#he would be avoiding all the fanfic tropes like he avoids cliche anime tropes in canon

[billiuspendragon]

Saiki K x Reader fanfic where Saiki keeps interjecting like "who the hell is Why En??"

[punz4lyfe]

Pokemon Journeys Episode 45. Let’s review:

1. How are the news reporters not dead yet in that flimsy helicopter in the middle of this apocalyptic event?

2. The fact that Team Rocket were able to reach out to Gigantamax Meowth to have him control himself and try to take on Eternatus absolutely speaks grand possibilities for both funny and awesome Team Rocket moments in the future in the Galar region! That, and Meowth’s knowledge of G-Max Gold Rush, too! Hopefully, the writers won’t miss out on these blatant opportunities.

3. I swear Leon and Charizard cheated death like 4 to 5 times in this episode.

4. The Ash vs. Chairman Rose fight was really done, with Ash using Pikachu and Riolu’s speed to take advantage of Ferrothorn and Copperajah’s bulk and put them against each other. In addition to that, Rose shows how much of a villain he is by smiling throughout the beginning of the fight with sadistic intent, even going as so far to command his mons to attack Ash and Pikachu and crush Riolu. Great display of character, writers! And, of course, as we’ve all been waiting for, Riolu’s evolution into Lucario. Absolutely done well, with Riolu showing his strong friendship with Ash and Pikachu by defending them against Rose’s mons, despite all odds being against his favor due to the sheer size and weight difference. Absolutely perfect. And then Lucario used his aura to tell Ash “Screw Vacuum Wave, I got the Poke-Hadouken, now!”, which was a sweet callback to Ash and Riolu’s aura bond in the latter’s debut appearance. And once the battle was over, Rose showed concern for his Pokemon and not for his failing plans, showing that he’s still human on the inside and is really just in a lot of turmoil due to the trauma he experienced as a child at the mines. So yeah, great moment of the episode all around! On the other hand though..... ugh.....

5. Goh vs. Oleana. Like I said in my last review, I was not looking forward to how this would turn out due to Goh’s win being obvious, and.... yeah, there are some problems. Compared to Ash and Rose’s battle, the action in this one was a lot less impressive. At the start, it was mostly just Raboot using Ember, only to get countered and splooshed by Water Pulse every time. When it actually picked up with Goh using the environment, leading to Raboot’s own evolution into Cinderace to finish Milotic off with Pyro Ball, it was still not done well, as Milotic was knocked out by Pyro Ball and a few consecutive Embers beforehand, which should NOT be enough to make it faint. Look, when Ash fought Rose, it took Pikachu and Riolu a good number of hits to push back Ferrothorn and Copperajah before both were finished off by Aura Sphere, a super-effective move. In this case, Milotic was taken out solely by A FEW attacks its strong against. That shouldn’t have done it in, especially with how untrained Raboot is compared to Ash’s mons. Not to mention, it also kinda digs further a little problem there is with Goh and Cinderace almost always winning/achieving every little thing they do that I’ll go further in-depth with my future blog over them. And while I’m happy Cinderace is back to his enthusiastic self (with some of Raboot’s coolness still left in) and the moment where Goh communicated with Raboot to use the environment for his preferred Ember attack was a good character moment between the two, the cons of this part of the episode kinda outweigh the pros. Moving on, however.

6. Sonia x Raihan? That’s.... kinda cute honestly.

7. Seeing Ash run around with a Lucario at his side is probably bringing a lot of fanfics to life. That, or Lucario and the Mystery of Mew flashbacks. Man, that was a good movie, wasn’t it?

8. Ahh, look at those five dorks gawk over each other and fist bump. It’s stuff like this that makes 2020 better.

9. Remember that part in the original Final Fantasy VII where Sephiroth attacked the whole gang with shockwaves before the fight against Bizzaro Sephiroth? The scene with Eternatus escaping Leon’s Ultra Ball gave me flashbacks to that. And I don’t even know why lol.

10. Oh my Arceus! The up-close shot of Eternamax Eternatus was honestly a little frightening!

11. Chairman Rose...pl-please get away from the helicopter windshield.... That’s just.... creepy.

12. Eternatus’ onslaught of Screw-U laser beams. At this point, it’s natural for Ash and Pikachu to take this kind of stuff in the face everyday.

13. Becoming the Sword and Shield legend? Yeah, that was expected. Look, when it comes to stuff like this in the anime, it’s about as obvious and cliche as it can get to the point it’s really no longer a bother to long-standing anipoke fans. And Leon? Please, my boi, stand down. You just want all the credit to yourself. (I’m only joking please don’t attack me fellow Leon fans)

14. The whole final battle between the good guys and Eternatus was alright. It was really cool seeing the Sword and Shield doggos’ signature attacks in the anime, though, it would’ve been cool for Ash and Goh to actually command them a little just like in the games. (and Ash’s whole thing with Nebby should prove that you don’t necessarily have to own a Legendary to command it in a crisis) It also nice for Pikachu, Lucario, and Cinderace to give Eternatus another three-way combo so that the doggos could have their opening. How it ultimately ended though.... well....

15. GOH’s REGULAR Pokeball caught Eternatus. I repeat, a REGULAR Pokeball from GOH caught Eternatus. Yeah......

16. Legendaries doggos, come back! I wanna see our dorks scratch behind your ears! Ah well, it’s more than likely they’ll return in the anime, given usual tropes and cliches.

17. Chairman Rose and Oleana are also definitely gonna make a return someday, no doubt about that. We still gotta wrap up Rose’s whole character with his childhood and father!

18. PROFESSOR SONIA!!!!! I STAN THIS SO FREAKING MUCH!!!!!!

19. Oh, Goh. You and your love for catching. Unfortunately, as the whole thing with Eternatus kinda proved, the anime is willing to have you able to capture Legendaries. With a plain Pokeball no less. You’re lucky I love you, my boy.

At with that, we’re done with the Darkest Day Arc! Pretty dope arc, ngl! While there were some things I felt were missed out, like Pikachu Gigantamaxing or Goh using mons other then Raboot/Cinderace, given how the episode ended, I feel there will be more of that kind of stuff in future Galar episodes. So that’s worth looking forward to you!

For the overall episode alone.... it was okay. Again, there were some things that kinda made it avoid being perfect (which sadly all involved Goh), but what we got was still great. The visuals and music were all amazing, there were a ton of great character moments, and for the most part, the action was intense and awesome! I’d give this episode an 8/10!

Now, to end things off, who else is excited for Mewtwo next week?!?!

[eeveebethsylveon]

Fanfics!

Note: I don’t have a good working title for this story.

It’s basically just a knee-jerk response to the end of the fourteenth chapter in Probable Theorem (so if you haven’t read that, make sure you read it first so you know where I’m coming from!).

That ending bugged me, so I’m just doing what I do best: taking a fictional scenario I didn’t write which I honestly had a negative response to, and changing it into something I am happy with by inserting my own character.

Warning: spoilers if you haven’t read PT, and also if you have a problem with mad borderline-rabid dogs you probably shouldn’t read this.

I hope I punched enough Enters to get the “Read More” prompt so as to hide this from everyone who’s trying to avoid spoilers.  Okay, here goes...

Lily had a project in mind.

Her plan was to go out at night, try to find Prince Charging, and snap a couple of pictures of him helping people.  Then she’d string them together in a video and narrate over them how much good he was doing.

Maybe then people would get off his back, and others like him could relax.

At least, she hoped that he was special with unusual powers.  That’d make him just like her.

She tugged her black hoodie up a little higher over her brown hair.  She knew full well that the outfit she wore on these outings made her look like she was planning something shady: totally black shoes, black socks, black leggings, and the black hoodie, with the only color she actually had being metallic silver fingertips on her black gloves so she could use her phone.  Still, it couldn’t be helped, and at least whatever method Princey used to find wrongdoings didn’t include spotting weirdly-dressed weirdos.

Not that he was one to talk.

Lily actually already had a bunch of pictures of the guy.  There were a couple of standard “superhero takes down criminals” shots, but most of them were just shots of him helping people who needed a sympathetic ear - which was what she preferred having anyway, they made him look more human.  She just wanted a bit more footage first before making her video.

Then she rounded a corner and stopped dead.

There was Prince Charging - unconscious and being lifted up by a bunch of people in black ski masks who were clearly about to throw him into the back of the unmarked van nearby.

She quickly snapped off about five pictures before ducking into an alleyway and tucking her phone into a pocket.  No.  I’m not going to let this happen.

Zipping up the front of her hoodie to completely hide her face, she focused and began to change her shape.

This was her power.  When she was a kid, she loved animals: loved reading about them, loved pretending to be them.  And after a while, “pretending to be” became “actually becoming.”  The only limitation she seemed to have was, she always was stuck becoming whatever color clothing she was wearing, and if the clothing wasn’t at least the closeness of the average T-shirt and jeans it wouldn’t “go” with her.  Closing up the front of her hoodie was the only way she could make sure her creature of choice didn’t end up with a face the color of her hair.  She didn’t want to be distinctive when she did this: she just wanted to be a totally black dog with silver nails.

When she opened her blue eyes again, the group of people who now had Princey right next to the open doors of the van seemed taller.  Not too much taller, she’d gone for a sight hound that probably stood about to her human waist.  Smells were stronger now, and sounds were somewhat louder.

Okay...I’m not Princey’s dog, I’m just a stray dog who has a serious problem with people in black ski masks.  I’m ignoring him, no matter how much I want to make sure he’s okay.  And I need to prepare to do the unthinkable.

After a second to compose herself, she dashed out, snarling and barking.

The bozos in the masks didn’t even have time to react before she hit the nearest one, sinking her teeth into his leg.

With a yelp of pain, he dropped Princey.

Lily released him, dashed around and used Princey as a springboard to aim right at the ski mask of another clown.  That guy got his arm up and her fangs found flesh yet again, while her weight alone caused everyone else to drop Princey on the ground.

First victory attained, now time to make sure they’re too scared of me to attempt to pick him up again.

She continued snarling, lunging at each guy while staying out of arm’s reach at the same time, doing her best to keep her attention everywhere and not actually look like she was protecting the guy she was all but standing on.  That was easy enough, actually: bite the hand of the first person to reach towards Princey, then turn around and bite another guy, leap off Princey and dash around to pull the most cliche move ever and bite a fifth guy’s ass.  Then she decided to be extra terrifying and ran right across Princey to head straight for the next guy’s crotch - 

It was the balls-dash that did it.  Her teeth never connected with him as he panicked and shouted, “Let’s get out of here!” leaping into the van himself.

The rest all hurried into the van as well, slamming the doors in her face - which she didn’t mind; she didn’t want to be in the van, she just wanted to scare them even more - and driving off.

Lily ran after the van for a bit, still barking up a storm...and doing her best to memorize the license plate.  She was so calling the cops on their butts.

When she stopped, she acknowledged to herself that she wished she hadn’t had to bite those guys, because now her mouth felt absolutely vile.  Well, better make sure Princey’s okay after that dance I did on his body.

She turned around and slowly walked back to where Prince Charging had fallen.

And he wasn’t there.

Huh?  She sniffed around the place.  There was his scent, that “I take regular baths complete with shampooing my perfect hair thank you very much” mixed with lightning, but it didn’t have any new trail away from where he’d fallen.  It was just...wait...

There was a second scent.  A second male, one who yeah cared for hygiene though maybe not as much as Princey, and oh yeah liked himself a bit of makeup.

What was weird about that smell, though, was that while the smell did lead there, it didn’t seem to go anywhere.  Like he’d run over, picked up Princey, walked over his own scent trail for about three paces and then just...vanished.

Another one like me?

Well, there was no point dwelling on it.  She had a video to make and the police to call.

Stepping back into the alleyway, she returned to human form, unzipped her hoodie and pulled out her cell phone.  Once she got the police on the line, she set to work.  “Okay, I just witnessed an attempted abduction.  There were maybe six guys in black ski masks trying to shove Prince Charging into the back of an unmarked van.”  She gave them the license plate number.  “They didn’t succeed in their attempt - a stray dog ran over and chased them off.  What?  No, I don’t think the dog belonged to Prince Charging, it acted more like it had once been traumatized by people in ski masks or something.  It was more interested in chasing the van than staying with him.  But yeah, whenever you find them, you’ll find that most of them have been bitten by that dog.  And I hope you arrest them, because removing dangerous people from the street is your job, not theirs.  Vigilante justice shouldn’t be stopped by vigilante justice, that’s just begging for things to spiral out of control.  In fact, they’re more dangerous than Prince Charging.  I - what?  No, sorry, I’m not sure where he went.  I was watching the van drive away with the dog chasing after it, I looked back and he was gone.  Okay, you’re welcome.  Bye.”  Lily hung up and went back home.

~

She spent the rest of the night putting together her video, and then uploaded it to YouTube.  “Now it’s time to turn those guys into a hashtag.”  She’d heard that expression exactly once, and didn’t know what it actually meant other than it was probably bad.

The video started with a shot of Prince Charging, of course, while she rambled on about him, flipping between pictures as she changed topics.  Mostly what she was saying was that there was never going to be a chance that he’d run out of enemies to fight and therefore go into the “hero becomes the villain” trope, because finding enemies wasn’t all he did - he just helped people who needed help even when there wasn’t a bad guy.  And then she sprung the pictures of the guys in ski masks and proceeded to bad-mouth them.  After all, nobody wanted to root for people in ski masks outside of their original sport!  Everybody in movies who wore black ski masks when they weren’t skiing was a bad guy!  She even slapped up a comparifier picture with Princey on one side and a selected ski mask clown on the other just as a way of saying “I’m sorry, but Prince Charging even looks cooler than these guys!”  She ended the video with one more picture of Princey comforting somebody and the statement of “If he’s truly dangerous - and everybody has the capability of being dangerous, so that’s not even the question - then this anti-Prince group needs to just let the cops deal with him.  I actually hope they try to find him for the sake of hiring him as an assist or something, because he’s clearly on the same side as them.  And as for that dog that saved him?  Well...who knows where that dog went, but wherever it is, Prince Charging really owes it.”  (The dog wasn’t really in the video, since she couldn’t get a good picture of herself in that situation; she’d just drawn a picture that was as good a rendering of what the dog looked like as she could and stuck that in - black dog with gray nails and blue eyes, nailed it.)

~

She hit a hundred thousand Likes within the first six hours of it being up, and got about fifty subscribers to boot.

A week later, she went to the Prince Charging Fan Club; no real reason, it helped her feel less alone.  She also didn’t go in, because she didn’t really want to, she just felt like hanging out outside the building “dressed” as that dog.

Lily could hear her video playing inside - what was that, the eightieth time this week?  Anyway, the group was also discussing it, and it sounded like she’d come in at the tail end of the meeting.

She lay down in an alleyway near the front door, took a deep breath...and froze.

There was that scent again!  That “I take regular baths complete with shampooing my perfect hair thank you very much” mixed with lightning!  Prince Charging was inside the building!

She slowly pushed herself into a sitting position, staring at the door and barely aware of the meeting being called to a close.

People filed out, and the last to leave was a group of two.  One had a bandage on his face and...and he was the one the smell was coming from.

And he turned just a little to his left and their eyes met.

Lily couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.

[groundramon]

Oh something I wanted to mention:

I think from an actual logical standpoint there actually is some merit to the statement “a gay love story is better than a straight love story” BUT lemme explain first, because usually im the kind of person against making that statements unless im reblogging someone else’s joke:

See the thing about writing stories is that you have tropes that you’re inevitably going to fall into, but what determines whether your story is good or not is the stuff around it.  ATLA’s premise is cliche as shit - a chosen boy must save the world alongside his 2-4 (or 5 if you count suki) companions and his animal side kick with his special powers that he must gradually learn how to use, with the final battle being the final testament of his ultimate strength.  But what makes ATLA so great is the character development, worldbuilding, emotion, and passion surrounding it.

There are two ways to avoid making your story feel trope-y - building on the trope, a la Teen Titan’s main cast or ATLA as mentioned above, or subverting tropes, which can unfortunately lead you into other tropes but if done correctly (and with more building on the trope, which is sometimes exactly what subverting the trope is) it can be an effective storytelling tool.

That last one is what makes a gay love story generally better than a straight love story.  Gay relationships by definition subvert the romance tropes found in many movies and stories because they flip at least one of the gender roles, and the dynamic may be different between the two characters because of their same-sex relationship (but it doesnt have to be, and in fact changing the relationship may remove some of the subversion).  But in a similar way, lots of times switching the sexes would subvert the tropes as well - mixing up the genders in any Disney princess movie would absolutely subvert the trope and imo would make a much more interesting story in most cases, buuut i digress, im personally biased against Disney movies.  So you could make the Beast a girl and Belle a boy, or you could make them both boys, or you could make them both girls - any of those options would subvert a lot of the tropes found in Beauty and the Beast.

That’s not to say every gay love story will be good.  I mean, yaoi/yuri fanfic is generally...uh...not too good to say the least.  But if you’re actually treating your gay characters like people, it leaves the doorway to some interesting plot subversions, and as long as you’re a good writer, you should be able to do something pretty good with that.

And like I said, just switching the gender roles of a heterosexual couple - assuming you switch the right ones and dont end up in another trope entirely - achieves the same effect.

And ofc plot subversions alone do not make a good story, just one with an interesting premise.

A lot of gay love stories so far (besides, again, yaoi/yuri shit) have also had writers who were passionate about their stories - or at least, all the good ones have.  At some point this might become less and less common as more people jump on the bandwagon of being gay to grab the left’s money as opposed to actually make a statement/show their support, but for the time being, there are only a handful of movies that do it for the money and not because they at least in addition to wanting your money also support LGBT+ rights.

So yeah.  Being gay doesnt automatically make romance better, but it does make it less cliche and/or inspire new/interesting character interaction which can in turn unstick a stuck story.  Or, yknow, reverse gender roles, thats fun too.