#i didn't know you had any DB blogs!

[corvussnakee]

Okay, Somehow posting a thingy with all my fuckin complaints n shtuff has helped to get my fuckin brain rolling again. Or maybe it's due to the fact that I've officially decided to open up questions to everyone and not just Rotten.

This also sorta spells the end of Rotten's ask blog... I'm sorry, truly am. Maybe one day I can bring back an Ask Blog but for right now, nah.

Besides that...

MEET SPLATTER name pending... YALL!!

Bro I am so happy with his design. I swear, Both my Ink designs are just absolute chaos. Though I guess that's due to the fact I view Ink as being quite chaotic.

It just gets x10-ed in my head.

Anyway, so uh. How'd he get the hole in his skull? That was from his Error. They got into a little itty bitty baby fight and next thing you know he's gotten a hole in his skull.

But don't worry, Dusk/Apathy(His Dream) patched him all up and gave him some cool new chompers!!!!

Fun little personality stuff and fun facts just because why not:

- Very energetic, very easy to excite.

Bro is a ball of energy. I like to think that he just can not physically sit still. He has to be doing something. Messing with his clothes, rocking, tapping a foot, drumming his fingers on the table, he's gotta be doing something. Also it's very easy to get him riled up, especially if you bring up stuff he's interested in. Say one key word and bro is going on a full blown villain type monologue.

- Main choice of Fashion: Yami Kawaii (inspired)

I just thought it fit him. He's got like, a pill pin on the back of his scarf that helps it to keep its bow shape. Honestly he wears a lot of bandages and band aids over his bones because of the various scarring he got from his Error. Dude was not in a good situation, at all, but don't worry. He got his revenge >:3

- Doesn't drink viles.

Okay, so when Splatter first came into being I had this idea of him going feral and having to eat others to quell his hunger, thus allowing him to turn back to normal. But that didn't seem right, especially with how he is now. I mean, he still goes feral-ish but it's more controlled. But then why is this like- where are his viles? He can't drink them anymore. After the hole incident he struggles heavily to drink liquids. So most of the paint just splatters on out. But, surprise surprise that's not the only way he can get colors!! Turns out monster souls hold a shit ton of colors in them. They're like rainbow jelly-filled donuts (God that feels so morbid to say). So he eats souls to get his colors, though the souls sorta... Like... Explode jusssttt... a bit when bitten into so you can tell very easily if he just got back from a hunt. His entire front half is just covered in bright rainbow splatter.

- Childish.

He has a childish spunk to him. At least, in all my daydreams he gives off childish vibes. Just a simple little thing. He can get serious when he wants to be, but most of the time he's an annoying lil shit.

I'm gonna just put it here but both DB and Splatter have little to no respect for the Omega Timeline/Those in power. Dusk and His Cross have a bit more respect but it's more so in the sense of "We're only being nice and respectful of you because you have valuable information"

The Stars have, I guess, gone rouge. Which I like to think the Omega Timeline's council absolutely hates.

Any who, there's Splatter.

Og Ink belongs to @comyet

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball AF Lore

Last night I reblogged a thing about Xicor, the imaginary villain of Dragon Ball AF, the imaginary sequel to Dragon Ball GT. There were some cool responses to this, but I didn't want to reblog the entire post all over again, so I thought I'd carry the discussion over here.

@brotoman-exe : #so do they ever explain why Goku cheats on his wife in this set up?#(to be clear Im guessing it was likely a stolen dna Superman 4 thing just having fun)

My understanding was that the West Supreme Kai faked her death and then came back as a bad guy. She somehow obtained a DNA sample from Goku and used it to impregnate herself? The end result being that Xicor is the biological son of Goku and the West Supreme Kai, even though Goku himself had no idea of any of this.

Of course, it's impossible to cite sources on any of this, since I'm talking about made-up details from a made-up show. It's entirely possible that there are other versions of the AF legend where Goku cheated on his wife like a jerk.

What I always wanted to know was how the West Supreme Kai survived the fight with Kid Buu five million years ago, and why she laid low for so long.

But now that you've brought up Superman IV, I can't stop thinking about the raw chicken thigh Lex stuffed in that little lockbox. This is my new DBAF personal canon.

@scarabats123: #As someone who wasn't alive in 1994#let me tell you Xicor and AF was THRIVING in the 2000s up into the early 2010s#hell even now some people make nostalgic fanart of it#Everyone knew about Xicor and Evil Goku and that blue bald dude

It really is bizarre how long the AF mythos has persisted. I think Dragon Ball Super was the final nail in the coffin for any true believers that were still left, but by the time DBS came out AF had already established itself as this weird little thing in its own right. It's like Bigfoot. I think everyone knows it's not real and doesn't make a lot of sense, but the idea is too much fun to discard completely.

@mozillavulpix: definitely think there's a lot of information here that's wrong, but I wasn't in the fandom in the 1990s to confirm any of it But the one big thing is...I'm pretty sure 'Dragon Ball AF' was originally supposed to stand for 'April Fools'. Like at one point someone somewhere started the name just because it'd be hilarious to trick people into believing something with a name so obviously-fake if you were paying attention. But when people started believing it they came up with their own theories on what it meant. kanzenshuu also says the rumours probably only started around 2002-2003 https://www.kanzenshuu.com/rumor/dragon-ball-af/

There were some factual errors, but the one that stood out to me was the notion of Toyotaro creating Towa and Mira, since I'd always heard Toriyama created her for Dragon Ball Online. And I've heard of the Goku Black/Xicor parallels before, but I'm pretty sure that's more of a coincidence than anything else.

I also found the 1990s to be a little too early for AF rumors to really get started, so I went back to that Kanzenshuu article you linked to and read it again just to check. This time, I ran across the link to the message board discussion about the "SSJ5 Goku" image that seems to have started it all.

Apparently, this was all discovered back in 2012, but I don't think I ever heard about this until now. Someone found the "AF Goku" image in an issue of the magazine Hobby Consolas, cover dated May 1999.

It looks like the magazine just published reader-submitted fan art, and this particular one was credited to David Montiel Franco of Alicante, Spain. Forums member Raykugan published this information in February 2012, and then Derek Padula contacted the artist and published his findings on his blog "Dao of Dragon Ball".

David Montiel Franco, as it turns out, has his own blog, af-dragonball.blogspot.com, where he appears to be promoting his Dragon Ball AF fancomics. And apparently, the guy in the image is not Super Saiyan 5 Goku at all, but an OC named Tablos.

So it appears that the true original DBAF was a fanwork created by Franco prior to May 1999. Everyone else was building onto his creation whether they knew it or not. The alternative is that Franco is stealing the credit from the true artist, but that seems like a weird thing to still be holding onto after all these years. I mean, if he wanted clout, you'd think he'd do more self-promotion than this. By now, everyone would have heard of his claims to be the creator of AF. So I think he might be the real deal.

Anyway, it definitely ties DBAF to the year 1999, although I have a feeling the rumors didn't really pick up steam until 2002 or so, as U.S. fans became aware of a sequel series to Z and wondered what might follow after that. There may have been rumors in other countries that got earlier access to GT, and there were surely American fans in the 90's who knew more about GT before it was localized. But at least the concept of AF was around in the 90's, even if it was the tail end of the 90's, and even if it was very obscure.

But that's AF in general, not Xicor. I get the sense that Vintagegeekculture seemed to conflate Tablos with Xicor, and that's probably an understandable mistake to make, since Xicor was probably invented as a response to what was thought to be SSJ5 Goku. So Xicor must have come later, but how much later?

I guess what bugs me is that there ought to be someone who would claim credit for the character, the way Franco claimed to be the artist of the DBAF image. It's kind of fascinating how Xicor is out there and no one's trying to act like it was their idea.

[f1restart3rr]

DO YOU RUN THE JABBERWOCKK BLOG? i wanted to chat about design bible stuff with someone but no one else i know keeps up with the alice stuff half as much.

i didn't look at the final DB but i do have an older (though still recent) copy downloaded, and my unpopular take is that i don't mind the "alice can jump into other people's minds" thing half as much (it was introduced in otherlands, so i guess i accepted that premise quite early) but it DOES bother me that none of the A:Asylum events make any sense within the timeline-- we HAD alice's journey from childhood to adulthood already. we HAD her get over both her trauma and bumby. i straight up do not understand why all of this inner child-5 stages of grief thing had to get hashed out at such an awkward and nonsensical point in the story; i can't even tell where in her life all this is supposed to take place? if bumby is in it, this MUST all take place after a:mr, so why are we trodding all this territory again??? WHY ARE WE ACTING LIKE ALICE KILLING BUMBY IS A BAD THING ALL OF A SUDDEN???

you said you didn't even look at the DB so none of this is gonna make sense, sorry. ive had this rant locked up for a while since i read the fucking DB from cover to cover. because i cannot let go of alice. we can defeat mcgee together

I do indeed run thejabberwockk blog!

I haven't been watching McGee's Patreon on purpose cause the man is insufferable, but I still pick up bits and pieces of news here, and yeah from what ive seen it's just...like he had a new idea for how he wanted to tell Alice's story and fuck the old continuity? Like he realized her story was...I dunno, just not vibes he wanted to emulate anymore (I wonder if it has to do with his right-wing ass politics 🤔🤔🤔) and I'm just...so over it. McGee if I could fire you I would

[edhellfire]

7,9,11, 15

Questions for muns.

7. describe your favorite relationship dynamic. (can be any kind, platonic, romantic, familial, antagonistic, etc.)

As big a ship-whore as I am, I love love exploring different kinds of friendships. There's something about writing Eddie that really lends itself to that. It sort of turns into found family and I love that for him.

9. when you look at a new blog, what is it that makes you press the follow button? is it the muse, the aesthetics, the writing–?

I always press the follow button. I'm a softy. And I've also been a not-so-popular blog and I know how it feels to be sort of ignored in a fandom so I wouldn't want to make anyone feel that way.

11. describe your ideal outcome/endgame for the muse you are currently writing. if you are a multimuse blog: do this for your current favorite muse, or the muse of the last reply you posted.

I know it's an unpopular opinion but canonically, I think Eddie should go out with his boots on. I don't think the DB did it right though. Selfishly, in writing, I would want Eddie to get all the things he didn't have growing up. I want him to have a family, and a house in the suburbs, and his tattoo shop.

15. icons, or gifs? you can only pick one, and cannot say ‘neither.’

Gifs, probably. There aren't many though. It might have been icons if I had more icons. The ones I have were gifted to me by someone I no longer like and it feels a little weird to use them. Don't get me wrong, I'll still use them but they remind me of the person and its never anything good. I think I just have to use them more and get over it.

[circle-bircle]

jrpg/srpg recs? old or new doesn't matter, but it's easier for me to get around to games if they're older so I can load them on my psp or 3ds or whatever. in return I give you uhhhh have you played any of the department heaven games? they're more like weird srpgs, st!ng loves experimenting with their games. gungir is my favorite cause it's the most depressing (imo) and there's sibling angst

department heaven looks cute! t'will have to check it out someday :) sibling angst is always fun!

onto the recs:

jrpgs:

standard ff2 plug (20th anniversary edition is my fav personally...), the FFIV collection for the psp is complete and also the best way to play 2D FFIV (imo). of course the 3d version is also on DS so YMMV. I liked Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for what it was, Final Fantasy Legend and its sequels are games that Exist but I didn't particularly enjoy them just because i don't like GB games. But they are out there!!

I know I'm not the kind of person to shill DB but I had a fun time with Buu's Fury on the GBA... and it's not a JRPG but if you like pressing buttons really good this might be up your alley.

Golden Sun exists, I think everyone should play Chrono Trigger if you have not already. I talked about it briefly in my last rec post but Lufia 1/2 are JRPGs that exist for sure. The Suikoden series is cool and I am itching to play Eiyuden Chronicles one day!!

Dragon Quest has handfuls of fun games, SMT of course exists as well and I am partial to Nocturne. I have never played Bravely Default but all of my friends who are into JRPGs more than I am sing of both games' praises, TWEWY exists, and for the 3DS I actually really liked Monster Hunter Stories which is nifty and very cute.

srpgs:

of course fire emblem as the SRPG probably everyone around this blog knows about. I wish I liked Tear Ring Saga more but it's not my thing personally, but if you like the kaga sagas I would recommend it! There are pretty people, so no complaining from me :P Vesteria Saga and the other games exist too. I haven't played them though, so no opinion from me! But they exist!!

OFC have to say FF Tactics, FF Tactics Advance, FF Tactics A2. I love FFTA but I know FFT is way better according to everyone. There's also Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings which people usually put as a JRPG but it's definitely not a traditional JRPG. I personally think it's very slow to control but it's not the worst game you could be spending your time playing.

People really like Tactics Ogre... I did not. There were two characters I liked but I just didn't want to sit through multiple routes - but hey, there's multiple routes if you like that stuff!

I have heard good things about both Project X Zone and Triangle Strategy, but I'm poor so I've never played either. However, I think a fun game is Summon Night 5!!! I haven't played any of the other games, but the characters are very cute and it is an SRPG so I am putting it here!

That's all off the top of my head. I have a million more I could probably recommend, but I'd be repeating myself and shilling FF2 more than I should. I hope some of these games inspire you to look for yourself! Or replay an old gem, or something :P

[demonoid-homunculus]

@aoibejitto

“Uh...WHY are you looking at me like that? I’ve been good. I promise.”

[your-mom-friend]

I've been listening to WTNV and just finished Triptych

Holy shit

No seriously. Holy shit

Okay so this probably isn't going far beyond my blog, so to my followers who do see this and know nothing of Welcome To Night Vale, let me give you some context.

Obviously, spoilers if you plan to listen to WTNV, or haven't reached this episode yet (Year 4, Episode 73)

Night Vale in and of itself is a friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and myseterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep

It's a strange place

The podcast is in the format of the community Radio Show, where you're a citizen listening to the news as narrated by Cecil Palmer

Bear in mind, that WTNV, for all the wholesomeness and absurdity that exists in it, is also partly a horror podcast, and you'll occassionally get descriptions of gore and violence that are graphically detailed.

Early on in the series, you're introduced to Desert Bluffs. Night Vale's sister town that is sort of implied to be populated by doubles/dopplegangers of the Night Vale Residents.

Desert Bluffs has also been taken over by StrexCorp. A corporation that is basically Amazon if Amazon was allowed to publicly violate the Geneva Conventions and brainwash their employees. And have it be part of their publicity.

Desert Bluffs has their own Community Radio Station, with host, Kevin. To give you a sample of what Kevin sounds like, he says “Wow. What a perfectly wonderful, wonderfully perfect super day! I could not be more thrilled. The Smiling God blessed me with Its presence once again." In the most cheerful voice you can imagine. No, more cheerful. Bordering on forced-through-torture-by-Joker-venom cheer.

Cecil hates him with a passion. He is the opposite of everything Cecil is and stands for

In later episodes, StrexCorp takes over Night Vale and Kevin becomes the Radio Host with co-host Lauren Mallard. Here we see him being super passive aggressive towards her

Lauren: Sure Kev! Can I call you Kev? Kevin: hahaha, no, Lauren, by no means. (she deserved it though)

Anyway this hints he isn't super happy with Strex actually but is still on their side

Fast forward, Strex was defeated in Night Vale, things go back to Normal, Kevin takes up residence in the Desert Otherworld blah blah blah

Which brings us to Triptych. roughly a year after Strex is defeated.

Cecil hosts his show when suddenly a radio signal connects him to Kevin. Kevin from the past.

Not just any past, but Pre-Strex past.

This Kevin is...unsettlingly like Cecil. They like the same things and have almsot identical views. Most jarringly, this Kevin hates Strex. He assures Cecil that he and the rest of the Bluffs are making sure they stay a small local company. He sounds like a regular cheerful person instead of...whatever he'd become alter

It reconnects to a recent-past Kevin. This Kevin was from when Strex had recently taken over Night Vale. He reveals, rather cheerfully "Can you believe it? I actually tried to stop them from buying it [DB Radio Station]. I tired, very hard. I put my own body, this fragile thing, in between the Strex Representatives and the entrance to the building. But they forced their way past me using ethically brutal methods that left me forever physically changed!"

Again it reconnects, but to a future Kevin, who is old and withered and lives in a desolate area, who is (i think) now freed from Strex's control. He's tired, alone, and regrets that Cecil never got to meet the Pre-Strex him. They'd have gotten along splendidly.

Cecil then tries to reconnect to the first Kevin, and succeeds. Kevin asks him about the future. "Do we succeed? Does everthing go as right as right can be?" And Cecil...lies. He says that their revolutions against Strex will be successful, that he is happy and lives his life.

The signal is lost.

Guys this episode left me sad in ways I didn't even know I could feel. Because everything else you hear of Kevin makes you kind of loathe him. The way he talks and the things he says (think toxic positivity on steroids and trying to kiss corporate ass) makes your skin crawl and you WANT to hate him but

He's brainwashed. He was bright and young and passionate and hopeful and fearless and Strex did unspeakably horrible things to him and just...broke him. There's barely anything left of the guy he used to be. He smiles and cheerfully talks but there's nothing behind it. It sounds like it's been beaten into him till it's all he knew how to do. He doesn't know or say or do anything that Strex doesn't want him to and it's just so profoundly heartbreaking. He was once willing to give up his life to protect the sanctity of a free radio show where he could report and Strex turned him into a puppet for their own needs.

I just want things to get better for Kevin

[buildinggsr]

What did you think about the CSI finale? How would you rank the seasons? Who do you ship?

Hi @vladimirputinskremlinqueenmary27 thanks for your question. I'll (try to) answer point by point.

1. What did you think about the CSI finale? I once wrote my take on the CSI finale here. In this other post I described it this way, "all f*ing angst for like 80 minutes and 10 minutes of sailing off into the sunset together."

Maybe - maybe - it would have been good as a regular episode, but not as a series finale. I also found it a bit disrespectful to the fans who had followed the series for so many years. I had been very annoyed by the lack of references to any of the events that had happened over the previous 15 years or to the characters that had been part of the series. (By comparison, there were many, many more in the recent reboot!) The finale was supposed to conclude a series that changed the history of TV series and instead it felt like a collection of post-it notes stuck to each other, with no real logical sense. 2. How would you rank the seasons? I have watched and re-watched several times only the seasons up to when Grissom left, the ninth, while I have watched only once, maybe twice, the following ones - apart from the episodes that involved Grissom and Sara to some extent.

Taking this into account, for me each season has its own peculiarities and beauties, maybe in one I find the stories more engaging, in another the character development is what interests me most, in yet another I like the aesthetic side, the lights, the visual effect.

From a general point of view, I can certainly say that the seventh season is the one I prefer: the story of the miniature killer is fantastic from all points of view and is very compelling and all the stories in the middle are great. I think the seventh season constitutes the pinnacle of the entire series. The development of the episodes had been a crescendo up to that season, and after that everything got a bit lost.

Recently I had started a re-watch (again) of the series from the first season and I have to say that it's not surprising that it had such a great success, because, in my opinion, from the very first episodes it had a great intensity of both the stories and the characters. Already from the very first episode the actors show to have a great feeling between them – even though at the time they didn't know what the hell they were doing. Everything seems very very natural and engaging. For this reason, apart from the seventh season, I think my favorite seasons are the first ones, I would say the first three, when the members of the team were outlined episode after episode, the bonds between them grew and the stories were very real, the creativity of the authors probably feverish. And then there were also a lot of funny scenes. If I had to choose to watch an episode at random - not for GSR reasons - I'd probably watch one from among those seasons.

One thing I also like about those episodes is recognizing traits in the team members' personalities that would later become their hallmarks over the years. It's kind of like looking at a family album, starting when the kids are little, and flipping through the pages to see them grow up, and remember the highlights of their lives.

Aside from the seasons up to the ninth, I have to say that the Dr. Jekyll arc hadn't been bad - although I never liked how they had made Ray Langstone the leader of the team with the minimal knowledge of the job he had. Conversely, I really liked DB, but not enough to go back and watch his seasons.

As for my favorite seasons from the GSR point of view, they are the sixth and the seventh.

3. Who do you ship? If we understand the term "ship" as referring to a love story, as you can easily guess from my blog, my ship is GSR. It's amazing the depth of Grissom and Sara's characters and how over time they, driven by the propulsive force of love, have undergone a radical change to be able to stay together. It's great that in the last scene of the reboot we see them, they're on a roller coaster, because there's nothing that better exemplifies what their relationship has been. And everything they've been through, ups and downs, steep climbs and maddening descents, has brought them electrified at the end of the ride. Electrified because what they went through to get to the end was electrifying: every event that characterized their love story was non-random, intense, provocative (in the sense that it provokes an intense emotion). And electrified they still appear now, in the recently aired reboot: with their looks, their simple, normal intimacy, the way they have of confessing their flaws to each other. Everything is pure energy.

I think I'm the only person on the face of the earth who dares to say that even the period of their divorce, as much as I wish it hadn't been there, was functional to the complete serenity of their relationship that we saw in the reboot. All the mistakes that could have been made have been made and, okay there's no limit to the worst, but at this point there's nothing that can sour their relationship anymore. They are now fused together, forever. Pure Lonsdaleite, the hardest mineral in the world.

Other than GSR, I don't have any other ship, but if we understand that term in a broader sense, including friendships as well, then:

- I liked Catherine and Warrick's relationship, it would have been nice to see something blossom between the two of them. I think they would have been maybe as good as Griss and Sara. - I loved Warrick's relationship with Sara, the most intense characters of the show, in my opinion. Both of them with difficult childhoods, they worked their way up in some part through shoulder pushes and in some part through their intelligence and the great work they did on themselves. They earned and deserved every accomplishment they achieved. I happened to rewatch Goodbye and Good Luck and even Forget Me Not, but I have never, ever, ever rewatched the last two episodes of Warrick and never will. I think that's all. Thanks again for your question. Stay safe and take care of yourself. L