#given the idea of 'what is a concept of a guy in a fantasy that you would want to be' without a rules overview/a lot of info

[outeremissary]

Running a TTRPG for complete beginners is always interesting in terms of where people fall on character concepts- like, I've seen a lot of beginners whose first question is "what can you do in the game" and then make the most basic interpretation of one of the first few archetypes they grasp (scholar wizards, knight fighters, etc), but when you go "it's a game of imagination" some of them will leap ahead with huge and amazingly specific concepts that the question is then "how do we bring this to the table mechanically according to your vision." All systems are created to do certain things and to suggest certain modes of play and archetypes- I've seen big dreams for every system I've run for or tried to set up a game for. I just really enjoy seeing both ends of the spectrum with people who are new to a game or to TTRPGs in general: what do I think the entry point is vs what is my biggest dream based on the idea of the game.

[rueclfer]

Can I request a best friends brother touya plssss :)

Ur loser Touya who, canon to your fics, writes in a diary journal is so good and needs a comeback 😭💗

Okay thank you byyyyyeee :P

god i love todosiblings tomfoolery in touya fics!!!! ily anon thank u for loving this loser as much as i do

open up the door // touya todoroki

“Knock knock.” The voice interrupts yours and Fuyumi’s chatter from the other side of her bedroom door.

“What?” Fuyumi calls out, cueing Touya to poke his head through the cracked door, eyes meeting her before your own, in which you quickly darted away. “Can we help you?”

“Yeah, you can actually.” He returns the tone, fully swinging the door open, leaning against the frame. “I hear you losers giggling and shit from all the way down the hall. Don’t you think you two should shut up and go to sleep?”

You look him up and down, eyeing the stretched out flannel pajama pants hanging low on his hips and distressed band tee over his lanky frame. The glossy sheen over his eyes and the state of his hair made it apparent that he had just rolled out of bed, woken up from yours and Fuyumi’s night time antics and gossip.

“It’s barely 12am on a Friday night, Touya.” You cock your eyebrow at him. “Nothing more important to do than to bother us?”

“Tell me, Y/N, what exactly am I interrupting?” He walks into the room, being careful to step over the scattered containers of various beads, rolls of string, and a couple pairs haphazardly throw scissors laying across the floor. “Friendship bracelets? Are you guys 12?” 

You were laying on the floor on your stomach as he approached you and stepped over you with a leg on each side. Touya leans down and looks past your head to see the unfinished bracelet in your hands.

“Whatcha spelling out, huh?” 

“Fuck off.” You huff, slapping his calf to shoo him away.

“Leave us alone” Fuyumi groans. “We’re gonna go to sleep right now, okay?”

“Sleep, don’t sleep, I don’t give a fuck. Just be quiet. Especially you, loudmouth.” He flicks the back of your head before stepping over you towards the door, clicking it behind him.

You and Fuyumi meet each other’s eyes before simultaneously letting out an annoyed sigh.

“Sorry, you know how he is.” Fuyumi huffs. “He’s so annoying sometimes.”

You had a long standing relationship with the Todoroki family. Your friendship with Fuyumi flourished in middle school when you had accidentally snapped her glasses in half during gym class. Luckily, for you two, you were a wizard with duct tape which had not only effectively fixed her frames, but made you two inseparable since. 

“Sometimes?” You scoff, beginning to shove the craft supplies to the side, making room for your floor mattress. “I was seriously planning on marrying into the family one way or another, but you gave me some shit options, Fuy. Introduce me to a cousin or something.

“Settle for him to be with me forever.” She sighs dramatically and shoots you a pout. “If you really loved me, you would.”

Another thing that lingered since you two were kids- the concept of setting you up with her older brother. The idea had always seemed so perfect for her. There you were, someone who got along with the family, the sister she never had, and most importantly, was “good enough” for her brother, who notoriously had a shitty dating history. However, Fuyumi’s fantasy quickly crumbled midway through high school, when Touya suddenly decided that he was too good for anyone- especially his little sister’s best friend.

“Touya’s a fucking prick, Fuy. I really do want to beat the fuck out of him, no joke, and I’m pretty sure the feelings are mutual.”

“Watch it!” She scolds you. “He’s not that bad, or at least not as bad as he used to be.”

“Not as bad? ‘Hey ugly’ is his go-to greeting for me. He acts like my presence is the most inconveniencing thing ever. If we're alone in the same room, he'll avoid me like the plague and then once there's anyone else around, suddenly he wants to annoy me at any given chance.”

“He’s going through a life crisis or something. Be nice.” She warns. “Or else I’ll kick both of your asses. Wake me if you’re up before me, okay? But only if it’s after 10am.” She yawns. “Goodnight.”

“Yeah whatever, g'night." You say and roll your eyes, knowing that you will definitely not be waking her up.

Now with the lights off and you two in your respective beds, all you could do is look up at the glow in the dark stars plastered to the ceiling, and think back on all of your interactions with Touya from the moment you met him to now- from your raging infatuation with him when you first met as children to the growing resentment and annoyance into your late teens.

-

The glaring sunbeam peaking through the curtains hit you right in the eye, effectively waking you up from your deep sleep. Your phone reads 6:54AM. You mentally groaned to yourself before rolling out of your mattress, exiting the dark bedroom with a soft click of the door behind you. On an early Saturday morning like this, the Todoroki household had its rare moments of silent solitude

Padding your way to the bathroom, you were still in a drowsy state, eyes lidded, and the heaviness of a deep sleep weighing on your shoulders. Once the door shuts behind you, you lean against the kitchen sink and rub the sleepiness from your eyes,

"The fuck, Y/N?" The familiar voice snaps you awake. Your vision focuses on the figure standing near the shower. "You pervert, what do you think you're doing?" He exclaims with a growing amused smile.

"Jesus, Touya!" You exclaim, taking a step back against the door. "Ever use a fucking lock before?" You lowly huff, trying to keep your volume down.

"Why would I when no one's ever up this early? Don't you walk around with your eyes open?"

"I just woke up like two seconds ago." You groan. "Why are you just hanging out in the bathroom?"

"Well I was going to shower. Unless you're here to 'beat the fuck out of me?'" He leans against the wall, arms crossed.

"Listening in on our conversation? Who's the pervert now?" You furrow your eyebrows.

"Involuntarily, with your loud mouth and all." He takes a step closer, almost closing the gap and leaving just mere inches of space between you two. "Sounds like you don't like me very much, huh? What happened to that little crush in middle school?" He kept his voice low.

"Fizzled out a long time ago when you started thinking you were too cool for everyone." You press your finger against the middle of his chest. "You're full of yourself, stuck up, infuriating to be around, and you have no reason to not like me when we've known each other for damn near a decade. You're such a dick for no reason."

"You done?" His amused smile grew even wider, making the fury in your stomach grow stronger. "Because I don't have to explain shit to you."

You rub your face in your hands in frustration. "You know what you act like? A 13 year old who thinks being mean to his crush makes them like you back." You cross your arms, almost tip-toeing your way closer to his face. "That must be it, huh? Can't navigate your feelings?"

Touya bit the inside of his cheek.

Before he could retaliate with another venom filled comment, someone on the other side of the door was knocking. Had you two been so loud this early in the morning?

"Y/N?" You recognized the groggy voice. "Are you in there? Can I come in?"

You froze and quickly realized how the situation looked- you and Touya almost pressed up against each other in the bathroom. Alone. After you had just told her all about your disdain for her brother the night before.

You locked your eyes with him. He opened his mouth, ready to respond in your place, in which you quickly slammed your hand over his mouth, and the other on his shoulder. You start pushing him back towards the shower.

"Yeah! I'm in here, give me a second!" You called out over your shoulder.

"What are you doing?" He mouths, taking a step into the shower before he could trip over the ledge.

"Shut up." You whisper back, closing the shower curtain. "Stay." You warn.

You took a glance at yourself in the mirror, silently hoping Fuyumi doesn't notice your flushed cheeks.

"Sorry I was getting ready to shower. Was I being too loud?" You open the door to see her sleepy state of lidded eyes and tousled hair.

"No." She yawns. "I got a migraine, I just need my medication."

You step aside for her to dig through the medicine cabinet for a moment, sending subtle glances to the shower every now and then, hoping Touya doesn't decide to make an appearance.

"By the way," She mumbles. "I was serious about last night. Be nice to Touya, okay? You know he kinda has a crush on you."

"What?" You exclaim a bit too loudly, slapping your hand over your mouth.

She shushes you, putting her finger over her mouth. "You'll wake him. He's a light sleeper." She warns. "But yeah, Natsuo read his diary last week and told me. I think I kinda knew though, since he's so emotionally constipated." She softly chuckles, lightly shaking the migraine medication into her palm.

"What the fuck, Fuyumi?" Your mouth hung open. "Diary? You tell me this now?"

"Well I didn't realize how much you disliked him." She smiles. "Just thought you should know. We'll talk more later, though. I'm going back to sleep. Think about it, and have a good shower."

"Okay.. thanks." You mumble, closing the door behind her.

If you really wanted to, you could let yourself feel mortified for Touya and make an agreement to pretend like that conversation didn't just happen, but you could feel the disgusting pride and ego growing larger by the second as you digested this new information.

Touya rips the shower curtain to the side, stepping out of the shower with a new layer of blush dusted over his cheeks and his wide eyes filled with embarrassment.

"Shut up." He huffs, running a hand through his hair.

"Didn't say anything." You shrug, pressing your lips together to suppress a smirk.

"Keep it that way, then."

He begins to make his way towards the door, in which you promptly block with your body.

"Y/N. Move." He demands, one hand on the handle and the other pressed against the door next to your head.

"Guess I got you figured out after all. You write about me in your diary often?" Your let your smirk grow. "You'd have better luck if you were nicer to your crush, don't you think?"

You could see that pompous facade of his crumble by the second with the way he bit down on his lower lip, cheeks growing into a deeper shade of red, and eyes darting away to avoid your own.

"It's a fucking journal. Not a diary. Let me out. I'm going to go smother that fucking brat with his own pillow."

"Why don't we unpack this here, instead?" You lean back onto the door, preventing him from pulling it open. "If you like me so much, why are you such a dick?"

A beat of silence passes as he releases a long sigh.

"I-" He starts, staring down at you with a sheepish expression. "don't mean to be an asshole. I just get nervous, okay?" His voice falters towards the end.

You cock an eyebrow at him. "Nervous? How does that make sense or justify anything?"

"Because I can't think straight whenever you're around. Which is all the fucking time."

You didn't think far enough ahead as to how you could navigate this. You questioned if this could even be considered a confession or where things would go between you two when you eventually let him out of the bathroom.

"We were fine when we were kids, though?"

"I didn't like you when we were kids." He huffs.

"So a few years ago? When you started acting like an ass?"

"I guess." He mutters. "Can you move over now?"

"I give you one chance." You cross your arms.

"Huh?"

"To apologize, confess and ask me out. Properly."

"Right now?" His eyes widened, mouth gaped open.

"Yup, or forever hold your peace and watch me get with one of your cousins or something."

"You'd actually go out with me?" He asks under his breath.

"Ask me and find out." You shrug.

He pressed his lips together, continuing to stare down at you with furrowed brows- of course you stared back in annoyance. You thought that he already had the easy way out, thanks to Fuyumi, so this hesitation only made you more anxious.

A voice in the back of your head had started pounding through the front. It was your 10 year old self. They're making your stomach twist in anticipation. They're making your heart race. They're making your hands clam up. They're hoping he'd do it.

But he wasn't.

"Okay, guess not then. I'm leaving." You suddenly blurt out, turning to grab the handle.

"Wait." He places his hand over the door frame, preventing it from pulling open. "Give me a fucking second okay? I feel like I can barely breathe."

He puts both hands on your shoulder, expelling a long breath of air to the side. You tense at the sudden physical contact, feeling the warmth of the palms of his hands melt into you.

"I'm sorry for being a dick to you. I'm sorry for not knowing how to act around you. I'm not sure I deserve it, but can you... give me a chance?" He spills out through clenched teeth, all in one breath.

His face was still flushed and expression was almost pained. You knew you backed him up in a corner but if he had this crush for a few years, was he ever planning on telling you?

"I know you had a crush on me when we first met as kids, and I know you definitely don't anymore, but if you want to give me a chance then I guess that would be.. cool." He sheepishly says, sucking in the inside of his cheek.

"You guess?" You cock your head to the side.

"You're fucking killing me, Y/N. That's seriously the best I can do at 7am right now." He deadpans. "Yes or no- before I start panicking."

You pause for a moment, taking in the weight of his hands on your shoulder and intense eye contact.

"I'll go out with you."

"Really?" His eyes widen, and grip tightening. "After everything? You will?"

You nod your head, slightly taken off guard by his surprise.

"Cool. Cool. Okay." He takes a step back, bringing his hands back to his side and shoving them in his pajama pants pocket, giving you space to take your exit. "Um. I'll keep you updated on that date then? When I figure it out?" He sheepishly rubs the back of his neck.

"Cool." You say, still standing idly.

"Cool." He responds, pressing his lips together in a tight line

"Don't make it weird, okay?" You huff. "I don't want to tell Fuy yet."

"No weirdness here." He awkwardly smiles, now fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

"Okay we're done here." You teasingly roll your eyes. "You're being weird, so I'm leaving. See you in a few hours, loser."

You two exchanged shy smiles and glances before you made your exit, letting out an audible breath of air after shutting the door behind you. Later that morning, after his shower and getting ready for the day, Touya would find a beaded bracelet hanging on his bedroom's door handle, reading "T O U Y A < 3" in which he slipped over his wrist and would glance down at all day, reminding himself not to fuck it up.

[panlight]

I feel there's just so much wrong with the entire imprinting concept in the Twilight books.

The concept of never being able to say no or essentially make your own decisions because of the girl/whoever you imprinted almost sounds like a romanticized version of domestic abuse. Google describes it as "pattern incidents of controlling, coercive, degrading and violent behavior, etc". Now the threatening wouldn't be necessary because they literally don't have any choice or say in the matter. The entire idea of obsession and doing whatever pleases the person I've imprinted on sounds degrading, that you're now longer you're own person capable of making you're own choices. I find this ironic because SM literally tells us the underlying theme of these books is about choice. None of the wolves have a choice. They didn't choose to be wolves (shape shifters), they don't choose who they imprint on and they definitely don't choose what they get to do after imprinting. Did SM find it all romantic? Because everytime it's mentioned it just gives me the ick. The wolves are my favorite characters in the books and seeing them being forced into all this is so annoyinggg! They deserved SO much better.

Also, it shocks me that after all the success SM gained from tts that she didn't donate a penny to the Quileute tribe. It's super disappointing.

Oh, yeah, with you 100% on imprinting. I've never found it romantic. It reads as straight-up horror to me. Who even ARE you if you don't have free will? If you have to be whatever someone else needs? And beyond that it just feels fake and empty to me. Sam loved Leah. When he had a choice, he chose Leah. Magic overruled him and picked Emily instead. Why am I supposed to think his love for Emily is the 'real' love?

I get that the fantasy is supposed to be from the imprintee's POV, the fantasy of having this guy who is 100000% devoted to you, will never leave you, you never have to worry about cheating, he is there for you and will do whatever you want or need him to do. But that's not . . . that's not like a person who loves you, that's like a robot programmed to fulfill your wishes. For me, there's no real love without choice. This dude isn't choosing to show up for you every day if he has no other choice. It feels fake and arbitrary. Like a love potion, like Cupid's arrow.

And hell yes, the lack of choice with the wolves is a pattern and a really unsettling one given that she chose to make these characters Indigenous and tie their wolf-ness to that identity. They don't get to choose to be wolves, they don't get to choose who they love, within those relationships they have no agency and have to be/do whatever their partner wants, and then there's also the Alpha Order! They can literally be forced to obey, no choice there either. Again, this is straight up horror stuff. Loss of free will, loss of identity. That whole passage when Jacob imprints on Nessie is the stuff of nightmares to me. Everything that Jacob cared about, everything that made him who he was, is cut away and he is bound to a half-vampire baby instead. And now he has to keep phasing forever to stay immortal with her. To paraphrase Rosalie: this isn't the life he would have chosen for himself.

There are ways in which Twilight vampires get a raw deal too (when I'm sick and have a sore throat it's like, the Worst, so dealing with that forever and on a supernatural scale sounds horrific) but they still have CHOICES. Carlisle had the free will and agency to run to the forest and starve himself as a newborn. Rosalie had the will to kill her attackers without drinking their blood. Edward chose to leave Bella for a time when we're told Jacob spending any real time away from Nessie would be impossible because of the imprint. The vampires may have to FIGHT their nature sometimes, but SM lets them win more often than not. Carlisle can be a doctor; the Denali sisters can sleep with humans; Edward can resist Bella's blood; Bella can be the best newborn ever and not kill her dad. But the only time a shifter character is allowed to fight his nature is when Jacob defies Sam to break off and form his own pack, and that's only because of the loophole that Jacob was himself the rightful alpha. No one else has that option. Leah has to choose between allowing Sam or Jake to have alpha power over her.

Which is all why I thought Jacob's whole thing would be fighting an imprint. It would be so in character for him and such a good parallel to the vegetarian vampires fighting their thirst. I wanted to see Jacob say 'no, I don't care what destiny says, I will make my own path.' And you know if SM had had him imprint on literally anyone BUT Nessie or Bella she would have written about him fighting it! It would have been so cool! But no, because ultimately this is Bella's fantasy life, and part of her happily ever after is keeping Jacob around literally forever even though HE wouldn't have chosen an immortal life with the Cullens like Bella did.

[liquidstar]

wait speaking of getting isekia'd via truck, a couple weeks back me and a friend on were talking abt portal fantasy/isekai tropes (mostly bc i was infodumping abt rz again), and it made me think abt a fun concept for an ocverse. tho its possible similar things have been done obvs with just how inflated the genre is, just hear me out OK

story starts in the normal world, with a typical Nerdy Guy going about his daily life, expositing about how he feels bored and longs for adventure and magic, just like in all of his favorite media. as he's crossing the street, distracted by his mobile game, he doesn't notice The Truck(tm) coming straight towards him. except he's not hit by it- he's pushed out of the way in the last second, saved by a passing girl who gets hit in his place. this is who the story is about now.

mc gets sent to that sort of intermediary dimension that some isekai have, where she meets the Goddess Lady or whatever that was in charge of the whole isekai situation. goddess lady proceeds to freak out, because she nabbed the wrong person, and she's going to be in SO MUCH TROUBLE. she starts questioning the mc, only to find out that this kid has a good social life, does well in school, is in sports, and has barely ever played a video game. basically the opposite of the socially introverted, underachieving, repressed, genre-aware guy she was supposed to have reincarnated. for the sake of fulfilling somekinda hero prophesy or whatever. and the mc kinda bargains to be sent to the fantasy world anyway bc, well, its that or death i guess. so the two of them kinda have to team up to course-correct this mix-up.

mc is kinda given a list of tasks to do that basically mirror how a typical story like this Would Go, expected to fall in line with the tropes in order to achieve the ultimate goal, but kinda ends up failing at all of them... or not? failing backwards, maybe. doing it in a way different from how its meant to go- using the wrong formula, but somehow getting the right solution. while sort of continuing to question the insanity of the whole situation, and the nature of this whole fantasy world. just fucking up all the tropes.

but a layer i'd wanna add on top of all that is the fact that the hero prophesy (or whatever) called for a man. so upon arriving to this new world, the mc is basically put into a "gender swapped" body and... doesnt seem to mind. this isnt an uncommon isekai trope either, but i hardly see it tackled with much care to really explore whole Gender Thing beyond gags about the "mismatch" (which can be in poor taste) or the conclusion that "well because their Body is now this gender, their gender identity changes to match" which i feel is a pretty shallow and binary take-away to draw abt bodies and identity.

but i think there can be more to explore w the prospect if you actually wanna get into gender stuff. in this case, i'd particularly wanna get into the idea of imposter syndrome. the main character was not MEANT to be... the main character. seen as a phony fighting tooth and nail to meet expectations, and constantly fumbling. not a real hero, or a real man. but its meant to be an act anyway, so why does that bother her? it was like that back on earth too, trying as hard as possible to be the perfect girl. a good social life, does well in school, is in sports.... but that good girl thing always felt fake too. or desperate. what was she trying to prove? how long as this BEEN bothering her, actually? why does it feel easier to breathe in this body, despite everything? the way this whole act makes her happy is scary, because its fake isn't it? but wait, which part was fake? the before or after? is it all fake? isn't this all just a mistake?

was it really a mistake? who is more heroic; a guy too focused on a mobile game to pay attention to those around him, or the person who risked their life to save a stranger? but the hero prophesy was for a "man," right? what does that even mean?

[tobiasdrake]

Digimon Adventure 01x44 - Jureimon of the Lost Woods / Trash Day

Previously on Digimon Adventure: Pinocchimon kidnapped Takeru wanting to play a twisted game, but then the grown-ups at FOX took his guns away and gave him a firm scolding. While Pinocchimon was busy, Takeru broke all of his other toys and fled the coop.

Before we begin, an interesting note on this episode's title. Today's episode is 迷いの森のジュレイモン Mayoi no Mori no Jureimon.

Mayoi no Mori is a popular recurring element of Japanese media. It translates to the Forest of Uncertainty or Forest of Indecision or some such. It's the idea of this labyrinthine and possibly even supernatural forest that, once you enter, you may never find your way out of. A place where people go missing and are never heard from again.

It shows up in a lot of places in Japanese media, though it often gets translated a bunch of different ways. Legend of Zelda calls it the Lost Woods. The Mario franchise has used names like "Forest of Illusion", "Forever Forest", or "Maze Woods". Final Fantasy has used terms like "Mazewood" or "Phantom Forest". Naruto called it "The Bewildering Forest". The subtitler for this episode called it "Forest of Doubt".

But they're all different attempts at localizing the same persistent concept: Mayoi no Mori. Throughout Japanese media, this idea persists of a thick, unnavigable forest where the souls of those who made the mistake of entering are doomed to forever wander, searching in futility for a way out that will never come.

I suspect it may be related to Aokigahara, Japan's famous Suicide Forest. But I don't know.

...

...so, let's have fun exploring that!

We join the Chosen Children searching for Yamato, who wandered off into the woods at the end of last episode.

Taichi: HEY!!! YAMATO!!! Sora: YAMATO-KUN!!! Gomamon: GABUMON, WHERE ARE YOU!?!? Hikari: Onii-chan, what do you think happened to Yamato-san? Taichi: How should I know!? What's his deal, anyway? Agumon: He might have been kidnapped by Pinocchimon! Koushiro: Judging by his abrupt disappearance, that's a likely conclusion. Jou: ...no. I don't think that's what happened.

The kids briefly bring up the cliffhanger from the dub and then Jou dismisses it. We're not going to spend too much time pursuing that as a possibility because the audience already knows Pinocchimon was moping in his playroom at the time.

The dub's had a week to stew on that as a cliffhanger, however.

Tai: MATT!!! HEY MATT!!! T.K.: MAAAAAATT!!! Sora: MATT, WHERE ARE YOU!?!? Kari: I'm worried. What do you think could have happened to him, Tai? Tai: Matt's a big boy; He can take care of himself! Agumon: Now, wait a minute; What if he was kidnapped by Puppetmon? Izzy: Yeah, he might have been. Or something worse! Jou: No, it wasn't anything like that.

Taichi responds sharply to Hikari's question in both versions, but there's a bit of a disconnect in Tai's response. Taichi is pissy and dismissive about why Yamato disappeared, but makes no indication that we shouldn't be looking for the guy. Tai sounds like he doesn't think we should be searching for Matt at all.

An odd choice given that his is one of the three voices calling for Matt a moment ago.

Jou recaps the kids on what he saw last episode. We see a silent flashback of Yamato's departure, with Jou noticing him.

Taichi: You saw Yamato leave!? Why didn't you stop him!? Jou: Because I thought he was just excusing himself for a moment. I'm sorry. Taichi: Well, forget it. At least now we know he wasn't taken by Pinocchimon. Agumon: But then where did he disappear to? Sora: Now that I think back, didn't Yamato-kun seem to be acting a little strange to you?

Sora conjures up a flashback to Yamato's Digivice and Crest refusing to function.

Piyomon: Gabumon wasn't able to evolve back then. Palmon: Yeah, but even so....

In the dub:

Tai: What, he just walked away!? And you didn't even try to stop him!? Joe: Well, no! Was I supposed to? I mean, I thought he was just going to go use the bushes! Or something. Tai: Huh. This is weird. I mean, it's one thing if he was kidnapped but why would he just disappear on us like this? Agumon: I'll say! He's been gone way too long for just a potty break. Sora: Wait a minute! Is it just me or has Matt been kinda strange lately?

They have Izzy talk over the second flashback to silence-break it.

Izzy: Come to think of it, he has been acting a little high-strung. Biyomon: Remember when Gabumon had that Digivolving problem? Palmon: (gasp) Yeah! I bet there's a connection!

This dialogue deviates a bit from the original, but not in a negative way. It flows really well. I especially like Palmon's organic response to Biyomon here.

Suddenly, Hikari hears something again. As with last episode, we don't hear whatever's caught her attention; Just a shimmering effect in the audio. Whatever it is, Hikari whips around too late. It's gone, if it was ever here to begin with.

Tailmon: What's wrong, Hikari? Hikari: I heard a voice again. Taichi: (runs up) A voice!? Was it Yamato!?

Taichi's quiet for a moment, listening for Yamato but hearing nothing.

Taichi: Were you hearing things?

This is another visual pun, like the one from inside Whamon. Taichi asks "Soramimi ka?" Soramimi is a Japanese expression that means "air in the ears" and is used to describe mishearing something. Upon asking the question, we cut briefly to Sora and Mimi exchanging awkward glances.

Koushiro: He couldn't have gone far. Taichi: You're right. Let's go!

Taichi rallies the group together and they head out to resume their search. Except Hikari, who stays behind briefly, answering the question now that the others aren't around to hear her.

Hikari: ...no, it wasn't Yamato's voice. Tailmon: (concerned) Hikari?

OMINOUS.

In the dub:

Gatomon: Kari, what is it? Kari: I thought I heard a voice out there. Tai: A voice!? Was it Matt!? (beat) Tai: I don't hear anything.... Come on, Kari! Don't you start losing it too! (Sora and Mimi exchange glances) Izzy: He couldn't be very far away, you know. Maybe we should look for him. Tai: Yeah, I suppose. Okay, guys; Let's go. (The group starts walking, except Kari) Kari: Gatomon, it wasn't Matt's voice I heard! Gatomon: Who's was it?

A small tonal difference here at the end; Hikari's basically talking to herself, with Tailmon beside her worrying. Kari addresses Gatomon to explain herself. But the important point still gets across in both versions. Hikari keeps overhearing somebody who is not yet accounted for in the story.

We leave the group here to join Yamato, storming off with Gabumon hot on his trail.

Gabumon: Yamato! What's wrong!? Yamato, listen to me! Yamato: (glower) ... Gabumon: Yamato....

While they're walking, we pan out to see Pinocchimon and Jureimon watching them from across the pond.

Pinocchimon: Hehehe! That guy is so stupid for breaking off from the rest! It's like he wants me to kill him! Jureimon: Of course, sir. Pinocchimon: Since I know he won't play with me anyway, I guess I'll give him what he wants and murder him. Jureimon: Please wait a moment, Pinocchimon-sama. I have an idea, sir. While you're dealing with the rest of the Chosen Children, your loyal servant Jureimon will handle this one! Ho ho ho ho!

Vulgar mouth on Pinocchimon. The show has used a lot of euphemisms to dance around the word korosu, which means to kill or murder or slaughter, since that word's considered vulgar in children's entertainment. Its favorite euphemism is taosu, which means to defeat or demolish.

We heard a lot of taosu last episode, such as discussing whether or not to "destroy" Kiwimon.

But Pinocchimon here drops two separate instances of its compound form koroshitai, combining korosu with shitai meaning "I want to verb". He's pulling no verbal punches; He intends to murder this child.

In the original, Yamato gives Gabumon a total cold shoulder, refusing to answer him entirely. The dub uses the last shot of Gabumon to let Matt talk to him.

Gabumon: Matt, come on! I'm all for exercise but I'm really not built for long distances! Matt! Where are we going? Matt: Just... away. I need some space! (Pan out to Puppetmon and Cherrymon) Puppetmon: Hehehe. Aww, the poor little kid needs a little space. Someplace far away from his nice little friends and closer to ME!!! Cherrymon: I agree completely. Puppetmon: I'm not waiting! I'll put him out of his misery! Those DigiDestined kids really bug me! Cherrymon: Wait a minute, Puppetmon! I have a better idea. You can take care of those other DigiDestined children if you want to but, as for this one, leave him to me! I'll have him climbing up a tree before I'm through with him! Hahaha hahaha HAHAHA!!!

I like Puppetmon's twisted retort to Matt "needing space".

But I'm sad to lose "Since I know he won't play with me...." That line was a nice callback to the previous episode, conveying that Pinocchimon is still salty about what happened with Takeru.

"I'll put him out of his misery" is a solid translation for Puppetmon's second line, since obviously Fox isn't going to let Puppetmon's language be as unapologetically violent as Pinocchimon's. The last bit is just Evil Space Filler, though.

As an aside, Jureimon's vocal performance is a deep and bellowing old man who speaks in a respectful and wizened tone. Cherrymon's going for Marlon Brando's Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather for some reason.

Yamato finds a place to finally rest and talk through why seeing Takeru be self-sufficient bothered him so much.

Yamato: I... I've always thought about Takeru. Takeru is... He can't take care of himself without me. Or, I thought so....

Yamato flashes quickly through various clips of Takeru over the course of the series, since they first noticed the snow falling at camp.

Yamato: Before I knew it, he'd grown up. And me? He doesn't need me anymore. (Flashbacks end) Yamato: It's not just Takeru, either. Taichi, Sora, Mimi, Jou, Koushiro... Everyone's changed so much since we came to the Digimon World. They've gotten stronger. Gabumon: (affirming) Mm. Yamato: But, next to them, look at me. I'm the same person I always was! I haven't changed at all! Gabumon: That's not true! You also-- Yamato: What's wrong with me!? This isn't who I want to be! Gabumon: Yamato.... Yamato: I can't stay like this! I have to change! I HAVE TO GET STRONGER!!! And for that to happen... I can't stay with the others.

This would, of course, probably be why his Crest wouldn't shine earlier. Sympathetic though Yamato's reasons are, he's not exactly expressing the virtue of Friendship here. He's wallowing in self-doubt.

The dub slips its first commercial break between scenes, which is a good place for it. Then we come back to Matt's doubts.

Matt: You ever feel like a third wheel, Gabumon? That's what I feel like. All this time, I thought I had, like, a purpose, y'know? To look after my little brother. (Flashbacks) Matt: I thought T.K. wouldn't be able to survive without me watching over him. Suddenly, it's like he's growing up. He doesn't need me anymore. Oh, and it's not just him. (Flashbacks end) Matt: It's everybody, man. I mean, when I think of Tai and Mimi and Sora and the others, this place has changed them for the better. They're stronger now. It's almost like they Digivolved or something. Gabumon: Hm? Matt: But you see, the problem is, I haven't. I'm still stuck in the same place. I haven't changed a bit. Gabumon: You may not see it, Matt, but you've changed a lot! Matt: Oh please, Gabumon. Give me a break. I'm the same jerk I always was! Gabumon: Hey, come on.... Matt: It'll never happen! Not this way. I've finally got it figured out! If I'm ever going to change, I've got to do it on my own! On my own... The others can't help me.

This is pretty much perfect. It his every last beat of the scene while being flavorful and interesting to listen to. 10/10 no notes.

Jureimon suddenly reveals himself with a hearty laugh.

Jureimon: AH HA HA!!! Yamato: WHO'S THERE!?!?

Jureimon calmly walks out to meet Yamato and properly introduces himself.

Jureimon is a Perfect-stage Virus-type Plant Digimon. He's one of the two Virus Perfects for the Wind Guardians, both of whom are pre-evolved forms for Pinocchimon himself.

His name comes from the Japanese word 樹齢 jurei, which means "the age of a tree". He's the Ancient Tree 'mon. The word jurei, sounded out loud, sounds super close to cherry - Something I don't think was lost on his creators, given that they filled his branches with cherry fruit. He's an ancient tree, but specifically a cherry tree.

Which means the dub's choice of "Cherrymon" fits well into the characters' lip flaps while still being evocative of his design.

Jureimon: My name is Jureimon. Yamato: Jureimon? Narrator: Jureimon. Called the Lord of the Deep Woods, this Perfect-stage Digimon lives deep within the forests. His special attack is Cherry Bomb.

A note about Jureimon's title. He's called 樹海の主 Jukai no Omo. The word of interest here is Jukai, which doesn't mean "forest". Rather, it more directly translates to "Sea of Trees" and refers to an especially dense part of a forest.

It. Um. It's also a term for Aokigahara. Jureimon is the Lord of places like Aokigahara.

...

And now he's talking to Yamato, in the midst of an emotional crisis.

Gabumon: You work for Pinocchimon, don't you!? Jureimon: Now, now, calm down. I didn't come here to fight. I am just looking for someone to talk to. Ah ha ha!

This is going to be bad, isn't it?

In the dub:

Cherrymon: Well, well. Look what we've got here. Greetings, nature lovers. (Cherrymon reveals himself) Cherrymon: What? You mean you've never seen a talking tree? Matt: ...not many. Gabumon: (rundown) Be careful. That's Cherrymon, Lord of the Forest and the best reason for the existence of termites. Gabumon: Stop right there or I'll turn you into toothpicks! Cherrymon: You really shouldn't be that rude. Calm down, my fighting days are over; I only want to talk with you. In fact, you might even say I've turned over a new leaf. Ehehe Haha!

"The best reason for the existence of termites" got me. XD It's the casual, matter-of-fact way he slides that into the rundown. Fantastic delivery.

Gabumon has all of his hackles up right now and he is absolutely right to. We are at war and he does not trust the enemy combatant emerging from the deep woods for a friendly chat.

Meanwhile, the other children continue their search for Yamato. Koushiro's using his Digivice to try and track Yamato's, but getting no results.

Koushiro: The Digivice isn't reacting. It doesn't seem to be functioning properly in these woods. Tailmon: I think we should take a break somewhere and wait for him. Everyone needs some time alone once in a while. Taichi: No, we have to find Yamato quickly. We can't do this unless all eight of us are together! Jou: But we're all tired. We should find a place to sit down and rest our legs. Mimi: (quietly, distressed) So the eight of us could stay together and fight... They all.... Palmon: Mimi.... Sora: Mimi-chan....

Quite a bit going on in this scene. We start with the discovery that the deep woods seem to be blocking the signals from their Digivices so they can't find each other.

Senpai and Team Leader have very different ideas of what we should do from here, with Taichi wanting to push the group to exhaustion out of a sense of urgency for fighting the war.

Taichi invokes what Gennai told them before they returned to Tokyo: They can only fix the distortions if all eight of them are together. That's why we had to get retrieve Hikari, and it's why we can't be splitting the party like this.

But Taichi is still trying to be Drill Sergeant and not considering the valid points that Tailmon and Jou are both making.

(That said, given what Yamato's talking to right now, they probably should hurry up and find him. Taichi's right but not because of the words coming out of his mouth.)

Meanwhile, Mimi remains traumatized from their various friends and Chuumon that gave their lives for the children's sake. The road they've walked to reach this point is paved in pixel dust.

In the dub:

Izzy: Mm, it's no use. I'm getting nothing. For some reason, the Digivices aren't working in this forest. Gatomon: You know, I'm not so sure we should be trying to find him. Everyone needs to be alone sometimes. I should know! Tai: I'm not gonna let him break up this team! We're gonna find him whether he wants us to or not! Joe: We're always walking around searching for someone; I've never done so much walking in my life! Mimi: Yeah, it's disgusting. My calves are starting to look like a bodybuilder's! Palmon: Like a what!? Sora: (dismissive) Oh, Mimi....

...okay, so all of this sucks. Well, Izzy and Gatomon are fine. Good job, you two.

Tai's being even more unreasonable than his Japanese counterpart. He offers no reason for why it's so urgent that we find Matt right now. Just that we're gonna drag his ass back here and that's fucking final!

Then Jou and Mimi both have their lines swapped out for whining about their poor constitutions. This is especially egregious for Mimi because the fact that she's practically catatonic right now from trauma is an important part of her character arc, but the dub has her quipping about her "gross" leg muscles like it's just another day.

Suddenly, a loud voice echoes through the forest.

Pinocchimon: YOO-HOO!!!

Perched at the very top of a nearby tree, Pinocchimon calls down to them, startling the group.

Taichi: (gasp) Pinocchimon! Pinocchimon: Hi, Takeru! It's good to see you again! Takeru: Not for me, it isn't! I'm not playing with you anymore! Patamon: That's right! Pinocchimon: Idiot! Playtime is long over! GET THEM, GARBAMON!!!

Three such creatures slide out of the woods in their trash cans.

Garbamon is a Perfect-stage Virus-type Mutant Digimon. Next to Jureimon, they're the other Virus Perfect from the Wind Guardians, and the other pre-evolution for Pinocchimon. Their name, of course, comes from the word "garbage".

They're based, specifically, on a desktop Recycle Bin for deleting files.

All Garbamon: YES, SIR!!! Narrator: Garbamon. A Digimon based on garbage. Their special attack is Unchi Bazooka, but they're still Perfect all the same.

Another rare attack name to feature a Japanese word in it. Unchi means poop. Yep, we're doing that again.

Which is what that last comment is about; Garbamon is along the same vein as the various junk 'mons we've seen like Scumon or Numemon or Nanimon. But these guys are not the pathetic little bottomfeeder Adults of the original V-Pet lineups. These guys are Perfect-stage Wind Guardians and they will fuck your shit up.

In the dub:

Puppetmon: Yoohoo! Tai: Puppetmon!? Puppetmon: Hi, everybody! Hey T.K., did you miss me? T.K.: No, not at all! And I'm not going to play with you anymore, either! Puppetmon: No!? Well, fine! You're not a lot of fun anyway! Front and center, everybody! Garbagemon 1: (slides out) Yes, sir! Garbagemon 2: (slides out) Yes, sir! Garbagemon 3: (slides out) Yes, sir! Palmon: (rundown) Uh-oh, Garbagemon! They're as tough as they are mean! And they don't smell very good, either....

Palmon's diegetic rundown here is completely different. But it still gets across the idea that despite being gross, they shouldn't be underestimated.

Puppetmon here is more outwardly upset about T.K.'s rejection. I do like that the dub has him clearly still nursing that wound, only launching the ambush after he's freshly rejected again.

Once the rundown's over, the Garbamon take aim.

Garbamon: FIRE THE UNCHI BAZOOKA!!!

The Garbamon unload their first volley of their disgusting projectiles. The kids turn and run into the woods as the Garbamon let off a second volley. But then Palmon notices one person who isn't running.

Palmon: Mimi!

Mimi snaps suddenly, furiously snatching one of the poops out of the air as it sails towards her.

Mimi: WHAT THE HELL EVEN IS THIS!?!? ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

She is so done with being the target of long-range poop assaults. She throws it straight back at the Garbamon.

Mimi is not very athletic, so her toss doesn't hit anything. It lands on the ground about halfway between her and the enemy, then flops to a stop in front of the center Garbamon. Still, her outburst takes everyone by surprise. The Garbamon stare slack-jawed at her, ceasing their assault.

A brief shot of Pinocchimon going O_O shows that he, too, is stunned speechless.

Sora swings back, grabbing Mimi by the arm and snapping her out of her temporary insanity. The second Sora grabs her, Mimi's ferocity collapses and she just looks freaked out and terrified again.

Sora: Mimi-chan, hurry! Mimi: Uh-huh!

A powerful moment for Mimi but not one that accomplished much.

In the dub:

Garbagemon: Junk Chuckers ready, aim, FIRE!!! Joe: RUN!!! (The kids flee from the non-specific junk) Palmon: Mimi! Mimi: (catch) I WON'T BUDGE!!! Let's let them do the running for a change! (throw) Garbagemon: :O ... Pinocchimon: O_O ... Sora: Mimi, come on! (grab) Mimi: Yeah, good idea! I must be nuts; I touched that stuff!

Mimi's ferocity comes on the heels of being repeatedly targeted by poop-throwing Digimon. It's the culmination of her individual experiences with Scumon and various Numemon.

Dub Mimi's snapping fury is recontextualized to be general outrage over all the running from enemies they've had to do. This probably goes hand-in-hand with the dub's persistent efforts to not directly admit that the projectile in question is, and has always been, poop.

Though calling it "junk" is getting pretty close to coming clean.

I do, however, love the addition of "I must be nuts; I touched that stuff!" at the end. That's a great line for her to deliver after snapping out of it.

From here, we return to Yamato to hear his answer to Jureimon.

Yamato: Sorry, but I don't feel like chatting with you. Let's go.

Yamato and Gabumon start walking towards the tree line. Jureimon extends his hand, growing it to a large size to cut off Yamato's departure.

Yamato: Get out of the way! Jureimon: Now now, I told you to wait. You don't need to be so hostile. Oh ho ho ho! "What's wrong with me!?" "This isn't who I want to be!" Yamato: (gasp) Jureimon: It's important to step back from time to time and think about who we've become, to better understand ourselves. Yamato: You were listening in? Jureimon: Ho ho ho ho! I didn't need to listen in. Nothing happens in this forest that I don't know about. Yamato: Then tell me! What should I do now? Jureimon: You're asking me what to do? Children these days, always wanting their answers handed to them. They never try to think for themselves. That's the problem right there, if you ask me.

Okay, boomer.

In the dub:

Matt: No offense, but even if I felt like talking, it wouldn't be to a tree. See you around. (Cherrymon blocks Matt's departure) Matt: Hey, what's the idea!? Cherrymon: Young man, didn't anyone ever tell you you should listen to your elders? Or was it redwoods you should listen to? I can never quite get those two straight. But anyway, I digress. So, you're still stuck in the same place. Still the same old jerk you always were. Matt: (gasp) Cherrymon: Surprised, huh? Ah, I know all about it! Must be tough being in such a rut! Matt: You've been spying on me, huh!? Cherrymon: Hahahahaha! Listen to me, kid. I don't need to spy because there's nothing that happens in this forest that I don't know about. Matt: (skeptical) Huh. Alright then, if you're so smart, what am I supposed to do!? Tell me that! Cherrymon: Ah, simple as that, eh? Kids. You want all the answers just handed to you on a mahogany platter but you never want to do the hard work of looking deep within yourself, where all the answers truly lie!

Pretty solid, with some tree jokes thrown in for shits and giggles.

Seeing that this isn't going anywhere good, Gabumon tries to intervene.

Gabumon: Yamato! You don't have to listen to this guy! Let's go! Jureimon: Are you sure about that? If you want to get stronger, you'll have to improve yourself. Yamato: Improve myself? Jureimon: That's right. But it's easier said than done. You will need to have the determination to carry it out. Yamato: Determination? I have that. Tell me, how am I supposed to do it? Jureimon: (thinking) Ha! He's taken the bait....

Jureimon playing Yamato for an absolute sucker.

In the dub:

Gabumon: Let's go. Don't you listen to that talking firewood, Matt! Come on! Cherrymon: That's right, go on! But you'll never learn how to change. You'll always be what you are right now. Matt: (weakly) I want to change! Cherrymon: Yes, of course, but are you really ready? After all, change isn't always a pleasant thing. You might find out a few things that you wish you hadn't. Matt: I'm ready. More than ready. Enough talking, big guy! If you've got some answers, let's see 'em! Cherrymon: (thinking) Haha! He fell for it like an overripe fig.

A small change: Jureimon baits his hook by questioning Yamato's resolve while Cherrymon questions Matt's commitment to change.

Finally, Jureimon reveals exactly what Yamato must do to better himself.

Jureimon: YOU MUST DEFEAT YOUR RIVAL!!! Yamato: Rival? Jureimon: (points) Go take a look at yourself in that lake. There, you will see the rival you must defeat. Yamato: I must defeat... my rival.... Gabumon: Yamato....

Yamato approaches the lake, peering into its waters.

Gabumon: Ah! Yamato: Th... That's...!

Slowly but surely the image of Taichi emerges.

(Honestly, who else was it gonna be? Mimi? Hell no. Yamato'd best not come slinging this shit at her 'cause she's got a mean answer to that now.)

The dub's delivery of Cherrymon's pronouncement is incredibly undercooked. Jureimon screams it as a dramatic, climactic revelation. The apex of what this conversation has been building to. Cherrymon lays it out all casual.

Cherrymon: Alright, kid, I'll help you out. First off, you're gonna have to defeat your rival. Matt: My rival? Cherrymon: (points) There. In that lake, you will see the face of the one who is preventing you from becoming as strong as you could be. Gabumon: Where are you going? Matt: I know it sounds pretty bogus but... Might as well look. Gabumon: Listen, Matt. You don't really believe him, do you? (Tai's image begins to emerge) Gabumon: Ahhh! Matt: TAI!?!? COME ON!!! WHAT KIND OF TRICK IS THIS!?!?

Matt absolutely refuses to sell the idea that he's buying what Cherrymon's selling at all. He's basically rolling his eyes while being dragged around by Yamato's decision-making. The original keeps what's going through Yamato's head here ambiguous. He's considering Jureimon's words but doesn't appear to have committed one way or the other.

From here, we go to commercial and come back to the Garbamon chase.

Garbamon: Don't think you can escape! Take this!

The Garbamon form up, back-to-back, and rotate in circles firing their Unshi Bazookas into the woods. in all directions. This achieves nothing, and instead Adult evolutions of all the Partner 'mons emerge. Everyone but Angemon, Tailmon, and Garurumon, that is.

The Partner Digimon converge their attacks on the Garbamon, creating a huge explosion. This seems effective until the smoke clears and reveals no trace of their targets.

Taichi: Great work! (Smoke clears; Nothing there) Pinocchimon: Hahahahaha! Did you think those puny attacks would be enough to defeat them!?

(This is a Dragon Ball moment; Their absence proves they got away before the blasts hit. But Digimon disintegrate upon death so there'd be no trace of them either way; This doesn't really work.)

In the dub, the lead Garbagemon gets philosophical.

Garbagemon: Ha! Don't you know that wherever you go, there will always be garbage? Okay, ready guys? MAKE A MESS!!! (The Garbagemon spin and fire into the trees. The Partners emerge and blast them.) Tai: WAY TO GO!!! Joe: That trash is thrashed! Puppetmon: Hehehehehe.... (Smoke clears; Nothing there) Puppetmon: Great, you've totally ruined my garbage fun! I'm beaten! I'm going home! PSYCHE!!!

Oh my god. Remember "PSYCHE!!!"? The 90's/early 00's!

"That trash is thrashed". Nice wordplay, extra Joe line.

With the team's failure revealed, the assault begins anew.

Pinocchimon: Look behind you!

A Garbamon rushes towards the Children from... Wherever they got off to, taking aim with his poopzuka.

Mimi: No.... Garbamon: GOT YOU NOW!!! Mimi: NOOOOOOOO!!!

Mimi lets out a bloodcurdling scream, activating her Crest and Super-Evolving Togemon into Lilimon. Bursting into existence, Lilimon tackles Mimi and pushes them both out of the way of Garbamon's shot.

In the dub:

Puppetmon: Look behind you! Garbagemon: WRAHHH!!! Mimi: It's trash! Look out! Garbagemon: (takes aim) Here's mud in your eye!

The dub takes its second commercial break here instead of where the original put it. Fair; The original's commercial did come surprisingly early.

Then we return, replaying the shots from Mimi and Garbagemon's previous two lines.

Mimi: Oh no! Help! Garbagemon: JUNK CHUCKER!!! Mimi: NIGHTMAAAAAAAAAARE!!!

On the hand, screaming NOOOOOOOO is incredibly overwrought and cliche. On the other hand, screaming NIGHTMAAAAAAAAARE is just silly.

I think they were stuck on that one because of the lip flaps. The word for no is ie, pronounced "eee-yay". It's two syllables, with Mimi's lips moving between them. It's hard to get two syllables out of NOOOOOOOO.

Once Mimi's safe, Lilimon soars into the fight.

Lilimon flies straight for Garbamon, but a second Garbamon suddenly emerges from behind them.

Garbamon 2: You fell for it! Lilimon: Wait, what!?

The pair of Garbamon open fire at once. Lilimon deftly maneuvers between their shots, but then the third Garbamon pops up behind them.

Garbamon 3: NOT DONE YET!!!

Lilimon's line here made me a little sad, because she says "Uso!" which means "Lie". It's an expression of disbelief; In this case, she fell for their trick completely and is conveying her surprise and confusion.

But for a moment, I thought she said "Kuso!" which is a Japanese curse word and literally means "SHIT!!!" Which would have been very apt in this situation. Alas.

In the dub, the Garbagemon remain poetic.

Garbagemon 2: TWICE IS NICE!!! Lillymon: Ah!? (The Garbagemon shoot; Lillymon dodges) Garbagemon 3: TRASH THAT PETUNIA!!!

Well punned.

Unfortunately for the Garbamon, Lilimon finds her footing and goes back on the offensive.

Stepping on the face of the Garbamon in front of her, Lilimon bounds up into the air to meet the third.

Garbamon 1: Do I look like a stepstool!? Lilimon: FLOWER CANNON!!!

Lilimon shoots Garbamon 3 point-blank, vaporizing them into pixel dust.

In the dub:

Garbagemon 1: That chick is heavier than she looks.... Lillymon: FLOWER CANNON!!!

Something about the replacement gag is getting my hackles up but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Inspired by Lilimon's counterattack, Taichi steps up.

Taichi: Yes! Now!

In the dub:

Tai: Alright! Finish them off!

Greymon Super-Evolves into MetalGreymon and fires off his Giga Destroyer. One of the two remaining Garbamon is still stunned from getting stepped on, but the other counterattacks with Unchi Bazooka.

The poop ricochet's harmlessly off the Giga Destroyer missile, doing nothing to impede its path.

Both Garbamon go up in a massive explosion that blows Pinocchimon off his treetop perch. While Pinocchimon hangs on for dear life, the errant final poop lands squarely on his forehead, provoking a furious and agonized shriek.

From here, we return to Yamato and Jureimon.

Yamato: Taichi is... my rival...?

Suddenly, Yamato stands up and starts laughing.

Yamato: Sorry to disappoint, but I've never felt that way about him. Not even once! Jureimon: Ha ha ha! That lake reflects whatever lies in the heart of the person who looks into it. Yamato: What!?

Of course, we know Yamato's not being honest with himself here. We've seen the friction between the two boys throughout the series, especially where Takeru was concerned. He may never have contextualized Taichi as a "rival" but he and Taichi have been locking horns since File Island.

You can tell how little Yamato believes in his own claim by how quickly he abandons it. Yamato says "LOL nice trap", Jureimon says "It's not a trap", and Yamato replies "WAIT WHAT!?!?" and resumes falling for it.

Yamato looks into the lake again. Then, after a moment, he pulls his gaze away once more.

Yamato: (struggling) I refuse to fall for this.... Jureimon: Do not avert your eyes! Properly face yourself!

At Jureimon's urging, Yamato gives in and looks down into the lake again.

In the dub, Cherrymon calls in from offscreen like a game show host while Matt's confronting the ugly revelation of the lake, which sounds absolutely hilarious in his Godfather Voice.

Cherrymon: Behold! The face of your rival! Matt: (hesitantly) ...so you're saying I have to fight Tai, is that it? (Matt stands up and starts laughing) Matt: Ahahahaha! Nice try, foliage-face, you had me going there. But you'll have to do better than that. Cherrymon: Hahahaha! I had nothing to do with it! The Lake of Truth reflects only what is in a person's heart; Hence the name. Matt: (shocked) You've gotta be kidding! Cherrymon: Sorry, kid; It's never wrong. (Matt looks again, then averts his eyes) Matt: That right? Well, I've got news for you. It's off this time! Way off! Cherrymon: Well, you can argue with me all you want but you're really only arguing with yourself.

Remarkably different approaches from Jureimon and Cherrymon. You can really feel Yamato's youth in the original; The way he responds to the booming voice of an elder authoritatively telling him what to do on a complicated issue he lacks confidence in himself to know how to resolve.

Jureimon has managed to manufacture an atmosphere where he can speak to Yamato as if he were a domineering parent commanding his child. Yamato's insecurity and uncertainty has created a vulnerability for an older predator to exploit, by speaking in a confident and certain tone.

Cherrymon takes the opposite approach, appealing to Matt as more of an equal. He pushes the issue but he's gentle and even sympathetic, going so far as to apologize to Matt for what he saw in the lake.

Cherrymon weasels himself into Matt's grievances with Tai as if he were just a passing bystander and not, you know, the guy who told Matt to look in the lake to begin with. He's metaphorically kneeling down on Matt's level. Hey man, it really sucks about that thing that's definitely just a fact of life and has nothing to do with what I said or did.

Yamato bends. He returns his attention to the lake, while Jureimon keeps pressing him.

Jureimon: I understand. Though you are both Chosen Children, everything you and that boy Taichi stand for are complete opposites of each other.

As a subtle psychological cue, Jureimon says Taichi's name with a scoff, as if the word itself tastes rotten and hollow in the mouth. He's monotonous and matter-of-fact except when he spits out Taichi's name as a curse.

Flashback montage of Yamato and Taichi's clashes through the series. We start with their fistfight on File Island, when Taichi wanted to abandon the rest of the group to go see what's beyond the ocean. Then Yamato snapping at Taichi at Digitamamon's diner. Then wrap up with their bitter argument over the graves Mimi built.

(Yamato was in the right in 2/3 of those.)

Jureimon: Whenever Taichi says or does anything, you can't help but react to it. That's how strong Taichi's presence in your heart has become. Until you overcome those feelings, you will never grow beyond where you are now. You must fight Taichi. Only when you free yourself from the hesitation in your heart will you be reborn!

What makes this interesting is that Jureimon isn't necessarily saying that Taichi is holding Yamato back. But rather that Yamato's feelings for Taichi are holding him back, and that those feelings can only truly be settled when he finally lets them out and has it out with Taichi. He must face the truth within himself before he can evolve.

Yamato feels like he's trapped in his cocoon and unable to hatch. Jureimon tells him that he's unwilling to hatch because the direction he must hatch in goes through Taichi.

Jureimon is telling Yamato that he needs to destroy the shadow of Taichi's influence over his mind before he'll be able to grow as an individual.

In the dub, Cherrymon... (sigh) ...makes this about who gets to be the show's main character.

Cherrymon: It's about time you face the truth. The one you call Tai is your leader; Everything he says, you do. Everywhere he goes, you follow. And yet, in your heart, you resent him because you know you're just as qualified to be the boss as he is!

The dub cuts the File Island flashback before Tai and Matt can start throwing punches, like they did in that episode itself.

(Digitamamon flashback) Tai: STOP IT!!! Matt: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, HUH!? (Mimi's graves flashback) Matt: WHO DIED AND LEFT YOU IN CHARGE OF THE WORLD!?!? Tai: Huh? What do you mean? Matt: I'VE JUST ABOUT HAD IT!!! (Flashbacks end) Cherrymon: Do not be ashamed of your resentment. Do not hide it. Embrace it, for in your anger lies your strength! Only when you recognize that will you at last be free to grow. To change. So face your rival! And prove you are his equal! Or better! By defeating him!

Cherrymon gives Matt a full-blown Emperor Palpatine Dark Side speech. You hate Tai because you deserve to be the team leader, not him, so let your anger grow and strike him down. Thanks, I hate it.

Fortunately, Gabumon is still not buying into any of this, and is ready to be the voice of reason.

Gabumon: That's a lie! It makes no sense at all! Taichi is your nakama. Don't be fooled, Yamato! This is a trap!

As a reminder, nakama is a group of people brought together for a particular activity or goal who form tight-knit social bonds with each other through their mutual pursuit of it. Like a military squad or a sports team.

Taichi himself started using the term to refer to the Chosen Children when he was getting the band back together in the PicoDevimon sub-arc. The term nakama was a big deal for Yamato and was part of what they fought about in the Digitamamon episode; Yamato internalizing and accepting Taichi and Jou as his nakama was what made his Crest of Friendship shine.

So Gabumon's tactical use of the word here is significant. The concept of nakama means a lot to Taichi and Yamato's relationship.

Yamato snaps suddenly as if breaking out of a daze.

Yamato: T-That's right! We're nakama....

Yamato turns on Jureimon furiously.

Yamato: A NAKAMA DOESN'T FIGHT EACH OTHER!!! Jureimon: Heh! Nakama, you say? You don't even believe that a thing like that exists. You can lie to the others, but you can't lie to yourself! Yamato: (suddenly quiet) ... Jureimon: Ha ha ha ha! A perfect picture of yourself, isn't it? Gabumon: YAMATO!!! Jureimon: Nakama. Tomodachi. Yuujou. Pleasant words, but they're all illusions. Nothing but a fleeting emotion. You can't let yourself be exploited by ephemeral things like that! Am I wrong, Yamato-kun?

Jureimon's list here is basically untranslatable because he says the same word twice. Nakama is commonly translated as "friendship" even though it has a much more precise meaning, as mentioned above. Tomodachi actually does mean friendship. And then Yuujou is also friendship, but more formally.

Yuujou, incidentally, is the specific word for Yamato's Crest. Yuujou no Monshou, Crest of Friendship. Jureimon picks that one for last because it has the most meaningful punch.

So trying to translate this list literally would be "Activity group with tight-knit bonds. Friendship. Friendship in a suit and tie. Convenient words, but they're all illusions."

A pragmatic translation would probably be something like, "Colleagues. Buddies. Friends." Switching the focus from the feeling to the objects of said feelings, while still ending on friendship for that punch.

The dub, again, is going to have to make this work without being able to lean on nakama. Though in this context, it'd be easy to just use the conventional "friends" translation. A bit of meaning would be lost, but that's pretty much doomed to happen since we couldn't use nakama in the Digitamamon episode either.

Gabumon: Don't listen! He's just trying to cause trouble! He's playing games with your mind. It's all part of some kind of trap! Tai is your friend, Matt. (Matt snaps out of it) Matt: He's my friend, yeah. He may not always act like it, but.... (Matt whirls furiously on Cherrymon) Matt: He's right! Tai is my friend. You don't fight your friends. Cherrymon: Friends? Ha! Now that's a good one. You don't even believe that such a thing really exists. Matt: Huh!? Cherrymon: Not in your heart of hearts, anyway. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hit the nail on the head, didn't I? Gabumon: What's he mean? Cherrymon: Friendship. Loyalty. Comrades. Fine-sounding words, but that's all they are. Words. Delusions. And you're wise enough to see that now. You know that, ultimately, the only person you can depend on is yourself. Isn't that right, Matt?

Cherrymon starts with the meaningful punch and then lists out the other words from there, rather than building up to it. Odd choice.

He handles the friendship redundancy by translating the other friendship and nakama as "loyalty" and "comrades".

Yamato hesitates to answer Jureimon's accusations.

Gabumon: Is that true, Yamato? Yamato: I... I don't know. Gabumon: Yamato.... Jureimon: Listen, I will say this once more. If you want to improve yourself, you must fight Taichi. Unless you have the determination to do that, you'll never be able to change. Unless you face this trial, you will never become the person you want to be!

Now that Jureimon has vanquished Yamato's objection to his words, he doubles down and reiterates his line of attack. Pressing the issue again onto the now more vulnerable Yamato.

As Jureimon makes his pronouncement, the wind kicks up, picking off leaves from his branches that blow over Yamato. Symbolizing him becoming lost in the mayoi no mori that Jureimon embodies.

Yamato: I don't know what to....

Yamato falls to his knees, helpless.

Yamato: (voice breaking) Damn it.... What am I supposed to do!?

In the dub:

Gabumon: He's wrong, isn't he? Matt: (voice breaking) I don't know.... I... I don't know.... Gabumon: You don't!? Cherrymon: Alright, then! That's enough moping around for now. Look, kid, stop staring at your shoes; The choice in front of you is simple! If you truly want to change, to reach your full potential, you must defeat Tai. It's either that or be content to live your life following in the shadow of him forever. (Leaves blow from Cherrymon over Matt) Matt: What a choice.... (Matt falls to his knees) Matt: What do I do? Oh, what do I do!?

Cherrymon comes closer to the original topic this time around. But he still ropes in the dub's idea that Matt's just pissy he doesn't get to be team leader.

Also, Matt doesn't curse when he falls to his knees in the dub because of course he doesn't.

Yamato, here at the height of despair, pulls out his Crest.

Yamato: The Crest of Friendship. Why does someone like me have the Crest of Friendship!? Gabumon: Yamato! I understand, Yamato.... You should do what you think is right.

Yamato jerks up suddenly, having caught the tone of this conversation.

Yamato: (vulnerable) Gabumon...? Gabumon: Charging boldly ahead like Taichi does can't always be the right answer. There are some things that only you can do, Yamato. Yamato: Things that only I can do? Gabumon: Let's look for those things together. And if you do need it so badly... Then I will fight for you, Yamato! Yamato: (shocked) Gabumon...? Gabumon: Even if it means making an enemy out of the others, I will always be with you, Yamato! Yamato: (crying) Gabumon....

Gabumon's proclamation is so affecting, Yamato's Crest reactivates once more.

Gabumon doesn't agree with Jureimon. He hasn't agreed with anything Jureimon's said. He's still convinced that this is the wrong answer, and tells Yamato as much.

(And he's right. Gabumon is right. Yamato was right in two out of three of those clashes with Taichi! And others, like the time Taichi got weirdly misogynistic about Sora's parental issues.

Taichi struggles to empathize with other people. This is a consistent flaw of his, and frequently the spark that sets Yamato off because that is something Yamato does far better than Taichi. Jureimon has poisoned his mind into individualist ways of thinking when Yamato's greatest strengths come from what he brings to the collective good. That's why he has the Crest of Friendship.)

But out of love for his Partner, Gabumon is willing to walk down the wrong path hand in hand with Yamato.

In the dub, the Crest continues beeping and making malfunctioning noises when Matt takes it out even though it... It has no mechanical parts. It's a lanyard with a magic rock inside of it.

Matt: Oh, that's a laugh. Wouldn't you know it that my Crest had to be the Crest of Friendship! Gabumon: Matt... There's one thing he's right about. Whatever you're going to do, do it! Matt: But do what? Gabumon: You've got to hear what your own conscience is telling you and not listen to anyone else! Not Tai or Cherrymon or me! You've got to have faith in yourself, Matt! Matt: What if I make the wrong decision? Gabumon: I know that whatever it is, it will be the right one. Because I have faith in you. And whichever path you take, I'll be there with you. Matt: You mean that? Gabumon: You do have a friend. Never forget that. I'll always be there, Matt, no matter what. Matt: (crying) Gabumon....

This. Is entirely wrong. Dub Gabumon washes his hands of the entire (much shittier) moral conundrum on Matt's hands, telling him "I'll back whatever you decide and that's that." He makes no attempt to engage with the conflict resting on Matt's heart in a scene where he's supposed to be the voice of reason.

This is a bittersweet scene where Gabumon's devotion to Yamato is contrasted by him literally saying, "Yes, I will go fight our friends for you if that's what it takes." But he still makes clear that he disagrees with this course of action, and offers Yamato guidance about a better solution to Taichi's influence over his heart.

In the dub, Gabumon ironically agrees with Cherrymon. Original Gabumon says, "Bold and decisive action isn't always the right answer," and dub Gabumon is like, "You must make a decisive choice right now!"

Original Gabumon offers guidance, and Dub Gabumon says "You must figure your shit out yourself and accept no guidance from anyone, not even me."

Americans suck at recognizing when individualism is bad.

Then the dub kicks up the opening credits Digimon theme song as he evolves, like this is a triumphant moment... Before we head off to go betray our nakama and beat the shit out of Tai.

Speaking of which, Gabumon Warp-Evolves into MetalGarurumon.

MetalGarurumon: Let's go, Yamato! Yamato: Yeah.

MetalGarurumon and heads off with Yamato. As he does, both Jureimon and MetalGarurumon reflect on what went down here.

Jureimon: Ha ha ha! That went perfectly. Jureimon: (thinking) Still, I'm surprised by the strength of their bond. Pinocchimon doesn't have a heart like theirs, so he may still be defeated if he isn't careful. MetalGarurumon: (thinking) Yamato... I know how you really feel. You truly want to believe.... In nakama. In tomodachi. In yuujou.

MetalGarurumon quotes Jureimon's list from earlier, noting that even though Yamato doesn't think he cares so much, he does.

MetalGarurumon lost the battle because he misunderstood the turmoil that was raging in Yamato's heart. But he intends to win the war, because he understands Yamato's truth better than anyone.

In the dub:

MetalGarurumon: Ready. Lead the way. Matt: Right. (The pair head off) Cherrymon: Hahahaha! Yeah, I think that went rather well. Cherrymon: (thinking) Still, I'm surprised by the strength of the bond between them. It took every trick I had to undermine it. If Puppetmon isn't careful, this game could still be lost. MetalGarurumon: I meant what I said, Matt. Cherrymon was wrong! Friendship. Loyalty. They're more than just words, they're real! And they matter. I'm going to prove it to you!

It's... honestly not clear if MetalGarurumon is thinking or saying those words out loud. His lip flaps aren't moving because the original MetalGarurumon is thinking, not speaking. But his tone is conversational, rather than introspective.

In any case, MetalGarurumon makes his intent more clear here.

Both of these carry on from where the previous scenes left them. Original MetalGarurumon is determined to work through this together with Yamato and believes Yamato already has the right ideas in his heart.

Dub MetalGarurumon thinks Yamato well and truly does not believe in friendship, but wants to show him a positive example of friendship in order to sway the decision he makes for himself.

Both of which they intend to do by fighting Taichi/Tai because that's what Yamato/Matt mistakenly thinks he needs right now.

His work complete, Jureimon reports to Pinocchimon, finding him washing his face at a nearby creek.

Pinocchimon: Shit! How dare they throw poop at me!? They'll all pay! Jureimon: Pinocchimon-sama, my plan has worked out perfectly. Pinocchimon: What was your plan? Jureimon: The two Ultimate stages, WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon, are going to fight each other. Pinocchimon: Eh!? That sounds fun! Jureimon: If those two fight seriously, neither of them will come out unharmed. No, at best, they might even kill each other. Once the strongest are out of the way, you'll only have to pick off the weaklings. Pinocchimon: Great! I should hurry up and check that out! I don't want to miss such a Super Battle!

"Super Battle" is said in English, for a similar effect as snarking (TM) onto the end of a phrase.

In the dub, Puppetmon seems to be threatening the Garbagemon.

Puppetmon: Yech! Splattering me with their gunk. Those bucket-brains will pay for this! Cherrymon: There you are. The plan went perfectly, just as I thought. Puppetmon: Plan? What plan? Cherrymon: You should have seen it! I played that trusting sap like a violin. He's gonna do our dirty work for us, Puppetmon. Puppetmon: Well, sounds like a plan. Cherrymon: Any second now, we'll hear the sounds of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon locked in mortal combat. Puppetmon: You're serious!? Cherrymon: Oh, yeah. With any luck they'll destroy each other. With the two strongest Digimon out of the way, the rest will fall like rotten fruit. Puppetmon: Mortal combat!? This I gotta see! Let's go! What are we waiting for!?

That threatening remark might be meant for the kids but "bucket brains" sounds like a jab at the trash cans that the Garbagemon were in.

Were they shouting out the Mortal Kombat series?

I love Cherrymon's enthusiasm here. He runs up like a happy kid shouting "Look what I did! Look what I did!" The dub handles this scene pretty much perfectly.

Pinocchimon turns to go see the fireworks, but Jureimon has a warning for him.

Jureimon: Please be careful around the Chosen Children! If you don't take this seriously, even you could be defeated by them. Pinocchimon: (stops, suddenly serious) I... might be defeated...? Jureimon: They have something that you lack, Pinocchimon-sama. Pinocchimon: (quietly) I lack something? You're saying that I lack something? Jureimon: Yes, it's-- Pinocchimon: THERE IS NOTHING THAT I LACK!!! BULLET HAMMER!!! Jureimon: WAAAAAAUGH!!!

Furious at Jureimon's insinuation, Pinocchimon erases him with his Bullet Hammer. Jureimon lets out an agonized scream and disintegrates into pixel dust - taking his critical insight to the digital grave with him.

(Which Mimi will not be making.)

Pinocchimon: Hmph. I don't care who it is; no one gets away with making fun of me.

Pinocchimon's childishness has become his undoing. He misunderstood what Jureimon was trying to say, interpreted it as mean-spirited mockery, and retaliated with ultimate force before Jureimon could even get a word out to explain. Pinocchimon killed Jureimon in the midst of a temper tantrum.

In the dub:

Cherrymon: Wait a minute! We gotta be careful! The DigiDestined are strong! Stronger than I expected, and to underestimate them could be disastrous! Puppetmon: What!? Are you saying... I might lose? Cherrymon: I'm only saying that I think you should take them seriously. There's something about them. Puppetmon: Something? Hmm... You mean like something I might be missing!? Cherrymon: (backpedaling) Well, not totally.... Puppetmon: I have everything I need to take care of you! PUPPET PUMMEL!!! Cherrymon: OH THE HORROR!!! (Cherrymon disintegrates into pixel dust) Puppetmon: Huh. Man, that kind of negative attitude really brings me down!

You know, from my perspective going over both languages, there's something hilarious about the way Puppetmon keeps trying to rerail the conversation back to the original script but Cherrymon refuses to actually say the things he's supposed to be saying here. XD

Jureimon was trying to warn Pinocchimon not to underestimate their feelings for each other. Pinocchimon doesn't have a heart and can't truly comprehend the strength of the bonds they share - bonds which may be a threat to the entire "Pit them against each other" plan. If he doesn't play this carefully, Yamato may yet turn back against him.

That context didn't make it into the dub, so Cherrymon's forced to say the kids themselves are super strong; Maybe stronger than Puppetmon.

Similarly, Puppetmon's final line doesn't quite convey the childishness of the original. This is overall a weaker scene.

Meanwhile, against all reason, one of the Garbamon actually survived that Giga Destroyer.

It's the one that Lilimon stepped on. Bootprint still on their face, they pop out of their trash can.

Garbamon: Alright, fine. I give up. JUST KIDDING!!!

Garbamon picks up their trash can; A powerful vacuum begins pulling everything into it.

Garbamon: YEAH HAHAHA!!! There's a Black Hole in here! I'll suck all of you into it!

Most of the kids cling to tree to avoid being dragged in. Hikari and Taichi hide behind MetalGreymon's leg; He's dug his claws into the earth to stabilize himself.

Taichi: Damn it. They still had a trick like this up their sleeve.... Hikari: (loses her grip) ONII-CHAN!!! Tailmon: HIKARI!!! Taichi: HIKARI!!!

Hikari and Tailmon both go flying, though Tailmon appears to have jumped and can be briefly seen swimming through the suction to reach Hikari. I don't know what she's planning but she intends to try something.

We'll never find out how Tailmon intended to rescue Hikari, because Garbamon is suddenly killed by a surprise Cocytus Breath from behind. The black hole trash can freezes and shatters right alongside them.

In the dub:

Garbagemon: Okay, okay! I know when I'm beat! You win! I surrender! ...JUST KIDDING!!! HYA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (Garbagemon starts sucking everything into the trash can) Garbagemon: Trash Day; Everybody in the can! If you're lucky, you'll get recycled! Taichi: This nasty little creep's really starting to get on my nerves! Kari: (loses her grip) TAI, HELP ME!!! Gatomon: KARI!!! Tai: KARI NO!!!

Garbagemon doesn't mention the black hole inside the trash can, so it's not super clear what happens to things dragged into it. But it's still clear that getting dragged in would be bad, which is the important thing.

With the last Garbamon dead and MetalGarurumon revealed, things begin to escalate right away.

Tailmon: MetalGarurumon!

Yamato steps out from the woods; Everyone's ecstatic to see him. Taichi has the biggest smile on his face to be reunited with their lost nakama member.

Sora: Yamato! Taichi: (running over, ecstatic) YAMATO!!! Where have you been this whole time!?

MetalGreymon degrades back down to Agumon and sprints across the field, smiling as well.

Agumon: Thank you! That was really close, so thanks!

MetalGarurumon says nothing, but fires a warning shot. Blue lasers shoot from his eyes, exploding next to Agumon and startling him. The children all gasp in shock at the unprovoked attack.

In the dub:

Gatomon: It's MetalGarurumon! (Matt emerges) Joe: Matt!

The dub puts a commercial break here. We return right where we left off, with Joe's extra line basically filling in as the respective ends of the commercial. Joe popped in to shill products before we resume the scene. :P

"Matt, you're back! Have you heard about ice-cold Pepsi Zero?"

Joe: Matt! Sora: Matt, you're back! Tai: (running over, ecstatic) BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!!! Where you been, buddy!? (MetalGreymon powers down to Agumon) Agumon: Thanks for saving our necks but did you have to cut it that close?

Agumon is ungrateful and deserves to be shot with lasers.

Now that the stage has been set, MetalGarurumon faces off with Agumon.

Agumon: W-Why!? MetalGarurumon: Agumon, I challenge you! Evolve to Ultimate! Agumon: The hell!? Why do I have to fight you!?

MetalGarurumon answers his question with another warning shot, firing off two missiles that detonate to either side of Agumon.

Following the reaction shot when MetalGarurumon first shoots at Agumon, Taichi whips back around to face Yamato but says nothing. It honestly feels like he should say something here if we're going to the trouble of animating him turning back around and facing Yamato, so the dub puts one in.

Tai: What's he doing!? Agumon: Hey, what is this!? MetalGarurumon: What do you think!? It's a challenge! You might want to Digivolve, and fast! Agumon: What have you been eating out there in the forest!? You want to fight me!?

MetalGarurumon's more aggressive here than his Japanese counterpart. Original MG is laying this down as a formal challenge, using the stock shonen phrase shoubu da, which basically means "Compete with me!" Often times in shonen that competition is fighting, including this one, though it doesn't necessarily have to be. The point is simply to face one another in a contest that will decide a victor.

Dub MG is saying the same thing, but pushes it harder with more threatening language.

I love Dub Agumon's translation of Nandayo!? as a censor-friendly "ARE YOU ON DRUGS!?" Beautiful reaction line.

Sora the peacemaker tries to confront Yamato over this.

Sora: Yamato! W-What... What are you doing!? Taichi: Hey, Yamato! Hurry up and stop him! Yamato: (coldly) No. This will happen. Taichi: (shocked) This will happen...? You....

In the dub:

Sora: This is insane! Matt, what's going on!? Is this some kind of joke!? Tai: Matt! I don't know what he's doing but call him off now! Yamato: (coldly) No, Tai. I won't. Tai: What did you say!? You won't!?

Sora and Taichi are both too shocked and confused to form words properly. Sora stumbles over her "Nani" as she tries to create her sentence.

Taichi initially doesn't realize that Yamato's in on this too and thinks MetalGarurumon went crazy for no reason; When he realizes the truth, he repeats Yamato's raw line straight back to him as if he can't process that those words came out of Yamato's mouth.

As usual, the dub kids are quicker on the uptake. Sora and Tai don't understand why he's doing this but they have an easier time delivering their flabbergasted lines.

With Yamato unwilling to call off MetalGarurumon, all eyes return to Agumon.

MetalGarurumon: I won't miss the next one. Now, evolve to WarGreymon quickly! Agumon: (steeling himself) You're serious about this.

We cut to Jou, Koushiro, and Hikari watching with apprehension. Takeru calls out:

Takeru: Onii-chan!

But Yamato's gaze remains cold and he doesn't acknowledge his brother. Finally, we close on Pinocchimon watching from the treetop perch that got him shitfaced earlier.

Pinocchimon: Hehe! I made it just in time. This is sure to be loads of fun!

Will it be loads of fun? Find out next time, when things will definitely go well for Pinocchimon, who is lacking nothing.

In the dub:

MetalGarurumon: I'm warning you! Hurry up and Digivolve into WarGreymon because I won't miss next time! Agumon: (surprised) ...I think he really means it!

They use the various reaction shots to have offscreen characters continue talking.

MetalGarurumon: Well!? Time's running out, Agumon! T.K.: Tai, stop him! Tai: I wish I could, but there's only one person who can stop him!

Yeah, instead of calling out to Yamato in startled confusion, T.K. yells for Tai to make this stop. I have no idea why.

The episode then closes on Matt's silent stern face; Itself now a response to Tai instead of to Takeru. Pinocchimon's final bit is cut.

Narrator: Will Matt succeed in destroying the DigiDestined from within? Find out next time on Digimon: Digital Monsters.

This is how far off-track we've drifted. We've gone from "In order to break free from Taichi's influence over his heart, Yamato mistakenly thinks he must fight and defeat Taichi in a formal contest of arms," to "Will Matt SUCCEED IN DESTROYING THE DIGIDESTINED!?!?"

Assessment: This one's a lot of sitting and talking. The Garbamon fight breaks up the discussion a bit, but the focus of this episode is Jureimon and Yamato's conversation.

It is a long talk because, while it's true that Yamato and Taichi are diametrically opposed to one another, it takes a lot of convincing to turn Yamato temporarily into an honest-to-DigiGod shonen rival. They don't really have that kind of relationship. In fact, the scene where they unlocked these Ultimate forms for their Digimon was all about the ways their Crest attributes complement and strengthen one another.

Yamato does need to figure out the emotional blocks holding him back from the true expression of himself that slips out when he's not thinking about it. But this ain't it, champ. This is Jureimon's nonsense.

Jureimon is, honestly, a pretty cool villain. I took him for granted as a kid because he's a big tree that just talks for like ten minutes. But as the physical representation of mayoi no mori, he's fascinating. The episode namedrops those words in the title, but the inescapable forest of lost souls never really appears.

Because, of course, it's not a place. It's him. The deep unnavigable wood is the semantic web Jureimon weaves around Yamato over the course of their talk. He fucks up Yamato for basically the rest of the show. This sets Yamato on his final character arc: The path to his true self-actualization down the road.

A conversation which the dub handles decently well in places but makes critical missteps about important points, particularly pertaining to Jureimon and Gabumon's respective interpretations of Yamato's feelings.

[tyrantisterror]

While we’re on the subject of Dungeons & monsters, what are your top ten favorite D&D monsters & why?

I'm going to limit this to monsters that are either original creations of D&D or so divorced from their mythological roots that they might as well be original creations, or else this would just be me listing dragons. This is also in no particular order.

I'm gonna start with the Otyugh, because I think it's a result of D&D creating a very interesting ecosystem to justify its mechanics. You have all these artificial dungeons filled with different man-eating monsters, right? Well, what about the waste products they create? Carrion, yes, but also, you know... poop.

Well, you get Otyughs, a species that, depending on the setting, was either artificially engineered to take care of the waste products of a dungeon, or naturally evolved to clear out the waste of enormous megafauna predators like dragons. Is it mostly just an excuse to introduce yet another weird monster with a unique attack mechanic (say hello to sepsis and other infections, players)? Yeah, but it's a good excuse, it gets the imagination flowing.

I've actually played a lot more Pathfinder than D&D proper, and Pathfinder went out of its way to give Otyughs love by exploring all the aspects of their ecology that were only lightly outlined or implied in D&D, including the fact that they're technically intelligent enough to be capable of speech and reason - and thus, not necessarily a monster you have to deal with using violence alone. It really endeared me to them, to the point where Otyugh characters became something of a trademark of mine when running Pathfinder/D&D campaigns - and to the point where I ended up making up an expy of them for my own fantasy setting.

Bulettes are one of the coolest looking D&D monsters for my money, especially given that their modern designs take two inspiration from two very different animals - sharks and tortoises - and manage to combine them so beautifully to create something at once very cool and yet perfectly plausible as a "real" creature.

I love Rust Monsters for the same reason I love Otyughs - it's a monster that was made to showcase a game mechanic (namely, destroying players' weapons and armor, making sure they know how valuable those things are) and ends up creating a weird but plausible and interesting aspect of the ecology and world-building as a result. Also like Otyughs, they're very cute in a groady monster way.

Not every monster needs to have a big mind-blowing concept for me to be happy, though. Sometimes a creepy guy with a squid for a head who eats brains is enough. Mind Flayers are iconic and often imitated despite/because of being such a simple and easy to grasp concept.

Speaking of iconic monsters, Beholders feel like such an obvious cool concept that is shocking to me that they're more or less an original D&D creation - and it kind of sucks that they are, because a giant monster head with one main eye and several smaller eyes on stalks feels like it should be as ubiquitous in fiction as dragons and unicorns, and yet it can't be without paying Wizards of the Coast a shit-ton of royalties.

I will say that the lore D&D gave Beholders is pretty good, though - namely that each Beholder thinks it is the apex of their kind, and hates all other beholders for their perceived imperfections. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you see. It's great, no notes, but beholders should belong to the people, not copyright holders.

I'm pretty sure Mimics originate from D&D, though I guess they just couldn't keep the idea of "a treasure chest that fucking eats you" from the people, since they appear in a lot of non-licensed stuff. As they should - man-eating treasure chests are another monster concept that should belong to the people.

I was talking about Froghemoths the other day on here but I want to reiterate that I love them despite/because of the fact that there really is no greater concept at play here than "what if there was a big fucking frog freak," and not once in the long history of this game has anyone decided there needed to be more at play than that. A big fucking frog freak is enough for all of us.

I just think this one looks neat.

D&D kobolds are in the category of "so far removed from its mythic roots that it's basically a new monster," and in that case the new monster is "scrabbly little dragon people with extreme anxiety," and I love that. Kobolds are my favorite humanoid species in D&D, and I'm glad 5th edition finally gave them a stat block that's actually playable, as opposed to previous edition's attempts, which made the prospect of being a kobold character the equivalent of having a public humiliation kink.

Finally, and also in the category of "technically named after a mythic monster it no longer resembles in almost any way," we have the Tarrasque, which went from a turtle/lion hybrid dragon in myth to a nigh-indestructible monster that's explicitly compared to natural disasters for its immense size, vast destructive power, and near inability to be harmed thanks to its armored hide and insane healing abilities. Or, in short, D&D lawyer friendly equivalent of Godzilla. How can I not love D&D Godzilla?

[mariacallous]

"This isn’t a political rally," said Lance Wallnau from a convention hall stage in Monroeville, outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It’s much different than a revival meeting, it’s kind of a new type of thing. It’s where the people of God, the citizens of heaven, bring heaven to earth."

Wallnau, a former oil industry marketer turned charismatic Christian author and media figure, was there recently on the sixth stop of his swing state Courage Tour. The tour’s goal is to bolster the courage of attendees' to speak their minds politically and recruit them to serve as local election workers and poll watchers.

Over the course of two days, audience members would pray, sway with their hands in the air to swelling worship music, take in lessons on American history, politics and the Bible, and be visited by vice presidential candidate and U.S. Senator JD Vance. Wallnau, along with his wife Annabelle, are just two of several right-wing Christian leaders hosting these revival-style events at which Trump is seen as God’s anointed candidate, according to Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies.

"They understand this as a literal spiritual battle between angels and demons. The angels are trying to enact the will of God, which they believe is to see Donald Trump given a second term," said Taylor, who has done extensive research on Christians who were part of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

'Demonic ideas'

On January 6, Wallnau was scheduled to speak at a prayer rally in Washington DC. But before he made it to a microphone, Trump supporters had already broken into the Capitol. So Wallnau went back to his hotel room to stream live on a Christian talk show. Right away, he and his co-hosts made baseless claims that the FBI had bussed in members of antifa to sow violence among the otherwise peaceful crowd.

"They're actually the activists that are working for the Democratic Party that were there in order to create the incident with violence that would smear the president," Wallnau said. "It was the devil’s people at this thing."

"I have been through the social media accounts of many, many of the Christians who were there on January 6th," said Taylor, "and you can find them posting Lance Wallnau videos and Lance Wallnau commentary." He added that one criminal defendant even cited Wallnau’s show as his reason for attending what he believed was a permitted rally.

In his new book, The Violent Take It By Force, Taylor describes Wallnau as "Trump’s most influential spiritual propagandist." He says when many Christian and evangelical leaders had been reluctant to back the brash, twice-divorced, reality TV billionaire’s 2016 presidential run, Wallnau gained a following popularizing biblical rationales for supporting then candidate Trump. God, Wallnau proclaimed, had anointed Trump, imperfect as he was, to lead the country.

Wallnau is well-known in evangelical circles for having popularized a Christian concept called the "Seven Mountains," which calls on the faithful to take dominion over all areas of culture. In person, however, the media-savvy Wallnau can be challenging to pin down ideologically. He’s previously identified as a "Christian Nationalist," but told NPR the term is a label "to create anxiety and misrepresentation." Wallnau also called Taylor’s scholarship "the fantasy narrative of this one guy obsessed with Christian nationalism."

"Nobody’s a demon, but they can be under the influence of demonic ideas," Wallnau said in an interview. "I regret when it sounds like I'm making people evil because I'm in the business of redemption." He still questions the 2020 election results and to this day refers to the events of January 6th as "election fraud intervention."

'A Trojan Horse'

On the Courage Tour, Wallnau and his fellow speakers laid out an updated approach for the coming election.

"Are you guys ready to show the world that Christians will be silent no more?" Joshua Standifer asked from the stage. His nonprofit, Lion of Judah, is helping recruit the folks in the audience to become election workers.

"We all remember 2020 when they bought up the windows, when they closed the doors, when they kicked all the volunteers out. You can be on the inside and be one of the ones making a difference and making sure that nothing nefarious happens," said Standifer, invoking debunked, but still popular, narratives of election fraud.

Standifer also wants these poll workers to send anything they see that could be evidence of fraud. He’s been calling the effort "a Trojan horse," which alarms some observers. He told NPR he didn’t mean the metaphor to extend to the part where the Greeks decimate the city of Troy.

"Do I regret it? I don't know, because it's brought a lot of coverage to us, you know, for better or for worse," said Standifer.

Trust in elections

Even when everyone is working with the purest of motivations, no election runs perfectly, according to Mollie Cohen, who teaches political science at Perdue University.

"But if you are constantly under scrutiny by folks who are looking to catch you in a mistake, certainly, there are mistakes to be found," she said.

The truth, she says, is that most mistakes are caught and addressed very quickly. And since 2020, many election officials have put an even greater focus on transparency.

Mollie also says there’s lots of research showing that working the polls increases peoples’ confidence in elections.

"Something happens when people engage in election administration. It is very boring. It's quite tedious. And you really see everybody in your polling place," she said.

That’s been true for Dina Macey. She drove in before 5am to wait in her car and make sure she could get in to see JD Vance on the second day of the Courage Tour.

"It's the white Subaru, that's all Trumped out. It's got the Trump flags all over it and the bumper stickers, you know, magnets," said Macey.

She’s been an election worker before and was a poll watcher in 2020.

"And I did catch a couple people. Like a kid just walked in, didn't sign in or check in, and he was going to enter that. And I was like, 'whoa, you can't do that, you know?' So I bring it to [election workers’] attention," said Macey.

Macey is clear she hasn’t been pleased with everything about the elections she’s worked, but ultimately, the process she saw felt secure. That trust, though, doesn’t extend to the rest of her state, or the country.

Traveling shows like Wallnau’s Courage Tour are likely to reinforce suspicions like those.

Fears about the post-election period

"We don't trust the government on vaccines now. We don't trust them on laptops. We don't trust them on elections. And that's not a good place for a country," Wallnau told the audience on day two of the Pennsylvania stop.

This election cycle, the Trump campaign has focused heavily on legal challenges to voting rules. They’ve also geared up to dispute election results in the courts. That’s a big part of why Matthew Taylor is concerned about Wallnau and others like him.

"Part of what happened in 2020 was, there was no evidence of election fraud," said Taylor. "The Courage Tour is one component of this multi-pronged effort to stage the aftermath of this election as a season of contestation, that the results of the election are not the results of the election."

A contentious election will also help sustain right-wing and religious media circuits Wallnau is part of.

"By the time that the 2020 election happened, there were hundreds of charismatic prophets who were all prophesying that Donald Trump was God's chosen candidate and was destined to win the election," said Taylor.

When Trump lost, Taylor says those leaders pivoted to support the false narrative that the election was stolen, through more prophecies about demonic plots and divine motivation to fight back. Taylor believes those narratives posed a serious threat to democracy then, and he says it’s not looking much different this year.

[sillygoblinantics]

Woah mama,,,,, /pos i love this guy a lot i need more gothitelle in my life

Thank you! This is Romare he’s a country Gothitelle

(Sorry this post got long cause I started gobbo spergin about science in fantasy and a topic that if not for frog dissection day in middle school, would be studying biology or being a veterinarian XD so I’ll leave a lil thing to make this shorter lol)

I’ve been playing around with how I’d apply the same type of sexual dimorphism seen in birds and insects (or the general animal kingdom) with Pokémon!

Since I’ve done it before with the ralts line I thought playing with the concept for a majority of the human shaped pokemon would be fun!

And there’s a lot of human shaped ones for psychic pokemon so to make them more alien I’ve been mixing today bird and moth type shtuff and spicing it up with ideas for hybridization traits from other pokemon species which are present in Romare here!

With hybrid designs I keep to mind the in-game/in universe rules to Pokémon genetics: baby is the same as the mom with little to no traits from dad if the dad isn’t a different species but same egg group of Pokémon.

Romare’s mama was of course a Gothitelle but also a cross between Gothitelle and Grimsnarl. As bizarre as it may seem, but given the properties I headcannon for the reason the Pokémon who have “clothes” have them being made from what I can only describe as similar to moth scales, gossamer and cobweb but it’s a Pokémon specific variant of keratin (think nails and hair).

While the ralts line favor brighter vibrant colors and abundant chest plumage (the bleeding heart); the Gothita line favor males with (I forgot my own notes ohnu) either the longest/most or the shortest/least “skirt” tiers.

Also I just realized I might’ve pulled this one tumblr original gem of a meme out when I was coming up with designs for Romare so uh, thank you 1984 goth anime legs uncle XD

I really need to get some shtuff out for the added “Bonnie’s day out!!”worldbuilding/lore and the general “pokémadhouse” flesh-out/rewriting!

I’ll have to add sketches of the species notes later! I got two animations to work on and some Bonnie pages to get done XD

Glad yall like this guy tho

[spectroscopes]

I normally ignore right-wing culture war stuff regarding new movies because it’s never especially deep and is very arbitrary and stupid but there is something how weird they’re being about gladiiator that makes it impossible to look away. it’s like yes this is mostly racism, and on top of that they all feel a sense of ownership over “the roman empire” but then you get these funny little twists like they’re mad because pedro pascal is in it, so it’s also about star wars. and then you have the fact that it is kind of a less conservative film than the first one (or is at least attempting to be) and is explicitly criticising some of the ideas of the first as well as the american empire and the whole concept of rome worship — but none of them have the intellectual ability to even identify that this bothers them beyond general grousing.

I guess maybe this is because I haven’t been looking but it’s the complaints that I’m not seeing that makes it all so much more ridiculous than usual, like ridley scott called trump a moron a few years ago but they’re not complaining about that. and then you have people reacting to this like “why do they hate this film when the main character is a masculine white guy which is what they want” and it’s like yeah but he’s sort of the wrong kind of masculine white guy, like he isn’t given maximus’s larger than life qualities, the fantasy doesn’t hit right for them, and the movie surrounding him despite being entirely about men is kind of like a weird distortion of all the stuff they fetishise so even if you read it as a conservative picture (and it has many conservative elements and some glaring flaws in its messaging) it’s not the right kind anyway. and it’s extremely cynical. so all that’s left for them to enjoy is the violence. of course they don’t like it. and it isn’t even like avatar which is a very straightforward allegory that they just decide to invert and say the evil colonising military are actually the good guys, it kind of defies their ability to twist and ‘reclaim’. it all just feels especially pathetic this time, somehow even more pathetic than when they do it about children’s movies.

[rjmhereunderprotest]

Only Human: Species Bias in Fantasy/Science-Fiction

Let's get the premise for this little essay out of the way now: Humans are Boring. They are the most overused, overemphasized, overdone, overrated race in any fantasy/sci-fi setting. And I'm honestly SO tired of it. And by that I mean, humans, and human-like races, are consistently the primary characters of any story. Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, they're all overdone to death, but Humans? Those other races are generally just derivatives of them anyway and they are constantly placed into the primary focus of any story. Often to its detriment in my mind. We always complain about how we want other perspectives, different heroes, different narratives, but we always default to humans and frankly its gotten stale. For me, it's become even more so the longer this has gone on. So in a follow-up to my entry about Monster-Narratives with Sarah Kerrigan, let's talk about humans and why they're so goddamn boring.

Disclaimer First

I am not saying ALL human characters and ALL human centric stories are boring. I can name many a human character who is compelling and interesting and deep. My problem isn't humans as a central POV, my problem is when given the option in a setting to do ANYTHING and be ANYONE... a story will default to human. Every. Single. Time. And worse yet, they'll even make Non-Human races more human like.

Besides the aforementioned Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits, a lot of alien or fantasy races can end up just being humans with a slightly different coat of paint. You don't need to look any further than a lot of monster girl fiction, which has universally decided that you can just have any human woman put on cat ears or pop out a fox tail or grow some wings and presto chango they're a monster now I guess. It's cosplay, nothing more. No one actually has the dragon BE a dragon i full. They have to look like a human somehow.

And let's be clear here, the reason for this is obvious. Write what you know. Everyone knows how to be human, so it's easier to just WRITE a human. The perspective will ring more true if you know what a human is and can properly depict them. And since everyone is human, everyone at least has an idea of how they're supposed to be. I'm not blaming anyone for going to the default option on this, it makes sense.

But all across media there exists multiple opportunities to actually present a perspective or allow someone to step into the shoes of something that isn't human. That isn't just a derivative of humanity. That is truly foreign to them. Sadly they rarely take the chance and when they do... well, a lot of the times it falls into some bad writing clichés. Before we get into some of the main offenders, let's address one of said clichés of the bat to better understand why human centrism in genre fiction can lead to some terrible ideas.

Planet of Hats

The Planet of Hats is the well-worn concept that alien/fantasy races are monoliths. That every member of a species thinks like each other, acts like each other, builds their society around a singular concept, is entirely devoted to that particular concept, and is forever entrenched in that one state of mind forever. That is the Planet of Hats. You see it manifested in every Warrior Culture or Pacifist Society or Amazon Island or Gangster Planet. An entire people bent to serve a singular overriding "Problem of the Week" scenario to comment on a singular issue. Mostly by going completely overboard with it. And if you want to know the biggest offender of this... well, all those examples I listed come from one single IP who has done at least one iteration of those worlds over its very long life-span.

Sorry guys, it's true and you know it. For all the good Star Trek portends to be, all the progressive ideas it puts forward, for all the social commentary it has added to zeitgeist, one place it consistently falls short in is depicting alien races. How you ask? How is one of the most socially conscious and ethnically diverse franchises in history failing in this regard? Especially considering it has spawned some of the most iconic alien races in all of fiction?

Because as I just pointed out, a lot of their alien races are basically just one note stereotypes. Built around a single idea to create a "Problem of the Week" episode. This has been true as far back as the original series. Which was completely episodic and rarely if ever revisited alien races it ran across. Now of course there are mainstays and they've been fleshed out over the decades, but a lot of that fleshing out has been a result of Star Trek trying to push back on the Planet of Hats problem. And they still don't really address the crux of it.

The best way to explain Star Trek's problem lies in how one alien race was introduced to us, the Ferengi. You know them, the big eared hyper-capitalists who are best known for being the franchise's greedy assholes/Comic Relief. And boy, was their introduction a MESS.

It's fair to say the first two seasons of "The Next Generation" were... bad. As in... awful. "The Last Outpost" is one of those awful episodes where the Ferengi first showed up. Roddenberry, Star Trek's creator, wanted to evolve a lot of the concepts from the original series. The problem was he didn't have anyone to tell him "This doesn't work" The Ferengi were made to replace the dated "America vs Soviets" allegory that a lot of Trek's previous antagonist aliens represented. For Roddenberry, the real danger was unfettered capitalism. Hard to argue with that, problem was the Ferengi weren't a threat.

"The Last Outpost" presents the Ferengi less as an alien race and more like farcical clowns who basically exist to make the Federation (Humanity) look better by comparison. The Ferengi run around the entire episode, acting like unhinged monkeys, while Commander Riker struts about with his superior moral values and beliefs. At no point do the Ferengi resemble a legitimate threat to humanity. They're buffoons, made to present less a commentary on hyper-capitalism and more of a mockery of it. As a result, none of the Ferengi come off as characters, they're caricatures. Silly, nonsensical, idiots who are there to make Picard look righteous and humanity as more evolved.

Now let's not act like Roddenberry was supposed to be fair to the alien race he created to represent the things he hated. But he was supposed to make them a culture and not just strawmen he could beat up for an hour. Hell, decades earlier, he had bothered to give the Nazi Planet more nuance! And that was a planet, as stated, full of Nazis! But even that felt more like a culture than the Ferengi running around like baboons, hooting and hollering as they unconvincingly tried to pull one over on the natives they intended to exploit. Natives that the oh so perfect Federation, embodied by Commander Riker, easily protected by simple human fortitude and stalwart moral fiber.

Of course, years down the line, the Ferengi were finally developed into something that resembled a real civilization instead of punching bag. They actually had a degree of morals, not like the Federation, but they weren't entirely monstrous. Characters like Quark helped immensely in rehabilitating the image of the Ferengi without completely discarding their original characterization. But Star Trek has never really completely abandoned it's human centrism. Nor it's tendency to portray humanity in general as the "Better Way/Only Way."

Because let's be honest here, the Federation is just humanity. Sure other races are in there, work with them, and we are TOLD their customs and beliefs are respected, but be honest. How often have you seen an alien on Star Trek in a Command position? How often are aliens in Star Trek the central character? Has any captain or lead character in any Trek show ever not been a human?

You may point out Spock or Worf, and fair, but Spock is half-human and Worf was raised by humans. They're also not the Captain of the ship of their respective series. Even then, Vulcans and Klingons don't get off so easily. How many times have the Vulcans and their reliance on logic being criticized because they don't express outward emotion like humans? How many times have the Klingons had their culture scrutinized as purely violent? Yes, they've always come back around to highlight the value of their differing perspectives, how their voices at the table are worth listening to, and how there is more to them than just the warrior and hyper-logical. But ultimately, a lot of Star Trek comes back to how each of these alien races REALLY should become more human. Oh the Federation won't FORCE it on them, but they'll just kinda neg them on it. You should really show more emotion, Spock. You should really stop being so war-like, Worf. Be more human, be more sensible, conform! Why don't you conform already?

You might argue that's not the case, but it kinda is. Star Trek will always come around to how if a lot of these alien races were more like the Federation's ideal of humanity, they'd all be much better off. And it all stems from the Planet of the Hats cliché. Which purely exists to give the Federation some problem to preach about and argue against. The Federation won't conquer you to be like them, but they will kinda pressure you to change. And sure, a lot of these cultures could do with reform. But a planet existing purely to be used as a soap box isn't a culture, it's just the Ferengi of "The Last Outpost" again.

I'll sum this section up in terms that were expressed by Chuck Sonnenberg of SFDebris. Star Trek's tendency to put alien races in a box is detrimental to its world building. If Germany was a fictional race in Star Trek, it would be defined by industrial power, a love of war, and expansionist foreign policy coached in racial purity. That even after being defeated, said society would constantly be trying to claw back to its perceived glory days, never changing, just constantly being stuck in its singular mindset for all eternity. The only thing keeping them in check being the Federation of United Planets, mostly dominated by humans, who shake their heads at how awful Germans are for refusing to change and be more like them.

Doesn't that sound stupid? And if the Federation of Star Trek, the epitome of Optimistic Science Fiction, can make such a mistake, how do franchises that aren't so hopeful and cheer faire? Star Trek is an incredibly influential series in genre fiction. It informs a lot about how its done even today. If it can't help but put humans on a pedestal, even though it shouldn't because that's antithetical to its own world-building, how have other IPs faired in that regard?

Well... not good. Not good at all.

Center of Everything

I could list so many examples of humans being positioned as the most important element of any fantasy or sci-fi story. It almost feels redundant. Star Wars generally has humans as its main protagonists. A good deal of Lord of the Rings involves the nations of men being the main bulwark against the forces of Mordor. Earth is basically the most important planet in both Marvel and DC and humanity is the most special of all races out there. How many humans get to be a part of the Green Lantern Corps? Overall, humans are going to be the focus of any story. Even if they exist in a setting where they aren't the only sapient race out there. Humans get to take center stage and lead the plot. Even if they really shouldn't and they aren't supposed to and you know where this going...

I think this is probably the best example I can use to point out how Human Centrism can be a problem. Because I think enough people at this point recognize what went wrong with the live-action Transformers movies. Yeah, I know some folks keep trying to rehabilitate them, I don't care. I'm dying on this hill! They were never that good!

A movie about the Transformers should not be so reliant on the squishy humans that no one ever cared about. A series of dynamic characters who, at the point of the first Bay Movie's premiere, had carried several stories on their own despite not being human! A race of alien robots with intriguing inter-cultural dynamics, opinions, philosophies, so much character and complexity. Sure they were toy commercials at the end of the day, but no one who watched Dinobot's sacrifice in Beast Wars' "Code of a Hero" would be able to deny that the series could not transcend that stigma! The Transformers were always meant to be the center of their franchise, as they rightly should be because they can carry it just fine on their own.

Then Michael Bay showed up and decided to turn the whole series into an extended US Army Recruitment Commercial instead. I think we can all agree Military-Industrial Complex Propaganda is far worse than making kids want to bug their parents for toys. But that's neither here nor there, even if Bay hadn't been jerking off to the US Military in these movies, the problem with them was apparent from moment one. When the films became more about Shia LeBeouf wanting to get laid than the alien robots. The films excessively/progressively revolved around humans and their interactions with the Transformers. They became the primary focus more and more until they essentially took over huge swaths of the plot and narrative. Autobots and Decepticons alike, no matter how important, iconic or well-known, were very casually tossed aside and killed off over the various sequels. And no one really cared because the Transformers on both sides became so highly interchangeable and forgettable that sometimes you could blink and miss them. Remember Arcee? Prominent female autobot? Strangely split into three motocycles for some reason? Murdered to death! With only one line of dialogue!

Oh sure, Optimus and Bumblebee got to be front and center, but mostly because they got to be colors that were just a mess of greys, browns and blacks. That and Optimus is by far the most popular of all the Transformers and the face of the franchise. But if you want an example of humans taking over a narrative to its detriment, Michael Bay's Transformers movies are the singular defining example of just such a problem. And you probably heard the defenses, it gave audiences a anchor point, a relatable view, something they could connect with.

Strange, none of the fans over the years needed humans to help them connect to any of the alien robots that were the main narrative focus of countless tv shows and comics. But I suppose Hollywood Executives know better. When have they ever been wrong, right?

To be honest though, this is nothing new. Science-Fiction especially has always had a problem with positioning humans as ultra-super special. And some people could recognize it for the dangerous prospect of what it was. Issac Asimov noted John W. Campbell's tendency to position humans as the most important or superior race as opposed to others it encountered in fiction. And to Asimov, that also appeared to extend to the smaller scale of reality and Campbell's... well, let's say belief in American Exceptionalism. Asimov didn't like arguing with Campbell, so he tried to avoid using aliens too much.

You can see the problem though, insisting on the exceptionalism of humanity often denotes a general sense of racial/national superiority. There's nothing wrong with rooting for the home team, but not everything should be a competition and humans shouldn't take over every story for themselves. Especially if it isn't their own, like the Transformers. Their franchise is proof enough that humans don't have to be central element to be successful. And yet, until now, most theatrical films felt the need to involve humans in some aspect. And sadly, because of "Transformers One's" not so stellar box office performance, that belief might persist. And it will continue to hamstring the Transformers property like it does with other stories in genre fiction.

Illusion of Choice

Even if this mindset doesn't inherently compromise a story's narrative, it can still kneecap it. The best example of how involves gaming, specifically RPGs. Despite portending that our "choices matter", so often in games they do not. Because, here again, too many franchises decide that the only perspective that matters is one that looks similar to you.

Discounting the many video games that might allow you to be an alien, monster or even just an animal, because they are out there, I feel far too many RPGs can be very limiting. Does Fallout let you pick if you want to be a Ghoul or Super Mutant? No. That's only been a recent development and only for one game and its an MMO. Video games in general, when set in a fantasy or sci-fi world will default to one of the pre-approved human or human-like races, if they present the choice at all. Dragon Age 2 famously hard locked you into being a human despite the last game letting you pick your race. Now you can say that's because they had a set story to tell that needed the characters to be human. But it's still jarring.

And I think there's one instance where BioWare itself had a huge opportunity to change things... but decided they were just going to play it safe.

After three games of playing Commander Shepard, who had to be human because that made the most sense for the story they were telling, BioWare had an opportunity to shake things up. They had a whole new story, not tied to Shepard. A whole new galaxy, again, not tied to Shepard or humanity itself. And they decided to just go with another human character... again. Mass Effect has probably some of the most diverse alien races out there and even now, you can still only play them through multiplayer. The main games? Stuck with human protagonists.

I'll freely admit I probably defend Andromeda more than most Mass Effect fans. Not completely, because it does have a lot of problems, but I admire it for what it was TRYING to do. What I can't forgive is what it didn't even attempt. It could've easily crafted a story that enabled the player to pick whatever race they wanted to play as. Turian, Asari, Salarian or Krogan! Quarians! They could've let us be quarians, but NO! We are always stuck as humans, never given the opportunity to experience this galaxy through any other eyes but human ones! Even when given the perfect opportunity to do so, Andromeda chickens out and just sticks us as an ordinary human again.

It's so painfully sad. And while being given the option to be something other than a human probably wouldn't have fixed the game's other problems, at the very least it would've been looked at as some admirable. As something that tried to expand Mass Effect's unique setting and give more dimension to the aliens it had crafted.

Humans are simply the safe option. Safe to animate, safe to draw, safe to craft stories for, safe to empathize with. The second you have to do it for something that is properly alien or decisively not human, that's when you run into trouble. Because if you can't get the audience to connect with a character, it's over. And that becomes harder if the alien or fantasy creature does not share something in common with us.

It's kinda sad honestly that the biggest departure from human-based races that Dragon Age has even done is qunari. And they're technically just horned giant people. They're not exactly inhuman enough, hell if character creation teases are anything to go by, they've actually tried to make them MORE human looking for the next game.

Which brings us to a whole other issue that is pushing us further down this hole within the confines of gaming itself. For far too long now, the gaming industry has become increasingly obsessed with hyper-realism, both in graphics and design. Unique artistic styles and aesthetics have slowly been eroded away by an obsession among developers and publishers alike. A need to force characters and games themselves to be grounded in the real, no matter how fantastical the setting is.

lately, people have often complained about how the faces of game characters have gotten "ugly" over the years. The stupid among these people think its a conspiracy to get rid of sexy ladies in video games and alter beauty standards in the mainstream for some agenda. The reality is known to the smarter set of folks, who have seen the industry cultivate motion capture technology to reduce their reliance on artists to craft characters for them. Just get a recognizable face or literally anyone you can find and make them act out the lines while wearing a facial capture rig. You wanna blame anyone for making women in gaming less sexy? Blame LA Noire for proving the viability of facial animation capturing, not some evil conspiracy of developers obsessed with some innocuous message.

As a result, gaming has emphasized realism more and more in its aesthetic design philosophy. Particularly among the Triple A Games, where they seem to think that if the characters don't look real, gamers will feel that things look too old and ugly. There's no room for artistic interpretation, that costs money. No, slap a rig on some actor's face and make them do all the work. You wanna know why MJ in the second Spider-Man game looked off to you? Well that's because the actress is a real person and faces don't always stay the same and alterations to a face scan can potentially mess things up even more.

She also suffered a car accident that required doctors to reconstruct her face, but that's probably only a minimal issue since she you can't really tell the difference as I understand it.

The point is, hyper-realism has damaged gaming to an insane degree artistically and further harmed non-human characters. Because in order to get that hyper-realistic look, games have compromised themselves. Now the qunari look even more like SyFy channel aliens than ever. The boundless creativity of CG reduced to what can be produced on a budget within the make-up chair.

And I don't expect Mass Effect's eventual fifth entry to be much better. If BioWare is still this scared about letting us play something truly non-human in a fantasy setting, then they're not even going to try to let you build your own turian in Mass Effect Beyond or whatever generic subtitle they shove onto it.

And yet its doable, they can let you craft an non-human character to be the main hero. The fact Elder Scrolls was letting you do this for years is proof enough of that. Baldur's Gate 3 revealing I could be a Dragonborn was enough to convince me to pick it up eventually. Admittedly, any game that lets me be a lizard or reptile of some kind instantly has my attention if not purchase. Purely for this very essay's stated hypothesis, it's almost impossible to find any game that will let me play as something that isn't human. Because far too many games and stories prefer to just fallback on boring humans.

And yet, nothing I've mentioned so far is the worst example of this problem.

Ultrabores in the Grimbore Future

I'm not going to mix words here. The Imperium of Man of Warhammer 40k is boring. There I said it. And it's this feeling that is impetus for this entire little article of mine. In the lead up to the release of Space Marine 2, and looking further into the lore of 40k itself, I came across two inescapable truths for me.

1: Every other race in the setting was 10x more interesting and compelling, both character and lore wise.

2: Every Imperium of Man Fanboy is an Insufferable Douche Canoe of the Highest Order.

I might be overstating that last point, but it's hard to be subtle about this because I don't think anyone is going to listen otherwise. The Imperium fucking sucks! And I don't mean as characters, I don't mean as a faction gameplay wise, I mean in-universe it SUCKS. There is NOTHING admirable about this future human civilization or anything they stand for. They're objectively fucking horrible and Games Workshop itself has admitted this. And yet, despite this fact that even the most ardent hobbyist of this tabletop will admit to, you still will find more than enough Stans of the God-Emperor of Mankind who will INSIST they are the good guys. Or at the very least, necessary for the survival of humankind.

My answer to that is no. Very emphatically, NO. The Imperium of Man is not neccessary, at least it didn't have to be. It did not have to be this cruel, this dogmatic, this blindly loyal, this xenocidal and racist. It did not have to be at all like what it is, but because of the choices of Emperor himself, it is now! And it probably can't unfuck itself, because it's already fucked over so many other people within and outside its realm of control. It does emphasize the good things about humanity, it's oozes all the worst aspects of it. That's its point. That's why this universe is Grimdark. That's why it's not a good thing that humanity has become what it is in this future.

And yet, Imperium fanboys will refuse to budge. Insistent that the Emperor did everything right and it was only everyone else not just laying down and dying that screwed anything up, if at all. And while Games Workshop itself has stated the opposite, explained in detail that this franchise is satire, that you should not take the actions of the Imperium of Man as a lesson for how to run a civilization or your life... guess what the biggest seller and face of 40k franchise is?

Yep, humans.

You might think that's a contradiction, but it makes sense you realize those are the figures that sell the most. Therefore, the Imperium gets the most books, the most lore, the most focus on media outside the main tabletop. Sure they've made games where you play as the xeno factions and books with aliens as protagonists. But the majority of 40k lore is all about Humanity and it's really affected how this franchise is viewed at this point.

You see it doesn't matter how often you say something is satire or that it's aspirational. If you place the spotlight on it long enough, people start to gravitate towards it. The Imperium of Man, being the most popular of 40k's factions, is a victim of its own success in this regard. It has become increasingly difficult to separate the satirical dark comedy of the Imperium from the lore's various attempts to make them the most badass of all badasses. People like watching struggles for survival, conflict of epic scale, heroic sacrifices, it makes for really compelling drama. It also more often than not whitewashes all the bad things the Imperium does if you overly focus on all the cool shit the Space Marine chapters pull off.

You tend to forget that the only reason anyone survived the Fall of Cadia is because a bunch of Eldar showed up to help evacuate humans. Or that Cadia only stayed standing for so long because a Nekron helped out. You ignore the pointless war that turned Kreig into a wasteland, when all anyone talks about is how the Death Corps can take down Tau with a shovel. You can point out how the Emperor is in fact, for all intents and purposes, fucking dead, but when it's coming out of the mouth of a dude who's following a sadistic murder god, it's not very convincing. People always come back to this when the Imperium is involved. "So what if they suck, they're humanity's best and only option at survival. And they're fucking badass!" And Games Workshop doesn't push back on this, mostly to not piss off its fans, generally though because tried to do that once before and it backfired.

The Tau Empire used to be an up and coming foil to the Imperium in many ways. They were ruled by reason and science, not blind dogmatic faith and religious zealotry. They believed in harmony among the races, not genocide and supremacy. They had an optimistic and hopeful view of the galaxy, as opposed to the fatalistic one the Imperium had. As it stood, they were the most heroic out of all the 40k races... and a bunch of fans, mostly Imperium as I understand it, hated them. They felt they ruined the grimdark setting by being too goody good.

So Games Workshop eventually just gave in and decided to change the lore. The Tau were only like that because their leadership was essentially mind controlling them. Great, so they're no better than anyone else in this future. Wonderful. Can't have an opposing view from the Emperor's that might turn out to be a better path forward. Nah, turn them into a brainwashed cult essentially to further justify the existence of the Imperium. Forget that an earnestly good society in a galaxy that is probably fucked beyond repair is probably sufficiently grimdark since they're such a young race but probably equally doomed. We need to make EVERYTHING in this setting so completely utterly hopeless, because anything less means the Emperor is wrong for creating the circumstances that made everything worse.

And as a result, the Imperium of Man is the one major roadblock for me getting into this franchise. Now, don't misunderstand, there are things about the Imperium I like and find interesting. Like many, I like Captain/Lieutenant Titus, because he's not a dogmatic sycophant who acts like a religious zealot. I do actually like the Death Corps of Kreig if only from a history buff perspective because I'm into the WWI Aesthetic they have going on. And of course there are the Salamanders, the only Space Marines I will ever consider truly heroic because they give a shit about things besides duty and honor, as well as possess some degree of empathy for other lifeforms. I enjoyed the first Space Marine game a lot! It's why I picked up the sequel.

However, all of these points have asterisks next to them. The Death Corps of Kreig are cool VILLAINS to an extent. I don't think you can ever present them as heroes given their mindset or origins. That's true of a lot of things within the Imperium. The Salamanders are still beholden to the dogma that has consumed a good deal of the Imperium and they are not really going to do anything to break off from it. And while I enjoyed the first Space Marine game and had fun with Boltgun, let's just admit something right now... half the enjoyment of the original Space Marine Game came from this dude.

Grimskull was probably the most fun antagonist to go up against in any game. Him just yelling "Space Marine!" in his ridiculous Cockney accent always made me smile. Titus, as badass as he is, lacks quite a bit in the personality department. The sequel doesn't do much better, even if his character arc is at least serviceably good in that game. But he remains stoic and loyal, he isn't exactly a dynamic figure like Grimskull was. And be honest with yourself, that first game got real boring after you killed the Warboss.

That's the problem I have with 40k. There are so many more interesting, compelling, fascinating alien races. Sure, none of them are perfect good guys and a lot of them are downright evil... but they're at least unique! I had a lot more fun learning about the Orks honestly than I did listening to the one hundredth iteration of something super epic and cool an Ultramarine did. We get it, they're Master Chief and Doomguy on Steroids! Do they do anything else besides pontificate about how awesome the Emperor is and go on about duty and honor more than Zuko in season one? The Orks might be idiot rampaging soccer hooligans, but at least they're funny.

And yet there are far fewer Ork, Eldar and especially Tau related books and media than the plethora of Imperium related works that have overstuffed everything. And if you admit to liking anything other than the Imperium of Man, especially the Tau, you are instantly ridiculed. I would honestly pay way more money just to play as Commander Farsight than Titus. Because Farsight feels like a natural progression for Titus to take, but never will. He just can't. While Farsight will leave his government behind and strike out on a new path to pursue the Greater Good as he now sees it, Titus can't, because that would only be seen as heresy, both by fans and in-universe.

Imperium Stans will look at this picture and honestly claim this fucking sucks without hesitation. That's the degree of brainrot they give off. Calling some of the coolest looking shit lame.

I just instantly felt Farsight is a more compelling and complex character by default because of his arc. Whereas Titus will never really change much beyond what he is, a reasonable enough Ultramarine in a sea of equally super serial hardasses that aren't much different from him. He just thinks a bit more for himself.

Farsight's crew of mech piloting badasses at least have variety. But to my surprise, so many others didn't agree, annoyed apparently that Farsight was able to resist corruption of demons, baffled at how it was possible because he lacked faith in the glorious God-Emperor of Man! None of them considered that maybe, just maybe, Farsight was able to resist corruption because he's not governed by religious dogma at all. Maybe his open-mindedness and ability to reason protected him just fine! But can't have that I guess, humans have to remain special after all.

Despite everything going for him, actually retaining a proper sense of heroism, being a truly good person who wants to do the right thing even in a universe full of shit, I still saw Imperium fans giving Farsight shit over the stupidest of things. I found a video on YouTube not long ago concerning how Farsight rightfully pointed out the weaknesses of the Imperium Titan Mecha. Oversized bulky machines that are millennia old. But while scary, Farsight noted how they can be defeated and are not as efficient or effective as the Space Marines were. The comments were FILLED with Imperium stans laughing at this bit of lore, calling Farsight names and declaring that the Titans were older than his whole civilization as if that was some kind of gotcha.

Everything the Imperium uses is older than shit though, that doesn't make it better. The reason it's so old is because the Imperium does not know how to make this shit anymore. They lost the knowledge when they rejected science in favor of their stupid religious dogma. Now their old as fuck spaceships are finite, same as their Titans. The Tau can replace their losses, the Imperium ultimately cannot. And yet here were the fanboys, praising how cool and awesome the Titans were, ignoring Farsight beat one easily, had video to prove it and that they essentially sound like those weirdos who jerkoff constantly about how awesome the Tiger Tank was. Despite it being an overly expensive over-designed mistake. One that both the Americans and Russians put to bed because their tanks didn't need special parts to function or guzzled up fuel like a thirsty pig.

Treating Titans as superior because they are older than the Tau is like arguing a Trebuchet is better than an Abrams Tank. Sure, one is way older than the nation that created the other. Doesn't mean its going to last very long in a one on one fight. But because humans have to be super special and awesome in 40k, we can never point out how their various systems, beliefs and strategies are outdated and costly.

Frankly, I'm more interested in Warhammer Fantasy by default by this point. Not just because they have a full faction of lizard people, although that is a plus. But because the factions of that universe are more diverse, interesting and not as mired in adherence to the grimdark lore mindset. Even the human civilizations are more compelling because they're not all one singular entity and have differing ideologies and strategies. I'll take that over being expected to look at the Ultramarines in awe simply because they do something badass every Tuesday which will get them six more books whereas Farsight still only has two.

And I don't think I need to point out what this has resulted in. As Asimov feared, placing humans on the superiority pedestal has emboldened that very sentiment in reality. Look no further than the current fervor over the existence of a Black Space Marine and a female guardsman officer in Space Marine 2. Even with fans pointing out how both of those things are both perfectly fine in canon, it doesn't change just how much 40k has attracted a lot of racists over the years. So much so they had to change tournament rules to prevent people from wearing actual Nazi uniforms to events because one asshole did so.

If there is any franchise that truly showcases the dangers of humancentric narratives it's Warhammer 40k. Because we are hardwired to root for the home team and we've also proven that we're incapable of reading satire. Creating the perfect storm of events that leads to far too many people stanning a literal Fascist-Dogmatic Forever War Machine. And while Games Workshop has tried to get the other factions more time in the sun, I'm not sure they can ever manage to get them up to the same level of prestige as the Imperium if they keep holding themselves back from just giving the Space Marines a damn rest for a second.

Room on the Party Wagon

I don't want to make it seem like it's all so hopeless. That there's no way for mainstream audiences to overlook their inherent human bias. I do believe it is possible for non-human protagonists to take center stage in a property and remain there. I believe that because I've seen it done before. In fact, I was quite literally there.

If there is any more miraculous franchise than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I don't know of it. There should be no reality where two guys making a sketch of a nunchucking turtle for funsies in an apartment while chowing down on pizza could launch something this everlasting. And yet they did it. Ninja Turtles, 40 years later, is still going strong. And all with a lead cast made of decidedly non-human lead heroes. Better yet, it didn't stop with Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey. Over the years, countless heroes and villains have been added to the mythos. A good number of them fellow mutated animals, all with distinct personalities, motivations and interpretations over countless adaptations and timelines. It is truly astonishing to have been there from the start of Turtle Mania and to have never had them go away for very long.

And again, all with primary character who aren't human. How? Simple enough, people gravitated to the Ninja Turtles. They had distinct vibrant personalities. They were fun and colorful and different. They connected you to them by getting you to recognize their relatability.

There is still an interest in non-human protagonists, and not just dwarves or elves. I'm not alone in my desire to have something other than my own species take the spotlight now and then. Wings of Fire is fairly popular series that stars no humans at all for the most part. In fact they rarely show up. The real stars of the franchise are dragons, big fire-breathing dragons who all have unique cultures and perspectives that incredibly well-fleshed out and intricate. They're also not entirely humanized either, as dragons have very different morality and cultural cues from humans.

Another interesting take on things can be found in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Which, despite having him out for most of the runtime, was all about Rocket. He was an absent protagonist, but he was the primary because everything revolved around his story and towards him finally accepting his species' name and moving past his survivor's guilt. Rocket is probably the most prominent non-human hero in the entirety of the MCU as a result and that's a big deal.

What I'm saying ultimately is that there is room for multiple perspectives. Not just the ones we're the most comfortable with. Because if we only accept the experiences of those we consider familiar, we will never understand those that are other. The road to a society like the Imperium of Man is based in one of mistrust, fear and prejudice. To avoid that, we must be willing to look through the eyes of others and learn about the human experience from something that is not. That is what the best of science-fiction and fantasy can allow for.

If such genres are meant to be an escape, what greater escape can be found but one that is outside our limited human experience. We can never know it is like to fly, or swim deep beneath the sea, or see from a dozen eyes or just one. But we can imagine ourselves in that role and empathize with that which is alien to us. If we limit our fantasies then we limit ourselves, our imagination, our ability to connect. If all you desire in your sci-fi or fantasy is for some big burly human with a sword, regular steel or chainsaw, to murder orks and aliens, then that's fine. But there are others among us who don't want such arbitrary limitations. Humans are not boring by nature, but picking the same old fantasies and escapes IS boring. We could do with changing things up more.

What I'm saying is, it would not hurt anyone if they just did one Triple A Title in the style of the Space Marine games but for Farsight instead. We don't always have to be the Space Marine. Notif we've be okay being a Ninja Turtle. There's room for all perspectives, human or otherwise, in genre fiction. We should be doing more to open up the gates for those experiences. Sooner rather than later.

[00belle00lovely00]

*+_THEATER AND OG DAYCARE AU!_+* (PART 1)

(OK. THINGS FIRST, DO FORGIVE ME IF YOU SEE SUDEN STRANGE CHANGES IN THE ART STYLE, I swear to my mama I made all of these, just that I've been drawing this concept idea for the past 2 years and I somehow completely changed from my own art style for these sillies towards the cardboard cutouts that the game has us to offer. So if there's any confusion, the first image up there is the latest from a few weeks.)

So I had this concept AU idea where I wanted to explain WHY the Sun and Moon can be completely separate while Eclipse is just cast away from the whole 'brotherhood' the fandom has created. And BECAUSE I haven't seen anyone do this back when I had this idea, I decided to make it my own!

AU LORE:

Eclipse in this AU appeared way back when the pizzaplex was being built. Small variations of iconic attractions such as a smaller version of the atrium, a half-cut area of Rockstar Row and Bonnie Bowl which was, at the time, the biggest attraction at the in-construction were all located within the upcoming glamrocks with their beta versions. Back at that time, Eclipse was somewhat of a prototype for the present-day daycare attendant we all know and love. They began to work around a smaller version of the daycare, being introduced to the children with both daytime and naptime protocols to ensure their safety and fun in Superstar Daycare.

Eventually, though, the pizzaplex began to grow bigger and bigger, to the point where more clients of all ages started to watch the early performances of the beta Glamrocks. Due to funds increasing and higher-ups becoming much more daring, a new attraction was set up near the daycare, this being known as the present-day Theater where Sundrop and Moondrop were introduced as its performers. Working as entertainers and jesters for comedic acts, especially for the adults who dropped off their kids and went off for a bag of popcorn and a soda to watch the sillies on their performances.

Sun and Moon as Jesters:

Sun back at the time was his usual joyful and happy self, yet one full of ego and quite self-centered if you must say. As Sun was given the role of the main character in the majority of his performances, he kept the idea that everything must be according to what was planned. Perfect, clean and nicely done, he thinks that the smallest mistake could ruin his "character arc" and much rather be scrapped on set in front of all his fans than admit that sometimes you just have to get off your fantasies and set yourself in real life.

Moon on the other hand, oh boy, that guy wasn't any less good. As the antagonist of the majority of the performances, he grew a 'villainous wanna-be' personality. Where he tries to prank you, trick you, and make pathetic yet silly obstacles before laughing away in an 'evil' laugh. I mean... what would you honestly expect? This is Moon who we are talking about you guys, there's no way this guy can be a calming presence to be around, not even before the virus situation.

FAMILY BONDING:

At first, Eclipse seemed a bit shocked and wary about how there were suddenly two completely identical modelled animatronics that resembled a lot of him living just near his daycare. At some point, they didn't want to be involved in whatever these two jesters were.

But as time went by, admittedly Eclipse grew attached to the twins. Having an older sibling bonded with them as they were the ones making sure those two imbeciles wouldn't go at each other's necks for dumb reasons like a scrip, a mistake in their performance on stage or even just a simple argument. Which they had. Multiple times.

Things were always a ruckus with the jesters. They hung out on their after-hours, helped each other with their usual routines for the day, and even there were rare occasions when Sun and Moon were invited into the daycare. That, of course, was where Sun learned how to adore arts and crafts. Seeing the beauty of art from his own viewpoint. As for the Moon jester? Well, he learned about disciplinarity, the need for perpetual rest and most wholesomely, he grew to like naptime due to Eclipse's soft lullaby that they would spread to every kid alike. Although too proud to admit, he is slightly jealous of Eclipse's calming nature. In a good way.

ANYWAY, ILL UPDATE ALL WITH THE 2ND PART SOON BYE-

[yakuzacanons]

Hi friend!!! :D I hope you're having a great road trip so far (I know it's gonna be a while for you to answer this one but it's okiee take your time, just wanted to thank you for writing these amazing headcanons!! <3)

So, I'm a sucker for marriage. Can I request some headcanons about how the boys would propose to their partner?

BRAIN GO BRRRRRRRRR yes you absolutel can have these headcanons ahooga. Also thank yew, road trip was gouda. Headcanons below da cut sweet anon, thanks for your patience!

Kazuma Kiryu

Most nervous about planning the proposal, actually. Worried about where, when, and all of that. He'll be surprisingly calm during it though, much to his own surprise.

He'd pick somepalce rather intimate, definitely not the type of guy for public proposals. Honestly might just go the classic route and propose to you while the sun sets on the beach in Okinawa.

Only other person who knows any details about his proposal is Haruka. She totally contributes, like hiding the ring box in her room because she knows you won't look in there.

Majima Goro

Debates for a long time if he's going to go the typical over the top route he does with... pretty much anything else in his life. Asks Kiryu and Saejima for advice, to which they both kinda blush awkwardly and are like "How the heck would I know what to do?"

Shockingly, he decides to also go the more intimate route, although maybe less romance movie tropey than Kiryu. Probably takes you up to a rooftop the two of you relaly like to hangout at, or some other place where you both have a lot of fond memories.

Most nervous of all of the boys DURING the proposal itself. You might honestly be able to pick up on it due to his sudden fidgety behavior a few minutes before it actually happens.

Saejima Taiga

He'll keep it fairly plain and simple. No frills or lavish giant public proposals here. Saejima wants to keep it as real and genuine as possible as he sees this as essentially THE confession of a lifetime.

Won't go too crazy with planning and will likely settle for doing a date that repeats your first date together. Visiting all of your favorite spots or maybe where you had your first kiss is a good setting for him.

Might propose on a rooftop or in a park but will make sure there are no crowds nearby. He wants to be able to lay out all of his feelings before popping the question and he needs some amount of space and privacy from the world to do this.

Akiyama Shun

Total class act. Fancy dinner and all. Brings flowers and everything. Probably secretly asks the waiter to pull some strings in the kitchen for a nice dessert.

Asks Hana advice for what to do. She helps him pick out the place, ultimately. She makes him do the ring shopping though and refuses to give him input on that.

Nervous the entire time, both while planning it and during the proposal itself. Akiyama is a romantic at heart but honestly marriage was kind of always a distant fantasy for him, so it's totally crazy for him to actually be doing this.

Tanimura Masayoshi

Our boy is a MESS. Has zero idea what to do. Where the heck do people even get rings? Does it matter which knee people get down on during a proposal? He has no idea.

Spends the most amount of time out of all the boys picking out a ring. He knows this is something very special and important so he puts in the time accordingly to pick one out.

Might honestly propose at Homeland after getting them to prepare a special dinner for you both. Proposes in private though, makes eveyone leave the restaurant before he gets down on one knee because he's shy as hell.

Ryuji Goda

The LEAST nervous of all the boys about proposing. It's kind of expected for him to get married someday given his position in the Omi Alliance, so the concept has been on his mind somewhat for a good while.

Confident in his ability to pick out a ring and he will indeed pick out something very nice. Unlike most of the boys, he can plan a proposal all by himself.

Think Akiyama on steroids. It's not just a fancy dinner, it's a PRIVATE room in the nicest restaurant in town with your favorite bottle of wine chilling when you arrive. Hell, private chef too if he can find one. Gets down on one knee after dessert just as the sun is setting.

Nishikiyama Akira

Out of all the boys, he's probably the easiest to sniff out when he's planning a proposal. Tries to play it cool like everything is normal but it's super obvious when things are not normal.

Asks Kiryu for advice on places to go ring shopping, to which Kiryu is like "Uhh... Le Marche? Where else do they sell rings..." which isn't much help. Might just go ring shopping WITH you after proposing, if you're into that.

He'll wait for an anniversary or Valentine's Day to pop the question. It lets him use the holiday as a cover up for all his scurrying around making plans.

Daigo Dojima

Similar to Ryuji in that he always knew he'd likely get married at some point due to his status. However, unlike Ryuji, he has ZERO clue what he's doing. Isn't panicking outwardly but is a little palms sweaty if you know what I mean.

If he asks anyone for advice, it's his mom. He wouldn't bring it up to other Tojo Clan members and plus he trusts his mom of all people to understand him and what he's about to do. They have a pretty decent relationship and she'll be glad to see her son getting married.

With Daigo, it'll eventually go down one of two ways. If you share a home together, he'll plan a private dinner at home with just you two and send all of his staff home so you can have the place all to yourself. If you don't share a home together, he'll take you on a weekend vacation and propose the night before the vacation ends.

Mine Yoshitaka

Good at ring selecting, bad at proposal planning. He's got a pretty good idea of what kind of ring you'd want but when it comes to the act of proposing itself, he's not sure where to do it.

Would end up taking you on a very special date, something the two of you hadn't done before, like going to an opera. It'll definitely be something that requires you two dressing up. Even by Mine standards, it'll be a rather fancy affair.

After the event, he'll take you to a really nice rooftop bar late at night and that's when it'll all go down. It's semi-public but he'll still try to keep it intimate and won't try to draw attention to himself.

Tatsuo Shinada

Despises public proposals. The idea of proposing is plenty scary and he doesn't need a hundred people watching. Having said that, he's not the best at getting all fancy, especially since he can't always afford that, so planning is pretty hard for Shinada.

It's cheesy but he might just end up like putting the ring on a cupcake and giving it to you at home after spending all day together doing cute things, like going to bookstores and getting food at some local restaurants.

The least traditional of all the boys to be honest. Don't expect the whole down-on-one-knee things. Shinada's pretty spontaneous so it'll be a unique proposal for sure. Most likely man to propose with a ring pop or something.

[guardianofnightmares]

You did not break me. I'm still fighting for peace

Text on a picture as well as a title of a work are taken from a song “Elastic Heart” by Sia. Although strangely enough, while I like an original version, I think a rock cover of it by Written by Wolves suits this pairing just as well)).

For a better resolution of a picture (since Tumblr tends to lower quality of big files) follow this link to DA.

Figuratively speaking, I always tend to jump in a last car of a departing train and this time is no different (I started working on this picture when there literally were two weeks left till a deadline). So, I really hope that I was on time to post this entry for @pastelpaperplaness DTIYS challenge, heh. If not, this work can be considered as a gift.

I am a huge fan of TFA and fan works based on this show in general. It’s always so inspiring to look at so many original ideas and concepts people create around such awesome (and well aged) projects. Hence why I tend to follow artists and their AUs in order to see their interpretations of beloved characters. And Pastel’s Thorns and Thrones AU is no exception. I mean, cmon guys, a fantasy AU about TFs - what else to add here))?

Such challenges as this DTIYS are fun to participate in since it’s a nice opportunity to try new techniques, especially when people are given freedom in such matters.

Umm,.. I kinda got carried away as you can see, heh.

In the end I tried to combine characters’ designs with a realistic approach to drawing metal, skin, clothes and etc. + added just a couple personal details such as an embroidery on attires. But I hope that Pastel won’t mind that since she’s given people an opportunity to “stylize to their heart's content and be as creative as they want”.

Coming back to an idea behind Thornes and Thrones AU and how I tried to show it in this drawing:

It’s always very delightful to see Megatronus and Sir Orion being flirty, hugging, kissing, simply spending nice time with each other. But what personally I value behind this relationship is a sheer impossibility of such love, the tragedy of these two men falling for each other under such unfair circumstances. Both characters are dedicated to their causes and none of them can easily break rules of a cold world they live in.

In the end of a journey, all that’s going to be left is a suffering caused by unspoken truths. This consuming feeling of a betrayal is akin to shrubs growing around and through a soul, stabbing it with thorns and permanently scarring it…

But if both can just try to “fight this war” with themselves and their desires “without weapons”, to finally raise a white flag,..

… one will see how such pure love is capable of blossoming as a marvelous flower, freeing characters from pain in their connected hearts.

If only this love’s given one chance of becoming true.

P.S. All in all, Pastel, thank you very much for an opportunity to participate in this challenge of yours. Happy 10.000 followers, you deserve it!

[acorpsecalledcorva]

Ok last night's research was wild and I would genuinely appreciate input and other thoughts on these ideas, especially if you've come across these before as I don't think I've seen them discussed. I was actually just looking into the idea of DID being a disorder or multiple realities as highlighted by Kluft but then I ended up in a rabbit hole.

Functional Dissociation of the Self: The Psychological and Sociological Self

So first of all I was reading this paper

Which is really really good, it's massive, absolutely huge, but incredibly thorough and explores how different kinds of trauma are predictive of different disorders and presentations across PTSD, DPDR, Dissociative depression, and complex Dissociative disorders.

But quite early on it mentions the work of Sar and Ozturk and this concept of the Psychological and Sociological Self, so what's that?

(this is just an abstract but it also appears in Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders DSM V and Beyond so you might be able to read it in a Google books preview)

This paper kind of proposes a new idea, my initial thoughts are that the authors aren't exactly exploring new ground so much as redrawing the map, however, it does seem to be that their perspective has merit in application. The idea is that everyone has these two selves, the psychological self is that deeper true self, it's your creativity and your reason, all that behind the scenes good stuff that makes up you. The sociological self is much more influenced by culture, it's behaviour and social conditioning and belief, the things we project outwardly about ourselves.

If this sounds familiar it's because it absolutely is, it's all very Jungian and Freudian and the authors admit to this. Where they differ though is the amount of agency given to the selves. Neither is a passive observer but instead a duality of the self that works in parallel as a team. These guys are also not afraid to get political in their writing and highlight how a culture that is at odds with the psychological self can give rise to extremist behaviours through overelaboration of the sociological self. There's a great bit in one of their papers about the kind of person who swings politically from far right to far left, it's wild.

When it comes to trauma, they propose that dissociation arises when the Sociological Self attempts to bury the psychological self to protect it. For instance, in the example of betrayal trauma from a caregiver, the psychological self would be the part of you that is hardwired to remain attached to said caregiver, while the sociological self recognises the danger. The SS pushes the PS down to protect it from the external reality, however, the authors suggest that the SS is unequipped to deal with this effectively without the PS's help.

Interestingly, they also suggest that the SS attempts to deal with trauma by distorting the reality of it. It repeats a version of the trauma to try and solve, unsuccessfully, and everytime it repeats it changes so that the trauma becomes retraumatising. This is important because this is where the sociocognitive aspect comes in, because when we are unable to rely on the internal solutions of the PS we turn our attention outward. Fantasy proneness, then, would result in unreliable narration of traumatic events based on attempts by the SS to reconcile trauma from external sources. Pseudomemories. The trauma is real, and a hard copy is stored in the psychological self, but when the SS acts as a barrier to the PS then that core trauma is inaccessible. That's why it's important to focus on the feelings behind the trauma as those remain true.

In this model, alter identity formation arises from the discrete packaging of trauma that is set aside, and an attempt by the psychological self to connect with the external world and creates a new sociological self. This is very relevant to me as it pertains to how I experience alters, that there's a pool of fragments (discrete trauma packages) and, when required, an alter emerges from this pool and passes through my social conditioning to create the identity aspect of the alters sense of self. The biographical data of the alter is therefore formed from my sociological self's interpretation of external sources (be they archetypal or direct copies of media).

This disconnect of the PS and SS leads to an underdevelopment of the psychological self and an over development of the sociological self. This is what, in the authors opinion, leads to the paradoxical phenomena of a lack of neuroplasticity (no new solutions for trauma are found) and high adaptability (new alter identities in traumatic or stressful situations) found in CDD patients. It also means that the psychological self remains a child with a strong drive towards protection and nurturing, but therefore, retains it's sensitivity towards betrayal and therefore need for protection.

Now, this is the extra wild bit, because the authors propose that reconnection and engagement with the psychological self should be the primary goal of psychotherapy and if successful then the PS can rapidly develop and resolve trauma.

In this paper

The authors highlight the main barrier to access of the psychological self, the trauma self. The TS is an aspect of the over developed sociological self. It contains a distorted sense of reality, one of hopelessness and helplessness, and projects this reality internally. Think of it like a recursive version of Plato's allegory of the cave. The trauma self sits inside the cave, miserable, but afraid of the shadows on the wall and therefore unable to leave. Those shadows are then projected inwards to internal parts onto their own cave wall. This creates a bidirectional phobia of the internal and external world. Internal protector parts are hyper vigilant against a distorted view of the external world, and the host alter becomes phobic of the internal parts which they view as irrational, frightening, and dangerous (hello, this is me).

Now, this is the bit that seems insane to me and what I would love others opinion on, because the authors seem to suggest that persecutory parts hold the resolution skills for processing trauma, and if the host would only stop being prejudiced against them (like, actually, not like liberal white women who support BLM but lock their car doors when they see someone looking a little too urban) and let the persecutors do what they were originally designed for then recovery is incredibly swift and effective. One case study took 6 sessions. They also claim that patients have had no relapses up to 7 years after treatment.

So, this to me seems way to good to be true (or maybe that's my treatment resistant trauma self talking 😅). There must surely be counter arguments to this model on limitations or impracticalities. The first paper I linked seems quite thoroughly in support of this model, but I'm pretty sure that it's the first time I've come across it. Does anyone else know more about this? Has it been done to death and thoroughly debunked? Are there discussions by other big names in the field? Help a sister out

[nottoxicfr]

So…

*steeples fingers*

FFXIII Rosegarden. I must know the inspiration aside from FFXIII being AMAZING (and my childhood) and also RWBY for the same reasons.

Scratch that, I must know everything. This is a crossover I never knew I needed.

I’m sorry this took so long! Seriously, my bad. If you have any questions, please tell me. I promise I won't take three months to answer this time

This will be long.

For inspiration, the short story is that I have a lot of Final Fantasy-RWBY AUs, for basically all the Final Fantasy games I think of regularly (7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) and even in the scope of Final Fantasy 13, I have a 13-1 and a 13-2 and a 13-3LR AU. I also have a KH AU I've been working on.

This'll just be the Final Fantasy 13-1 AU, though I’ll link the other story details when I post them.

Just to run through a few things, just to set a baseline of how the world works. This is a Remnant where the world increasingly reveals elements from Final Fantasy 13, rather than a true crossover.

For example, the l’Cie and the Fal’Cie are the same idea in concept. The l’Cie are branded servants of the Fal’Cie, mechanical deities serving the Gods themselves. However, in this story, the l’Cie are a fairy tale to even Ozma, which means he only has a strange idea of what they actually are. Only l’Cie really knows what being a l’Cie entails.

A l’Cie is:

Someone who has been branded with a tattoo by a Fal’Cie, essentially the sign that they’ve been given a quest and a vision (a Focus) of what they have to accomplish

The tattoo slowly grows, setting a time limit for their quest. As it grows, the l’Cie also gains the ability to harness magic

However, if they fail to accomplish their task in time, they will be transformed into a monster, a Ci’eth

Someone who is branded naturally attracts Grimm to them, which makes traveling more difficult

Oscar is aged up here a bit, just a year younger than Ruby, and this takes place during a pseudo-Beacon Arc time period.

Oscar is the first l’Cie of the story. His brand is on his neck, under his bandage wraps. His Focus, his quest, is to awaken the slumbering Fal’Cie hidden around Remnant. They were put to sleep when the Brothers left Remnant and, for some reason, they’ve judged it time for them to awaken.

Outside of being a L’cie, he’s just a regular guy at this point and that makes it hard for him to get where he needs to go. For this reason, he hires Ruby to help him get to Forever Fall Forest, which is where he thinks the Fal’Cie he needs to awaken is.

The first arc takes place in Vale, where Oscar’s tremendous bad luck causes a trip that should only take a few hours take several days, which pushes him up the edge of his time limit. Naturally, this puts him in a bad mood, which makes him and Ruby have some friction between them. The situation is somewhat smoothed over when Oscar shows Ruby some magic and he vaguely explains that he needs to get to Forever Fall soon or he’ll die a miserable death.

Ruby distracts him for a little while by talking to him about her Team and asking him about his life. He worked on a farm for most of his life, his aunt died recently, and he’s always wanted to see the world. They fight several packs of Grimm as they hike and Ruby contemplates calling in reinforcements because, for some reason, Oscar insists he’s on a time limit.

They arrive in Beacon where they meet up with WBY and Team JNPR briefly, only to hop on a wagon heading to Forever Fall. Oscar is, at this point, seemingly kind of sketchy. To be fair to him, he’s basically dying.

The arc resolves when Oscar and Ruby plummet down into a sinkhole and find the sleep Fal’Cie of Forever Fall, Behemoth, who brands Ruby simply for being nearby. Now, aside from being paid, Ruby has been dragged into this race to awaken the Fal’Cie, much to the frustration of Oscar. He doesn’t feel comfortable with that, but there’s not a lot he can do but beg an uncaring Fal’Cie to unbrand her.

On the upside, Oscar is given an extension of his time limit and a new vision. He needs to go to the floating city in the sky (Atlas) next, which is where he needs to find the twin Fal’Cie sleeping there.

Ruby is branded as the second l’Cie. She has a brand at her collarbone, hidden under her shirt. Her Focus is to awaken the slumbering Fal’Cie as well, although she also catches further glimpses into the future that put an emphasis on encroaching darkness.

This starts the second arc, Atlas, or the journey to Atlas.

It kicks off when Ruby essentially runs away without telling anyone, under the assumption that once Oscar and her finish their quest, she’ll come back and explain everything. It’s not a very good plan, but she’s understandably occupied by everything that’s going on with her life right now. Ruby and Oscar try and fail to rent a car because they’re both underage. Following this, Ruby tries to buy them tickets directly to Atlas, which doesn’t work because travel to Atlas has suddenly jammed up. Instead, they have to take an indirect route from Anima (the Mistal continent) to Mantle, which takes a few more days but that’s fine.

Yang is, understandably, incredibly distressed that her sister seems to have given up her dreams of being a Huntress to chase after a boy she met three days ago. She reports this to Qrow, who tells Ozpin, who tries to get an understanding of what happened. Yang tells Ozpin about the weird stuff that she heard Oscar and Ruby talking about before, which entails something about Fal’Cie and l’Cie and the Kingdom of Atlas. 

She suspects Ruby has joined a cult and is, again, incredibly distressed.

As stated before, the words l’Cie and fal’Cie are like myths to Ozma. They’re messengers of the Gods and assistants to their angels and, most importantly, they’re almost synonymous with great change. Not good or bad, just big changes in the world. This rings alarm bells in Ozpin’s mind, though not to the point of overreaction.

Ozpin asks Yang to take Team WBY and go after her sister, just to make sure she’s alright and to try and bring her and Oscar back. Ozpin wants to speak with both of them over this supposed l’Cie business. Qrow says he’ll do some scouting ahead to search for them, hopefully, to wrap this whole thing up quickly. He’s not too fond of the idea that some kid swept Ruby away from Beacon.

Ozpin informs his inner circle about all of this, just to keep them updated. It seems like Ruby and Oscar are headed to Anima and then to Atlas, they’re talking about l’Cie stuff which is crazy because, etc…etc… He wants Leonardo to investigate Oscar Pine, he wants Ironwood to try and bring them both in and most importantly, Ozpin just wants to talk.

The lack of details makes Ironwood have a bit of an overreaction. The l’Cie are agents of change in the world and, with the Vital Festival on the horizon, it seems more likely to him that these “l’Cie” are probably going to cause a negative effect. He mobilizes some of his elite forces to capture Ruby and Oscar, as well as putting out wanted posters on Scrolls that these two people are wanted for questioning. It’s a bit of an overreaction, but in his mind, it’s better to be cautious when it comes to mysterious things that haven’t been heard of since Ozma was a child.

Leonardo reports this to Salem soon after, having defected to her not that long ago. Just as troubled by this reappearance of a fairy tale from her childhood as Oz was, she tells Cinder to go find them. She can kill one of them, but she needs the other one to question about what’s going on.

To summarize:

Yang, Blake, and Weiss are chasing after Ruby and Oscar from Vale. Qrow is also looking for them as a bird.

Ironwood told Winter and some of her troops to go to Mistral and cut them off. He also made wanted posters for them.

Salem told Cinder to go find Oscar, who told Roman to spread the word and find them.

Meanwhile, Ruby and Oscar’s air ferry to the port crash lands because, apparently, l’Cie magic disagrees with technology. They have no idea they’re being chased until Ruby sees a wanted poster on her Scroll, detailing that Oscar is a potential terrorist and Ruby is either an accomplice or a hostage. This causes Ruby to freak out and summon her Eidolon, essentially a summoned spirit meant to assist a l’Cie in the quest. She and Oscar have to subdue it before it attacks the people on the crashed ferry, because a freshly summoned Eidolon is naturally berserk.

Her Eidolon is Carbuncle, which basically takes the form of a giant wolf-cat when it is going berserk and is much smaller after being tamed. It has the ability to produce elemental dust from a gemstone in its forehead and is, generally, more of a support Eidolon.

They have to run now because Carbuncle managed to destroy a hefty part of the ferry while it was attacking them, which upgrades them from potential terrorists to probable terrorists, even if it’s only on accident.

This is as far as I’ve written properly because I’ve also been writing a dozen other things. As I said before, I have a lot of Final Fantasy AUs. However, I do have vague details on how things progress from there.

Ruby and Oscar run into Yang, Blake, and Weiss just as they arrive in the port town where they have to board a boat. They end up getting into a fight, Ruby verbally and Oscar physically, because of the miscommunications involved. It’s hard to explain being a l’Cie to someone who doesn’t have the context of apparently sleeping Gods under Remnant. For the most part, Oscar’s part of the fighting ends up being running away and casting magic, which baffles all three of the Huntresses (because of genuine magic) and ends up casting a Thunder (Thundara) spell too close to Blake. This knocks her out.

They board the boat, just barely managing to escape from Ruby’s teammates and there’s a climactic moment where Yang has to watch the boat depart without being able to chase after them. WBY makes plans to keep up the pursuit as soon as they can, with Qrow flying ahead to Mistral.

When Ruby and Oscar get to Mistral, where they’ll board another ferry to go to the north and then get on a boat, there’s a scene that plays out similarly to when Snow rescues Lighting and Hope in FF13.

Winter corners Ruby and Oscar in a plaza with her troops, putting handcuffs on Ruby, only for Yang to show up on a motorcycle and rescue both of them. Blake and Weiss provide supporting fire and they all escape to the rooftops to get away. This puts Mistral on high alert, which shuts down the air ferry, complicating matters significantly. Still, Ruby and Oscar are grateful they weren’t captured. At this point, Ruby’s brand is halfway developed.

They all talk things over and, although WBY don’t necessarily believe everything they’re saying, they decide to help them get to Atlas. Yang also frets over Ruby’s tattoo-brand, which feels relaxingly normal to the group.

While all of that is going on, Cinder begins to make moves towards Atlas, planning to take advantage of the chaos the l’Cie are causing to damage Atlas and capture them. Salem is contemplating what to do about the awakening Fal’Cie, who is purging the overpopulation of Grimm in the world.

Oscar summons his Eidolon, Pegasus, which can turn into a motorbike with wings.

Ruby falls off of Atlas, but is saved by Oscar in a Bullhead.

When they get to Atlas and awaken one of the Fal’Cie there, WBY gets branded as l’Cie. It’s kind of like a spreading curse, and eventually, it will reach JNPR too. That comes later on though.

One of the Fal’Cie is located under Mantle, Vulcan, and the other one is located on the under side of the island of Atlas, Venus. WBY is entirely branded by Vulcan, and Winter and Penny are branded by Venus (though this isn’t something RWBYO is aware of).

There’s only one more Fal’Cie to awaken after this, which is located in Vacuo.

-Oscar awakened the Mistral one

Ruby and Oscar awakened the Vale one

Ruby, Oscar, Yang, Blake, and Weiss awaken Vulcan, which awakens Venus

The last one is in Vacuo. JNPR and Oscar will end up awakening it by falling into a ravine (Woo!)

The final stage of the story reveals that the Fal’Cie want to harvest the collected souls of Humanity so they can use that power to evolve into a God themselves and follow after their creators. They despise Humanity and resent having to serve the inferior creations of the Brothers. Everyone takes a stance on what to do about that, though the main characters decide to fight that. This goes against their final vision, which tells them they are meant to assist in harvesting the souls of Humanity. This is called Humanity's Fall!

Pyrrha does get stabbed in the process and possibly dies, which relates to the RWBY x Final Fantasy 13-2 AU. I love interconnecting these things.

I love talking. If you have any questions or ideas about anything, please ask. Please. Again, my bad. It's been a rough few months.

[anonameisadditions]

So You Want To Write #2: The Roguish Type

It’s the 1930s in America, and the world is a dim, grimy place. Gone is the Jazz Age- with slick art deco, free-flowing illegal liquor from every speakeasy across the nation, and get-quick-rich schemes smothered under The Great Depression. The Great American Experiment seemed to be over- the rot in the once-great society (In the eyes of the vastly more empowered Caucasian men of the time) had become septic, and foul. The banks had shown themselves just as greedy and selfish as the average American, failing to properly plan for an economic bubble burst and ending up going insolvent within days of the economy crashing. The entire country would be placed out of work- the great boom of industry transformed into a sputtering, dying foghorn in the mist. It is no shock that in this era, our art would turn mistrustful, angsty, and depressed. And nowhere would this deep illness be reflected so cleanly as Film Noire.

These films- seedy, provocative crime films based around smoking, whiskey-swilling private dicks, and smoldering, vicious women would depict the dynamic of a dying society- a place where the police were rotten, the men weak, and the women hard. This is the environment we associate with the icon of the film noire- The private eye.

A “good” man, in a matter of phrase- for they always had some canny sense of right and wrong, a belief that their work was making life truer for someone. But, they’d be shaken- a dame, a woman worth trusting, beautiful and convincing, would lead them astray, tricking them into a deadly tango of treachery that would have them once again asking- Is it worth it to be good in a world that’s so bad?\

In steps The Man Who Knew Too Much.

“The Man Who Knew Too Much” is the common DNA of the modern rogue, in our modern conception of one. It stars Leslie Banks- a man known primarily for playing gruff, menacing bad guys across the pond at this point- and casts him as a leading man. He’s a brawler. He shoots first and asks questions later. He puts himself up against terrible odds- an entire criminal conspiracy to destabilize the political situation in London- and steps through with candor and charm, at each step along the way. He gets way too involved with a situation and ignores all rational advice given to him by the police- all because he trusts himself more than he trusts any institution.

And the audience EATS THIS UP

“The Man” becomes an instant classic, and Hitchcock begins to truly accue stateside appeal- and this only gets refined in his spy-fiction follow-ups, the best known being “North By Northwest.”

What’s the point of this brief history to the topic at hand- The Roguish Type, and how you want to write them? Everything. Because to write is to render fat from meat- it’s to understand how society changes a story as society adapts to it, to understand the underlying psychological underpinnings of motivation that makes an audience resonate with an archetype. And none is as misunderstood and spiritually confused as “The Rogue.” A scoundrel, A criminal, a scumsucking mouthbreeder who sits below the expectations of society- he flits from job to job, obliged to no one but himself- a modern cowboy, perhaps, but without an obligation to protect anyone but themselves. Within the rogue, however, lies an exceptionalist ideal we all wish we could live up to- the idea of innate goodness. 

Art from 2nd ed. Dungeons and Dragons, Kyle Punk and Tim Shepard

Prince Of Thieves

When we refer to “rogues”, the Jungian ideal in our world is drawn to the Tolkienesque, fantasy-focused interpretation of a rogue- a man bundled in leather, with a meaty look to him and a small, sleazy smile. He plays with knives, idly- using the point of his blade to clean out under his fingernails, suggesting a propensity for violence, and skill with a dagger. His eyes size you up and down, boldly, questioning whether a quick robbery could solve some problems that need solving, right, bub? 

But then we see him act. He joins our merry caravan, the rogue- this criminal outcast, this thief, this reject- and we see that he’s more than some petty criminal- he’s a self-styled robin hood, who won’t screw over people he likes, and will actively target those he doesn’t- but he' never given someone something they didn't have coming. He’s a self-styled anarchist- a true believer in individuality, who smiles and accepts the dog-eat-dog world of the undercity- and yet, this dog only eats a meal worth having. This “Robin Hood” didn’t need an education, a religion, a cause, or a care to be good to people- He only needed his wit. 

When Indiana Jones goes deep, deep, into the jungles of some tribal colony to steal their precious Incan gold relic, he does so to do… what? Sell it to a museum? He’s certainly making a buck off this. But, Jones is then contrasted to what a man like Beloq is- unprincipled.

A true asshole, willing to work with Nazi’s as long as they pay enough. He is quite rich from this-- His resources are plenty, his palette refined, his Jordan’s unsoiled. But then, as you see them interact, you realize that Jones and Beloq could not be more similar- The only thing stopping Indiana Jones from exceeding Beloq- no, what makes Beloq unable to win against Jones, with it’s final act, is the fact that Jones, despite his bad behavior and bad traits, still desires to be good. 

This is where I draw the core concept you must adhere to in “The Rogue”. Within our society, we have a strange relation to criminals. Our court system’s biggest inherent flaw- by design- is that ultimately, a jury of your peers will be the ones to convict you. We use this concept because we believe that a man must be considered a true criminal, a malintented traitor, worthy of punishment. This is why the jury must be convinced of the fairness of the charge to cast judgment on the offender, and why we don’t treat manslaughter and murder the same. Criminality is not inherently defined by breaking the law- it is defined by breaking the law for reasons that the state views as invalid.

Some say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the rogue presents a different hypothesis- that one can use the tools of evil and still be good, as long as they can keep their moral code intact. This places the rogue in the place of the outsider- a common character used to question societal norms with pluck, determination, and humor. 

Examples? Right. Examples.

Look, Your Worshipfulness, let’s get one thing straight. I take orders from just one person: me.

Han Solo occupies an interesting role in the first Star Wars film. He’s a smuggler who’s working under the boot of a powerful fascist army, driving a spaceship that’s widely considered one cherry vehicle, and shows a reluctance to get himself involved with the fleeing Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan. His introductory scene- the infamous “Han shot first” under-the-table pistol blast helps establish Han quite well as a rogue, using an unscrupulous and dishonorable trick to remove an obstacle in his path. But as Luke spends time with Han, so do we, and we start to realize there’s more going on in the heart of this smuggler than he lets on. He implies a background working with the resistance, several times through the film; He quickly bonds with Luke like a big brother. What’s most important for this roguish character, however, is the clash of sentimentality and practicality. Han Solo denies an opportunity to work with the rebellion to strike a major blow against the empire, in what is considered practically a suicide run. But, in the last moments of the film, while Luke is left to perform the trench run, alone, Han Solo comes back, with a quip and a cheery face; For the rogue, despite his dog-eat-dog psychology, sentimentalism and heart is why he lives to fight another day. 

"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

If you thought for a fucking second i was going to use Benedico Cumshlupper or whatever, you have a lot to learn about me.

Hows this for a head teaser? It’s often easy to forget that Sherlock - the insufferable, upper-class advisor for all manner of criminal mystery - is, as accounted by the original short stories and novels, the roguish type. Consider- Sherlock seems to regard absolutely zero importance to the laws and rules of polite society, making an absolute terror to his landlord, doing large sums of illegal narcotics to stave off boredom, and generally treating the police as ineffectual at best and annoying, abusive bullies at worst.

Sherlock may be better off than the average rogue, but do not be mistaken- His interests, as selfish as they are, are still interested in helping his fellow man. Most Sherlock stories have Sherlock professing a lack of care towards the problems of “average people”, save for the mystery- yet most of his stories end with a brief segment of sentimentality, of Sherlock making right what was wrong often at personal expense, and recognizing the humanity in the poor souls who come to him, seeking his help. Sherlock utilizes both the concept of authority and breaks the law to bring justice and truth to people- despite his assurance of having nothing but self-interest in mind. 

"ARGH! The common language doesn't have enough swears!"

Chilchuck, from Dungeon Meshi allows us to explore this tendency further. Chilchuck fits our archetypical rogue- a highly skilled, vaguely illegal operator with a focus on the fine arts of thieving- mainly lockpicking, athletics, trap navigation, and other roguish skills. But while Chilchuck doesn’t typically encompass the criminal miscrent side of the rogue, he does showcase the other commonality between the last few examples- the eruption of sentimentality. Chilchuck constantly comments on how he shouldn’t even be working with the twins, and empathizes, again and again, that there is no possible way that he’s going to stick his neck out for his party beyond what he’s being paid to do. Yet, what does Chilchuck do every time the situation gets tough? He runs to danger. He only threatens to leave when he feels his concerns are unheard by Laius about the state of the adventure. Chilchuck can pretend all he wants that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself- but actions speak louder than words. 

Conclusion

The identity of the rogue is based in a rejection of the concept of nature vs nurture in a work of fiction. The Rogue, despite his background in skullduggery and criminality, showcases an intact moral compass that even the most polished wonderboy can recognize as a heart of gold. He exists in this environment to prop up an element of heroic fantasy- the belief of innate goodness, that one can utilize the powers of evil for the purpose of good and avoid letting it corrupt themselves too far. They work in contrast to other, more pure-of-heart characters to exemplify that circumstances don’t always make the man- and to let us, the audience know that we didn’t need to grow up a soft-eyed farm boy or be promised a great destiny to make a difference- only have our hearts in the right places and to do what we can to make evil lose. If you liked this blogpost, Give it a reblog and a like, and don't forget to follow me for more media analysis and creative endeavors. Below, you can vote on the focus of my next entry in "So You Want To Write" series.  

Yours Paradoxically, 

AN0N