#fixing descendants

[little-pondhead]

Your Ancient History, Written In Wax

-

Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.

No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and started hunting Danny down.

The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!

Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.

Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.

It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.

Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.

Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.

Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.

Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.

Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.

He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.

Danny returned to Amity.

The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.

How was he supposed to fix this?

-

In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.

Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?

Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”

“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.

“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”

Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”

Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”

“Here? Now??”

“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”

“WHAT?”

[aspen-charminghearts]

Chloe asked about her preferences in a partner before meeting Red:

Chloe: My future partner must be intelligent, kind, thoughtful, have a heart of gold, and be the most chivalrous person on this planet-

Red at that exact moment: [Parkours off the ceiling runs by into a door and proceeds to yell profanities at the door then flip it off before leaving to go secretly cry in the next room]

Chloe:

Chloe: . . .

Chloe: Her. I want her. I can teach her love.

[writer-room]

Obsessed with Lloyd never mentioning his grandfather is the First Spinjitsu Master, apparently to the point even Arin didn't seem to know, because "eh, it never came up". Cause like, yeah, sure, my grandfather is God, what of it? Normal day for me. Shit happens. My dad is also evil, you wanna talk about that? I sure don't.

It's also funny from a character arc perspective. Here's itty bitty baby first season Lloyd, loudly proclaiming he's the son of Garmadon, and probably also making sure everyone knows he's God part 3 electric boogaloo. And then one Tomorrow's Tea and a few more years later and he's doing everything physically possible to NOT care about his heritage. In fact he'd probably rather his parentage was literally anyone else. Dude could care so less he forgets about it most of the time. King behavior.

[velvet-vox]

Why King Candy has been so underrated and misunderstood for a long time (Still is, but to a lesser extent)

(All the images in this post come from the video linked below)

Hi everyone; so, usually, I'm not a trend chaser, in fact, I completely missed out on the hype of the Murder Drones finale by not releasing something for the occasion, as I have been very busy this past couple of months, and still am, but I've decided to make a special, out of program post just for my new current hyper fixation, that being King Candy from Wreck-It Ralph, who, for the past couple of weeks, has slowly risen up to become my third favourite Disney movie villain of all time.

And all of that, as some of you might have guessed, happened because I watched @king-crawler 's two hour long video essay on the character and the movie that he comes from.

Needless to say, just like many others before, it inspired me to add my own two cents to the conversation, and talk about some points that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else.

This is probably the only Wreck-It Ralph related analysis that I'm ever going to make.

I even thought about scrapping this whole analysis, because midway through development I thought that I was just spewing out nonsense, but I kept going because some of my points may give food for thought to someone who understood this character way better than me.

I may reblog some analysis/art posts of this character, but I'm not going to turn WIR into a staple of my blog; however, if I see a lot of people in the comments or the reblogs adding stuff or points to my arguments, I could always make a sequel post to this one.

But first, I need to get something out of the way immediately.

Spoilers below the cut if you never saw this movie, kind of important, as it is the movie's major plot twist:

King Candy is Turbo.

Who's Turbo? Watch the movie.

With all that said, enjoy the read, I'll now elaborate on the meaning of my title, also, here's the video in question; I highly encourage everyone to check it out, as it is a way better sequel to Wreck-It Ralph than the one who was lost in the depths of Lake Laogai:

Clarifications:

Wreck-It Ralph is an amazing movie, but one for which I've never had much to think about.

Don't get me wrong, I always considered it to be the smartest Disney movie ever made since my first watch, but I saw it for the first time relatively late, after I had consumed other Disney movies as childhood classics and other crossover movies featuring video game characters, so it never had neither a nostalgia nor hyper fixation factor as reasons as to why I should have put the story under a microscope after that.

Also, as Rando says at the beginning of their video, it is not a movie that blew me away after my first watch. Or the second. Or the third.

Why is this section important? It is important because these are my subjective opinions of the movie, which are unfortunately going to subtly influence what I'm about to say in one way or another, regardless of me trying to speak from a place of supposed "objectivity".

I'm really passionate about this world now thanks to Randomalistic, but you won't get the same vibe from this post as you would get from one made by long time fans of this movie.

Ok?

Good.

Next:

King Candy/Turbo has always been... in a weird spot for me.

Just like the movie where he comes from, I never really cared about Turbo until a month ago, despite always feeling like I should have loved him a lot more, especially since Deltarune chapter 2 released a while ago, and the character of Spamton G Spamton is someone for whom I have very strong feelings about; and Turbo, in a technical sense, is literally the spiritual predecessor of that guy (actually, Turbo is the spiritual predecessor of a lot of similar characters, he kinda was ahead of his time).

If I had made a Disney tier list for their movie villains, a completely subjective one for that matter, I would have put him in A tier, but thinking that he should have gone in B tier... while also feeling like neither were appropriate placements for him.

Randomalistic's video finally helped me fall in love with the character; so much in fact, that it got me thinking:

"Damn, if Turbo is actually this amazing of a villain, why was(is) he so underrated and overlooked by general audiences, when he admittedly is, in my opinion, one of the best Disney villains of all time? Frollo is by and large considered the best villain out of any Disney movie, and the HOND was nowhere near as successful as Wreck-It Ralph when it first released, so it can't just be a matter of first impressions (?). Maybe there are other factors, that stop audiences from recognizing Turbo as the Magnum Opus of villainy that he truly is..."

... And that's exactly what I'm going to discuss!

Let's get right into it.

The minor stuff.

First things first:

He's ugly. I'm sorry to all of the people who ironically and unironically simp for him, but that's a design only a mother could love.

On a serious note, KC and Turbo's designs always felt... not very eye-catching to me? (The bug form is excluded from this conversation)

I'm not saying these are bad designs, far from it; but each form has on them a certain amount of design decisions that, by the authors own decisions, make them unappealing to a viewer like me (I'm using myself as reference point because the topic that I'm talking about is inherently subjective).

Starting off with King Candy, is design has to balance a lot of different aspects simultaneously: it has to be eyecatching, so that the viewer can pay attention to him as an antagonist, and believable enough so that the watchers buy the fact that he is the King of Sugar Rush and not someone else, but it also has to be generic and fake enough so that it can later on add up to the fact this is just a performance, a facade, a ruse, a costume, and not the real character, it also needs to be friendly enough so that the audience can be manipulated together with Ralph into believing that he actually is a good guy;

I could go on and on listing off all the amazing things, that the King Candy facade pulls off simultaneously, but exactly because the design has to feel real and fake at the same time, it also, by proxy, ends up feeling weird, and that inexplicable sentiment can end up alienating the viewers who are watching the movie and the ones who have finished consuming it without thinking too deeply about what the meaning of the KC's facade actually was.

In the case of Turbo's design, all the people working behind the movie did such an amazing job making him look as scary, ugly, alien, and deranged as possible, all the while keeping him relatively PG friendly; the result clearly paid off, but Turbo's ugliness is not as slick as the likes of Ratigan's, nor is it as nightmarishly horrifying as the Other Mother's.

The most nightmare fuel qualities of Turbo's design are hidden out of plain sight, which is basically a recurring theme with his character.

To put it in a funny way, his looks neither end up in the conventionally attractive territory that most other Disney villains fall into, nor do they grab the attention of the Monster Fu###rs crowd.

I have zero things to say about the Cy-bug form, but I do have a section later on where I talk about that entire scene in and of itself.

All in all, it might just be me, but the first impressions of this character's design don't really do him any favours when it comes to his popularity.

I now love both designs, but before, they just didn't click with me, and I think some other people might understand what I'm talking about.

Admittedly, I could have explained this section better, but these were mostly my personal opinions and they are not really important in the grand scheme of things, unless somebody else agrees with me, in that case I'd have to take a closer look at the situation.

Second of all:

The marketing.

To be honest, I feel like what really elevated all of the most iconic Disney villains into pop culture status was a joint push from the company and the artists to include these characters into more stories and products.

Like, sorry to all of the Oogie Boogie fans, but that character is barely in his movie and doesn't do a lot, and he wouldn't be nearly as iconic as he is if Disney didn't use him again multiple times after his first debut.

And the same can honestly be said for all of Disney's most popular villains; they got used multiple times in multiple different projects, that either kept them mostly the same, changed them with some unique twists (that change in quality, but that's up to you), expanded on their preestablished characters, or put them into unique situations that showcased just how versatile they are.

Kingdom Hearts, The House Of Mouse and Descendants are very obvious examples of what I'm talking about, but even appearances in lesser known stories like Lady Tremaine in Cinderella 3, Captain Hook in Jake and the Neverland pirates, or the entirety of Disney Twisted Wonderland help solidify these characters as pop culture icons;

All except Frollo.

Frollo is the only one whose hype and cultural recognizability wasn't built up by the company or the media in which he was featured, but by the fans of the original movie.

And despite Disney almost never used that character ever again after his debut, he, his movie, and Hellfire still get a lot of prise and are talked about classics to this very day.

Because Frollo is just that freaking awesome.

Turbo, on the other hand... is barely in anything.

Let's get the most obvious stuff out of the way first: King Candy is a relatively new character, released in an era where Disney was slowly starting to integrate the new, corporate ideals that we see today.

All of the villains that I've mentioned previously already became tried and true successes by that point, so even if the company doesn't care about having good villains anymore they still use their likeability because it has already shown in the past to bring in audiences.

It's also the main reason as to why Mother Gothel is used so rarely: King Candy, as the last truly great Disney movie villain (excluding Tamatoa, who's barely used anyway, and movies not produced by their main animation studio), arrived at a point in time when the company wasn't pushing for their villains anymore, and instead actively sanitized some of them in their new stories (you know what I'm talking about); therefore, Turbo, being actually incredibly dark on second look, and with no actual intention of tuning him down like Jafar because he hadn't already reached the iconic status by that point, had no reason to make any big appearance ever again or be paraded around as much.

There are some more reasons as to why Turbo likely doesn't have more stuff dedicated to him, like the fact that he is technically 3 characters at the same time, but I don't want to prolong this section too much.

So instead, how about we take a look at some of his other appearances outside of Wreck-It Ralph?

Let's see...

He has various cards in Lorcana, which is his most recent appearance, mind you;

He became a playable character in the 7th season of Disney Speedstorm, a game where I was hoping he would be the main villain, due to a variety of reasons, but hey, that's perfectly fine;

And he was mentioned multiple times in Disney Heroes Battle Mode, a game where he hopefully is the secret main villain, as it would pay off a large amount of story and design decisions chosen for that game, but it's probably just wishful thinking and unless the game's plug is pulled, I doubt we'll see him anytime soon.

Ok, it's more than nothing, but it's also not that special if you ask me.

But hey! At least he got a boss fight in a Kingdom Hearts game! That's more than Randall can say! He was a major boss in Union Cross... the mobile game... that you can't play anymore... and since KH adheres strictly to its own canon most of the time, it also probably means that we'll never get to play through the storyline of the first WIR in any future mainline game, and we're more likely to see a world based around the second movie instead.......

Yeah.

That seems to be it, unless I'm missing something huge (feel free to let me know).

This section is important because Cruella De Vil became one of my favourite Disney villains of all time not after seeing her in the original movie, but after I saw her in 101 Dalmatian Street, a niche show that almost nobody knows; so other medium appearances are important to these characters popularity, especially when not all of these villains are Frollo.

ALSO, PLUS 1+, I was originally going to cut this point, but I decided to add it anyway: the Italian voice actor.

After recently rewatching this movie in English, (I'm Italian, we in Italy translate the movies to our language because it's easier than learning an entirely different language for them), I have to really admit that Alan Tudik's voice performance really does a lot of heavy lifting for the character's memorability.

This is not to say that the Italian voice dub sucks or that King Candy's Italian voice actor does a bad job, in fact, the voices are actually quite similar to each other, it's just that Alan's performance has that small edge of hidden bitterness that really brings the character together; though I do prefer Turbo's Italian voice for its twist reveal: the more raspy, heavy tone of the actor really highlights the vicious, alien nature of his character, as well as the sense of dread that Vanellope is feeling in this moment; I encourage you to give it a watch.

Again, this is extremely minor, and it really only affects me specifically, but don't worry, it's not going to have influence over the rest of this post.

These were just additional points and not the actual meat of my argument, so now I'll start discussing what I actually wanted to talk about from the very beginning:

Who is he?

I think that one of the main reasons as to why Turbo is so underrated is because we spend way less time than with most other Disney villains (before him) to know him as a person.

Think about it:

Most other Disney villains, or at least the most popular ones, all have moments where they are doing nothing to progress the plot, that are dedicated solely to get us to know them better.

Hades has several moments with his minions to show off his personality and anger, Jafar has silly little moments with Iago that show off his depravity, Maleficent has talks with her crow that make her more dynamic, Ursula has her introduction scene where she spies on Ariel and does nothing but talking, and Captain Hook... has 30% of his screen time dedicated to just that.

Heck, Hellfire, one of the most iconic sequences in all of Disney, is just a character set piece for Frollo, and it's arguably completely disposable, as it doesn't really do anything to progress the story, it just explores Frollo's character in deeper depth and that happens to make the big difference when it comes to him.

King Candy doesn't really have an obvious character centric moment, something easy for the audience to quickly latch onto: every time we see him, he is always doing something to push the plot forward.

Yeah, there's that small character interaction with the Donut cops when he gets glasses, and other small moments here and there, like the would you hit a guy with glasses joke, but nothing truly character-defying.

I also don't count King Candy's first scene as a character centric moment, as that's more of an introduction rather than an elaboration, but it is technically valid, even if it ultimately is just a facade that he puts up to serve his needs.

Speaking of which: the fact that most of what we see of Turbo throughout the story could be entirely fake is definitely something that I could use to make the argument in this section stronger, but I'd rather save it up for later.

Also, side note:

I think that the moment most dedicated to him only, to show off a different, "true" aspect of his personality, is when he is walking back and forth in the castle waiting for his cops to show up again.

This moment is so interesting on rewatch, as it is one of the few moments in the entire movie where I can safely say that Turbo is being 100% genuine and isn't putting up any facade whatsoever, as there really is no benefit to him appearing distressed in this situation.

In general, it's funny to think that Turbo's most genuine reactions are of fear.

Back to point one, do you wanna know why Maleficent was given a crow in Sleeping Beauty? The reason as to why was for her to have someone to bounce off, a way for the writers to showcase more facets of her character, and while Candy has Sour Bill, the movie never uses the relationship between the two to show off a different aspect of his character.

To be clear, I'm not saying that Turbo is a worse character than these other Disney villains, or that without these moments of calmness he doesn't work, one great example

Do you know that Calhoun in early development had a camouflage ability, meant to highlight how she hides her feelings but was scrapped because it made her harder to relate to? Well, let's just say that Turbo's entire character is a What If scenario where that idea actually went through.

It's a double edged sword: King Candy is so interesting because he is so mysterious and surprising all throughout the movie, but exactly because he has to be so mysterious, he is not a character as easy to understand as some of the other villains from the company; it's incredibly easy to miss out on just how cruel he is and the full scale of all the damage that he has done.

I, AM, .......the twist villain.

There's also something to be said about how popular to the conversation the twist that King Candy is Turbo became.

Everyone loves this reveal, am I right?

It may not be the best moment in the movie, but my god if it isn't hype, all thanks to the music, the lighting, the setup, yada yada yada....

But the identity reveal scene is to Candy what the Genocide Boss Fight is to Sans: it's the most impactful moment about his character, to the point where it becomes the entire baseline where most discussions are built around, which, more often than not, lead a lot of people to overlook other things about Turbo.

Let me explain: how many analysis videos have you seen where the person making it talks more about the setup and subtle hints present in King Candy's earlier scenes that slowly build up to the twist and less about the events happening in it?

The reveal is amazing, don't get me wrong, but if Rando's video didn't come along to dive deep into King Candy's earlier scenes with the twist already in mind, the true impact of what Candy had been doing throughout the entire movie up to this point would have been lost on me, and I can imagine someone else feeling the same, as me, casual enjoyer of WIR, have been conditioned to think of Candy more for his well planned out surprise, rather than for how that surprise makes the character more engaging (I hope this makes sense).

I also want to mention this video ranking all the different twist villains from Disney and Pixar where CellSpex says that the Turbo twist is useless, since the movie doesn't do much with it afterwards.

Now, aside from the fact that CellSpex is clearly in the wrong and she's missing the point, I think this lack of reconsideration highlights that casual viewers care more about the Turbo plot twist than they care about Turbo himself.

But honestly, I don't believe people focusing too much on the twist is that big of a problem, more so, the problem stems when you want to use the twist... to discuss something else.

Now, I think it's perfectly fine if you want to use Turbo to explain why other Disney twist villains don't work, but when the villains that King Candy is compared to the most are Hans, Yokai, and Bellwether, you kind of start to think that he is only the best of the worst, and not an actual amazing antagonist in his own right.

It may not be a message that was intended to be sent, but it is something that may subconsciously cling to someone's brain, especially when you consider that there might be a huge audience of people who watch these videos because they saw Hans in the title (wishing for the video to bash him), and have seen Frozen, Zootopia and Big Hero 6, but have never seen Wreck-It Ralph in their lives, and they get all their knowledge of Turbo from them.

It's exasperating, especially when King Candy has way more in common with renaissance Disney villains than contemporary ones.

Yes, through technicality, he is a twist villain, but he's more so a hybrid antagonist to be honest.

And even worse than people just grouping up Candy with a bunch of morons, as I've just discovered by reading a comment from this Turbo Tribute, is that some people apparently despise him for starting the Disney Twist villain trend: even if he's leagues better than his competition, the simple fact that you can attribute some of the blame for the fall of villainy onto him, is enough for someone to despise him.

King of the Cy-bugs (feat Rockotar):

Very recently, I've rewatched Rockotar's video analysis of the first Wreck-It Ralph, and when he arrived at the "Welcome, to the Boss Level!" scene, I decided to analyse all the possible reasons as to why he (and possibly many others, such as, admittedly, myself) wasn't as entranced by it as basically any other scene from the movie, who he had been praising non-stop up until this point.

And I think I understood why: aside from the fact that this scene is only a setup for Ralph's sacrifice (and I wished the actual boss fight to be longer and more creative), the Boss Fight is less of a climax for Ralph's journey and more so a character study for who Turbo/King Candy is.

In my opinion, this is the closest we ever get to a "villain at rest" moment with Turbo because in every other scene of the movie, King Candy is always doing something, he's always active and we never see him doing anything that doesn't coincide with his role.

And, paradoxically to what I've just said about this being a "villain at rest" moment, in this scene, he is still doing something and being active in the plot, only that this time, instead of advancing the story, he's holding it back from its conclusion.

This scene simplifies Turbo's character to his most bare bone essentials: he's a short-tempered jerk, a power hungry murderer, a virus; it's all pretty interesting stuff once you take a sweet moment to break it down.

However, there's a point that I briefly mentioned before that I want to bring up; this creature that we are laying your eyes upon, is now three different people all at once, King Candy (anxious, quiet and manipulative), Turbo (short-tempered, competitive and spiteful), and now this Cy-bug hybrid.

To reiterate what I've said before, if you don't think about it for long enough, you aren't going to understand who either character is exactly.

Because that's the big thing: all of his facades, implied development off screen and reactions are so well constructed that at certain points, it feels like we're following two different characters simultaneously, which fits perfectly with the narrative that so called "real" Turbo died and now he's no longer himself, but...

I'm scratching the bottom of the barrel to bring up other possible points as to why this character is so underrated, and the lack of a clear identity seems like a pretty obvious thing to me.

But that's only two out of the three characters I mentioned; we need to take a second look at the Cy-bug form, who, in many ways, is simultaneously the thesis and antithesis of his character.

In particular, there's one thing I want to consider:

There's this theory made by somebody else that says Turbo, upon getting eaten by the Cy-bug, didn't take over the animal's conscience and control his body, instead, upon eating King Candy, the Cy-bug took upon himself his mannerisms, meaning that, according to this theory, neither King Candy nor Turbo technically survived the encounter.

If we accept this theory as true, then that means that even during what is supposed to be a character study, the character that the movie is highlighting may also be just as fake as the act that was put up until this point, meaning that, in a sense, we never saw the real Turbo in the movie.

He was three people at once.

(Yes, I've been spamming this image everywhere, and I'll keep doing so because I can)

In Conclusion:

Turbo is, ironically and unironically, an incredibly subtle character, and that makes it extremely easy for a lot of people to overlook and miss out on the most subtle details and characteristics that make him truly exceptional;

Him being so deceptive and mysterious helps and hinders his popularity, as some either love the mystery surrounding him, others fail to get a good grasp on who he truly is and become disinterested.

He is, by design, a building block, a puzzle to be solved, a character to piece together, that makes him so much fun!

But also, if you aren't interested in putting the pieces together, then he may not be up everyone's alley.

I definitely feel like the best thing that @randomalistic did in her/their video on Wreck-It Ralph was create an easy jumping point for new fans/casual watchers of the movie to get insanely invested over the story and characters;

I'm sure it was incredibly easy for many other people like me to focus only on the most talked about aspect of Turbo, aka the plot twist, and overlook all the other things that were not as much in your face as that; I was blinded by the spotlight, and it made it hard to see the genius that was put everything else;

Now, thanks to Random highlighting King Candy's cruelty and repulsive behaviour, my favourite thing about Turbo is how he weaponized the "disability" of a child to marginalise and persecute her, discriminating her for it all of her life WHEN HE'S THE ONE WHO MADE HER "DISABLED" IN THE FIRST PLACE.

This man, is so HORRIBLE, and he deserves to be publicly exposed for all the heinous s##t that he did, not just for being the best of a bunch of villains who frankly he shouldn't even be attempted to be compared to.

Anyway, I hope someone had fun reading this. I definitely felt like I started to write this with some really good ideas that I wanted to share, but in the end, I feel like they weren't all that interesting to begin with.

Feel free to share your own opinions, and have a great day!

[phantajam]

rewatching descendants 3 again and remembering how hated it was when it came out has me thinking that maybe rise of red isn't the WoRsT moViE Of aLL tiMe or "killing the franchise" or whatever. maybe this fandom is just full of people who hate fun and will shit on anything new the series does

[buwheal]

I'm sorry, Spamton. I know you won't believe me, but I'm sorry we hurt you.

[mylittleredgirl]

well the t key on my ancient macbook has called in dead so place your bets now on whether i will do something about it before i become so fully naturalized to copy-pasting t into words as i type that i go “it’s fine actually i like living this way”

[descendantofthesparrow]

D3 screenshot redraw - Are you for real Evie?

i ended up redoing Mal and Jay's skin shading because they felt out of place next to Carlo's more realistic/straight from the reference shading so yeah. anyways enjoy~ I'm really loving doing these iggbh

[pastelaspirations]

As a last hurrah before the year is done, have my take on lesbian Errorink ✧˖°.

I saw an interesting question once. One that posed the controversial thought that "if your yaoi ship got turned into yuri, would you even still ship it anymore??" It was an interesting question, although perhaps a leading question, that gave the idea that many people may cease to ship a pairing if they turned from boys to girls.

I only had one thought to that question.

It's cute that you think that would have any chance of deterring me. No, w a t c h. My undying love for my otp is only strengthened.

Case in point; if yaoi errorink has consumed my entire mind and soul, then it would make perfect sense that yuri errorink would do so as well. Don't you see. It's literally the exact same ship, with all the same dynamics and interactions, but they're ✧˖°.girls now✧˖°.

SO. BIG SHOUTOUT TO JUNIEMUNIE FOR THEIR REFS WHICH STRONGLY INSPIRED MINE. I want to draw their versions one day. And I will, I will, just let me cook, man, I promise I will-

Of course, obligatory "p l e a s e open drawings in another tab to see them better 'cus they look like dog water on here."

WARNING; RAMBLING AHEAD THAT I WILL T R Y TO MAKE SHORT I thought it would be so funny, man, hilarious, if Error was like. This scrunkly girlboss badass who could, and would, absolutely destroy you. B u t she is sort of dressed like a high end hobo?? Like- SHE GOT THE BUNNY SLIPPERS ON AND LOOKS LIKE SHE LOW KEY JUST ROLLED OUT OF BED, but she gonna make damn sure her makeup is on f l e e k before she walks out that door ✧˖°.

BUT, THEN, COMPARE THAT. COMPARE THAT WITH. Just comedy gold, I tell you. This badass, skrunkly girlboss Destroyer of Worlds and her love interest, the only one who holds the key to her heart... is just Ink. A teeny lil cutie patootie who runs around completely barefoot in Care Bear lookin' overalls, with a paintbrush taller than she is and a giant burrito scarf. Just-

Yep. That's the Destroyer of Worlds's gf, right there. (I can see the crap posts now. Error being an absolutely horrifying entity to be reckoned with, but immediately switches to a sing-songy, happy voice as soon as Ink pops into the room.)

Fun fact; I'm sick as a dog as of this post. I finished these drawings not being able to breathe or swallow. :D Well, f i n e, I wasn't as bad when I finished Error's first, but then I got worse with Ink's. Like. I was staring at the screen, half-dead and unable to focus, when I was finishing her up, but she doesn't look half that bad, huh. Not too shabby for someone who can barely concentrate and had to proofread this post four times before giving up and hoping it is at least somewhat coherent in my fever induced fog state.

[ace-s-fav-dp-posts]

So I've seen DPxDC stories where Danny is Damian's twin brother or just full blood sibling in general and not biologically a Fenton at all, where he's Bruce and Maddie's son, Talia and Jack's son, stories where he's either Bruce or Talia's kid with some other random person and was adopted by the Fentons.

Stories where either Jack or Maddie is Ra's kid and Danny (and Jazz) are thus Damian's maternal first cousins.

I've even seen a few stories where Danny was just literally Ra's son, either by blood or by adoption.

I know of one specific post where Danny is Dusan's son and Mara's older brother, but that's it.

I have yet to see a single prompt where either of Danny's parents are descended of either Dusan or Nyssa even though both of them are far more than old enough to be grandparents.

Hell, Dusan is calculated to be around 750 years old by some people, while Nyssa canonically had her bloodline wiped out by the Nazis, a bloodline that included a great grandson and she has a confirmed birth year of 1775 (so she'd be nearly 250 years old in modern day).

So the idea of Damian's first cousin being an adult pushing 50 with kids older than Damian himself would be completely logical (if you go ahead of sticking the show aged DP characters into the 2020s).

Though to be honest if we go this route I'd pick different Fenton Parents and generational displacement from Ra's depending on which of Ra's kids Danny and Jazz are descended from.

If they're descended from Dusan, then I'd pick Jack as being his son, and Mara's older half brother, who is older than her by like 46 years.

The Fenton's are actually aware of their connection to a quasi-immortal assassin, but Jack and Maddie do their best to keep their kids out of that life.

Which Dusan isn't supper accepting about. But he also only discovered Jack when he was already an adult, and if he wants to be invited to his grandkid's birthdays and be allowed to drop Mara off at the Fenton house to be watched he just kind of has to accept that his son and grandchildren aren't interested in the Al Ghul legacy.

While if it's Maddie who's descended from the Al Ghul bloodline, then I'd want her and Alicia to be descended from Nyssa's line, specifically Vasily Vasilevich, Nyssa's great grandson.

Nyssa thinks he's killed by the Nazi's like the rest of her descendants but because he's an infant someone actually manages to smuggle him away before he actually enters any camp. He eventually ends up smuggled all the way to the United States, where he's given a new name, and raised as an American by the family that took him as their own while fleeing from the Nazi's and smuggled him to the state's in the first place.

So Maddie and Alicia are both Nyssa's great great granddaughters, while Danny, Jazz, and Dani are Nyssa's great great great grandchildren. The Fenton's (and Walkers if we go ahead with making that Maddie and Alicia's maiden names), have no idea that they're descended from a weird eco terrorist assassin cult...

Until Jazz insists on the family doing one of those at home dna tests after Maddie casually dropped family lore about how her dad wasn't the biological child of her grandparents, and that they'd ended up taking him in when fleeing Europe from Nazi persecution, and no one knew who his birth parents were or if any of his biological family survived or not. Or even the name his biological parents gave him.

Jazz just thinks this is going to be a fun family history project where nothing weird will happen, unbeknownst to her Tim Drake has created backdoor access to every single one of those at home dna testing databases he can find, specifically looking for hits on the Al Ghul family tree.

That man might be old as fucking dirt, but Talia's existence (and backstory of being conceived at Woodstock with a random hippy lady) is proof that Ra's is more likely than not still producing swimmers and going around banging random women much to Tim's horror.

And Tim wants to know if any oopsie Al Ghuls pop out of the woodwork before Ra's does, at the very least to try and prevent any more from getting indoctrinated into the League of Assassins.

I just feel like either one of these would really hammer home that Ra's line really is comprised of largely unaging immortals (if they have access to a Lazarus pit and want to), who's outer age doesn't really reflect their actual age at all.

WIth Mara and Jack being half siblings but also like 40+ years apart in age, or Maddie being Nyssa's great great granddaughter but looking basically the same age.

Because DC's never really pushes that when it comes to Ra's. Sure all of his kids are adults, but all of them are also seem to be frozen between the ages of like 30 to 50 years old, with Ra's himself looking around 70-ish, and then all of his grandkids (who we get to see) are literal children.

So if you were to take a family picture of Ra's and the descendants (who matter and) we get to see in the comics, it would just look like a normal family portrait or family tree. The grandparent looks 20-30 years older then the Parents/Aunt/Uncle generation, who looks 20-30 years older than the child generation.

Like I just feel there should be more family line fuckery going on with the Al Ghul family than there is in canon.

Or hell you could make Jack or Maddie Talia's kid if you go with the really old canon of Talia also actually being a lot older but using the Lazarus Pits to stay physically young. I think she's like 150 in that continuity but using the pits to stay in her 30s or so.

Then you could just have Jazz or Danny show up and Damian introduce them to the Batfam as his niece and nephew, played best with Damian being around ten, but Danny and Jazz in their late teens or even early 20s.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

The portraits of younger heroes and villains in totally-not-EAH-and-SFGAE-rip-off Merlin Academy, if anyone's curious. And like, before anyone goes at me for that nickname for Merlin Academy: the villains group portrait literally has 'V.K students' under it, implying they themselves are children of villains, which just opens up the idea that these kids basically became evil like their parents before them and the only ones to not be evil are the prior Descendants main characters, aka, similar to main characters in EAH and SFGAE. At this point, Disney is losing their right to complain if EAH does ever return because the only one copying right now in Disney.

[lsleofthelost]

eye contact

[aspen-charminghearts]

Chloe talking to Chad in her and Red’s dorm: The thing is I drop hints like crazy! She just won’t take the stupid hints! I could paint it on a banner, point at it, say I made it for her and she still wouldn’t get it!

Chad: Surely she can’t be that bad.. Can she?

Red walking into the dorm: Hey you guys, what are you guys talking about?

Chloe staring at Red: [Flustered]

Chad: [Nudges Chloe]

Chloe regaining her senses: Oh! Right.

Chloe very bluntly: I’m in love with my roommate, I’m not even subtle about it, she’s just clueless.

Chad: [Almost spits out the water he was drinking]



Red, clearly jealous: Oh wow, lucky her, she sounds stupid.

Chad: [Has the most incredulous look ever seen on his face]

Chloe sighing in frustration: She indeed is very.. dense.

[childrenofthesun77]

...okay, so I'm probably not the first person to notice this.

But gear's earing that he points towards when he says that he did the same ritual he wanted to help kuro with already on himself before:

actually looks pretty similar to the pieces of the necklace the count used to create the servamps:

The different pieces of the necklace seem to contain one demon each and the count used them to create the servamps.

So...did the count either learn this technique from the werewolves or is he possible even originally a werewolf himself? It would explain why he's immortal, that's why I'm wondering about this.

Gear says that the ritual is used to remove spirits, could it be that the count removed his own sins using the werewolf ritual and created the demons this way? But he went too far and removed too much unlike gear who only removed one part of himself? Him removing the sins from himself would also explain why he's so weird and doesn't understand other beings. As the sin demons say, they are a natural part of being a human and we have seen multiple times that denying their existence is harmful, removing them all from you would probably lead to you not being able to relate to other people anymore.

Maybe removing all these parts of himself is also why he has no appearance. Without his demons he's not a person anymore.

The count originally being a werewolf would also explain why he has magical abilities (gear can also use magic) before other magicians existed and why he's so anxious about certain people dying. Gear talks about how his immortality makes him sad because human friends do die, but unlike the count gear seems to accept death, grieves in a heathier way than the count and is able to move on and make new friends. Could also explain why his magic and creations are all strongly tied to the (full) moon.

Another similarity is that while werewolves apparently can't reproduce gear was able to have descendants by sharing his life force (it's mentioned in chapter 135 which isn't translated yet) with a woman and through her human children tsurugi is related to gear. Sigurd explained to nicco that the magicians came to be because the count let humans drink his blood, three survived, got magical ablities and became the ancestors of all human magicians:

Maybe the count is more of a werecat though. He and the sloth demon do seem to have a closer connection, even though the count's appearance changes depending on the person looking at him he does usually keep his tail and the tip looks exactly like the one of kuro's cat/lion form and similar to the the one of inner sloth's non-human form.

It was also stated multiple times that the sloth demon is the strongest. I wonder why that is. Servamp comments on the fact that being lazy is often actually a sign of depression/anxiety through kuro's arc, so maybe the count was depressed and that's why the sloth demon is the strongest? Basically the demons strength depends on how much the count suffered from the different sins? It would also explain why melancholy is so strong, I assume kuro refusing to see him no matter how many siblings he sent his way to tell him to come looking for the count made him extremely sad and probably even made him come up with the plan to have himself be killed and then put in the same body as kuro through the ritual.

I assume he was behind C3 ordering the servamps to kill him because he's the one who created the magicians and thus C3 and lily who is kind of working for him was probably the one who put the idea that the count needed to be killed into the head of his eve (aka a member of the alicein family who hold a lot of power in C3 basically since the beginning. I explained this in more detail in another post). The people from C3 even said that the count can only be killed if he wants to and yeah, kuro didn't truly kill him, but he did destroy his body and kuro seems to have met little resistance when he attacked the count. Which probably means the count wanted this to happen.

[humaudrey]

Things my Rewrite Will Fix About Descendants - Kingdom Names

I'VE DONE IT!!

Anyway, one thing (there are multiple though, let's be honest) that particularly irked me about the Descendants franchise would be the names of the kingdoms. While "Auradon" has a nice ring to it, some of the names of the other smaller kingdoms/locations leave something to be desired.

So for my rewrite series, Barriers (and for my second rewrite WIP that has yet to be named), I decided to rename the ones I didn't like.

Charmington -> Edenwald, Snow White and Florian's Kingdom

First of all, if any of the kingdoms were going to be named "Charmington", why wouldn't it be the kingdom from Cinderella? Originally, I wanted to swap Charmington for Cinderellasburg, so naturally, the old Charmington would need a new name. I wanted the name of the kingdom to reference the Enchanted Forest in Snow White, so Eden was the first name to come to mind (meaning paradise, but also referencing the Garden of Eden in the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible, which also parallels well to Snow White being the first Disney Princess). But "Eden" felt somewhat incomplete. Eventually, adding the "wald" (meaning forest in German, which is where the story of Snow White originates) at the end gave it a much more fitting name imo.

Cinderellasburg -> Charmont, Kit/Charles/Henry/Christopher and Cinderella's Kingdom

Don't get me wrong, I love Cinderella (somehow even more now than I did before), but why would they name a region after some commoner? Yes, her story's inspiring, but not inspiring enough to rename a kingdom in her honor. Having the kingdom named "Charmington", where the Charmings rule felt fitting at first. But, the more I looked at "Charmington", the more "Charmington" felt like a clothing store or a medieval amusement park. I wanted to incorporate "Charm" as a prefix , and took the suffix from "argent" (meaning silver in French, which is the color of Cinderella's dress) and changed the e to an o.

Auroria -> Aetheria, Aurora and Phillip's Kingdom

I almost left "Auroria" alone because it sounds so pretty and ethereal and whimsical. I could believe that either Aurora was named after "Auroria" or "Auroria" was named after Aurora and I was willing to let that be that. All I did was add ia to aether, and that sounded prettier to me lmao.

Auradon -> Beaumier, Adam and Belle's Kingdom

This one is specifically for my second rewrite. In this fic verse, all of the united kingdoms are still called "The United Kingdoms of Auradon". However, Adam and Belle are not the monarchs ruling over all the other kingdoms, therefore their specific kingdom needs a name. I wanted the name to be French inspired, and the name "Beau" felt fitting given it means "beautiful" or "handsome" like "Belle". "Beau" is also a nice little callback to the writer of the original fairytale in 1756, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont AND to one of the villages the setting is based on, Ribeauvillé. All I did after that was research names of places that had "Beau" in the name, and I came across Beaumier Hotels.

And nothing for Seaside, because A.) All of the other names I came up with sound too corny (and I don't like Tirulia) and B.) Seaside's growing on me.

[endollvors]

Yo, you know Rise of Red, the Time Travel Descendants film about time travel? What if it didn't have time travel, and also the character arcs were complete and made sense as a single work.

Welcome to the Urban Resistance AU. It's a game of cat and mouse through Auradon. The Queen of Hearts does her Coup and Chloe and Red escape, but instead of using the Pocketwatch, they have to learn to trust each other and get along while escaping the card soldiers and attempting to thwart the sweeping changes of the new Regime.

Chloe, Our Knight in Shining Armor and face of the resistance, skilled in close quarters combat and community organization, has to stop being precious about how to accomplish her goals and accept help from unlikely places. Her glass slipper shatters when she stops holding back and lands a roundhouse kick on a guard to protect Red.

Red, Our Shadow behind the scenes, familiar with how her mother thinks and plans, good at stealth and parkour, and the only person in Auradon with practical, structured, magic training that's not in prison, has to learn how to work with other people and gain their trust. It's revealed at the climax that her supposed betrayal in the second act was a planned ruse.