saw him,” and hank giving him this loaded sidelong glance. i love how dick’s precarious mental health from last season is still this big elephant in the room but at least nobody’s blowing up in his face and questioning his every decision yet

2.25. i love the relative matter-of-factness with which they’re discussing a possible resurrection. and, of course, ra’s al ghul is brought up and quickly dismissed

(still wouldn’t put it past this show to bring him up at the very last second as the real real mastermind)

2.5. “maybe they can bring donna back” OH KORY

2.75. didn’t they have this same conversation about killing/not killing rose last season? man, the og titans make me tired.

and i don’t know if it’s just hank, but there’s a definite in-group/out-group vibe going on with the og titans, where they’re not only ready to consider killing anybody who threatens the group but makes it difficult for new people to fit in. donna and kory got along well with each other, but the dynamics between hank/donna/dawn and gar/rachel/rose were somewhat strained, and with jason, they were really fucking terrible. it makes sense when you think about how the titans started and how they broke up the first time--both were fairly disruptive events, i’d imagine, in that they probably got together to break away from their mentors and strike out on their own, and when they split up, it was the first time they felt directly responsible for the loss of an innocent life.

but the titans that dick is leading now is explicitly about mentoring a young generation of heroes, about second chances and found family. dick definitely wants to reach out to him first, and i have a feeling he’s going to be forced to make some sort of terrible Choice later on in this episode. 

2.8. (honestly tho, this also seems like hank struggling with his own guilt re: jason; if red hood is not the kid that he failed, it’d be easier to fight him.)

3.

HANK NO

4. honestly this season is already ticking off so many things on my wishlist, but i really wish dick would sit down with the newer members of his team and trust them with important information the same time that he’s telling them to the other members. gar searching for help and reassurance from a man who just dumped all of his responsibilities on his son overnight and went AWOL is a sad sight

4.25. has it only been just 48 hours????? wow! jason’s definitely been planning the red hood gig for a long time now...

5. ezekiel, my man! shady looking guy gets into your cab without a destination in mind... no problem, get right in! said guy gets a call to go to the observatory when he’s barely even looked out of the window so far at gotham... yep, a damn tourist! i want more ezekiel in this show.

5.25. (of course jason has upturned table lamps all along the floor... we have to *gritted teeth* balance the TEAL with the ORANGE don’t we?)

5.5. “dick’s a fucking psycho--he could be following you right now.” hank... has no objection to that lol

5.25. hank, hank... this is bad-decision-palooza. i can’t imagine that hank actually thought that jason was reaching out to him for help, given that the last time hank and jason had any substantial interaction hank had been one of the people accusing jason of sabotaging the team. but for him to go seek out jason and go along with his demands without any backup, weapons or equipment? not the best idea he’s ever come up with.

(add to that getting into the swimming pool of a condemned gym... oh yuck.)

((yes, i have enough self-restraint to not cap his ass.))

(((cap his ass! HA!)))

5.5. do you think jason has bugs/monitoring equipment planted in wayne manor to monitor the titans, or remote access to the cave’s systems? wouldn’t put it past him.

6. oh man, hank came back before dick and the others could meet ezekiel! this is TRAGIC

6.25. i mean, it’s plot-convenient that connor was able to give so much information about the bomb from just looking at it once, but i also like to think it’s the luthor-side of him coming to the fore. it also reminds me of that (in)famous scene from the new52 run of Nightwing comics, where a bomb was attached to nightwing’s heart and luthor disabled it by killing nightwing (temporarily). it’s a neat little callback. 

6.55. “where i come from, you go after family? there’s no mercy.” BUT THAT’S THE PROBLEM ISN’T IT

6.75. i mean, dick’s making sense: this is a game, and they need to get it off playing out on jason’s terms. but having a member of his team in his face, doubting his reasoning and every decision? a very familiar sight. 

6.8. krypto with an a+ sense of humour? also a very familiar sight.

7. wayne enterprises... providing the military with... bombs that can be implanted in humans? a BIIIIG yikes. i guess it’s not too many steps above developing clandestine intra-dermal trackers and implanting them in your own sons, and bruce probably thought they could be used as part of negotiation tactics, but still... YIKES.

7.5. on the other hand, conner being asked to build a deactivation advice seems part of a growth arc that started from last season... he knows so much, but part of growing is learning, and part of learning is using what you know to create something new.

8. oh man, my heart broke at hank going “i’m an idiot... i screw everything up.” like. for him to go like this, after being brought down to such a low last season? struggling with pain and addiction and his relationship with the love of his life? it’s so sad.

9. oh, oh, oh! ronnie from schitt’s creek! i love her!

9.5. “one of jason’s minions” took his body out of the morgue... how deliciously morbid that he planned out his own death like this!

10. TALK TO HANK, DICK

honestly, tho, i’m quite impressed with dick here. trying to think beyond just the most alarming part of the crisis at hand, keeping his cool, delegating tasks, frequently touching base with different members of his team... well done. 

10.25.... whoops, spoke too soon. i’m genuinely confused here, tho. where did the van full of gold bars come from? why did they stop there and get out? how did dawn even know about this?

on the other hand, it’s cool to know dove has bulletproof feathers!

10.5. eh... curran walters isn’t really selling red hood’s menace to me so far. but then again, if titans version of red hood is vulnerable-kid-with-father-issues-trying-to-overcompensate, then yeah! yeah, it makes sense. 

11. “when bats have sex, they gotta have something to hang from” OH GOD HANK

... because i want smiley!gar on my blog :)

11.5. awww. i feel sorry for hank but NONE of these fuckers deserve gar except maybe kory

12. ohhh FUCK! look at jason being exactly one step ahead of the titans at every turn. nice.

no really, i love the building stakes and the building mystery - i feel like the deathstroke arc from last season should’ve been more like this. the flashbacks about jericho and rose came too late and after too much build up, which resulted in a very underwhelming and confusing season throughline.

13. HANK AND DIIIIIICCCKKK

“you’re doing your best by me. always have.” WAILING HERE

it also kills me to think that hank thinks that his imminent death is because of his failure to keep the team together (when he was clearly struggling with his own issues and was spiralling towards rock-bottom) and his fear that he will once again be the cause of the team falling apart. 

also:

14. “i grew up... you can, too. you just have to face your fear.”

yep, got scarecrow’s grubby little fingerprints aaaaalllll over this. 

14.25. nightwing’s got specialised batarangs! yay! (somehow i can’t see this universe’s dick calling them “wingdings”)

15. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

oh man, that was devastating. well done, show. fuck, well done, jason.

this is going to bring up all sorts of “if onlys” for the team. i can’t wait for some fucking aftermath.