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scaredofheroin · 4 years ago

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Captain N - Chapter 18: Urban Champion in the Making

When Captain N's eyes met Ryu's, he felt his foundations weaken. Ryu was built like a mountain, almost towering over him. He looked over him suspiciously, taking in Captain N's unusual appearance. A chill traveled down Captain N's spine as Ryu's eyes scanned him. An awkward silence filled the room, and Captain N almost felt suffocated by the tension. The ambient buzz of the fluorescent lights above was the only thing accompanying the two's silent greeting. Eventually deciding he should do something, he raised his hand out to him, cleared his throat and introduced himself with "Hey, I'm Pet- Captain N.". Ryu squinted his eyes at him, making his heart beat faster. Was he supposed to say that? Should he have waited for Ryu to introduce himself? All Captain N could do was keep his hand held out and hope for something to happen. After what felt like an eternity, Ryu met him halfway, took his hand and gave it a firm shake. "Nice to meet you, Captain N." Ryu's bold voice said in a surprisingly quiet tone. Captain N his the pain he felt from Ryu's crushing grip and maintained a strong form as he shook in return. Releasing him from his grip, Ryu took a step back and looked over to Little Mac and Doc Louis. "Do you know them?" He asked the two. Little Mac shook his head. "Nope, you're meeting them with us." he answered. Ryu looked over to the three accompanying Captain N. He gave Pit and Falco a solemn nod, and bowed graciously upon seeing Zelda. "It's an honor to meet you all." He said to them. "The honor's all mine! I'm a huge fan of your fighting!" Pit giddily responded, nudging past Falco to get to Ryu. He smirked slightly, apparently used to having fans. "So what brings you all here? I assume you've been looking for me." Ryu asked the group. "How'd you know we were looking for you and not Doc over here?" Falco asked. "Oh, don't flatter me, son. I 'aint as popular as I used to be." Doc Louis chuckled in between bites from a chocolate bar. "We were hoping you would guide us to Suzaku Castle." Zelda spoke up, moving closer to Ryu.

His expression grew more stern as he heard the castle's name invoked, heaving a deep sigh. "You're hardly the first to want to know the location of Suzaku Castle." Ryu responded. "But it IS real?" Pit asked eagerly. With only a nod, Pit pumped his fist in the air victoriously. "Ha! Told you so!" He bragged to Falco, who rolled his eyes, annoyed. "Why would you want to know where it is? It's a secret not lightly held." Ryu asked. Captain N stepped forward, his mentally prepared speech ready.

"These weapons I hold are proof that I'm the hero that ancient prophecy was talking about. We've already reclaimed the weapons from the secret chambers in Peach's Castle and Castlevania, and we believe the next weapon is hidden in Suzaku Castle. Without those weapons, it'll be essentially impossible to defeat the three kings terrorizing Yamajiro." Captain N declared, presenting his Zapper for Ryu's inspection. His expression grew more suspicious, eyeing Captain N's less than idea physique. After a moment of Ryu mentally mulling over his options, Captain N spoke up, asking "So can you tell us where it is?".

Another moment passed.

Doc Louis and Little Mac moved away from the conversation, giving them their space.

"Come on, where's the castle?" Falco impatiently asked.

Another moment passed.

"...I can't tell you." Ryu finally answered.

"What!?" Captain N, Pit and Falco responded in unison.

"Surely you can't mean that!" Zelda insisted, taken aback.

Ryu ignored them, and walked over to the punching bag laying on the floor. "You're in no shape to take on the forces of the three kings." Ryu bluntly stated, hanging the bag from the ceiling. Captain N felt wounded by the comment, but didn't let that become visible. "But we managed to go up against Dracula! We defeated him!" Captain N assured him, walking over to Ryu. "Dracula doesn't have the weaponry or the influence of Bowser, or K. Rool or Dedede. Just from looking at you, I can tell you're not a one-man army." Ryu reminded him. Zelda stormed right up to Ryu and straightened her posture with a stern look on her face. "As Princess Zelda of the kingdom of Hyrule, I command you to reveal the location of Suzaku Castle!" She demanded. Doc Louis and Little Mac tried to look busy, while also trying to subtly eavesdrop. Ryu didn't even acknowledge her as he adjusted the punching bag. "I have a sworn oath to keep the location of the castle secret from the outside world. If too many people found its secrets, the consequences would be disastrous." was Ryu's only response. Zelda huffed frustratingly, turning to the other three with a "Can you believe this?" look painted across her face. "But you can trust us! Destiny says I'm gonna save the world!" Captain N reminded Ryu. Once the punching bag was secured, Ryu turned to face Captain N. "Punch the bag." He instructed.

"What?"

"Punch the bag."

Still incredibly confused, Captain N stepped up to the punching bag. The bag swayed slightly, with a barely audible squeaking noise coming from the chain harness above. Captain N mimicked Little Mac's form in the ring, steadying his footing, putting up his hands in front of him, and with a deep breath, struck the bag with a swift punch. The punch stung his fist slightly as the bag reacted by swinging away. Rubbing his sore hand, he looked over to Ryu. "There's work to be done." Ryu bluntly stated. "What do you mean?" he asked him. "You need to prove to me you deserve to know the location of Suzaku Castle, and that you deserve your prestige." Ryu answered. "So you'll help us?" Falco asked from across the room.

"Yes, but only once he's proven he can put up a fight."

"Does that mean you're gonna teach him Ansatsuken?" Pit excitedly asked, leaning forward.

"No, but I can teach him how to fight before he competes tomorrow." Ryu answered, making Pit's expression fall slightly.

"Compete?" Zelda asked.

"You don't mean in the World Warrior Tournament, do you?" Captain N nervously added.

"You'll be taking my place in the tournament." Ryu informed him. Doc Louis nearly choked on his chocolate bar, and Little Mac was thrown off by this revelation. "But he's not ready!" Zelda objected. "Sure he is, destiny's on his side, after all." Falco semi-sarcastically spoke up. "We can train here to prepare. Only after your performance tomorrow will I decide if you deserve to know where Suzaku Castle is." Ryu calmly answered. "Well shoot, we better get going, then!" Doc Louis declared, getting up with a slight groan. "You know if we have any spare gloves in the back?" He asked Little Mac. He darted off to the office to check, and Doc Louis climbed into the ring. "Come on in here, Cap." He invited, which Captain N somewhat awkwardly obliged. Ryu stood right up at the edge of the ring, with Zelda, Falco and Pit standing next to him. Not too long after, Little Mac returned with two red boxing gloves, and gave them to Captain N. Standing in the corner of the roped edge of the ring as he slipped on the gloves, he spotted Ryu patiently observing, Zelda watched concerned, Falco watched with subtle interest and Pit hopped slightly in place, eager to see the action up close. He could tell the gloves haven't been washed recently, but otherwise felt comfortable. "Lucky you, getting trained by such legends to compete in the World Warrior Tournament!" Pit said giddily, gripping the rope below. Captain N nervously chuckled as he adjusted the strap on the gloves. "It'll be the first fight I've ever gotten into one-on-one. I won't be able to rely on dear friends like you to bail me out." He sheepishly admitted. "Plus it'll be broadcast all over the world for everyone to see you take on some of the best fighters in the world. No pressure, though." Falco chimed in nonchalantly. Pit nudged him for not helping. "Wait, what about the Koopa or Kremlings or any of those guys? It'll be, like, impossible for them to not notice me." Captain N realized, growing more worried. "If that happens, we'll be nearby to come to your aid. We took down an airship on our own, need I remind you." Zelda assured him. Captain N wasn't entirely persuaded, but decided that his time would be better spent training, so he turned away from the audience and towards Doc Louis wearing his own boxing gloves in the other corner, with Little Mac behind him.

"So you've never boxed someone before?" Doc Louis asked to clarify. Captain N answered with a shake of the head. "Well, you're gonna learn today!" He chuckled, tapping his gloved fists together. Captain N raised his fists up and steadied his posture. Doc Louis started approaching him, and he carefully made his way towards him. "I just wanna say it's an honor to be teaching someone of such reputation." Doc Louis said to him, making Captain N slightly flustered. "What can I say, my reputation precedes me." He responded. "Yeah, well, get ready for some old school!" Doc Louis declared, getting into a fighting stance. Realizing he was relaxing his posture, Captain N snapped into a posture matching his opponents. He could feel the eyes of his audience burn into him, Ryu's careful gaze making him feel slightly unsteady. The bell dinged, and round one had begun. Doc Louis danced around Captain N slightly, him trying to keep up with the surprisingly agile older man. Out of the corner of his eye, he could spot Pit bouncing in place, hyped up. Doc Louis suddenly pulled back slightly and yelled "Dodge!". Before Captain N could react, he was met with a strong boxing glove across the face, knocking him gracelessly onto the matted floor of the ring. Falco could barely hold back his snickering as Zelda gasped in surprise. "Come on! You can do better than that!" Pit cheered him on, Ryu remaining silent. Captain N's face stung like never before. His right cheek was already a bit swollen and tender to touch. He was content to lay on the mat where safety was somewhat guaranteed, but he knew he would have to face his elder opponent eventually, and with a quiet groan, got back up on his feet and put his gloved hands back up. "Try to listen up next time!" Doc Louis advised. "I doubt my opponents will be as sporting as you." Captain N remarked. "Hey, that's training. You gotta walk before you can run. You wanna go up against someone like Ryu in your first bout, be my guest." Doc Louis remarked. "As much as I enjoy watching you get your butt kicked, you should probably listen to him." Falco spoke up. Paying him no mind, Captain N re-steadied his stance and braced himself for the next strike. Doc Louis quickly got into a rhythm with him, each carefully maintaining a short distance from each other. "Dodge this one!" Doc Louis suddenly warned him, but this time he was prepared. As Doc Louis unleashed a mean right hook, Captain N dodged out of the way, finding an opening to strike his opponent. Before the window could close, Captain N struck Doc Louis several times before his opponent stumbled back to the ropes. "Good going, kid!" Doc Louis congratulated him. Zelda offered polite applause, where Pit happily cheered him on. Ryu remained silent, and Falco wasn't too eager to make any kind of remark yet. Doc Louis got back up from the ropes to get close to Captain N again. As the two held their fists up, Captain N waited for his opponent's next warning. "Block this!" Doc Louis suddenly exclaimed, which Captain N had barely enough time to register. Holding his arms together to block the right jab, he stumbled back somewhat, thrown off by Doc Louis's strong punch. "Try to stay anchored to the floor!" Doc Louis advised him. Regaining his footing, Captain N nodded along.

As the two slightly danced around each other, Captain N suddenly got an idea. Right after Doc Louis gave his warning in the form of "Dodge!", Captain N opted to duck down and strike his stomach with a right jab, rather than dodge out of the way. Doc Louis clearly wasn't expecting this, and stumbled backwards onto the ropes. The feeling of triumph he felt course through his body helped him stand up taller, feeling triumphant in his ingenuity. Looking over to the small audience, Falco nodded approvingly, Zelda seemed pleased with his actions, Pit was clapping excitedly, but Ryu remained as stoic as ever. Little Mac looked over to check on Doc Louis, but he got back up just fine. "Now you're getting the hang of it!" Doc Louis commented, approaching Captain N. He felt more determined than before, maintaining his distance from his opponent. His ears perked up slightly, anxious to get Doc Louis's next warning. This time, the warning came later than usual. Tensions were high as Captain N danced about on the tips of his toes, eager to spring into action. His instincts were kicking in, and he could feel Doc Louis peer into his eyes, much like how he was doing the same. He could feel each individual bead of sweat decorate his forehead. He could feel the air move around him. "Block!" came Doc Louis's voice suddenly boomed. Captain N's instincts took over, and as he weaved out of the way of his jab, he delivered the strongest uppercut he could summon and knocked Doc Louis down onto the mat. He stepped away to observe his opponent. Before he could worry if he ended up seriously hurting his sparring partner, Doc Louis got back up, chuckling heartily. "That's the spirit, son! You've got the spirit of a real fighter in you." He remarked, stretching his back. Captain N let out a laugh of built up nervous energy, relieved that the match has seemingly ended. "Hooray for Captain N!" Pit cheered with eager applause. "Oh, please. He was literally told what to do. It's about as great an accomplish as a connect-the-dots picture." Falco shrugged off. "Pay him no mind, you're making admirable progress." Zelda assured him. He smiled warmly, taking pride in his admittedly minuscule achievement. "So what next?" Captain N asked Doc Louis. "First, take five." He answered, tossing Captain N an unopened water bottle. He managed to clumsily catch it in his arms, and greedily gulped down its refreshing contents. Wearing his jacket wasn't helping how much he was sweating. He sat down in the corner of the ring, near the four watching. "This is such a waste of time, can't you just tell us where the castle is?" Falco impatiently asked Ryu. He remained firm in his stance. "The tournament will go for two days. I need to see that he's worthy of knowing where Suzaku Castle is." Ryu stated. "And you're SURE you can't use your magic to just find it?" Falco turned to Zelda. She sighed softly, looking down. "It's been attempted before, but to no avail. Plus, I... I'm not terribly confident in my navigational abilities after I almost led us to our defeat in Castlevania." She glumly admitted. Falco groaned, annoyed. "Oh, come on. You're telling me there's NOTHING on where Suzaku Castle is?" He asked. "You didn't even think it was real yesterday." Captain N reminded him. "Then how'd you hear about it?" Falco interrogated Pit, who put his hands up in defense. "I dunno, I heard a couple rumors!" Pit nervously answered. Captain N spotted Little Mac talking with Doc Louis on the other end of the ring, just out of earshot. Not paying them too much mind, he took a couple more swigs of the cold water, feeling incredibly refreshed.

"Alright, break time's over, Cap. Time for round two!" Doc Louis declared. Captain N jumped onto his feet, ready for action. But instead of climbing back into the ring, Doc Louis opened the ropes up for Little Mac to get in. "Normally I wouldn't move you along so quick with your training, but since your big day is tomorrow, we gotta hustle." Doc Louis explained. "That means I'm gonna be sparring you." Little Mac continued, putting up his gloved fists. Captain N's worry returned, turning to his audience for some kind of help. "Don't worry Cap, I'm sure he won't hurt you too bad!" Pit reassured him. Falco smirked slightly, but seemingly got a mental instruction from Zelda to not make any witty remarks. "Relax, I'll go easy on you to start, but it's gonna get tougher later." Little Mac explained to him. "After all, I can't have the chosen one getting all bruised and bloody before his first official competition." He remarked. Captain N didn't want to get into a real fight like this, his face still stung from when Doc Louis got his punch in. But he knew that he was going to have to get stronger if he was going to save Yamajiro. He steeled his nerve, tossed the empty water bottle out of the ring, and put his hands up. The bell rang, and Little Mac marched forward. Only when he got closer did Captain N realize he was actually taller than Little Mac. Not by much, only a couple inches, but it still surprised him. He shoved those thoughts to the side and met his opponent in the middle. Mimicking the stance he's learned, he crouched slightly behind his two raised arms. The two carefully moved in a circle around each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. But almost in the blink of an eye, Little Mac attacked Captain N with a right hook. He was quick to react, and hid behind his arms to block the attack. "You coulda dodged that!" Pit noted from outside the ring. "Thanks for the tip, coach." Captain N sarcastically replied, moving back from Little Mac. He still didn't react any further than that, carefully trying to maintain a safe distance from Little Mac. His small stature betrayed his skill, his prowess radiating off his bold form. Right as Little Mac let loose another right hook, Captain N dodged out of the way and jabbed at his torso. The impact pushed back Little Mac a bit, who chuckled once recovering. "Nice shot!" He congratulated. "Heh, than-" Captain N was about to say, but was cut off by being crossed across the face by a surprise left hook, knocking him to the floor. His face felt sore from the impact, but he felt his pride was more wounded. "Don't get distracted, that's how they'll get you!" Little Mac advised him. "Yeah, save the flirting for post-match." Falco remarked. Captain N waved him off and quickly got back onto his feet, guided by his fighting instinct.

He furrowed his brow at Little Mac, more determined. Tension was cut short as Little Mac tried to jab at him. Captain N quickly got out of the way and landed two more punches at Little Mac. But this also left himself open, so his opponent was also able to punch his side. The punches made him feel more sore, but he couldn't quit now. The two danced around each other, anticipating their next move to subvert and strike. "It might be a good idea to take on a more offensive technique." Zelda suggested, watching closely. Ryu offered no suggestion of his own, silently watching the match. Captain N locked his gaze onto Little Mac's face, keeping his wandering eyes from giving away where he would attack. Finding a small opening in his lower torso, and tried to quickly jab at that region. Little Mac was too quick, and blocked the jab, knocking Captain N back onto the ropes. "Perhaps not..." Zelda shrunk back, slightly embarrassed. He wasn't going to keep getting pushed around, so Captain N re-approached Little Mac, ready for more. He waved out of the way, but jabbed at Captain N. He blocked the jab, and unleashed a powerful uppercut on Little Mac. Taken completely by surprise, Little Mac fell back onto the mat. He tapped the mat twice, indicating that he's done sufficiently enough. "Heh... not bad!" Little Mac noted, slowly getting back onto his feet while rubbing his jaw. "I'm glad you think so!" Captain N chuckled, taking this opportunity to catch his breath and relax. "See, you're making progress!" Doc Louis noted approvingly. "Was that impressive enough for you?" Captain N jokingly asked Falco. "Eh, could've been better." Falco shrugged. "Never mind him, your skill is improving ever more." Zelda assured him. Captain N sheepishly thanked her for the praise. "Thank goodness you didn't beat him too bad, could've embarrassed him in front of the Princess here." Doc Louis joked, whereupon Little Mac rolled his eyes. "I could've beaten you if I really wanted to, you know that, right?" Little Mac asked Captain N. "Yeah, I got it." Captain N answered, with a small smile.

"Now what?" He asked Ryu.

"Next you fight me." Ryu stated.

Captain N froze in place.

"...Huh?"

Ryu climbed into the ring and walked to the opposite end.

"Your competition tomorrow will be fierce and relentless. If you are as promising as I'm seeing, you'll need to do well against me."

"Ryu, I'm not so sure this is such a good idea." Little Mac spoke up, but Ryu was undeterred. He adjusted his gloves and did some minor stretching, not helping Captain N's nervous state. "I'm sure he won't hurt you too bad. This is only training, after all." Doc Louis said, trying to ease the tension. "Yeah! Plus there are a TON of people who'd love the opportunity to have a fight with Ryu himself!" Pit added. Falco and Zelda shared a look, both deciding that there was nothing too drastic to worry about. "Do be careful with him, we've only got one." Zelda requested of Ryu, using humor in attempt to alleviate the tension. This did little to aid Captain N, who was almost shaking in place at the thought of having to fight this mountain of a man. "Are you ready, Captain?" Ryu asked him.

Captain N nodded.

The bell rang.

Ryu approached Captain N, and he followed his motion.

He instinctively put his guard up, but it did little to block Ryu's powerful punch. He was knocked to the floor, doubling over in the severe pain. Ryu simply stood over him as he writhed on the floor, trying to recover as soon as possible. Captain N eventually rolled away from Ryu and slowly got back up, putting his guard back up. As Ryu approached him, Captain N watched him carefully to detect where he would strike next. In almost the blink of an eye, Ryu swung his leg around and kicked Captain N's legs, knocking him back onto the floor. "Wanna call in an assist?" Pit asked him. Captain N waved off the suggestion, and slowly got back onto his weakened legs. He saw an opening in Ryu's defenses, and swung him arm out to strike him in the abdomen. His rock-hard abs almost deflected the blow, and all it took was one uppercut with a powerful "Shoryuken!" to knock Captain N back down, this time for good. He groaned in pain, clutching his nose and hoped it wasn't broken. No blood ran down from his nostrils, which assuaged his fears. All Ryu offered was a simple. "Hmph." before exiting the ring and retrieving his punching bag. Shame came over Captain N as he realized what losing meant. He looked down at the floor, avoiding looking at Ryu. No one in the room wanted to comment on the match, not even Falco. "At least you'll have your weapons." Ryu noted, throwing the bag over his shoulder. "Huh?" Captain N said, perking his head up. "Weapons are allowed in the World Warrior Tournament, I assumed you knew that." Ryu went on. "Then why'd you have him get beat up? You're not wasting his time only, you know." Falco interrogated him. "It's unwise to rely solely on weapons, especially if so much rests on one's shoulders." Ryu calmly explained.

"I'll head to the arena to arrange for you to compete in my place. I will see you there tomorrow at 5 PM." Ryu stated as he walked out the door, before anyone could bid him farewell. "Wait, where are we gonna stay for the night?" Captain N asked. "It wouldn't be a good idea to search for a hotel, with so many of the three king's forces patrolling New Donk City." Zelda noted. "Yeah, plus we shouldn't keep asking for free stuff." Pit added, making Falco respond with a smug "Tch.". "I've got some cots in storage, you four can stay here for the night." Doc Louis spoke up, opening the door to the storage closet. "Oh, no, we would hate to impose." Zelda tried to object, but Doc Louis was undeterred as he got four cots out and set them up, with assistance from Little Mac. "I trust you four won't be causing much trouble, although I wish I could offer something more fitting for a Princess." He said. "It's more than what we could ask of you, thank you for your kindness." Zelda thanked him. "Yeah, I don't know how I would've gotten by without the kindness of strangers." Captain N added.

"We'll be back at around 7 AM, have a good night, you'll need it!" Little Mac said over his shoulder, carrying his gym bag as he exited the gym with Doc Louis, who tossed a set of keys to Captain N. Once the two left, Captain N locked the door behind them, looked back at his three allies, then at the four less-than ideal beds.

"...Hey, come on, this isn't so bad. Two nights ago we slept on the ground!"

#captain n #nintendo #crossover #reboot #fanfic #writing #the legend of zelda #princess zelda #star fox #Falco Lombardi #Kid Icarus #pit #punch-out!!#little mac #doc louis #street fighter #ryu #capcom

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dragonofyang · 6 years ago

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ABTV Feb 25 Transcript

A complete transcript of the ABTV Voltron interview with Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery on February 25 2019 is under the cut.

@crystal-rebellion @voltronisruiningmylife @felixazrael @leakinghate

KC: The series is over, but we’re not quite done. We are the Afterbuzz TV Voltron: Legendary Defender after-show and we’re here to talk to you guys about season 8 as a whole. We’re gonna talk about character arcs. We’re gonna talk about the end of reality. We’re going to talk about some of our favorite moments, and we’re gonna talk about them with two very special guests. So let’s get this ball rolling and team, it’s time to form Voltron!

KC: Hello, everyone! Welcome back. We are the Afterbuzz TV Voltron: Legendary Defender after-show. This is the season 8 review. We are gonna talk about season 8 as a whole. We are going to have a grand old time doing it. I have with me a green lion, Megan Salinas.

MS: Hey, everybody!

KC: I’m black lion, Katie Cullen, and we have two wonderful, fantastic, returning guests that we are so thrilled to have in studio. Our showrunners: Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos.

JDS: How’s it going?

MS: [cheers off-screen]

JDS: It’s nice to see you guys.

LM: Yeah, thanks for having us. We’re happy to be back and talking about the final season.

JDS: Yeah, and we have to sort of give a pre-warning that we haven’t really watched it in a while, so we aren’t really sure what season 8 is anymore.

LM: Yeah, I did, I refreshed myself on the, uh, episode thumbnails on Netflix, so at least I have like, a slight reminder.

JDS: Yeah and they spoil everything for you.

KC: No, just me.

[laughter]

KC: Things I will never be over: when Netflix marketing screws up that bad. Well, welcome back. Before we get started we are gonna do a little bit of housekeeping. As always, we have the livechat going for those of you who are watching live on YouTube. We have the hashtag for those of you who are watching live or listening later. That hashtag is #ABTVVoltron. If you’ve got something to say, throw it in the hashtag, throw it in the live chat, you may well get a shoutout. I will say that we do check the hashtag throughout the week, and it lasts longer than the livechat does, so art, links, fun stuff, throw it in there if you want it to be a little more permanent. And as always, we have our tavern of lions house rule: be nice or get out. We--[laser sound effect]--there we go. Yeah. Everyone has opinions. I firmly believe you can express your opinions in a respectful manner and if you find yourself unable to do that, you will be banned from the channel. No more Afterbuzz animation for you. Buh-bye. Most of you have been pretty dang good at that, which I appreciate. Keep it up and we’ll continue. Season 8, though, you guys.

MS: Oh my goodness.

KC: The series finale. What was releasing this last season like for you?

LM: It was…

JDS: Exhausting.

LM: Yeah. Releasing it was really easy because we were, like, out of, you know--

MS: It’s done!

LM: --out of work for, like, a month and we were like, [noncommittal noises]. We were relaxing, we were kind of like--things were nice and slow. Making it was a whole different scenario. This was where we really procrastinated a lot on a few things, like, we thought we had this beautiful idea that we’d have all this time at the end where there’s no new episodes coming up that we’d have to make and like, we’ll have all this time to, like, reboard all these things that needed to be reboarded and focus all this attention. And we had none of that time, and I don’t even know how that happened. I think what we forgot to realize was doing our regular producer duties takes the whole day, and the end of the day was when we did all of our storyboard stuff.

JDS: I think, I don’t know how the math worked in our head, but I think we assumed that, like, as soon as season 7 was done, we reverted back to being, like, storyboard artists or something, and then we’d just be like, “yeah, we’ll just, like, draw and stuff again.”

LM: Yeah, we’ll have all this time to just, like, make the finale the best it can be. Like, I remember us talking with Eugene, like, “Oh my god, Jean. Eugene, when we’re done with, like, this last batch of episodes can you imagine how much time.” And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s gonna be so great!” And then, like, there was none of that because we were still making the frickin’ show and finishing, like, episodes just in editing and in post.

JDS: Balancing act was still happening, you know, like three spinning plates at a time.

LM: One day, I’m gonna figure it out.

KC: Sending it in at 11:59 before it’s due.

JDS: We’re gonna be, like, 80-year-olds like, “We figured it out!” And they’re gonna be like, “What’s this crazy old person doing here trying to make a cartoon?”

KC: That’s what we’re all trying to do collectively. We’re making a cartoon.

JDS: That’s right.

KC: So you had a lot of story threads to bring together and resolve as well as a lot of new information to give us. Was there… was there anything that got lost in the shuffle? Was there anything you would have liked to emphasize a little more that there just wasn’t time for it?

JDS: A lot, I mean yeah. It-it’s tough. We had this massive Honerva backstory to sort of really set up and queue up, and-and we were able to do that a little bit, sort of, leading up, but season 8 was really our big push to-to get that all set up. I think, you know, that came at the cost of, like, I would have loved to have spent more time with the MFE pilots and sort of figure out what made them tick. And we got a little bit of that with, you know, like, “Day 47”, but…

LM: Yeah.

JDS: I don’t know. There was stuff like that, like incidental side characters that we just were-we were super fond of.

LM: Yeah, it’s one of those really tricky things about having a show this big. As you introduce all these characters, and we had all these great ideas of, like, they’re all gonna come into play in these many different ways. And-and so you would be, kind of, in the writers’ room with the writers, like, talking about all these things. And then slowly but surely as we needed to just kind of whittle it down and make it understandable and get the strongest points across, like, these little things would fall away and so suddenly you’d lose that-that kind of side character involvement. Like, we had this idea of, like, Slav was gonna kind of be, like, with them and figuring out all of these, like, crazy interreality traveling stuff and like he would know all the realities, he would know exactly where to go, he’ll be in the cockpit with them--

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: --it’s gonna be crazy. And then we were like, “Oh, no. We need to just, like--do we really need Slav in the finale? Like--

KC: Yes you do.

LM: --with all the paladins? Like, we love him, but that might be a little awkward. So, uh, yeah. And honestly, just, like, the finale itself, just that last episode, like, we’ve always…

JDS: Yeah.

LM: With every finale we’ve done, um, in-in our three, like, big seasons, we--you know, Zarkon we consider to be one season, Lotor is the second season, and then this big, like, Sendak Earth/Honerva arc--each of those had a big finale and every time we would write that big finale and we would run out of time. Like, we would overwrite it and I would always try to say, like, “Guys, we need, like, at least an act of wrap-up.” And then for the big series finale, like, it would have been awesome to have an entire episode where we could just dedicate to, like, tying up loose ends, but you can’t do that. We-we wrote an episode and then we got notes like, “Hey, there’s only action in act 1, can we have action in act 2 and 3?” And we’re like, “No! No we can’t!” Like, like, we gotta wrap up 78 episodes! This isn’t just a, uh, a 26 episode wrap-up. This is a 78 episode wrap-up.

JDS: But when you-when you look at that final episode, it really is just the first act of, like, fight stuff and the rest is pretty much wrap-up. Uh, I mean, we were just saying to each other, we wished that the conversation in limbo almost could have had its own episode. How awesome would that have been to really, like, explore, deep-dive into Honerva’s POV and make that transition when she, you know, sort of decides to go along with Allura. Sell that. Uh, but, you sort of deal--

LM: It was--there’s a ton of stuff that just hit the-hit the, kinda, cutting room floor, storyboard-wise, just because we didn’t have the time and so we’re looking like, it’s a kids’ show technically still, even though we’re trying to make it more than that. You have a-a scene that’s basically an act long that’s just in a white floaty space with people talking about, like, you know--

JDS: Bigger emotional stuff

LM: Yeah. And, uh, you know, letting that go any longer than that is just like, “You can’t do it!”

KC: Yeah.

LM: “Kids are sleeping right now!”

JDS: No it’s, what’s interesting, though, is that it seems like we’re in a--I don’t know--sort of social situation now where those types of shows are becoming more and more of a reality. And we were on this, like, weird precipice where we were always working on shows that were pushing the boundaries, and maybe Voltron was on the tipping point. It seems like now animation is way--it’s broadening, like, every day, so hopefully we’ll be able to see more shows that can, like, lean in and get really, really character-centric and still have all the sci-fi, like, big action stuff to go along with it. Um,

LM: I was telling Joaquim how, you know, we were just talking about how during our time on Voltron we-we started in a very specific point in the industry where we were very used to working inside of our boys toys animation box and trying to push the boundaries. And those were literally the only jobs that were available to us because those were the only shows that studios had in animation and during our time on Voltron, like Castlevania came out and changed the landscape and now suddenly there’s all these studios. Netflix opened its own studio here. We were making a show through DreamWorks for Netflix and now, you know, we could have just gone straight to Netflix and made a show that was more geared towards, like, young adults and-and more, but that wasn’t available to us when we started.

JDS: We were, like, trying to, like, like, sneak it in the back door like “this is secretly a much deeper show, everybody.”

LM: But it’s exciting that--because that’s--it’s a reality that we didn’t know if it would ever be a thing because we were working on Korra and we would say to ourselves, like, “This is the last time we’re ever gonna get this chance, you guys.” Like, Korra is, like, a crazy creature where Nickelodeon knows they’re not making it for kids, it has no toy tie-in, has no consumer products tie-in, it’s just meant to be kind of an art project at the studio. And so it was allowed to be this very mature, different show for an audience that they didn’t really understand. And-and so when it was over we were like, “Alright, well, back to the old way.” Uh, you know, we were prepared for it and we, you know, we definitely had more of, like, a fun campy vibe to Voltron, but we still wanted to try to push those bigger themes--

JDS: I think we maximized as much of the, like, sort of pathos and-and sort of hero’s journey and sort of deep character introspective stuff as we could.

KC: Yeah.

JDS: But, you know, it’s-it’s funny too because it just seems, maybe even to ourselves, but it seemed like the lines got blurred even in how it was, uh, uh, received by the fandom and received by, even like, the media outlets. It was-it was sort of, like, on the cusp of being talked about, you know, with other shows that were way more mature like, “Oh, the Game of Thrones of it all” and it’s like “[hesitant honking noise].”

[laughter]

KC: “We didn’t kill that many pe--oh we did kill that many people. We ended reality!”

MS: [indistinct] way more people than Game of Thrones.

JDS: So we did. We did-we pushed the boundaries.

LM: Yeah, and we would--we’d find ourselves getting compared to shows that we were… like live-action shows where, like, “Oh, they should have done it like this,” and it’s like, “That, that would be awesome if that were an option at all--”

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: “--in any way.” But, uh, us-us to consider our, like, little robot lion show being made, us trying to make this show for as many people as possible under the guidelines of a “boys toys” show, it’s never gonna be able to have, like, quite the ability to push farther that, like, a live-action, like Walking Dead on AMC that’s at 10 o’clock at night specifically for adults where you don’t have to worry about “how are my kids gonna do with this?”

KC: If your kids are watching Walking Dead, you have other problems.

MS: Either that or you’re the best parent in the world.

KC: Uh, disagree.

MS: Agree to disagree!

KC: Disagree!

MS: But was it that sort of desire to push the boundaries that, sort of, resulted in this climax where, “Yeah, we have the big action set piece leading up to it,” but ultimately the resolution is one that’s brought up from empathy and understanding.

JDS: I think so. And I think--I will say DreamWorks was incredibly patient with us with regards to us broaching a lot of these subjects. They were, you know, maybe still figuring things out in terms of how they would approach, you know, other topics that we can-we can get into a little later. But I would say the finale is almost--I don’t know, I don’t want to say unlike anything you would see in other like-minded shows, like, let’s say Transformers or Power Rangers or something that, like, Voltron was by outward appearances being compared to--but it was something, I think, really exciting for us to be able to explore because we did create villains and create heroes that worked within this very, kind of like, shades of gray spectrum. There was-there was-there was black, there was white, but we played in this really weird, morally-ambiguous zone a lot of the time and that was, I think it’s important for, kind of, audiences of every age group to see that.

LM: And, you know, we also came from working on shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Korra which very much pushed those boundaries as well, and were extremely groundbreaking for, you know, children’s programming and it was not something that was coming out of western animation. So, uh, I mean we, I would say we learned an insane amount from Mike and Bryan.

JDS: We just had to reverse-engineer that into the goofy cat lady. [Hosts laugh] You know what I mean? That was, like, that was our, like, little-little trick to the industry. It was like, “How do we do all that cool stuff that-that we were able to do in those shows and sort of cram it into this package?”

LM: Yeah, and honestly, like, a lot of it was just us knowing that our ability to, like, show everything on-screen, like, every type of representation we might have wanted to show. We might not get our way on everything, but at least through having these larger lessons we can-we can still push those messages of acceptance and of understanding and of, like, looking beyond. And you know, those are just important messages. I think, like, everyone kind of learns them in their life in their own way and, uh, I don’t know, like, I was such a little, like, asshole kid [Hosts laugh] that, like, I, like, didn’t understand empathy. I didn’t understand why people cried when they were happy, I was like, “Why would you cry when you’re happy? Like, you’re happy.” And then, of course, now I’m the woman who watched a T-Mobile commercial today and friggin’ cried, so--

JDS: I want to know what this commercial was.

LM: It was beautiful. I’ll describe it to you after because I don’t want to take time.

[Laughter]

LM: But uh--

KC: Advertising other brands, uh, [concerned noise].

LM: But uh, you know, there-there are things that come through, I think, life experience and through learning and our paladins had that, kind of, on steroids with their whole Voltron journey, so you know, to really show how that manifested and how they learn from it was… it’s important, and it-I think it’s just important for kids to see it, even if they’re not there in their life yet, to know when they get there they look back and, like, “Oh, I-I saw that, like--”

JDS: “I saw that happening to that character.”

KC: To be able to see it happen to someone else and someone that you’re invested in because, “Oh, it’s Lance! He’s my favorite!” and then you watch him grow from this brat to the right arm of Voltron. Yeah, actually I think this is a good point to start talking about character arcs in this season.

MS: I think so! Yeah!

KC: Let’s talk about Honerva. Let’s talk about this horrorterror! She’s-she is amazing and horrifying and not the villain I expected to make it to the very end. Here we are, I’m impressed.

JDS: Let me ask you, though, were you at all sympathetic to her and her, sort of, cause [indistinct]?

MS: 100%. Um, it-it’s so--she was one of the most fascinating characters to watch because once she gets her memory back and she realized--you know, contextually-speaking we as the audience find out who she is at the same time she does--uh, you, you slowly start to realize how much of this entire scenario she’s responsible for whether inadvertently or not. And so it’s so fascinating watch her refusal to take responsibility for her part in it but still desperately wanting that sym--you know, the human connections that she was denied. You know, human, so to speak.

JDS: Sure.

MS: Altean!

JDS: Altean.

KC: It’s telling that the perfect world that she found to slot herself into is the dimension where she died. [MS makes an agonized noise] Where-where this whole--

JDS: She was taken out of the equation?

KC: Yeah, it’s possible that it’s a dimension where the comet never happened because Voltron was obviously a surprise. The alliances were still there but the giant robots were, “You’ve brought this monster down upon us, what are you?”

JDS: Right.

KC: So it’s-it’s telling that that’s the perfect dimension that she found is the one where she died super early on.

MS: And correct me if I’m wrong, but her--to obtain the perfect world--she was also basically willing to kill infinite versions of her son and her husband in order to get what she deemed she was worthy of.

JDS: Well, I--that’s, and that’s sort of like the misdirected love, right? Like, she was in one hand looking for the acceptance and the love of family that she never had, but she was blind to everything else, all the other chaos that she was causing as a result. That to me is-is interesting. I feel, you know--

LM: Yeah. It’s an interesting character. It’s not necessarily, like, the most honorable by any means, but you know, characters, when you can understand why they want it but then you see them doing things that are absolutely unacceptable to get it, it’s like you know it’s wrong but you know, you can-can kind of understand--

JDS: We’re hearing crackle in our ears, everybody. [Hosts laugh] That might be me, I’m just gonna go ahead and put it on the floor.

MS: It’s probably mine.

KC: It’s--your phone case doesn’t like the table. It-it’s, no seriously, it’s super weird and I’m pretty sure it’s your phone case. Sorry, I was trying to do that silently so I didn’t interrupt you.

JDS: I was going to call attention to it, please carry on, sorry.

LM: Oh no, we were talking about Honerva, or something.

KC: Great podcasting.

LM: Yeah, there-there’s something really incredible, like, interesting to me about her, kind of victim mentality where she-she really won’t accept that, like, a lot of this is her fault. She just looks at, basically, like, she’s lost her whole life. She’s witnessed it not knowing that it was hers, realizing looking back on all the things she should have done differently, that she could have done differently and it’s kind of, you know, she’s kind of trying to point that blame. I was like, “Well, if I--the quintessence hadn’t, uh-duh-duh,” you know, she-she’ll turn it on everyone except her, even though she was right there, you know, kind of diving into this whole quintessence research and bringing this whole thing about.

KC: “It’s Voltron’s fault.”

[MS laughs]

JDS: But it was also cool, I think, you know, one of the things that I was really surprised of in the room--I don’t really remember how it came up--was the notion that when she shows up in this reality and then Voltron follows, they’re like, “Why have you brought this, like, demon monster to our world?” It’s a-it’s-it’s a-it’s a crazy, sort of, flip of the script where really, you know, Voltron was doing good, but in a lot of people’s eyes and it’s, you know, in a certain people’s eyes, it could be seen as--

LM: I mean, you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know any better.

JDS: --bringing chaos.

MS: Voltron was the robeast in that scenario.

JDS: That’s right!

MS: You know, it’s like, “Look at this giant monstrosity that’s gonna wreak havoc on our planet.”

KC: Because Honerva parked hers out back.

LM: She was smart enough to store it off-planet, wink wink.

JDS: And we were talking a little bit before this about, you know, how there’s this portion of the fandom that’s like, “How could you, like, justice for Lotor!” and-and where, you know, “where is his redemption” and “how could you kill him off?” and obviously, you know, we feel we’re coming from a point of, you know, he’s gone so far off the deep end that-that death was really the only, sort of, salvation that he had on some level. But it’s interesting that it was-it was Lotor in that reality, there was a version of Lotor that was, you know, unaffected and uncorrupted, and-and you know, doesn’t come from that-that kind of horrific background that our Lotor did that, uh, was in essence, kind of kicked off everything being turned on Honerva’s plans.

KC: Yeah.

MS: It really does highlight how a person’s, like, the circumstances that they find themselves in really do have an effect on the person they become.

JDS: Right.

KC: But it’s also a matter of choice. Like, this up--these awful, awful things happen to him, like there’s no question that Lotor would have turned out better had his parents been physically capable of empathy. They’re kind of zombies, so it’s an issue.

JDS: There’s nature versus nurture.

KC: That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve said today.

JDS: Aww.

KC: That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve said today. Um, but even after all that happened, he made the choice to go, “You know what? Fine! Violence it is!” And lean super hard into that curve, even while he was still going, “Oh no, I don’t want to mess with my Galra heritage. Oh no, I’d rather be an Altean. Oh no, this.” Like…

JDS: Right. And-and that’s--I think that noncleanliness of, like, where he fits in and, like, the villain category, or the hero category, or the character that’s going to be redeemed, or… That is an area that we like to play in and sometimes does not have the answers that everybody’s sort of hoping for, you know.

LM: We’d like to blur those lines, but sometimes, you know, the lines are blurred, therefore the fans have their own interpretations, but ultimately it’s a story, guys. And not everyone gets to have a happy ending in the story.

JDS: I will say he was beautiful.

[laughter]

JDS: He had beautiful hair.

KC: He did!

JDS: And him and Allura together look beautiful together.

MS: Mm-hmm!

KC: This is very true.

LM: Oh, you’re treading into some dangerous territory there, buddy.

JDS: But, you know, I will--that, you know, that isn’t from a story perspective, sort of, place to, uh--

LM: Yeah.

JDS: --to work back from if that makes sense.

KC: Yeah, but, you ever see those beautiful flowers and then you go to smell them and they smell like death itself? That’s kinda that.

JDS: Hell of a point. MS: I still ship it, but no! It does not work within the framework of the narrative in any capacity.

JDS: Sure, sure.

KC: Look, there is a universe in which it happened and it was fine, this is not that universe.

MS: And that’s the--

JDS: And that’s the beauty of more--

MS: Multiverse stories! There’s an AU where it totally worked out and everyone was happy.

LM: Yes, and there’s comics to be written, fanfics, go crazy.

KC: Yeah.

MS: Yeah, well, and ultimately it’s the memory of what he was trying to do that brings Honerva around.

JDS: Exactly. Yeah. And so there was, there was goodness in him, like, you can’t-you can’t deny that. But, um, some actions are, you know, really your only way out.

KC: You kinda gotta--

JDS: From a story perspective is you gotta, you gotta kind of pay that ultimate price.

KC: Well, for Lotor there was some good in him, but uh, cool motive, still murder.

MS: So much murder!

KC: Lots and lots of murder!

JDS: Totally involved a ton of murder.

KC: Yeah, pretty sure all of the battery Alteans are super dead because I don’t think anyone else found that moon.

MS: Yeah!

JDS: Right.

MS: Talk to Bandor if you wanna hear about why Lotor doesn’t get a redemption arc.

[KC makes uncomfortable noises]

MS: I’m sure Romelle would love to hear your thoughts on that.

JDS: By the way, when that episode came out, and when we were getting, like, the recording, we couldn’t stop saying to each other, “Bandor! Bandor!” Like, we loved that read so much, like, and we love that name.

[Hosts laugh]

LM: Bandor.

JDS: Oh, Bandor.

MS: Well there were-there were a lot of fun--talking about that--there were a lot of fun references to the original series in this season. Like at the very beginning we actually have a clip from the original series playing.

KC: We did! “I don’t sound like that!” God bless Bex and their ability to sound like that.

JDS: Yeah.

LM: We, uh, we love the original show and we always had this silly idea because we played with so many different realities that, like, what if in our reality the show it’s, it’s technically live-action to them and it’s being made about them. And so it’s like, because here we are making a show that’s based on that show, and I was like, “Ooh, what if that show was based on our show?”

JDS: It’s super meta, it’s like inverse meta.

LM: It was just funny to us that, like, we could work it in. And we always wanted to work it in in some way just because, you know, we love it and we like to pay homage to it. But that, like, we-we joked about it and we actually had a few more references, like, in the episode. I ended up way super-overwriting that episode, so we cut a bunch of stuff, like, you know like the rookie writer mistake. Um, but, uh--

JDS: It was all gold, it was all gold. It just had to go.

LM: Yes.

[Hosts laugh]

LM: I paid him to say that.

MS: You have to kill your darlings.

KC: Yup.

LM: But, uh, there was a scene where they were gonna see, like, the Sven dies scene. Shiro wasn’t there, though, but like, Eddie was like, “Hunk and Keith were, like, at little viewing party with, like, Hunk’s family.” And uh, and then they see the scene, they’re like, “Wow, they’re really taking some liberties” like--

[laughter]

LM: “--they were making their own story about the paladins.” And it was just--

KC: There wasn’t a space hospital!

JDS: That’s right.

MS: I would have expired. I would not be here right now if that had happened because I would have died laughing.

KC: I would’ve been doing this show on my own this season.

JDS: There-there was a version of it.

LM: It never made it, it never even really made it past, like, the roughs and storyboard, ‘cuz again, like, I so overwrote that episode that we just started hacking stuff out.

JDS: There was also, Tim Hedrick did an amazing Pidge in the room and a lot of, like, us being so obsessed with him was just going like, “Waaaahhhh?” If ever something was, like, confusing he would just go “waaahhhhh”. Bring in more OG Pidge. Bex.

KC: Yeah, Bex’s ability to emulate that voice.

JDS: Oh, she nailed it.

KC: Oh yeah, they are just wonderful.

MS: They’re amazing.

LM: Yeah, we got to do that, we got to have the little nod to, like, Pidge’s outfit and Allura’s outfit that, like, kind of goes by real quick.

MS: Those are so fun.

KC: That was pretty great.

MS: That montage. And then we got Chip at the end, too! And Vehicle Voltron!

LM: I know! Like, we’re the biggest trolls ever, like, “here’s a show we’re never gonna make!”

KC: That and the epilogue about, “They made the next generation of Voltron!” and it’s like, “it’s happening. It’s happening!”

JDS: We queued it up real nicely for whoever wants to do it, by the way.

LM: Yeah, you know, if anyone wants to take that. But, uh, we, you know, I, so, I’m just gonna admit I never watched Vehicle Voltron.

JDS: How dare you.

KC: Same, I had to google what Chip was.

LM: But, uh, you know, like, I did my research. Like, there’s a cool idea to-idea to it there and-and my husband and I were originally recently watching Patlabor--how they call it, that’s what they call it on the thing--Patlabor.

JDS: That’s probably close.

LM: They call Labors. Patlabor was what we always called it, but they’re called Labors and it’s this, like, cop mech show and it’s really clever, like, it’s fun because they have mechs and they’re cops and they just, kind of, episode to episode do cop things. And I was like, “Well, if you’re gonna make a vehicle Voltron, you’ve got these three teams, they could basically be, like, cops in mechs.” And it would be a lot of fun.

MS: You just described my dream show, oh my god.

LM: But, uh, yeah, we queued it up and then-and Chip I just, I loved the idea, like, Pidge’s one goal in life, you know, going out into the world and seeing sentient AI, like to create one of her own and she’s doing it, like, with her brother and it’s this, like, nice bonding moment. And then the fact that Chip was, like, what, Pidge’s cousin or something?

JDS: Yeah, that’s right [indistinct].

MS: I think it was her brother. I believe it was brother in the loosest--it was really just--

JDS: I thought it was just cousin.

MS: It was--it might’ve been cousin.

KC: Well, I mean Sven had “a brother” that they found later on.

MS: It’s a little hard because they started cutting together different series to continue Voltron, so it’s hard to say.

LM: It just made a lot of sense that, you know, she would pursue that and that would be her passion. Technology is her passion. And then you’re with her family and then obviously being such a huge part of the Galaxy Garrison with Voltron, kind of, you know, taking itself out of the equation, they would then--

JDS: Sort of take up the mantle.

LM: Yeah, and then really--

JDS: I do think there’s a pitch, though, where Chip ends up taking over Earth as, like, a sentient AI and becomes the villain a thousand years later.

MS: And it’s the singularity!

LM: Hey man, I was just about to say, like, the dark version is that, like, the Voltron that Sam and-and everyone creates ultimately is, like, you know, the police and then they--yeah--they become the power-hungry, power-hungry Earth.

KC: And there’s a scrappy Galra resistance.

JDS: And they flip the script and become the good guys.

LM: There you go.

KC: Living long enough to see yourself become the villain.

MS: Oh my gosh, I love it.

KC: I don’t have time to get into how much I love this AU because we are gonna run out of time here in a hot second. I--there’s so much I want to talk about and I’m having such a hard time deciding things.

MS: Let’s talk about Allura.

KC: Oh, Allura. She had such a rough season. Incredibly well-telegraphed, very rough.

LM: For sure, I think, you know, we-we knew, like, coming down to it that with Honerva being the final villain, and basically we have two female Altean people who have had a very similar thing happen to them. They’ve lost their families, they’ve lost, like, the life they knew, and it’s just two very different ways of how they handled it.

JDS: That’s right. They’ve had very, in a weird way, similar circumstances and come-and approached it from very different angles.

LM: Yeah, it’s a storyline we wanted to originally do, kind of with Keith and Lotor back when, like, our kind of original story pitch where Shiro was gonna, kind of, exit the show, Keith was gonna be here, he was gonna stay with the team so he wouldn’t have jetted off and gone into the Blade of Marmora, and it was gonna be a big, like Lotor season where you got Lotor, half Altean and half Galra, Keith, half Galra, half human. And it’s like, you’ve got--

JDS: They sort of were--

LM: --yeah, the duality of those two and, like, how does it work out? And, you know, you see Lotor seems like the guy who has it all together in the beginning, but then ultimately Keith evolves and becomes a better person. So we got to play a little bit of that here with Allura and Honerva, who… very similar situations, but Allura going about it, like, the way that it’s-it’s painful to her. She did lose her entire family, she lost her planet, her home, and even now there’s-there’s a sense in the first episode where she realizes once this war ends, she might not even have, like, her Voltron family. It’s like, they have families--

JDS: They’re all gonna go on their ways.

LM: --like, “what are they gonna do? They don’t need me anymore.” And it’s this, kind of, very--it’s selfish in a way, but it’s beautiful because she can feel that way, but she’s not acting on it.

JDS: Right. She’s allowing herself to feel it, but she’s not acting on it.

LM: She’s not sabotaging the war effort to keep them, which, I would have loved to do that. That dark, sick, twisted version of, like, Allura sabotaging the war effort to keep her Voltron family, but, uh--

KC: There is a universe where that happens.

JDS: Yeah, sure.

LM: But uh, but yeah, it was just beautiful to kind of see how much she was willing to take onto herself

JDS: And at the end of the day, like, you know, we keep sort of using this term “boys toys show” because that’s sort of the reality of what we came into. We sort of were taking on this--this franchise that was very merchandise-based and trying to sell toys to young boys essentially. And at the end of the day it became this story, almost Allura’s story solely when you-when you really sort of, like, step back and look at it, but it was-it was this, sort of, face-off of two strong women that were approaching these problems from very different angles and who the heck would have known that that would have, you know, that would have been the--

LM: Yeah, we didn’t even really know it at the beginning.

JDS: We didn’t. We really didn’t. It evolved.

LM: But, but, yeah. It was nice. It was nice because when we-we told Kimberly, and of course she was sad and like, listen, we know it’s--we never--it’s never personal, we’re not like, “You know, I don’t like that Kimberly, let’s kill Allura.” It’s never that.

KC: At the very last minute.

LM: But it’s, like--

JDS: We also told Neil when--

LM: We told Neil, and we try to be kind and, like, let people know and so we let her know ahead of time and so she’s not just reading the script like, “What the hell?”

KC: “What?!”

LM: And she was sad, but we just let her know, like, “Listen, this is Allura’s story, like, she is literally the hero. She’s not dying to further another hero’s story, she is the hero. Like, this war ends with her.” And then I made her a completely, um, fake promise that I couldn’t really make her. But it--

JDS: I think I know what this fake promise is.

LM: Because I have no control over what they do with Voltron, but I was like, “Listen, if we do any more episodes, I’m bringing her back. We’re not--I’m not making this show without her.” But then, like, I have no control.

MS: But there’s no Voltron without Allura.

LM: I have no control after this point.

KC: Eight seasons, now we need a movie.

JDS: Honestly that the, sort of, post-credits thing was leaving that door open.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: The Lions taking off and seeing the, you know, Allura nebulae, I think, in our minds, it was sort of her quintessence coalescing and--

LM: Reforming. It’s, like, kind of coming back together, so you can do whatever you want with that, like--

JDS: Yeah, but it was--

KC: Have fun, guys!

JDS: Honestly it was-it was a door left open. Like, there’s nobody ever really dies in comics or animation.

LM: I mean, yeah. I feel like comics and animation and sci-fi in and of itself is a door left open.

JDS: Right, right, right.

LM: If the word sci-fi exists in a definition of your show, there is a door left open.

JDS: This was like one step back from the ending of Iron Giant. [hosts going “ohhh”] Like, we didn’t actually, like, show all the pieces going and the thing.

LM: Yeah, like there isn’t an Allura hand that’s just, like, crawling through space.

JDS: Yeah, there’s no hand, like, jumping through the snow.

MS: That would have been terrible! Oh my gosh. But yeah! I think there’s this misconception because Allura is a woman of color and so I think a lot of fans only looking at it superficially were like, “Oh, the woman of color was killed off.” And it’s, like, yeah, there is a trope of people of color dying to save the stupid white people around them, like I understand that trope. But the problem with that superficial interpretation is that they’re ignoring the fact that she’s the main character here.

JDS: Well, there’s that and also just to put it on the table, our original pitch was that they were all gonna die.

KC: Woah!

[Hosts scream and cackle]

JDS: And that got taken off the table.

KC: I love it!

LM: It’s teamwork! Voltron! And honestly, in my opinion, that would have been an easier, like, window to bring them back. If they all disappeared, you could pop them all back anytime and you got the team again. Easy-easy spinoff. But, uh--

JDS: Sorry if the board is blowing up.

KC: So it wouldn’t have been, like, literal bodies, it would have been just disappeared.

LM: Yeah.

KC: Okay.

JDS: We’re not showing, like--

KC: We’re not showing Lotor.

JDS: We showed, like, the melted, like, Lotor body, but--

LM: It would have been the same--

MS: Nobody’s getting Cronenberged in this scenario

KC: Except Lotor.

LM: --same scene except that we, you know, instead of Allura taking it upon herself, they all would have agreed to do it together and-and they would have gone in and essentially taken Voltron out of the equation.

JDS: Right.

LM: That was something we actually really believed for even from early on, we introduced this idea that Alfor had helped to create this thing, not realizing how dangerous it could be; kind of like, you know, the person who created the atom bomb, and, like, having that guilt. And so having Allura be part of the team that took Voltron out of the equation and now that weapon isn’t available to anyone, that was a big deal. We were told that was too sad.

[Hosts laugh]

KC: Uh, you broke chat. Alexis is in chat going, “*rocking back and forth, broken*”. Like, congratulations. Everyone, take a drink of your nonalcoholic beverage of choice.

MS: Oh that is-that is a line of gibberish that she typed.

KC: Oh yeah, no. Everyone’s just losing their noise, it’s great. I love it.

JDS: It was, you know, in a strange way I think, a beautiful sacrifice that Allura is allowed to make. And also really when you think about it, if it had to come down to any one person, she’s from, like, a logistical standpoint she’s the only one powerful enough and we’ve sort of through, you know, being a life-giver.

LM: So, we’ve had a lot of characters, like, who’ve been on, like, the death table. We’ve thrown them all out there at some point.

JDS: Right.

LM: But they all had to, kind of, get thrown out at a point in the story where it made sense that their death would have been worth it. Like, for Pidge, it would have been saving her family. Like if she had died to save her family. For Hunk, it would’ve been saving Earth, which almost happened. Um…

JDS: Hunk was, like, inches away.

[Hosts go “ohhh” and laugh]

LM: We got a yes, and then, like, you know, they were like, “Who’re you gonna replace him with?” And we were like, “A lady,” and then they said, “No.”

MS: Ohhhh.

KC: Would Romelle have been the pilot?

LM: It would have been, it was gonna be Acxa. Yeah, it was gonna be a redemption arc that takes place over this last season of, “It’s not about who you were, it’s about who you are,” and the fact that she’s done some bad things. But she truly believes in doing the right thing and moving forward and she could have been a viable part of that team.

JDS: But I-I also would argue that, like, there’s no--there wouldn’t have been enough time, I think, for everybody to, like, absorb that. If we had, like, a three season run at, like, bringing her in, getting her settled, and then having her, that would have made more sense.

LM: Yeah, that was a hesitation.

JDS: But Hunk’s was especially tragic, like, it was the moment where they were gonna--where they were taking robeast up and there was, like, that ticking time-bomb going off. He literally sees his family, but he’s never actually, like, interacted with them. So he only gets to look at them and see that they’re alive, and then he’s like, “I gotta get this thing out of here.” Sorry everybody!

LM: But he didn’t die! We didn’t kill anyone.

MS: And speaking of dark storylines, princesspony in the hashtag did some fanart of evil Chip.

JDS: Oh wow!

[laughter]

KC: They are very fast.

LM: World domination.

MS: Check out the hashtag #ABTVVoltron to check that out, it makes me very happy.

JDS: Are there red glowing eyes?

MS: No, it’s black and white, but he does look very happy.

LM: But Allura’s death was the only one that made sense from a power standpoint and even from a story standpoint that we were setting up with Honerva. And then also just on--I know, like, it’s probably gonna be highly contested--but on a feminist level from my standpoint, the-the man is always the one who gets to be the hero. Like Armageddon, Bruce Willis sacrifices himself to send, you know, friggin’ Ben Affleck back. And if-if basically Keith had gone like, “I’ll do it,” and then, you know, Allura had to stand on the sidelines and say, “Good thing Keith saved the day! I’m happy!” Like no. I want my women to be able to save the day, too, and even if it’s about making that ultimate sacrifice, if people want to interpret that as sexist, then that’s fine. But we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree.

KC: I mean, Keith tried to do the heroic sacrifice at one point and it didn’t work.

MS: They went, and you guys went, “No! Don’t do that!”

KC: Lotor was just like, “Excuse me.”

LM: We tried to kill Keith, though.

MS: This was--

LM: That’s not a lie.

MS: You guys apparently tried to kill everyone!

LM: We did. It was because we were told we couldn’t kill Shiro. Like, well, we don’t need two leaders, we’ll kill Keith. And they said, “You can’t do that.”

[Hosts laughing and sputtering]

JDS: Also by the way, we’re not kill-happy people. We’re not. We don’t kill for the sake of killing, like, there’s something--it’s a journey and there’s something meaningful, I think, to everybody’s death. And-and so when you even look at, like, melted Lotor corpse. Like, he basically had done to him what he had done to so many other people, so there’s, like, a sort of a give and a take there.

MS: And like a show where--I don’t want to rag on any other shows that skirt around death or anything like that, because again, they are writing for certain demographics--but I always appreciate when shows have, you know, actions have consequences. And sometimes character death is a really good way of conveying that. And I think for a lot of other people, people forget that Allura in season 1 is the same character that picked up Shiro, threw him out of a room right as the doors were closing, and basically could have died in that moment. She was sacrificing herself, so it’s not like this is out of character for her.

LM: Yeah, and Coran said, like, 15 different times, like, you know, “What about the risks? You could-you could not come back from this. If you give all your quintessence to the balmera, if you give all your quintessence to making this gigantic wormhole to transport Zarkon’s ship.”

JDS: “If you take the darkness into yourself.”

LM: And every time, she would say, like, “I know the risks.”

KC: Yolo.

[laughter]

MS: Until she walks into the west with the other elves.

KC: Or into the void with Honerva. I love that she had to do a hard reset on Honerva’s brain and then we could fix things. Like, she’s the only one that would have been able to do that in any capacity.

LM: Yeah.

JDS: Yeah, and it’s allowing Honerva to maybe experience the consequences that came as a result of her actions and really understand what those--

LM: It’s allowing her to get past, like, the cloud of all of the pain she’s felt, realize, like, remember the good things because sometimes you can get so bogged down with the negativity that you can forget what it was that you loved about a thing in the first place. And she was Altean and she loved discovery, she loved knowledge, and she-she reached out with Alfor and she helped multiple people before, you know, they started this quintessence project that kind of messed everything up. So she just kind of had to show--

JDS: She had hopes, she had dreams, she had heart.

LM: Yeah. At one point.

JDS: [quietly] At one point.

KC: Is there anything else that you--’cuz we’re hitting the end of our time--is there anything else you guys want to touch on now or should we save a few things for next week?

JDS: Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, look, we, I think, Lauren made a really good point in that, you know, sometimes you sort of lose sight of the good things for, you know, some of the negative things. We’d only hope that, you know, the sort of big post-mortem from the fandom at large-- even those that are super unhappy with the way season 8 turned out--sort of looks back on the series with positive feelings because I think there’s, while feelings might get hurt and feelings might--people might feel betrayed by, like, story decisions, like, the show was made with nothing but, like, love and good intentions and positivity and yes we told some hard stories to tell and characters came to certain conclusions that weren’t, like, the most popular decisions, but we were just trying to tell a story that, like, looked beyond the campiness and beyond the colorful robotic silliness to tell something that felt a bit more true and a bit more real and had, as one of our execs would always say, stakes and consequences.

LM: No, stakes and urgent stakes.

JDS: Stakes and urgent stakes.

LM: That was gonna be a restaurant.

KC: That’s one of Vrepit Sal’s new chains. It’s part of Hunk’s food empire. “Steaks and Urgency.”

JDS: But we can, you know, leave all the other stuff for our other show.

LM: Good times.

MS: Yeah, and princesspony has made a new version that’s got red eyes.

JDS: Ah! Red eyes! Red evil eyes!

KC: You asked for red eyes and in-chat they went, “I’ll add red eyes!” All for the red eyes. Well, yeah, thank you for joining us this week. This has been absolutely lovely. Are there any other projects you’re working on that you can tell us about?

JDS: No.

KC: Okay! NDAs it is!

LM: I am working on getting my floors re-done, and I’m getting the popcorn scraped off my ceilings, which is a lot more expensive than I realized it was gonna be. And-and moving all of my crap out of the house so that these people can do this work and that is a hell of a project that I would not wish on anyone.

JDS: And I just took a week off with my wife to Marie Kondo our entire house.

KC: Dang!

MS: Nice!

JDS: She didn’t come over or anything, but we definitely--

LM: Did you actually put it all in a pile?

JDS: She did with her clothes, and it was pretty epic, like, my pile went to your sister to eBay off, so that was. And my pile of toys.

LM: Oh, right, right.

JDS: Her sister is a sweet human being and like, will like, yeah. During the course of Voltron, during the production, like, super weighty dark times, I would just go on, like, eBay and be like, “buy, buy, buy, buy” and a pile of toys stacked up behind me that I never opened up.

LM: Yeah, me too. We had a cardboard box fort.

JDS: Yeah.

KC: Oh, goodness.

LM: And then he had a kid and said, “Oh no, I don’t need all this stuff.”

KC: And return to sender.

JDS: Yeah.

KC: Sounds fun.

MS: eBay.

KC: Where can the people go on social media if they would like to keep up with you?

LM: Um, all of the same places: @artofLaurenM on Twitter, @thebestlaurenmontgomery on Instagram, though I will say the Voltron posts are kind of over at this point. So maybe don’t follow me now if you’re just coming for Voltron. You’ll probably be a little disappointed.

JDS: Same for me. Um, @jds_247 on something and @jds_77 on the other thing. There you go. Underscore in between those. Sorry.

KC: So I’m gonna follow you guys now for Voltron. [laughter] No, no!

JDS: That’s fine!

LM: But if you like any of my other artwork, you’re more than welcome to stay.

KC: I like all of your other artwork.

MS: It’s so pretty!

KC: Alright, thanks again for coming, you guys.

JDS: Thanks for having us, you guys have been awesome this entire time.

LM: And we’ll be back next week.

JDS: That’s right.

KC: Yes we will! I was gonna save that announcement for a little bit. Uh, Megan, where can people find you?

MS: You guys can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at @themenguin. I was gonna say, I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Mark and Emma and Alexis who all were wearing the hashtag tonight. We miss you guys and we love you and we’ll be seeing you soon!

KC: And on the live chat in Alexis’ case.

MS: Love you, Alexis!

KC: You can follow yellow lion Mark Donica at @MarkBDonica, co-red lion Emma Fyffe at @EmmaFyffe, and blue Lauren--blue Lauren--blue lion [unintelligible]. I am Katie Cullen, you can follow me all over the social medias as well as on YouTube and Twitch at kiaxet, I am also on Overwatch podcast called “On the Point”. Guys, we will be back for the final episode of ABTV Voltron. Next week we are doing a series retrospective. Same lion time, same lion channel, thank you so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.

Voiceover: Our founder: Keven Undergaro and me, Megan Menounos, would like to thank you for tuning in to Afterbuzz TV. Remember, we’re not just the first, we’re the biggest in the world and we’re the only destination for all your favorite TV shows. Whatever you crave, we’ve got it, so go to afterbuzztv.com and check out our lineup. Buzz you later!

#dragon's ramblings #TeamPurpleLion #ABTVVoltron #abtv #voltron #vld #jds #lm #joaquim dos santos #lauren montgomery #voltron legendary defender #voltron: legendary defender #afterbuzz tv #strafe

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saijspellhart · 6 years ago

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End of the Year Tag

I got tagged by @xiueryn. I’m feeling pretty good, so I think I’ll do this one. :3

~favourite food?~ I’m such a stereotypical American. I love hamburgers and French fries. I feel so ashamed. It’s like my comfort food too. When I’m sad I just want someone to take me to McDonalds of Dairy Queen and let me eat fries and cry.

~favourite drink?~ Huh, Diet Pepsi? Coffee? Diet Pepsi is my go-to when I want something fizzy, or I’m sad, or I’m happy. Welp, I guess it’s Diet Pepsi then. I love soda, but I don’t like sweet soda, but I don’t like unsweetened carbonated drinks. So Diet Pepsi is the perfect balance for me.

~favourite clothing?~ Pfffff, who needs clothes? Right? Right? No? Ok no. ...but seriously I like camisoles paired with a button-up blouse/shirt waaaay too much. It’s like super comfy.

~favourite product?~ I love everything Nintendo makes. Especially their gameboys/handhelds. Just slap Pokémon, Zelda, Fire Emblem, or Metroid on it and you’ve got my undivided attention.

~favourite month?~ I think October. Because Halloween is the best but also it’s the month I got married in so I also get to celebrate my wedding anniversary and I love doing that. I love it every time my anniversary comes around.

~favourite season?~ Fall! Autumn! Whatever! I love the munchy-crunchy leaves, and the mild weather, and the rain. I love all the fun smells, and baked goods, and fall themed flavors.

~favourite holiday?~ Halloween! It’s one of the only holidays that I don’t have terrible traumatic memories attached to. So it’s easier to forget and just enjoy the festivities. Also I love giving out candy to all the people in costumes!

~favourite place?~ I like sitting in my husband’s car and just listening to music. I don’t care where we going, I just want to go along for the ride.

~best experience?~ Going to Korean BBQ with my husband! It was so new and fun and exciting, and delicious!!! But then also going to Izakaya Meiji bar with @edhelwendm and @saoirse7ilysi. That was amazing too. We had lots of interesting Japanese foods that I’d never tried before.

~best song?~ My favorite song has always been To the Moon and Back by Savage Garden. It’s been my same favorite song since I was in grade school, I got treasured memories attached to it. So it’s still my favorite this year.

~best movie?~ Train to Busan! So good I had to watch it twice! Definitely the best movie I watched this year.

~best series?~ Castlevania was the prettiest animated series I watched this year. Beautiful. But I think She-ra and Voltron were the most engrossed I’ve been. Aside from Miraculous.

~best book?~ Haha I read almost no books this year. Fail. I just read the original quartet of books that Were the predecessors of the books my fanfic OaT is based on. And I think my favorite to read of that Quartet was All for Quinn.

~best videogame?~ Spyro the Dragon! The reignited trilogy. Best game I played this year. God that was so much fun. I beat the first game in a single night, 120%.

~have you unlearned any bad habits?~ I don’t think so?

~biggest disappointment?~ Let’s not talk about that. :C

~worst experience?~ Let’s just not talk about that at all.

~any new hobbies?~ No new hobbies. Just doing what I always do.

~did you achieve your goals for 2018?~ I didn’t finish Once a Thief Always a Thief, so... no.

~have you fulfilled a long-term wish?~ My husband had to pierce his ears because you guys helped me reach my 1k followers goal!!! Now he’s even more hella sexy!

~have you tried something new this year?~ Dubia Cockroach farming! I got a bearded dragon and I need to feed him, and there are no pet stores around for like... ever. So I have to raise his food for him. I just started.

~what plans or wishes do you have for next year?~ Gonna finish Once a Thief!!! I’m so determined! And finish my commissions and giveaway art.

~what was the funniest moment?~ I have a terrible memory. So... the most recent hilarious thing for me was writing a oneshot about Chat’s fuzzy velvet balls. I think I cackled waaaay too hard the entire time I wrote it, then made my husband read it.

~what are you thankful for?~ My husband’s balls! ....I’ll just... I’ll just let myself out now. But seriously I’m really thankful to all the wonderful friends who have stuck by me through these passed few months. Friends who were there to cheer me up and talk to me despite how depressed and withdrawn I became. I know it’s been rough talking to me, and being around me. I’ve been such a mess, but you guys chose to check up on me, and help me through it. You know who you are. <3 <3 <3

I’m tagging @aknazer, @the-wonders-of-self-indulgence, @hopelesstargazer, @tresity, @evaliasmigrane, @x-aa, @da-tasuky, @quesbee, @edhelwendm, @saoirse7ilysi, and anyone else wants to do something like this.

#questions meme #saijspellhart answers #for funsies

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nightwingxy · 7 years ago

Photo

This is Sayaka Maizono, She is a character from the First Danganronpa. While changing profile pics on another account, I was reminded about how I found out about her & my love for her and decided to tell that sory.. Bare with me this story does get a bit wierd/Weebey at times,though i'm 98% sure i'm not a weeb. How I found out about her was rather interesting/strange. Back in my senior year of HighSchool, In September or October of 2014 I think. I was in my English class skimming through an issue of Gameinformer I had on me, Issue 258 "The Horror Issue" Which had a alien isolation cover. As I was near that end at the review sections I saw an image that peeked my interest, 2 Really Really cute/beautiful anime girls in an awesome looking artstyle, standing next to a ripped dude with crazy anime hair about to fuck shit up, with what looked like of TV's behind them And I looked at the review, and it was for a game called Danganronpa 2: Goodbye dispair. I also saw that it was for the Vita, a handheld I still to this day love and praise with all my heart, and got more interested. Then I saw it was a point&click game and my interest went down. Though I was interested in the 2 girls in the image, as well as the art style they were in, so later on that night I looked up the artist, rui komatsuzaki, and found a lot of his art on some site, Zerochan I think. And While scrolling though the Pages of art I came Across what Looked like concept art or whatever of This extremely cute/Beautiful Girl in a School Girl's outfit with Dark Hair, and I instantly loved her design (2nd and 3rd Pics). I saw that her name was Maizono Sayaka, which I found out was a direct translation of her name in japanese, with her localized name being Sayaka Maizono. So I goggle imaged searched her and found this image, where I noticed her hair was more blue than black (4th Pic). Then I came across This image of her (5th Pic), and That's when I realized.... I was kinda in love with her. And I say that as someone who Didn't watch anime or hentai, read any manga, and is 98% sure he's not a Weaboo. But Something about her drew me to her, and I wanted to know more. So I checked out her page on the Danganronpa Wiki. For her personality it said "Seeing as she's an idol, Sayaka has a cheerful, sweet, and supporting personality. Despite her idol career, Sayaka actually enjoys cooking." Which I liked. But I also saw that she was the first to die, which bummed me out a little, but it didn't stop me from looking up more info on her and more pics. Like I said earlier she was the closest thing to a real anime waifu I've ever had. Like before i've obsessed over some other Game characters, Including some fighting game characters like Cammy from Street Fighter, Morrigan from Darkstalkers, The Smash Version of Zero Suit Samus, and Hitomi from DOA, along with non FG characters Hatsune miku and Magurine Luka From Vocaloid. But this....this was different. Unlike all those other characters, who I thought were cool and/or looked beautiful/hot, in addition to maining them in their respective games, save for Miku and Luka. Maizono was Someone I wanted to be with, someone I wanted to spend time with, someone who I had romantic feelings for. Someone who wasn't real. That last part hurt more than knowing she died. And she was the closest thing to "love" or a Girlfriend I've ever known/had at the time. Like During High School Getting a girlfriend wasn't a top priority, I kinda wanted to have one, but Didn't mind being single. There also wasn't too many girls I had a crush on, aside from 1 or 2 specific girls, who which I didn't try to become friends with or purse a potential relationship with because it wasn't wasn't a top priority (Doing good in shcool hanging out with friends was), and I was SUPER socially awkward around new people (still kinda am), especially girls, with a major example being Me trying to be funny to a girl I liked back in freshman year. It was embarrassing AF, I pretended it never happened &Never talked to her after that. Never talked to the Other Girl I had a crush on from Sophomore Year through the rest of High School Either. There was also the occasional cute girl I walked by between class periods but that was it. Sayaka Maizon was the closest thing to "Love" I was ever going to get. Even if that was just me looking at pictures of her before going to bed (no not like that you creeps.), and Wanting to be with her, very, very much so. I loved her to death and I thought about her a lot for a good chunk of my senior year, Though by the end I didn't think about her as much if at all. About a Month Later I was in a Bose electronics in Carlsbad and in one of the display rooms they were playing a clip of frozen, from the First time in forever reprisal song when Anna & Elsa are at the ice castle, which rekindled my Love For Princess anna, and the rest is history.As for Maizono, I would occasionally see her picture when scrolling through the downloaded photos on my phone, and I would briefly reminisce about our time "Together" and my Senior year, then move on to the next photo. And Earlier tonight when Changing profile pics for another twitter account I have I decided to go with Maizono as I wanted to keep an anime girl as my profile pic there, &got thinking of this story. Was gonna tell it there but decided I should talk about it publicly, as I felt ok coming out about this, Since it's old news by this point. As it stands Maizono is on top of the Regular Waifu list (for now), as Princess Anna is still the one true waifu at the moment (and is separate from that list) despite not really thinking of her much recently, though I tried. Also despite my love of Maizono and the Vita, I only now have pics of her on my vita, and is is the wallpaper on the bottom 2 menu screens with all my PS1 classics. With that, My Maizono story comes to a close. I still think she is pretty amazing, and still is still someone special to me....despite never playing the games or watching the anime, The latter of which I might do now once I finish one punch man and watch castlevania,

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tekka-wekka · 7 years ago

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Vlad/Lisa Fic Idea Posted to Show I Still Have Creative Thoughts

So I love all of Netflix's new Castlevania show, especially the first five minutes where toll Dracula falls head over heels for smoll Lisa. Because we only get five minutes with the happy couple and don't even get to see them coo over little Alucard/Adrian, my brain is of course spinning fic ideas.

So I don’t have to invite more OCs than my brain can handle, I’ll borrow some canon from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. Dracula-Was-Right-Blonde-Doctors-Are-The-Best-Hector, Tight-Pants-Tattoos-Bondage-Jewelry-Isaac Laforeze, and Why-Can’t-My-Brother-Flirt-Normally-With-Men Julia-Laforeze. The two Devil Forgemasters and the witch, respectively, hang out in Castlevania and give Lisa and Drac someone besides themselves to talk to.

This is going to be an AU where Lisa gets to live at least a little longer, so I’ll put it under a cut in case that doesn’t interest some people (but how could it not??).

Dracula makes one request of Lisa--bathe and brush her teeth daily, because he has a sensitive nose. Lisa’s fine with this, but has some questions about this “indoor plumbing” Dracula keeps talking about. Julia takes responsibility for teaching the only other human-ish woman in Castlevania about hygiene technology and is patient enough to listen when Lisa raves about the incredible impact plumbing could have upon human mortality.

Lisa is one hell of a driven student, pushing herself to study for such long hours that even Dracula has to remind her hey, you humans have to sleep sometimes, right? Dracula falls harder for her every time he has to gently wake her and get her to sleep in her appointed room instead of a laboratory desk, which is always. Dracula also smells Lisa bleeding, assumes it’s merely her “monthly courses,” and says nothing because that would be rude.

(He isn’t interested in the blood because hey, menstrual blood is all mixed up with mucus and uterine tissue, it’d be like a human eating a scrambled egg mixed with chicken shit and feathers)

About a week after Lisa comes to the castle, she asks Julia for help. Lisa has some wounds on her back she’s attempted to treat, but they’re in too awkward a position for Lisa to clean out and bandage properly. Julia gets one look at Lisa’s back and immediately calls for Dracula, because this is far, far above her skill level.

Dracula arrives full of curiosity that turns into rage when he sees Lisa has several infected whip marks on her back. Apparently the clergy in Lupu didn’t like a woman claiming proper wound care was as important as prayer when it came to healing injuries, and she was lashed as punishment.

It’s an ugly business, but Dracula takes care of the wounds as best he’s able. The treatment hurts like hell, and he’s impressed with Lisa’s ability to joke even while he’s applying antiseptic to open wounds. “I must be as blind to the truth of God as the priest claimed, since I’m lying down topless and allowing some sinister man with secret knowledge to touch me.”

Dracula grows super protective as he helps disinfect and heal Lisa’s wounds. By the time her wounds have healed into some gnarly scars, he’s spending most of his waking hours researching human biology with his “patient” and generally being amazed and delighted at how goddamn quick she learns. They rave about the possibilities of medical science together, argue over the effectiveness of teaching peasants how to heal injuries with proven remedies, and debate whether Dracula and his servants are demons from hell.

(Dracula and Isaac are convinced they are. Lisa, Hector, and Julia think otherwise)

Dracula reveals his past to Lisa--once he was Mathias Cronqvist, Crusader. His wife Elisabetha died of an illness while he was fulfilling “God’s” will by besieging the holy land. His twisted desire to avenge himself on “God” by becoming a vampire ended in the death of Sara Trantoul, an innocent woman and the fiance of Leon Belmont, Mathias’s dearest friend. Dracula is now pretty damn skeptical of the existence of God but is damn sure that the Church uses faith to enslave humanity and keep them weak, sick, and poor while the clergy grow in wealth and power by the day.

Even Lisa has to agree he has a point with that, but never stops believing that skepticism towards the Church or not, that’s no reason to hate all of humanity and turn a blind eye to their suffering, especially if someone has knowledge the improve humanity and the power to escape the Church’s efforts to squash said knowledge.

Dracula has to concede she has a point there.

One winter evening, Dracula and Lisa are taking tea and talking on one of Castlevania’s innumerable balconies when snow starts to fall. Dracula has a spark of inspiration and brings out one of the laboratory’s portable microscopes so Lisa can see the hidden symmetry of the snowflakes. Lisa is delighted.

“What incredible beauty, simply awaiting the right tools to reveal itself to the human eye! Think of what wonders are simply waiting for humans to find a way to see them.”

Dracula watches Lisa catch snowflakes and rush them to the microscope and realizes he has to have her around forever, or at least for as long as she’ll tolerate him. He proposes marriage to her right then and there.

(Look Alucard is AT LEAST 18 by the time Trevor and Sypha find him, and Lisa was murdered only 20 years after meeting Dracula. It’s canon Dracula jumped to put a ring on it).

Lisa accepts and gets the shock of her life when she realizes Dracula is serious about giving her a ring, a dress, a ceremony--the works. If he’s gonna marry her he’s gonna marry her.

Dracula designs at least three different wedding dresses, because Lisa deserves the best but he’s not sure what the best is. We’re talking lace and pearls and swan feathers, people. Lisa just sits back and lets him enjoy himself.

And the Ring! The soon-to-be Lady of the Castle must have a RING, one fitting her station. After several long talks with Lisa and poring over several arcane tomes, Dracula and Hector forge a ring out of silver, moonstone, rubies, and Dracula’s own blood. Not only will it protect Lisa from the nasties roaming Wallachia, she’ll have some power over Castlevania itself--enough for the castle to recognize her as someone it must protect.

The ring also fits her perfectly and will never tarnish, but those are side considerations.

The wedding is the supernatural event of the millennium. Werewolves howl in homage as succubi escort the bride to her groom, Lisa outshines the full moon with happiness as Dracula lifts her veil, and Castlevania itself shakes with cheers as Lisa and Dracula exchange rings.

The wedding night is awkward, at first. Lisa’s never had sex and Dracula hasn’t had sex in a while. They take several treatises and manuals to bed and study them before and during the act. It’s awkward. There’s laughter. There’s also a lot of satisfaction.

Lisa convinces Dracula to “travel as a man” for the first time after their week-long honeymoon. (Lisa enjoys being a married woman but not even vampire lovin’ can keep her away from the books for more than a week). Dracula lasts all of a week away from Lisa before paranoia (and horniness) drives him back to Castlevania and the marriage bed.

With Lisa and Dracula always being so happy to see each other, it’s not long before Lisa notices hey, my period’s late and the smell of food cooking in the morning makes me want to blllLLAAARGH oh thank god I turned away from the books in time.

Dracula worries over Lisa’s sudden illness until she tells him she’s likely pregnant. Then he’s PANICKED.

After Lisa calms him down and convinces that yes, I know women die from pregnancies, yes I want to keep our baby anyway, yes I acknowledge our baby may not be human but I still want to TRY and keep it, Dracula becomes the most involved father Wallachia has ever seen.

He visits every single midwife in Translyvania and nearly gives several heart attacks. The finest craftsmen in all of Eastern Europe find themselves inundated with orders for beautiful gowns that fit loosely around the middle, jewel-encrusted cradles, rattles and bottles and booties fit for an imperial princeling.

Like with their wedding, Lisa sits back and lets Dracula enjoy himself. It gets him out of her hair. She’s got enough to deal with, now that blood smells oddly tasty. Carrying a vampire’s baby has some weird side effects.

Trevor Belmont’s father hears rumors that Dracula is forcing some poor peasant woman to carry his demonic seed. The Belmont clan has been enjoying not having to storm Castlevania, but Trevor’s father gears up to see if Lisa needs rescuing. There’s nearly a fight when Trevor’s father finds Lisa and Dracula sees a warrior with a whip near his beloved wife (Dracula always and reverently kisses Lisa’s scars when they are in bed together). Fortunately, Trevor’s father is amendable to reason and willing to let Lisa stay with Dracula. The Belmonts have enough to deal with when it comes to cyclopes and werewolves and lesser demons, why the hell stir up Dracula when he’s living quietly with his wife?

When Adrian is born, Dracula is banished from the room. No one’s concerned about him smelling blood and trying to eat Lisa; they’re concerned about him smelling blood and becoming the first vampire to die of a stroke.

Adrian is perfect and nothing anyone could ever say would convince Dracula and Lisa otherwise. Lisa wants more. Dracula’s not sure he could survive the fear and joy of seeing her with more of their children.

When Adrian grows up and brings home his lover Trevor Belmont and his lover’s lover Sypha Belnades, Dracula’s not sure he’ll survive that, either.

#castlevania #netflix castlevania #no editing we die like men

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defunctblogtobedeleted · 5 years ago

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8/17/19 1:47am SU 10/? - Olivia, aka Why I Quit Tinder

After I finally gave up on Rachel coming back to me I decided to launch right back into the swiping game. It’s the beginning of April still, so Rachel had only freshly started ghosting me for good. So I moved along pretty quick, I suppose.

I was still determined to quit melee, and playing more guitar, and speedrunning mega man, and watching a bunch of anime. But now I felt a little spoiled by Rachel. She was incredible, so if I was going to find a suitable girl to replace her from Tinder of all places, I wasn’t going to find her by putting out some homogeneous slosh of a profile and weeding through vanilla girls.

No, this time I figured I’d try to turn away as many as possible by creating the most nerdy avant-garde tinder profile I’d ever created and attract only the weirdos. I’m pretty sure I even put that I was a furry in there, because I definitely remember girls asking about it. I put that my interests were anime, video games, drinking, smoking, Pokemon, I don’t even remember. It was definitely a mess. and I didn’t get very many matches. Which is what I wanted, ofc.

But there is one person I DID match with. Olivia. Cute little asian girl, short, not really skinny but not overweight by any means (which is better off than most girls I’ve gone out with from Tinder), and had great taste in anime and nerdy shit. We talked about video games and shit, she was really into CoD at the time I think, and we were pretty quick to escalate things to sending nudes and sexting lmfao. I was out of town visiting Darlin for the week because I needed to recuperate from the Rachel fallout, and was pretty pumped to chill and play some Earth Defense Force (SNES), binge on mint chocolate chip ice cream and smoke cigarettes by the river out back.

She was into video games so we were talking about childhood favorites and stuff, and made plans for her to come over for the weekend when I got back and spend a couple days together. She was bragging a lot about her ability to make edibles, and I told her she had a high bar to pass since I made some great ones myself, and the ones that Kailey used to make for us were even better. But she was confident. And also very excited to suck me off.

SooooooOOoOOoOooOoo she convinced me to leave a day early from Darlin’s, take off in practically the middle of the night (I think I left about 11pm) and pick her up to meet up with her earlier so we’d have an extra day.

She was staying at her friend’s place in a trailer park that night, and it was kind of on the way back home to Greensboro. So I swung by a bit out of the way, and we instantly started making out in the car. We decided we couldn’t wait to get home and decided to pull over into this field to the left of the trailer park so we could fuck real quick. It was cold and dewy and the grass was patchy, so I started trying to dig around for a towel and she said what the fuck do you need that for? So we had sex right then and there on the ground. Not ideal, but definitely fun lol. We got in the back seat to dry off, smoke a cigarette, and chit chat for a while now that we were finally talking face to face. She told me about how she was a squirter, and one thing led to another and we started fucking again in my back seat. SHE WAS NOT KIDDING THOUGH. When she said she was a squirter, I mean

-continued 8/23/19 1:57am-

I mean she SOAKED my backseat. Like the seats were drenched to capacity. Like there was practically a layer of fluid resting on top of the seats. It was almost unsettling, definitely made me raise an eyebrow lol. Like a lot of times squirting is pretty hot but when it’s that.. voluminous I’m pretty tentative as to the nature of fluids being excreted, to say the least.

Anyway, that’s all fine, it’s fine. Doesn’t matter had sex, right? It’s absolutely more amusing than disgusting in my opinion.

We make it home to my place and had a cigarette on my porch and started talking about some shit on the stoop. We started talking about some fucked up shit like how she got abused and how she had a new baby. And I was like woah what the fuck why didn’t you mention you had a kid, and she tells me that her family’s helping take care of her but she doesn’t know what to do with it because the dad left because they were addicted to meth when they conceived and I was like WHAT. and she was like yeah and I can’t give this one away to my aunt and uncle like the last one. and I was like WHATT.

So then I had a moment of like “Tyler what have you gotten yourself into this time? Is this really where we’re at now? We’re in for a couple days of this yknow.” and then I thought “well thank god I’ve already got my vasectomy LOL.”

We also talked about a bunch of less serious stuff like pokemon and the castlevania anime and she showed me some of that before we passed out. Must’ve been like 4 in the morning at least.

The next day we woke up hellllllla late and were on a quest to test out how great her edibles actually were. We fucked that morning (well really late afternoon), went off to my buddy’s place to pick up an eighth, hung out there for a bit, then went to the grocery store to get spaghetti and meatball and cookie stuff. The closest grocery store is like 12 minutes away from my house for some damn reason. I swear everything in Greensboro was always a 15 minute drive away. We got back to my place, got some weed simmering in butter, started making meatballs and stuff, and we realized we didn’t actually get the cookie dough to make the edibles with. We were like ahhhh whatever we’ll cross that bridge later. Left the weed on the pot, had some delicious spaghetti and meatballs, watched one of her favorite anime movies while we ate in the living room. God the meatballs she made were actually sick, I remember I ate like 5 plates of spaghetti. She only had like 1, drank like 12 beers, and I had like 6. So we decided to go out to boxcar for a while and play some games. It’s pretty late like 12 or 1? I walk in, uncomfortably full of spaghetti, and ask her what she wants to play. She says Dance Dance Revolution. I’m like oh shit let’s fucking go then. We played through a song and a half (i’m on standard she’s on light), at which point she FALLS ONTO THE FUCKING FLOOR. I’m like holy shit are you okay and jump down to check on her, and she’s just like “yeah, i’m fine. Let’s get another drink.” I’m like holy shit lol what but really i’m like “haha okay.” So on the way over to the bar she asks me what are you drinking? and I say “oh I don’t know, some cheap beer or something.” We sit down at the bar and she’s like “two glasses of scotch, please.” and I’m like fuhuuuuuuuck me hahahaha. Really fucking courteous of her, but I’m literally stuffed to the brim with spaghetti and meatballs and beer, and now it’s all jostled up from playing DDR, but whatever. We cheers, she gulps her down and I gulp down... half of mine before it starts feeling like it’s going to come back up. I try to save it like I pull it up to my nose and swirl it around like “ahhh yes, quite, indeed. That’s some good stuff.” and she just says “uhh.. aren’t you gonna finish it?” and in my head I’m like god damn man yeah just give me a fucking second lmao. But really I’m like “yeah of course.” Gulp down the second half of the glass, and it does NOT sit. I start puking, spew puke into the glass til it’s almost full to the brim, then manage to regain my constitution to stop and sprint off to the bathroom, puking frothed spaghetti sauce all over some poor toilet.

I get out of the bathroom, we play another game or two, and it’s time to go. Like it’s 2 at this point, the bar’s about closed. We get to my car and she realizes she forgot her purse, so I say don’t worry I’ll go get it. Meet the bartender, who has pure hatred in her eyes and starts to hand over the purse, but before she will she says to me “the next time you puke in a fucking glass, you throw that shit away yourself. Got it?” and I’m like OHHH FUCK I FORGOT I LEFT IT ON THE BAR WHEN I RAN TO THE BATHROOM SHIT. But I just tell her I’m really sorry and get the fuck out of there. Laid low and didn’t go back for a couple of weeks after that one hahahaha.

Anyway, we get home, I’ve had like negative drinks now since going to the bar, and we still have that weed simmering and need to get the cookie dough. So we drive the 15 minutes out to the 24hr grocery store, get some cookie dough, come back, and it’s nowhere to be found. I was like “what? I handed it to you before we left, where did it go?” and she said “no you definitely had it.” and I was like whaaaaaat the fuckkkk. I say “whatever, this is at least as much my fault as it is yours, it’s no big deal,” and we drive BACK to the grocery store. I’m checking the self checkout area to see where we might have set it down, when a security guard who watched us leave asked if anything was the matter. I say yeah, I’m just trying to find the cookie dough we bought, and he says “oh she walked out with it.” 🤦 So I scan around the parking lot, maybe it fell off the car or something? Finally give up and tell her I can’t find it, start checking inside my car and we find it underneath her seat lol.

So whatever, we finally have all our ingredients for edibles and the butter is ready as fuck and we’re ready to go. So she’s like here take the ingredients and mix them together. And in my head I’m like alright fine if you’re making these cookies I might as well contribute a little bit. So I mix them up, and she’s just having me do step by step, until she’s finally like “okay now make them into cookies and put them onto the tray and cook them for like 15 minutes” and I’m like “wait what part of these fucking cookies are You making?” So I convince her to do the actual baking part, so I can finally relax and have a beer, my stomach is still feeling kind of uncomfortably full, and I’ve been driving around for an hour and I’m kinda over it by this point.

The cookies are finished at 4:20 in the morning. Hilariously perfect. She pulls them out, and they’re slightly burnt. Ugh. At least they’re not so burnt that they’re not inedible, just a little stiff. I start munching on one. It tastes very weedy. Like the chocolate chips are the only part that don’t just taste like weed. and it’s not soft at all, it’s like a cracker. So I’m chomping through it, kinda cracking my way through it really, when she says to me “so? how is it??” She looks pretty excited. I say “ah, they’re pretty good! Aren’t you gonna have one?”

She says “no, I don’t smoke.”

🤦 🤦 🤦 🤦 🤦 🤦 🤦

[in my head] I’m like what in the hell did we do all of this for then? We didn’t need to do ANY of that. Jesus. whatever.

Then she says to me “hey do you want to rail some xanax?” and I’m like “what? It’s 4:30 in the morning. If I rail some xanax now I’m just going to pass out.” She says “that doesn’t make any sense, xanax is a party time drug, not a sleepy time drug.” So I was like “alright fine then lol.” She spilled some beer on some of it and we had to set it out to dry, but we got two lines laid out and railed them. We laid down in bed and she was asleep no shit 5 minutes later.

The next day we mostly hung around and fucked til she had to leave, she had some job interview I think. We did some kinky handcuff shit since I had my toys back from Mary’s at this point. And she is the one girl who’s asked me to switch to anal out of nowhere. I obliged, but it’s not really my thing now that I can cum in any orifice without worrying about it. Still, pretty neat lol, she’s definitely unique for that.

As soon as she walked out of the door, Ash was like “good. Wash your sheets, your room smells like piss.” Did I mention? Every time we fucked she would squirt like she did in the car and it kind of amounted to me having a soaked bed. Absolutely filthy :3 hahaha

She wanted to hang out more, but I had to broke things off as gently as I could. She had to come by to pick up some stuff she forgot, gave me a little pikachu figurine that I’ve got on my dresser now, and I was just like yeah we’re not really gonna do this again.

All in all I thought she was a really nice person, and we had a lot of fun shit in common. But being confronted with that level of degeneracy was incredibly unnerving. I was like “man is this what I look like to people? Probably. Wow. Huh.”

I decided I was over it for a bit. I was gonna focus on speedrunning and karaoke and guitar and chilling, and determined that if girls happened to land in my lap at karaoke that’d be just fine, but that I was totally over seeking them out. It was just too much, I needed to straighten myself out a little bit more or something. Or at least just give up on Tinder because it was not a good look for me anymore. I’ve redownloaded it a few times for various reasons, but not for very long and have never met up with anyone online since. RIP

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