#i want original stories not three iterations of the same thing

[feijoaaas]

i bet they’ll reboot fr!ends any day now (dear apollo plz don’t find this post)

[kirain]

Sigh....Galemancers really love to move the goal post when it comes to the grooming accusations huh? You found out Gale was a fully grown MAN when Mystra slept with him so now you have to say, "Well then he was emotionally groomed and the power dynamic is too vast." Mystra is a neutral good goddess because she's Midnight, who was a neutral good human. She hates that her magic has to be used for good and evil. Ao makes her share it evenly but she'd rather not. She would never do anything to hurt Gale. The writers of the game even confirmed she's not a groomer. People like you also downplay the point of Gale's entire story arc, which is he should've listened to Mystra! The whole point of his personal quest is he needs to learn to humble himself and listen to his goddess! He has no one to blame for his downfall but himself.

There's no "post" to move, anon. The game and lore give us all the context we need. Grooming doesn't only apply to children, and people have proven right and left that Mystra is terrible at relationships. She's petty and abusive when she isn't obeyed by her partners, and that's been the case with all of her iterations. Even the narrator describes her as a "jealous goddess" when you visit her shrine. Plus, your information is wrong on many accounts; the most pertinent being that the Mystra of BG3/5E isn't technically Midnight. Cyric and Shar killed her, reducing her to her godly essence (lore-wise that means she died). The current Mystra is an amalgamation of the vestiges of Mystryl, Mystra, and Midnight, as told in the novel Elminster Enraged.

Now, this is about to get complicated, as it always does with Mystra, so from here on out I'll be referring to Mystra #1 as Mystryl, Mystra #2 as Mystra #2, Mystra #3 as Midnight, and Mystra #4 as 5E Mystra. Alright, let's get started.

Elminster had to reform the fallen goddess by giving her fragments of all three iterations of Mystra. Since all three iterations are combined, our current 5E Mystra embodies the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. There's even a conversation with The Simbul (one of the Seven Sisters and a Chosen of Mystra) where the newly reformed 5E Mystra speaks of Elminster as her "longest lover". This puzzles The Simbul because that was something of the old Mystra (Mystra #2), not Midnight. The new 5E Mystra replies that she has become a combination of the memories of Mystryl, Mystra #2, and Midnight. This is all in chapter 25-30 of Elminster Enraged. I know it's confusing, but in short: 5E Mystra is not Midnight anymore, and the leading mind is clearly that of Mystra #2, hence her extremely poor judgement—a recurring theme with her character.

Mystryl and Mystra #2 were originally lawful neutral. The alignment changed to neutral good when Midnight took up the mantle, because Midnight herself was a neutral good person. But now it seems 5E Mystra is true neutral, because you are right, anon; Ao won't allow her to do whatever she wants. Midnight tried and was forbidden. 5E Mystra absolutely does not have the same level of humanity or kindness as Midnight, and that may be because Mystryl had no human consciousness and Mystra #2 was a mess.

Regardless of her alignment, she must embody her domain by Ao's decree, which means she needs to spread magic across all Realmspace. Since she has to maintain the balance, she approaches good, neutral, and evil mages with potential opportunities. This isn't a criticism (that's just how godhood works), but rather proof that Mystra is absolutely capable of good and bad. I don't want to hear any more of this "she's a precious little bean and Gale's victim" nonsense. Even if she wants to be, she's not. As Kikitakite said in their post, she's done some fucked up things.

Whether or not the writers intended to make Mystra a groomer, that's exactly what they did. Sometimes writers don't realise they've written an abusive character until they're criticised. Take writer of The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks, for example. He didn't realise he'd written Noah to be an abusive piece of shit until Ryan Gosling pointed it out himself. Gosling has gone on record many times to say he hates Noah, and experts have labeled him an unrealistic and emotionally abusive/manipulative character. The same can be said for Stephenie Meyer, who wrote some of the most celebrated toxic relationships in recent media—with a dash of borderline pedophilia on the side. Therapists have weighed in extensively to tell people that Bella and Edward's relationship isn't healthy and shouldn't be emulated in real life. Indeed, perhaps the best thing to come out of the entire franchise is Robert Pattinson's hatred of Edward and the series as a whole. Jacob's actor, Taylor Lautner, even argued with Meyer's on set because of how weird the "imprinting" segment was and he didn't want to come off as predatory. Meyer argued it was "romantic". 😕

Even if you don't agree Gale was groomed, Mystra is flagrantly responsible for his insecurities and she never should've put her hands on him. The power dynamic is too vast, and even god Gale (conceited as he is) realises it by the end. He only stays in a relationship with Tav if they allow him to ascend them alongside him as his equal. He recognises that anything else would be unhealthy and unacceptable. Also, I researched high and low regarding your claim, but none of the devs have dispelled the idea that Mystra is a groomer. In fact, the most I could find was one dev simply saying, "To Gale it was love, but he didn't know any better." If anything, that only confirms he was confused and didn't know what to do. Their "relationship" was a stunningly horrible idea from the start and that's not on Gale, it's on the literal cosmic being who initiated it.

Moreover, Gale was very likely 17 when Mystra revealed herself to him. This perfectly fits into the 5E Forgotten Realms timeline. If so, no, he absolutely wasn't a grown man. He was a teenager. Mystra may not have slept with him until he was in his 20's, but that still makes it a disgusting teacher-turned-lover situation. Gale even tells us he was "young" when she took him into her fold, and he was only eight years old when Elminster started their lessons. Remember, Elminster is Mystra's biggest apologist. He would've taught Gale to revere her, which means there was almost never a point in his life when Mystra wasn't the main focus. You can tell by the way he speaks about her in Act 1. He's in awe, he's excited, he's proud she chose him. That does something to a child. Something irreversible. If anything, Elminster is complicit in what happened. I've said this before, but he couldn't even be bothered to visit Gale himself. He sent a simulacrum.

As for your accusation that I'm "downplaying" Gale's story arc—you're damn right I am, because the writers made me! Most D&D players I know aren't very happy with how Mystra is portrayed in the game, and that's probably because even they know she isn't presented in a very flattering light. If you really think about it, it's obvious what the writers were going for, but they failed. For example, you said Gale should've listened to Mystra, right? Well, in Act 1 he admits his ambition was his undoing, blames himself for his downfall, and by Act 2 he's literally ready to off himself for her. In fact, he's the only one who sees her ultimatum as justified. Every other companion says she's being cruel and unreasonable. If Gale actually blows himself up at the end of Act 2, the results are catastrophic. The brain is destroyed, yes, but the tadpoles, free of the Absolute's control, complete their transformation and infect/enslave the entire Sword Coast. Anon. She. Is. Stupid. Even the Narrator is like, "You wanna ... you wanna try that again?"

The entirety of Act 2 is Gale learning he shouldn't listen to Mystra. And then she has the audacity to lecture him in Act 3? If he'd listened, it would've been the end of everything. Maybe if Mystra was as infallible as she pretends to be, she would've put her three brains together and came up with a better, less vindictive plan. Because make no mistake, she wanted Gale to blow up in Act 2, which is ridiculous. I know this is an uncomfortable topic for some people, but gods aren't perfect, especially in fiction. They're flawed. They're selfish. Some of them are straight up assholes. The real irony of Gale's arc isn't that he has no one to blame but himself, it's that Mystra should blame herself. At no point does she even consider if she's being unreasonable or unfair. There's no self reflection whatsoever. And the writers expect me to think Gale's full of himself? I wonder where he got it.

Probably from his teacher. ✋🎤

[burst-of-iridescent]

atla live action thoughts: episode 1

SPOILERS AHEAD

tw: opinions

things i liked:

love that we're starting from a hundred years ago and seeing exactly how everything played out. iirc in the original, sozin's first move was to colonize earth kingdom territory so the show expanding upon it in sozin making it seem as though he was about to attack the earth kingdom as a red herring so he could wipe out the air nomads instead was a good change

sozin being able to wipe out the nomads because they were all gathered in one place for a festival makes a ton of sense, and i really like that they let us have time with the air nomads before wiping them out. gyatso and aang's scene almost brought me to tears, it was so beautifully sincere and touching

whoever casted gordon cormier needs a medal because THIS. FUCKING. KID. i nearly lost it when he started crying like what do you mean this baby has to save the world???

i am so thankful that they didn't shy away from the savagery and brutality of the air nomad genocide. seeing the fire nation cut them down so ruthlessly was absolutely horrific, but it was the perfect way to start this darker iteration of the story and those ten minutes alone made me feel more for the air nomads than the entire three seasons of the original. and having the scene cut between aang lost in the storm and his people being wiped out???? insane.

the visuals are absolutely beautiful. i think they shot this on a volume stage and holy shit did they make use of it because every establishing shot was gorgeous, especially the one for the southern air temple

ian ousley, questionable heritage aside, is actually doing a great job as sokka. his comedic timing is excellent

the bending actually looks... really good. i love how they're doing the airbending in particular, it definitely feels as though aang is entirely untethered to the earth

katara's arc is... interesting. i'll reserve judgement on it till the end of the season but right now i don't hate what they're doing with the changes to her relationship with waterbending. we'll see where they're going with this.

initially i wasn't a fan of them changing katara pulling aang out of the avatar state, but after reflecting i love that it was the memory of gyatso that brings aang back to himself. the idea that even though gyatso is gone, his love for aang still lives on within him, protecting him, is remarkably powerful and moving. and i think at this point, this version of katara and aang don't have enough of a relationship for her pulling him out of the avatar state to have the same impact it did in the original

THE MUSIC IS TOP-NOTCH. ngl i teared up when the credits were the iconic sun warrior soundtrack mixed with the atla theme

things i disliked/am conflicted about:

aang running away... doesn't feel like it's aang running away. i know he had the scene where he's crying and upset, but it feels more as though he just wanted to clear his head for a little bit rather than fleeing in terror because he was afraid of the responsibility of being the avatar. his guilt over abandoning his people and the world is fairly important to his character, so i didn't love the way they did this scene because it doesn't really feel like an active choice that aang made

gran-gran being turned into into an exposition machine to tell the audience - and aang - everything. really wasn't a fan of her being the one to reveal that aang is the avatar, or that they info-dumped everything about the fire nation and the war in one scene. it also sort of took away the gut punch of aang finding gyatso's skeleton because he already knows what's happened, whereas in the show it hits so much harder because of his blind optimism and naivete leading up to that moment

RIP katara breaking aang from the iceberg because of her righteous fury scene, you will always be famous. live action katara feels a little too passive so far but i hope that'll change in upcoming episodes as we get further into her arc

dallas liu as zuko... mmm, something about it is not working for me so far but i can't put my finger on why. i wouldn't say i disliked it, but i'm not loving it either. his performance feels a little too theatrical, somehow? but it's only the first episode so again i won't be too harsh till i finish the season

the southern water tribe should look far emptier and more isolated to get a real sense of how the war has affected them, imo. here the impact of their parents and most of the adults in the village being gone doesn't seem as apparent as it does in the original when it's literally just a few women and children

overall, premiere rating: 7.5/10

[spockvarietyhour]

In season 2, [Co-creator Ronald D.] Moore told Inverse:

Actually, I did spend some time thinking about that and in my head. None of this has been set down, I haven’t talked about this formally. But in my head, The Wrath of Khan is the first Star Trek movie [in the For All Mankind timeline]. They probably did the Star Trek: Phase II show that has always been talked about. The original Star Trek went off the air before the Apollo II landing. ... In my version of history, Paramount does make the Phase II show in the mid-seventies. And then they transitioned into Wrath of Khan and not Star Trek: The Motion Picture, because of the run of the lengthy and glorious, and critically acclaimed run of Phase II, it’s a year later that The Wrath of Khan comes out. But it’s still The Wrath of Khan that we know and it was essentially the same story. I love The Wrath of Khan and I couldn’t bear to change that. So it’s the same thing.

"Based on Moore’s explanation, Star Trek seems healthier in For All Mankind’s ’70s and ’80s than it was in our timeline, yet this also led to fewer iterations of the franchise. Does any version of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise exist in this alternate reality? Ron Moore worked on both Next Gen and DS9, so he may want to avoid references to versions of Trek he worked on."

[encrucijada]

PÍA RAMBLES #8

you might have seen this post or this wip intro. i'm here to talk about this book because i think it's really cool @teddywriting and i wrote almost 40k words by simply playing dolls with our ocs.

(yes i will be using screencaps of before sunrise, 1995 for any and all subsequent updates regarding this project thank you very much)

what's weird about this book in particular is that, despite maripaz and theo taking up way too much space in my brain, it's also incredibly hard to talk about them?? i know every single detail about them down to what they might order to eat at a mcdonald's, and yet i feel no one outside from teddy and i really knows these characters. their lore is weird and a bit convoluted and explaining it feels like i'm trying to explain the plot of a television show with like 18 seasons of character development you just had to be there to witness to understand even a fraction of it.

but first some basics about the actual book

title: babylon boy (book 1 of the home habitat duology)

genre: literary fiction

category: i say adult because there will be no censoring of topics but in this first installment our protagonists are around eighteen years old. you might consider that ya but i wouldn't

a small summary: having independently run away from home for their own reasons, theo and maripaz meet while homeless on the streets and form an alliance of convenience to survive. while theo vehemently denies the drug addiction he’s nursing, maripaz tries to deal with the way both want and revulsion seem to exist in her at the same time. falling in love is probably the easiest thing they do.

teddy and i are co-authoring, as in we both write the words. they will be primarily working on theo's chapters and i will be primarily working on maripaz's chapters but we'll both be involved in fully crafting this story.

talking about your book is hard when all that happens in it is character work so even whether someone gets sick at one point feels like a spoiler you want people to be surprised by.

we created mari and theo in 2020 on a whim. i can't even remember what prompted it exactly. we wanted a new pair of characters to play with and we decided to make two assholes to bicker and be mean to each other. this iteration saw three reincarnations before we put the characters on the shelf and almost resigned ourselves to them being a miss... if not for one important detail... i really, really believed they should have kissed. this first version of them would eventually be known as the homeless au.

looking back it's Wild thinking about how different mari and theo used to be. we moved onto new aus to play around with, landing on a superhero-type beat that became their new canon for a while. we had fantasy and sci-fi and musicians and hadestown and the raven cycle (that last one did so much for us it's insane). every new thing we tried shaped them more and more until they were unrecognisable from their original versions. one day i really want to go through their threads from start to finish and look at that change in real time.

there was a new thesis to their characters and it was no longer "what if two awful guys with issues were forced together and tried to bite each other's heads off". instead we were looking at two characters that through every new incarnation became more sincere and gentle. they had meta-narrative character development.

(every new au also gave us more characters to populate the world including but not limited to theo's twin sister, maripaz's seven siblings, alex, philip, a whole lot of parental figures, a quirky cast of friends... but i'll talk about them some other time)

then i did it again. in the 2.0 version of the homeless au there was one scene i loved beyond words where an argument between our two protagonists resulted in maripaz punching theo right on the mouth. when she tried to swing a second time he stopped her hand and warned her that if she wanted to hit him he would hit back. they fought and the scene ended. i said to teddy: they should have kissed. we laughed and imagined how homeless au would go now that their characters had changed so much. we started thinking about it more and more until we were moving the pieces of their cinematic universe around to fit this new idea... and suddenly we had plot for a book that would revamp that original homeless au... and a sequel too! (but more on that second one another time)

teddy started a rp thread of what came right after the opening scene of babylon boy, where theo and maripaz would shoplift and he would steal the angel necklace she wore (<- this is important)... and we just kept going... and going. we'd already had a few keys scenes to work towards, one those being that punching scene that started it all, as well as the ending. teddy added two new scenes we began calling the halo scene and the church scene, and we moved something we called the pool scene into this book from another au. we just had to fill in the blanks... fill in the blanks we did.

these right here are the names i gave each individual thread of the roleplay-ification of babylon boy. their purpose is not so much to be chapter titles but to make specific scenes easy to find for future reference. though obviously i had to be a bit artistic about it.

i don't know if babylon boy will have chapter titles, and if they will have some sort of theme going on (usually i like just putting two words together to create some imagery). "angel face" is probably what i would title chapter 1, but i also hesitate on that decision because i think i would like to save angel for later.

these threads are less of a draft and more the skeleton of a draft, that's why i called it a draft 0. its purpose is to give teddy and i direction and reading through them i already know how i want to shift the timeline and how i'd rewrite some of the scenes to make them a lot better, but it did give us a great cause and effect look of things. the way teddy and i approach our roleplay threads is more loose than what i do with @on-the-river-lethe (with whom i'm currently roleplaying draft 1 of our book lupine trail and also a giant hunger games au). fluffy and i write responses between 1k-4k words, they are basically chapters. teddy and i instead do a quick call and response, mostly focused on dialogue, we build on top of each other and neither of us really knows where a thread will go when we start.

there are no actual non-roleplay words written for babylon boy thus far. teddy is in charge of chapter 1 as we open with theo's pov but we are both busy or focused on other things. right now we're enjoying the playing around stage of the process (which i don't see going away even once we start seriously writing, i know for a fact we'll probably do various roleplay-type passes to babylon boy).

you've probably noticed the christian imagery is rampant here. it happened kind of by accident and the already mentioned halo scene is entirely to blame for it. like i said, teddy and i have this very "yes, and," approach to storytelling together where we kinda build on top of what the other puts down. teddy gave me the description of one (1) scene where theo sees a halo of light around maripaz's head and i decided "well, this is now i thing that is here to stay". church scene really brought it all together and there is a scene in book 2 adeptly nicknamed the angel scene that is kind of the culmination of this.

the imagery is almost exclusive to theo's pov as mari is more the subject of the imagery than the one pushing it forward. teddy and i will be doing our most to fill this book with visuals: characters lined with stained glass windows, lights shaped like hearts, signs and graffiti that say meaningful stuff.

babylon boy, as the title suggests, is more theo's book. both he and maripaz have meaningful arcs but theo's is really at the core of it, mari takes centre stage in book 2 (titled gossamer girl). i think i talked about this somewhere before but the titles just kind of... happened. gossamer was relevant for that superhero au and it's just a word i really adore so i wanted to use it on the title. you can't go wrong with alliteration so gossamer girl it is. and because i love when books in a series match i had to do something with boy. like gossamer i adore babylon for some reason, and so we got babylon boy. i wasn't sure about that one because while gossamer girl made sense with the theme, what did "babylon boy" even mean, exactly? teddy came in clutch and analysed the title for me. they connected it to theo's drug addiction and now i can't think of any two titles that are more perfect for this series.

like i said, there are no actual words written for this book so sadly i cannot share any excerpts. but i will share

Festival was very much the result of teddy and i having just watched before sunrise, 1995

we watched before sunrise, 1995 because the mannerisms of the two leads reek of maripaz and theo

"until a miracle happens" became a recurring thing said in the draft and it wrecked me

Our Fears is probably my favourite thread both thematically and visually. followed closely by Church Angels, though that one is mostly visually

The Pool is the longest thread with about 90 responses and all of it is beautiful. i would probably consider it the companion to Our Fears

"mutual pining they're both just idiots"

the closing image is probably my favourite one of the book

the core themes are very much trust, love, and communal help. we've got such an array of npcs who simply... help. i love the human race.

i'll probably do another update before we start properly writing talking about maripaz and theo as characters specifically. a bit of a crash course on who they are, really.

anyway. i'm giving you a golden star if you read all of that ⭐ do ask me or teddy about this story!! we'd be happy to talk about it. or even just about the characters.

cheers, pía

[prospectivehero]

THE NEW TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT - Written by Marve Wolfman, Illustrated by George Pérez

Holy cats, Batman, this was a read! I had watched or read a few different iterations of the "Judas Contract" story, so I finally wanted to read the original. I also wanted to dip my toes into more classic Teen Titans comics to see if I enjoyed them. I have many thoughts and will talk about them, so spoilers are ahead!

First and foremost, I want to talk about Tara's betrayal and death. It felt empty to me in a way I'm still trying to explore. I saw it coming because I've been exposed to versions of Tara Markov and this story. And I'm not opposed to spoilers because spoilers never ruin my reading or watching experience.

I'll give you, I'm not seeing her full story in the context of this comic. Tara made her first appearance in Volume #1, Issue #26 of New Teen Titans (1982). The Judas Contract arc doesn't start until Volume #1, Issue #41 (1984). I may be missing beats of her story that add something to her death. Maybe there were hints of her insanity and her contempt for the Teen Titans that I haven't read, but it still makes me feel dissatisfied.

I think part of it is that I don't like characters that stab their loved ones in the back, for whatever reason. In other versions of this story, Tara has realized the consequences of her actions, so her death is self-sacrificial instead of karmic.

Next, I want to talk about disability in comics and I won't be talking about Victor, yet.

I was only vaguely familiar with Joseph Wilson, or Jericho's, character before this comic. Now he might be a new favorite of mine because NOBODY TOLD ME HE WAS DISABLED.

I've written before about the treatment of disabled characters in the various superhero universes (link included). It's mostly disappointing, to summarize. While superhero stories make for great unintentional disabled metaphors, DC, Marvel, and whomever else, have struggled, for the most part, in representing certain disabilities and characters with them.

This is why I was so surprised by the treatment of Joseph. He is a metahuman made mute as a casualty of his father, Slade Wilson's, mercenary work. He communicates with sign language. I was impressed by how the writers balanced a functioning superhero with his disability. That's so rare and SO COOL!!!

Speaking of unintentionally disabled metaphors, let's talk about Victor Stone. I think he is the least "unintentional" out there. My theory is that Victor's most memorable and resonant stories are the way they are because someone is writing through the context of disability or race, maybe both. But he shares a parallel with a Marvel character, The Thing. Both are monsters in the eyes of many and have to live with the fact that they are unchangeably different. What makes the difference between the two characters is that Victor finds a group that accepts him, and he can accept himself. Ben Grimm can't achieve either. I'm writing an episode discussing Ben Grimm, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Once again, whether through Victor or Joseph, The Judas Contract, has surprisingly good and nuanced disable representation, just not in the places you'd expect.

TRIGGER WARNINGS (with potential spoilers) -

1) Reference to Insanity - Tara's reasons for her actions are all brushed under an "insanity" rug. I don't have the expertise to analyze if that's well-represented.

2) Cult/Religion/Terrorism - These three are not the same thing, but they all act similarly to manipulate and harm our heroes as well as civilians.

3) Implied inappropriate relations with a minor - it is not said directly but heavily implied that Slade Wilson is in a romantic and possibly sexual relationship with teenager Tara Markov

4) PTSD - This comic retells Slade Wilson's transition from the military and failed experimentation to civilian life.

[wren-writes-things]

Let's see... 1, 9, 12, 13 for the fandom ask games? :)

Oh hey Pixel! Thanks for asking.

OTP? 

Probably Sasharcy (of course in the context of Sashannarcy). I absolutely adore all variants of the Calamity Trio but I just tend to drift towards them. My guess is that the personality contrast, and possibly just how much they both need to grow and forgive each other. I don't know it just intrigues me.

I also really like platonic Zelink from the BotW/TotK iteration.

9. Write a recommendation of someone else's fic you enjoyed!

Hmm... Pixel go read your own fanfic! Joking, probably

And I Know I Kissed You Before (But I Didn't Do It Right) - BearerOfTheBitterMoon (liminal-lesbian on here) - Okay I could put all of Mara's fanfics on here. Her writing style and story concepts are just amazing. But we'd be here all day, so we're not going to do that. This one specifically though, was just such an emotional rollercoaster (without leaving with permanent emotional trauma, ex: The Three Body Problem). It's very sweet, it's very sad and it all just feels so real. If that makes any sense

A Witch In Wartwood - Disect - I haven't finished the sequel fanfic yet, but I love this story. It had a very creative take on a Swap AU, and it did a really good job at capturing the essence of the original show while also completely being it's own thing.

Pinpoint - i'm-at-my-limit - Okay, I need to get caught up on this one, because I love the concept and I find it's characterization really interesting but I'm also behind by like two chapters because I wasn't reading as much for a while.

Across The Seven Seas - Heart_Wit_Strength - Did I successfully trick you into thinking I wasn't going to say this? Did it work? Seriously though this is one of those fanfics that I read, immediately reread and proceeded to think about for the next three days. I actually have fan art of it that I need to complete some day. I don't know what you did, but you succeeded at it.

Then there's this one fanfic about Sasha that I really like, but I cannot find it or remember what it is called.

(I have quite a few others that I really liked, these are just the four that were in my brain apparently)

12. What's the funniest or craziest AU idea you've ever come up with?

So the same week that I created Daren, I also created what I call that Devil in the Details AU. Which is one of those AUs where it could be angsty, but I decided it was way funnier to write absurd shenanigans.

Basically Marcy, a lonely and aimless college student, opens a music box (gifted to her by her academic mentor, Andrias) and ends up with Darcy as the devil on her shoulder. Then Anne and Sasha are sent by heaven to prevent her from becoming corrupted and taken over by them.  

Of course, it’s a massive train wreck. 

Darcy is trying to convince Marcy that she should trust them. But because Sasha and Anne are almost always there they can only accomplish this through underhanded life coaching. (Though when Sasha and Anne aren’t there it’s manipulation is more direct).

Sasha is a nearly fallen angel who has taken to giving beneficial but selfish advice and also physically attacking any devils that she ends up paired with. 

Anne is just trying to get Sasha back on the right path and to find a way to get rid of Darcy so Marcy can go back to a normal life.

Then Marcy who was incredibly lonely finally has a social life and people that she can get engaged in her interests. So she’s convinced this is a great thing and is scheming to make it permanent. 

And from this queue all of the comedic shenanigans that could possibly come out of it. But also Anne and Sasha helping guide Marcy into making a life for herself that she really wants rather than what everyone kept telling her she wanted. While Darcy of course tries to counteract that because they assume she searching for a very specific type of success and do not understand any other idea.

13. What's a character or ship you haven't written/drawn yet but would like to some day?

So ironically the answer here is also Sasharcy. I’m not sure how this happened but we have two Sashanne centric AUs (TOH and BotW) and two Marcanne centric ones (Witch Marcy and also BotW). But none of them have focused on Sasha and Marcy specifically (aside from post breakup in the Witch Marcy AU). It's a really interesting occurrence

[subaerial-dweller]

aaaAAA I'm on a roll now, I'm just spitting whatever comes into my mind about Generation Loss onto the table now. I love this show very much and I no longer care if people see these posts, I have too many thoughts and I'm writing them down :DD.

PART THREE: FRANK AND CHARACTER ORIGINS

I don't think Frank is a skeleton. We know he's a dude, right? There was that screenshot someone took of Frank's poster in Episode 3, let me see if I can find it.

Here we are. In my search for this screenshot, I did come across a lot of posts that said very similar things to what I was going to say, which was that Frank might just be a rotting corpse they drag around with them, which is really quite insane. I said in my first post of this late-night frenzy of Genloss thinking that I'm not very good at drawing, and in 45 minutes that hasn't actually changed. But I have a very graphic view in my head, and it makes the point where Jerma fucken smacks Frank across the face and breaks his fucking neck or something, it makes it all a lot harder to stomach. It's a gruesome thing, and now I'm just worried about how exactly Frank died.

Sneeg likes him, so maybe he was once the main character, where GL!Ranboo is now? It would make sense, because he's in that cage thing with Sneeg, so they might've just both failed together, but Frank was never going to go beyond the first episode without dying.

OH SPEAKING OF THAT. This is where the "and character origins" part of the post comes from.

I want to talk about where the other characters came from. We see a bunch of them, and they all allude to being in this game for a while before we see this iteration with GL!Ranboo in the main role, but I also have other ideas.

OPTION ONE: they're all, strictly speaking, actors, and Ranboo's the one running through this completely blind. They all know their roles, they understand what they have to do to get the story moving along (Sneeg tackles Austin to get Ranboo through the moving cutout wall thing, for example), and they play those roles. That would explain why Charlie's in every episode: he's the Slime Demon, then he's Surfer Dude/Patient Slime, and then he's Charlie Slimecicle the Streamer. He's a recurring talent (maybe I'll write another thing about where I think GL!Charlie came from, when speaking about option one). They're all mind controlled like Ranboo is, with the same filter layered over reality (except on Austin, I think his malfunctioned which is why he looked so horrified in the clothes room with Ethan, and on the merry-go-round next to rotting corpse!Frank, and Sneeg when he was wearing the hat). They're briefed on their roles, and they follow them, but their main goal is to keep the story moving and get Ranboo to the end. Once again, I think GL!Austin's filter thingy doesn't really work, because he called Jerma "sick", he looked horrified and disgusted to sit next to a dead body, I think he was the only person to care that GL!Ethan had been, you know, brutally murdered, and he also tried to take Ranboo's place in the cutout room.

OPTION TWO: They've all been through the games before. They've all been the main characters, and they've now been moved into other roles with each repetition of the show. So GL!Sneeg was once the main character in Episode 1, and then he fucked up and was locked in the cage with Frank (who also was the protagonist, but then he, uh, well something went wrong and Showfall regrets this Tragic Accident), before Ranboo comes around.

Slimecicle was the main character in Episode 2 once, and he was about to lose the Mousetrap game in the Candy Room, so he ate the piece so the Puzzler couldn't blast him to pieces. Obviously it worked, but he was repurposed as another role, because they took that "oh it's in him" as a great premise for the next time this show went over. Now, our version of Genloss, where GL!Ranboo's the main character, this could happen right after Slime ate the piece, or it could be a while back, but Showfall liked the idea so much they just kept forcing Slime to eat the pieces and random shit, or they cut him open and put it all back inside. Either way, it's not pretty.

Option Two would explain why GL!Vinesauce says "I've done it before" when he asks Sneeg and Ranboo to throw him across the lasers. It would make sense for the first two episodes, where there are other characters and the storyline seems to be in control (as much as Hetch was manipulating Episode 3, Ranboo did have his own mind back and made his own decisions, like with rescuing Streamer Charlie Slimecicle), because for those, the plotline is simple, straightforward, with barely any variation. The characters can be recycled, it makes sense. However, I think accidents do happen, and sometimes, in the case of Frank, actors only get past one episode before, you know, dying. RIP Frank. Squiggles misses you.

[alpaca-clouds]

Castlevania's Two Unfinished Character Arcs

I talked before that I believe that Castlevania on Netflix was once supposed to have 5 seasons, not for. Or at least Ellis, while writing, was assuming that after season 3 he would get more than 10 episodes to finish the plot. Everyone who has seen season 4 will agree that it just feels very rushed in many regards.

But there is another point of why I think that there were more than 10 episodes planned to happen after season 3: The show leaves two character arcs unfinished. The arcs of Sypha and Hector.

Let me talk character arcs in general!

Before I talk about why their arcs are unfinished, I gotta talk about what a character arcs normally entails. Mind you, this is something that holds true for western literature and western media in general. Other cultures deal with those things not always the same way, though anime in general (especially shonen) tends to use the same stuff.

Usually a character arc defines three things for a character: A want, a need and a fatal flaw.

A character starts out the story wanting something. This want usually is something that is not good for the character long term. It might be neutral long term, but it is not good.

The character also has a need. That is something that the character actually needs to gain that will on longterm will be good for them. Usually they start out the story not being aware of this need.

And they have a fatal flaw. Their need tends to be connected to their fatal flaw - basically their need is something that would help them overcome their fatal flaw. The fatal flaw is some trait, that gets them into trouble.

The character arc usually is about a character realizing their need. This tends to work by their fatal flaw really, really badly biting their ass and them hitting rock bottom above it, so that their only way out is up - by realizing their need.

Let me talk about the two best realized character arcs in Castlevania: Trevor and Isaac.

It has to be said that Trevor finishes his character arc at the end of season 2. He starts with the want of "wanting to be left alone" or rather "wanting to not care". He keeps iterating this throughout season 1. He does not care. He does not want to care.

His fatal flaw is, that he always assumes the worst in people and hence does not really trust them. And it is what got him to hit rock bottom at some point prior to the series.

Hence comes his need: He needs to start trusting people and working with them. He needs to start to care. And this is what he in the end realizes until season 2 for the most part.

Isaac meanwhile is the best realized character in the entire show. So he is interesting.

Isaac's want at the beginning is simple: He wants to destroy everything. He wants to destroy the world.

His fatal flaw is that he is unable to see good things. (Which yes, is somewhat similar to Trevor.) In his case this gets called out even by the Captain. "Yesterday a man gave you a gift and made a joke, yet all you remember is the port authority running you and your beasties out of town."

His need is to realize that there is not only bad in the world, but also good. That people - including that he is himself - can be good.

(And yes, I find it kinda funny that the Captain just spells out his character arc for us xD)

Now, let me talk about Sypha. I talked before about how she kinda is a paragon within the structure of the story. She is in some regards the ideal. This is especially true within season 1 and 2, where she really is more the driving factor for both Trevor and Adrian's arc. But in season 3 she really is set up for an arc.

It is also pretty much clear that her arc kinda goes counter to Trevor's arc, with the original plan clearly having been that they both learn a bit from each other and find a good middleground.

Her want is to help people. To help everyone, solve all the problems, save every single person they come across and fight all the monsters.

Her fatal flaw in this is that she always sees the good in people and thinks that everyone can be saved. Or to put it differently: She is too idealistic. I would also argue that her second fatal flaw is, that she puts strangers above herself. She will gladly use herself up for strangers.

Her need is to be a bit more suspicious and also just a bit more selfish.

But... that gets never quite realized. See, she clearly hits rock bottom by the end of season 3. She realizes she trusted someone who should not have been trusted. She had not managed to save anyone. All of that. So, from there on she would need to realize what her flaw and her need are and overcome that fatal flaw. But... she never does, because season 4 just has no room for that. So season 4 kinda just ignores her hitting rock bottom by the end of season 3 when it comes to her arc - but it really is never brought up in season 4 again. Because, again, there is no time for that.

Hector is even more... well, unrealized. So far in fact that it is not quite clear what even his need is - or his want. Because the point kinda is that he does not have wants on his own.

Throughout the series his wants are just situational. He does not really want all that genocide. But Dracula asked him, so Hector said: "Sure." He does not really want to betray Dracula. But Carmilla asked him, so Hector said: "Okay." Because he is easily manipulated. Then in season 3 his want is "get out of the dungeon" and in season 4 his want, though never quite put into focus, clearly is "get out of the slavery thing".

His fatal flaw is fairly clear. He is naive. He is painfully naive and easily manipulated. He is a fullon himbo. Which gets him into worse and worse situation.

I would say that his need is kinda to self-actualize. To actually find his backbone. To develop an actual agency.

And it seems to me that with him helping Varney and making his plans to escape the castle would have involved him figuring out his need. But it happens off-screen. So, in the end, he really never gets to develop a full arc. And especially this entire thing with Varney clearly seems to be linked to something that was once supposed to happen on-screen.

So, yeah. Those are the two unfinished character arcs in Castlevania. But it makes it interesting to write about them. xD

[concealeddarkness13]

So...All's Fair is Now a Sci-Fi!

Content warning for mentions of rape and violence and death. Tagging: @ratracechronicler, @maple-writes, @pen-of-roses, @drabbleitout, and @grailfish!

I've been rethinking the plot of All's Fair, thinking about how to change it, to make it feel more manageable and make it better. And I think I've figured it out. Change this story into more of a sci-fi/cyberpunk. I am also merging this story with Irina's story!

Instead of the species ganging up on the humans and putting them into an enclosure, a group of corporations (led by humans and other species) joined together to form an empire that controls the citizens through religion, corporations, and force. A majority of the citizens are relegated to the "undercity" (name pending) where they are exploited and used and have to scrounge for survival.

This empire wants to put all humans and other species under their control, and they are doing a good job of it so far. The only free peoples left are most of the faeries (the Kage aliens from this one but revamped), all of the Venus girdle species, and some groups of humans and Shades who have escaped the empire. Outside of the empire, a lot of the world around it has been destroyed and left a wasteland, so much so that it's hard to travel on your own out there without plenty of supplies. It's why Chess hasn't left the empire herself. But first, let me talk about the species and then how the empire works.

There are three other species besides the humans this time. The Shades are honestly still the same, so I won't go into details there. The faeries rarely ever show their true form, but I imagine it looks similar to the Snakes, with scales, fangs, slit pupils, and tails. They have powers that if their prey is within a certain distance of them, they can give an order, and that prey has to obey it. They can do some devastating things with that power. They drink blood now, but their young are parasites that eat a full humanoid as they grow.

The Venus girdles are very similar to their original iteration as adults, but as young, they are small enough to infect an insect and eat its brain, which they then use the zombie insect to go to a human or other species and inject their young. Which that young will eat the humanoid's brain first and then slowly eat the rest of the insides until the young bursts out of the corpse fully formed. Their "hair" as an adult is how they eat a humanoid's soul (don't have to eat a full soul, and they usually don't), which also causes a feeling of euphoria in the humanoid. All of the species honestly generally target humans because humans don't have magic (unsure if that's true or not), so they're not as dangerous.

The empire has the wealthy corporation owners or other aristocrats who live extravagantly in the skyscrapers that look down on the undercity. A lot of the humans, especially the wealthy ones, are deeply connected to the Celestial religion, which states that the Celestials left humanity because humans were too violent, so it preaches peace and condemning and ignoring those who don't follow that peace. Which this religion will be a big deal in this story, with the Celestials just being more plot-important in general. There are cops to enforce the empire's will, but what most people fear are the soldiers. Victims of the cyborg experiments which are now fully endorsed by the empire who were taken at young ages, and a chip was put into their brain which allows their overseers to control them. Controlled and brainwashed soldiers who are used to "cleanse" the undercity and to fight the species and humans who are trying to remain free. The magic is still about the same. Naivi is trying to find a way to make the magic less harmful to the victims. I think now it's time to talk about the characters.

So, of course, the first person I must talk about Chess. I still want to keep most of her trauma and how she sees the world because I love the character she's become, and I don't want to take that from her. Her original name was Ezra Vesperia. Her parents were murdered when she was 10, and the government immediately took her to become a victim of the experiments. Aeflin took special interest in her because she was strong and angry and fought back against the species' powers even before she got the chip that made her immune to that. I will talk about Aeflin's plans in her paragraph, but Aeflin still wants to use Chess as her special weapon. Chess was sent out to fight the species (probably did get sent to "cleanse" the undercity as well at one point), and when she was 20, the Venus girdles sent a swarm of their young to the soldiers, and Chess got infected, but one of her friends in her squad (Torryn, I think) used his lightning magic to try and kill the young in Chess, but the young had already ate through the chip, and when the lightning hit her and killed the young, it hurt her as well, causing her to have a seizure. The overseers decided to just abandon her as defective, but a Shade decided to heal her and take away all her memories. Which he then sent her to Ashont who did the things that he did to her in the original before dumping her in the undercity the next morning. The residents hate her and fear her and call her a monster, because her prosthetics are a symbol of the very empire that hurts them. And she is hurt and abused and doesn't really trust anyone. There are a few people who try to help her, and she does meet Vortex and help him and make friends with him, but mostly it's just people either trying to use her or hurt her. And it's the only life she knows now. She will meet Creed somehow in this story. And she will meet Naivi and still have the rivals to lovers with her. And I'm thinking that the rebellion against the empire decides to use her as the image of the rebellion without her permission, and she has to deal with that as well as Aeflin trying to find her again once she learns that Chess is still alive. (I promise the rest of these character paragraphs won't be so long, lol)

Vesper is the daughter of some nobles, and her faith is extremely important to her. With Maisa's advice, she has come to believe that leaving behind the people of the undercity will be the only way to become the peaceful humans the Celestials want, so she makes speeches about that, about focusing on peace over trying to help anyone who has been hurt by violence. She believes that when the Celestials come back, they will heal all the pain and strife. She will learn better and become a more active advocate who condemns the passivity of what she had been preaching. There is a certain reason why Maisa has shown interest in her.

Thorne was born of two soldiers, and when the overseers learned that his mother was pregnant, they killed her and cut him out to kill in front of his father, but someone decided to let him live, and he grew up dumped in the undercity (not sure how that all happened, but we'll figure it out). He despises the empire and thinks it should be all burned down. He met Jude when he was stealing from Jude's parents' mansion, and they have been friends ever since. They are part of the rebellion, and they are known as the demon twins.

Creed is a "project" that a noble couple took into their home to prove that the citizens of the undercity totally have opportunities. He has proceeded to be the biggest nuisance, but if they drop him, they disprove their "project". He'll probably meet Chess at a bar, but I don't think they knew each other before she lost her memories. He is also half-Shade.

Killian is a hurt Celestial who has come to the surface of the world to help where he can, since he can't fight and protect the planet anymore. He is a tattoo artist who gathers information, and some days, he goes outside the empire to talk with Primary's seed and plant plants and trees where he can to help heal the earth. He knows too much and can't meddle too much, but he'll do what he can.

Irina is the daughter of the CEOs of an android company. She has always shown empathy towards androids, and she ran away when her parents became too much. She ran away with her beloved dog, Briar, but Briar got an illness and was going to die too young, so Irina paid for an android dog that looked exactly like Briar and would have her memories. She paid fully for her, but the company decided after a few months that they needed to take Briar back, and Irina has been on the run ever since. At some point, she will become infected with a Venus girdle young, but she'll talk to the young and try to see if they can coexist. This infection will cause one of her eyes to turn gold (part of one of Chess's eyes is gold too).

Vortex is an android made by Irina's parents' company. He was first made as a pleasure android for the wealthy, but he was abused and hurt and raped, and when he finally fought back, the company took him back and punished him and rebranded him as a hunter for the people stealing from the company (like Irina is considered). I will say that the day that he fought back, he does meet Chess and becomes friends with her, and they remain friends. He'll make sure to tell the other androids that Chess is really nice if they need someone. When he learns that Irina isn't abusing Briar, and that she did pay fully for Briar, he finds loopholes in his orders that allow him to not capture Briar.

Maisa is one of the leaders of the empire, but he prefers to work in the shadows, so no one knows that he is a leader. He was around when the Celestials were still on this world, and he hates them. The Celestials showed special treatment towards the humans, so he wants to use human suffering and death to convince them to come back so he can kill them and prove that the empire is better than the so-called gods. He took special interest in Vesper because she is actually half-Celestial, but he took her powers secretly, so she doesn't have them anymore. He gave the contained powers to...

Aeflin! Everyone's favorite bubbly scientist who is such an asshole is still here. She wants to be able to dissect a Celestial, and she will do anything to let that happen. She knows how to fix the prosthetics to give the victims good magic, but she will only do that for her weapon once she has absolute control over her. And she chose Chess for the job. She's been planning on having Chess receive the half-Celestial powers and receive her overpowered fire magic so she can go fight a Celestial, under Aeflin's control, of course. She doesn't care about the politics of it all, she's just excited to finally dissect a Celestial.

And last, but not least. Naivi. She is a half-faerie. Her mother was taken by a faerie and taken to their city and treated as a pet and raped and is still stuck there. She doesn't even really know what's going on. Naivi saw the truth and the horror of how the faeries were treating humans, and she ran away and joined the empire because she believes that only by being under the empire's rule and laws will humans be safe from the other species. So, she enthusiastically works on the prosthetics experiments to bring everyone fighting against the empire under their control. She despises the free species and thinks that they just want to be able to abuse humans any way they want. She does think that the victims of the experiments are volunteers who want to be here, and she doesn't know about the controlling chips, and she would be horrified if she knew, but she has a lot of learning and growing before she'll be able to be lovers with Chess. It'll be fun!

And I think that's about it! The aesthetic is a little more cyberpunk too. I think Chess will wear a muzzle sometimes, either of her own choice or because the cops catch her and put one on her. And she still has her long, green, curly hair, but she'll have an undercut to one side. And that's all I can think of for right now! Thanks for reading!

[dangerously-human]

rat heart doughnut I’m too lazy to find the emojis

Sooo valid of you, bestie.

🐀 [Rat] Name three reasons why this WIP is great at being insert genre here. (You can send a genre, or let the recipient pick one.)

Ooh, genre categorization is not necessarily my strong suit. I guess, since I'm working more or less within the original genre of canon, I can focus on the overarching fanfiction trope as what sets it apart?

My Heart: Domestic fluff. 1) Baby fic! 2) Soft 💕 3) Changing dynamics at home, not just for Lockwood and Lucy but also for their friends, all navigating this new stage of life together.

Twins: Tragedy. 1) "The end was set before the beginning." The outcome for this family is hella tragic, canonically, and mostly the same for thematic reasons here, and thus I knew the ending before I started writing any of what leads to it in this AU. Determinism is a big theme in Dune, which was partly what I set out to explore - how much can I change while still keeping later key events intact? 2) "It was always going to happen this way." Dune takes a pretty fatalistic view on the whole, or at least, its main narrators tend to, especially Paul. So while characters make some different choices here, those choices are useless to save them from their fates. But it's the fact that they could have chosen another path, that there could be a road out - which we kind of go down for a bit here! - that makes it truly tragic, even knowing (some of) what's coming. Because the characters are still who they are, in the end. 3) "The love was there. It didn't change anything. But it matters that the love was there." You know the post. We've all gone insane about it at some point. That's probably above all the theme of this piece. The love between Paul and Irulan - tbh on every side of this love triangle, in many iterations - matters. The ending doesn't really change but there's some light in the middle that wasn't there before and that counts something.

💖 [Heart] What is your favorite moment in this WIP?

I gave another answer for this, but luckily this gives me an excuse to share more than one thing I love about the projects I'm working on!

My Heart: There's a bit maybe two-thirds of the way through the story where Lockwood is sparring with Lucy and all of a sudden is hit by the reality of the situation, how much their lives are about to change and the fact that he and Lucy made a whole person. Lucy just brought him to his knees with a practice sword and manages it twice over with mom magic. It's kind of sappy and very cute.

Twins: There's this moment in the third act where Paul and Irulan have both kind of slipped up and are sharing a deceptively calm, happy moment, a bubble which Paul proceeds to pop by telling Irulan the name he's picked out unilaterally for their child. Anyway, I really love the way Irulan opens the narration for this scene, which alludes to something Paul says at the end of Dune about how he feels sort of helplessly enslaved to play a fated role of entangled kindness and cruelty:

Eventually, she’ll unlearn wanting. Already she’s discovered that for every concession she wrenches from her husband, the recoil is worse than her win warrants. For every flash of tenderness he grants her, Paul lashes out to punish her, or perhaps himself. But it’s so easy to forget, in the moment, that cruelty always follows his kindnesses.

🍩 [Donut] What's the weirdest thing someone eats in your WIP? What's the best thing?

You know, this question made me realize I do not write food into my stories very often. I should change that, it's a good background detail.

My Heart: I think the only thing eaten in this entire fic so far is doughnuts. I should give Lucy some really weird pregnancy cravings, though, something everyone judges her for except her supreme ally, George.

Twins: Again, the only food I think is explicitly mentioned is grapes. Well, that and spice-infused Fremen dishes, though nothing specific. I guess the latter could count as weird, or at least can lead to a weird time for those sensitive to it.

[hsvh-hp]

what are your thoughts about Draco’s intentions in the room of requirement scene in book 7?

Lord, if I haven’t overthought this one to death. Sorry, this is going to be long.

So the thing about this scene is that it’s happening at the very end of the series and the war. Narratively, it ought to be the climax in Draco’s character arc. I could just be boring and say that Draco’s arc is all about being cowardly and taking the easiest option every time he’s given a choice, but fuck that. He’d just proven two weeks in-story before this at Malfoy Manor that that was no longer the case.

What canon information we have about Draco’s mental state and actions through Deathly Hallows is as follows. He’s suffering with the route his life has taken post-Astronomy tower. He returned to Hogwarts for his seventh year, but is not given special mention by Neville to Harry about any evil deeds committed in that time. It’s established that Crabbe and Goyle now reign supreme in cruelty, and that Draco has lost any control he once had over them.

In the Room of Hidden Things encounter, the dynamic between Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle reflects this change in their relationship. Crabbe and Goyle stand in front, and Draco is basically squeezed in between/behind them:

[Harry] skidded to a halt and turned around. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right at Harry. Through the small space between their jeering faces he saw Draco Malfoy. "That’s my wand you’re holding, Potter," said Malfoy, pointing his own through the gap between Crabbe and Goyle.

The following discussion ensues:

Harry: So how come you three aren't with Voldemort? Crabbe: We're gonna be rewarded. We hung back, Potter. We decided not to go. Decided to bring you to him. Harry: Good plan. So how did you get in here? Draco: I virtually lived in the Room of Hidden Things all last year. I know how to get in. Goyle: We were hiding in the corridor outside. We can do Disillusionment Charms now! And then you turned up right in front of us and said you were looking for a diadem. What's a diadem?

I don't think that Draco was initially with Crabbe and Goyle in the corridor. Why, after he had the chance on a silver platter to hand Harry over to Voldemort two weeks earlier, would he suddenly change such course - and especially in a way that requires such direct action? Why would Crabbe and Goyle have even considered including Draco in this plan if he's gone soft and the Malfoys are completely disgraced in the Death Eaters' eyes?

(Aside: would Crabbe and Goyle have known on their own the best place strategically to hide to catch Harry? I think so; Death Eaters entered the school a year ago via the Room of Hidden Things. Crabbe and Goyle could have suspected that Harry used the same method. They would have known where the hideout with the connection to the Hog's Head was because they would have been told to go there as part of the castle evacuation. So, rather than leave, they hung back outside of it and waited.)

Coming back to Draco, it was obviously broadly known at this point that Harry was inside the castle. So, if Draco wasn't with Crabbe and Goyle, why would he come to the Room of Hidden Things by his own volition?

I think he had something in mind, but Crabbe and Goyle being there fucked it up for him. However, they were able to tell Draco that the Hogsmeade exit was closed off and that Harry had activated a different iteration of the Room (of which one Draco accurately guessed), but Draco couldn't get inside then without Crabbe and Goyle following. Draco stating to Harry that he wanted his wand back was a flimsy excuse to prevent Crabbe and Goyle fully turning on him without a guarantee Harry, Ron, and Hermione wouldn't just do the same. Then, obviously, things went completely sideways with the Fiendfyre before Draco could follow through with his original intention.

So what (in my opinion) was Draco's intention in the Room of Requirement scene in book 7? To catch Harry alone, touch base after the events at Malfoy Manor, and perhaps finally draw some sort of truce.

[stormofbats4224]

Gonna be a grumpy old man for a minute, ignore if you want and take everything I say with a grain of salt, but DP&W has reminded me of my least favorite thing ab my boy Timber:

Why The Fuck Does He Look Like That.

When I say this, I’m talking mostly about his stupid copycat relationship with Wolverine, partly about his ever changing appearance compared to some of the other Legionnaires (not to say they don’t change, but most of the others feel like more subtle shifts then, idk, YOINKING HIS EARS, CROOKED NOSE, AND HAIR STRIPES ALL IN ONE FELL SWOOP), and the disappointing blankness of humanizing a character who’s backstory is one of being experimented on.

I mean this with all the love in my heart when I say that we don’t need another fucking Wolverine clone. Timber never should’ve been associated as one to begin with, especially considering he’s technically the original of the two (and by roughly 10 years, no less). Their stories are both exceptional in their own rights, and there was absolutely room to make characters that both filled the niche of “grumpy, animal-themed science experiment with claws” for their universes while still allowing them to flourish. And for Wolverine, that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen, a character set up to rise above his base and become this figurehead of franchise.

And then there’s Timber.

It genuinely feels like they have no fucking clue what to do with this man, and it kinda feels like he just flip flops around like an emo fish in the background sometimes. He gets his moments (The show comes to mind first, as does his and Phantom’s side plot in The Legion, and what I’ve seen out of Legion Lost so far) in the limelight, but other then that…where tf is he? Half the cast line ups, he’s near the back (fuck, he exists for half a second as a statue in both JLU and JL V. FF, and has, like, three lines in The Movie I Want To Burn) or off to the side, and every time it takes longer and longer to find him bc HE ALWAYS LOOKS DIFFERENT.

It’s like Where’s Waldo, but Waldo is bright orange and can shapeshift. Fucks sake, the man changes so often that I drew him with 9 canon versions and one of mine, and I STILL left out at MINIMUM 4 other iterations for one reason or another, not counting the newest version of him (the one that looks like pouty-lipped Hugh Jackman) bc it didn’t exist.

On one level, I get it, different stories and authors can warrant different appearances, and the Legion is kinda just one of those random IPs that most probably don’t care ab, but that argument falls apart when so many other secondary and tertiary DC characters don’t get fucking overhauled every three years on the whims of new writers and artists. Keeping something recognizable is a way to bring people back, and that doesn’t just go for emblems (which are also horribly inconsistent for the Legion and it Makes Me Want To Scream).

Back to the topic at hand though, squinting at a successful character and approximating their likeness a little to the left is not the way to do shit. The first time, you could argue it might’ve been the other way around, bc Timber’s first “Wolverine”-esque look debuted before Wolvy existed, and it stuck for a bit. And then they diverged from it, and things were beautiful. And then they went back. And split again. And now they’re back to basics with a man that is literally Hugh Jackman and Mark Wahlberg fused.

And Wolverine has stayed almost the exact same through that stretch, maybe with minor things like costume changes or aging.

It feels like the only times Timber gets something creative or sensical to his appearance is when he steps into the hot seat, and when he’s in the background, they just need a space filler that says “hey, I’m basically this guy, that’s all you need to know”.

Again, not something you would “need” if you kept everything at least semi-consistent.

Wrapping around to my least favorite part of all this shit, STOP MAKING TIMBER SO HUMANOID. Fuck’s sake, would it kill people to give him back his teef? Or his white streak (tho, looking at Jason, even that might be too much to ask)? Let this man’s past affect his design, I BEG of you. Show that he went through some fucked up shit instead of randomly blaming his asshole personality on said fucked up shit and la-Dee-da’ing away like you did something. Slap some not-so-human features on him besides easily hidden shit; fangs, ears, literally ANYTHING that makes someone think twice about assuming he’s just some dude.

If it sounds like I’m describing some specific versions, good, bc I am, and it’s Reboot Timber from the early 2000’s and Show Timber from later 2000’s.

These bitches had it ALL, the appearance, the act, everything was instantly recognizable, and almost entirely unconnected from his Marvel counterpart. You can glance at them and never once think ab Wolverine, while also piecing together why they’re called Timberwolf. They’re beautiful, just the right amount of scruffiness and non-humanity to convey backstory and general character, while still maintaining strong human aspects to help it all along (and make him consistently redrawable without needing to learn a whole other skeleton).

Anywhozzles, that’s my midnight brain spit from being hyped up on the high of DP&W, this is all the conclusion paragraph you get for reading through all that. Thanks and feel free to let me know your thoughts, I’m probably wrong about several things 🤷‍♂️

[klonoa-at-blog]

From: Nintendo World (March 2009)

A new mascot for the Wii Platform games are getting harder and harder to find. Even more so when it's in 2D perspective. It's even worse when it's on a console like the Wii that excels in using the Wii Remote in an original way. With a few exceptions, like the excellent Super Mario Galaxy, and last year's releases like Wario Land Shake It! and de Blob, this type of game doesn't usually get many iterations. But if it all depends on Namco and Klonoa, the style will still live a little longer.  As is already obvious, Klonoa is a platform game, in which you control a creature that I wouldn't dare say what animal it is. Some say it's a cat, but you're never sure. It is more accurate to call him "animal with giant ears that we don't know exactly what it is", or the abbreviation "animal". The new work is actually not new. It is a remake of a game released in 1996 for a "non-Nintendo" console. The protagonist who gives the name to the game, lives in a place called "Phantomile" and this place survives on the dreams of its residents. That explains why they can't remember them afterwards. But Klonoa keeps having the same dream every night, about a flying ship crashing into a mountain near where he lives with his grandfather. Surprisingly, in one night, this happens exactly as he dreams, and from there comes the villain Ghadius, who is a dark spirit who wants to turn all dreams into nightmares and put Phantomile at risk. Now Klonoa resolves to be the hero and save his city. Nothing Oscar worthy, not least because it's a game, not a movie. SIMPLE FANTASY Visually, Klonoa impresses with its level of detail, even though it is a "2.5D" game. With 3D graphics, but the camera is focused to the side, allowing only lateral progression of the character. Even with this limitation, the game manages to use creative shapes to give the necessary aspect to create a three-dimensional environment. The character can rotate in scenarios, such as a spiral tower, and observe distant objects that will only be possible by following paths of this style. And all with bright, colorful detailing. Similar to a Disney movie. Only with an "animal" that we don't know what it is. The simple story dictates the style of the game. Not that it's a bad thing, but it demonstrates how easy the game is to play and to advance through the challenges, which aren't even complicated. However, the theme of the game is interesting. You use a spirit friend, called "Huepow", and the "Wind Bullet" weapon that serves to catch enemies and lift them above their heads. So far it seems simple, but the possibilities of this simple act are what differentiate Klonoa from many games. You can do the obvious, which is to throw the enemy into another, or use the enemy to double jump and reach new areas. This possibility helps to create very unique puzzles.  The game is divided in the usual way, with platform and puzzle phases, and at the end you face a boss. Even being a game that seems ordinary, its presentation, and the ways to advance in the game, are the true protagonists of the experience. For fans of the platform genre, there's no better time.

[red-dyed-sarumane]

marshall maximizer is a series song right. i think thats the only one ive listened to (yet), un:c did a good cover of it ...... what are ur thoughts on it whats it about . kicking my legs in the air

YES YES MARSHALL MAXIMIZER IS A SERIES SONG. theres so much going on in it u have no idea yes the song fucks verily but holy shit is it so important to the story.

okay so i think i need to give like. a quick reminder of the story here right. so u have "a certain world" & basically these people onset the destruction of said world such that it basically crumbles to pieces & then disappears. tragic. okay. but theres a catch. they get more than one chance to try. when one iteration of the world ends instead of really dying they kind of just. wake up in a new version. the world's still going to end in the day, but they get another chance to try and save it. the only real thing about it is any given person still has to have sight of their own goals or they aren't allowed to wake up next time & they disappear as well. this is, in the original song and afterwords referred as as being a "person" and having "one's self" or not having your self & being a "thing".

marshall maximizer is the explanation of this phenomenon (the later song laboratory being the demonstration of this concept btw to build off what this song says) among other things.

ill get to the lyrics in a second but the thing that always gets me about this song is the text in the middle of the video that's a conversation between two people. idk how to even go about this i just want to quote the whole thing at u. the beginning of its the narrator (perhaps not the same one as the lyrics but i cant prove or disprove this) trying to figure out the whole thing and the person working with them- referred to as "doctor"- basically says choosing who u are is an impossibility and if u cant prove ur alive of ur own volition then u arent even truly "alive" & won't have a place in heaven or hell. the narrator then asks the doctor to prove if he's alive for himself to which he doesnt answer and the narrator goes "Doctor, you have the appearance of a human. But, what of the possibility you're a 'thing' someone created?" to which the doctor answers "and if im not a 'person'?" and the narrator continues "Just as an example. Doctor, you said 'I chose this job in order to go to heaven.' And the reason you stay here is because 'if i can go to heaven, then it's fine to die,' right?" after this the doctor still cant give a solid answer and when the narrator looks for him again, he's disappeared entirely. which is nearly one to one with what the girls in the songs are going through. the doctor wasnt really doing it for himself he was doing it simply to achieve an end, with no real strong desire or goal along the way, which essentially turns him into a mere tool or 'thing' to achieve that end. much like the girls in the songs; they have to have something in it for themselves or they're a mere "thing" to be used, and at that point they'll disappear entirely.

theres also flashing text of 2 kanji words at the end that are a lot less profound but do give some insight on the series. the terms are broken up a series of three question marks & im willing to bet its describing the timelines in the story. the first 5 words regarding observing the failures of the past, the next 11 dealing more with what sounds like the more modern songs & all the confusion & rash decisions bringing them to their end, and then the last 15 words possibly being from the sort of future or at the very least whatever point in time the first song takes place in as it seems to lineup the most with shoushitsu itself. but its not like its as important to this song's understanding as the mini novel in the middle is.

so whats up with the lyrics then. as u can guess its not as fun as the song sounds. theres a lot of mentions of experiments in this song & ive seen people say its like the demon core thing irl, but i need u to understand the while series been talking about science experiments the whole time. like. all of aru sekai shoushitsu is talking about it, kyuuyaku is talking about it, shuuen touhikou is to some extent talking about it, oumen is, apoptosis is, etc etc this is just par for the course okay, but it does show maximizer in particular does have direct influence on experiments being performed or at least attempted. she is pretty casual about how she talks about it btw the character in this song gives me a very easy going type of vibe with how she talks which is probably why the song itself is the way it is and not like something that fills u with dread the entire time. though i would argue parts of the instrumental do sound like theres a bit of weight in them and its not ALL party time vibes.

one thing i do want to point out in regards to both the lyrics and the people vs thing topic, are the lines "ki ga kuruu HITO no furi wo shiteiru KIMI wo miteiru" (observing You pretending to be a Person gone mad) and "ki ga kuruu HITO no mane wo shiteiru KIMI e" (to You who's imitating a person gone mad) where both the words for person and you are in katakana drawing emphasis to it as well as mirroring how the "people' vs "thing" is written in both the background texts & previous songs. which is to say the narrator here is very aware of this other person not actually being a person. the implications here that since its "pretending to be a person" the "you" is a…. perhaps less direct way of calling out that its a "thing" or in completely transparent terms, is a person not acting on their own will and doomed to disappear. similar to this is the most recognizable lyrics in this song the "tabete sugu nete ushi ni naru/ okite mata nete hito de nashi?"(eating, falling right asleep, becoming a cow/ waking up, sleeping again, is that so inhuman?) is also calling on that "person" aspect, although not as strongly as hito uses the kanji this time rather than katakana. in any case she's still making the claim that despite all the horrors going on she's still acting as she pleases so she should still count as a person……right?(spoilers she does)(this isnt really spoilers because its told to u by the fact the nami no ne no motif is in the song) but it DOES show she's a little worried about it. not enough to full out panic but she sees other people no longer counting as people it makes sense she's going to worry about herself.

likewise the lines in the chorus "nante koto da! shindeshimau!"(what the hell is this! we'll die!" is much more likely referring to the fact if they arent "people" they disappear and are REALLY dead & is kind of worrying over that. like the line later what the hell is this! we'll live! is not really rejoicing at a percieved break in the case so much as realizing she DOES have her own goals in it and she's not about to disappear just yet.

and then of course i cannot overlook that this is also Sunk Cost Fallacy:The Song. the whole "sunk coster, sunk costess! 'i want to return to the isotope we had at the end!' 'we're falling to the worst of hell! falling!' but a dazzling unbalance diverged farway!" like on top of all of this she's still going to run the experiments that are risking her literal self to whatever extent that she invests herself in them. she cant give up yet. they've put so much into trying to correct this disaster, lost so many people, endured so much trauma, even when continuing is a sin, there's no other option but to continue at this point. even when they know it's pointless, even when they can see (to take imagery from kanon) the scales have been upset & the outcome will never be good, theres no other option.

theres a bit more to it but that requires getting sources from other songs & its not overly huge details its probably fine to leave them out for now this is long enough as is. one thing i do want to mention is its one of the side songs(songs that are not directly linked to aru sekai shoushitsu itself/not one of the kanji songs that links to certain lyrics in it) that has alliteration in the title (ma ma) as a way of keeping with the "repeating fractals" theme in the series. which to me implies this situation is not particularly unique to this character as some other songs are (oumen especially, touhikou, ashura, etc)(apoptosis i have an argument to make about but thats another topic entirely) and while maybe not 1:1 it can also be applied to other chara's experiences, or maybe implies its happened at other parts of the timeline as well. which makes sense since its common knowledge among the charas that some people are not "people" anymore so yeah i can imagine them keeping watch on coworkers they think are losing or have lost their selves. that doesnt make maximizer a general song though this is still VERY MUCH a subjective song from a particular chara's perspective & leaves things out & emphasizes others accordingly.

anyway my opinion on this song is that its VERY good and VERY important to get a good look at the story. the instrumental behind the tabete sugu nete ushi ni naru parts scratches my brain & the inclusion of the series "this chara lives" motif drives me insane.10000/10 everyone should like this song.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 061

“Who are you?”

“I’m you, but stronger.  Furthermore, I’m substantially more verbose, though you may find this difficult to accept.”

“Indeed, for I have amazed even myself on occasion with my propensity to ramble endlessly on a given topic.  Though my diction flows like clear waters across a mountain stream, woe be to any who seek to quench their thirst for meaningful conversation, for I provide only minimal insight in the magnitude of verbiage I employ.” 

“Yes, I quite agree!  I have often noticed how my own thoughts and feelings seem quite trivial when diluted beneath the deluge of my interminable speech.  Though I begin with a point I wish to make, I continue to belabor it, adding word after word, clause after clause, like a builder stacking bricks upon a great tower reaching up into the heavens.  And yet, though the great temple is unmatched in splendor, the thought which it houses is so minuscule as to require only a tiny fraction of the space.”

“It is a remarkable similarity we share.  Perhaps, it is a good omen.  Yes, for if you are another iteration of myself, and we truly are of one mind in fact rather than spirit, then we both share the same dream of perfect justice for the entire universe.  A world finally freed from the shackles of evil, released from the fuzzy handcuffs of corruption, and loosed from the kinky chastity belt of mortals, who stain the cosmos with a taint so profound it disgusts me to speak of it.  And if our dream is to be fully realized, then what other outcome can there possibly be, save for a universe where only we two remain as its population?  In such a divinely pristine creation, a creation restored to its rightful essence, our tendency to prattle endlessly will not be abnormal at all.  For such holy voices as ours will be the only speech heard throughout the cosmos.”

“This is nice.  I feel like we’re really vibing here.  Do you want to go somewhere and get a coffee?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.  All Gowasu ever let me drink in this stupid place is tea.”

Okay, so we’re fifteen episodes into this stupid saga, and we’re finally going to get the origin story of Goku Black.  I probably need to write a separate thing where I compare the Zamasu Saga to GT, and I think what I need to do is like a side-by-side with the Baby Saga and the Shadow Dragons Saga, because those two arcs are the most similar to Zamasu’s whole storyline.  I couldn’t decide which one would be more appropriate, so maybe a three-way thing to decide which is the worst.  The point I’m getting at here is that no matter how bad and dumb the Omega Shenron fight got, at least he didn’t have a stupid secret identity on top of the rest of it. 

Okay, so let me set the stage here. In Episode 59, Beerus destroyed Zamasu for attempting to assassinate the Supreme Kai of Universe 10.  This action would have led to Zamasu securing Gowasu’s Time Ring, the Super Dragon Balls, and Goku Black.  So Beerus believed that by destroying Zamasu before he could do all of that, then Trunks’ future world would be at peace. 

That hope was shattered in Episode 59, because the next episode preview clearly showed that nothing had changed in Trunks’ world.  And yet we still had to wade through Episode 60 to find out the long way.  Lots of debate over how time travel works, and now we’re in Episode 61, and we’re still going over this shit.  And the good guys will have to go back to tell Beerus he’s wrong, so we’re spending a lot of episodes on this one plot point. 

So up until now, the good guys had believed that Zamasu had used the Super Dragon Balls to create Goku Black as a henchman, but that’s not it at all. Goku Black is Zamasu, having wished to swap bodies with the real Goku. 

So who’s this green asshole who’s been helping him this whole time?  Well, he’s Zamasu too.  Specifically, he’s the Zamasu native to this timeline, just like Future Trunks and Future Mai and Future Yajirobe.  When the “main” Zamasu successfully switched bodies with Goku, he used the Time Ring to travel to this alternate timeline, where he found his counterpart and recruited him for his plan. 

Goku Black knew that this other Zamasu would share his frustrations with mortals, so he found him, killed his version of Gowasu, and explained what he wanted to do.  Overcome with fulfillment, the other Zamasu embraced his alternate self. 

All right, but that only explains how Future Zamasu got in on this bit.  How can Goku Black be the same Zamasu that Beerus destroyed in Episode 59?  Simple, it’s because of the Time Ring.  At least, that’s what Goku Black says.  The way he remembers it, no one was there to stop him the day he killed Gowasu.  So he took the Time Ring, became Goku Black, recruited Future Zamasu, and made him indestructible. 

I pulled up the subtitles for this, just to make sure there was no confusion, because this part has always irritated me.  Beerus spent like an episode and a half insisting that his way would work, and that his divine status overruled the empirical evidence Trunks had witnessed over the years.  So was Beerus just talking out his ass, or did he just overlook a detail?  

The dub implies that the Time Ring protected him from the causality effects of getting destroyed in the past, but that doesn’t add up, because Zamasu wasn’t wearing it when Beerus destroyed him.  But Goku Black is wearing the Ring now, and he has been for the past seventeen years.

I think that’s what the idea is supposed to be.  Beerus’s whole argument was that he went to the Zamasu of a particular timeline, the only timeline where he met Goku and developed his obsession with Goku, and destroyed that Zamasu.  In theory, this should have a “Marty McFly Effect”, erasing Goku Black from existence, no matter what he does in the future or which timeline he goes to.  And because Beerus is a Hakaishin, this doesn’t create any new timelines, like when mortals change the past like Trunks has done. 

Episode 61 seems to be suggesting that Beerus’ plan could have worked, except he didn’t know that the Time Ring protects the wielder from changes in his own history.  I guess that property would make sense, because the Supreme Kai who uses the Time Ring would need a way to be able to observe and interact with future events without potentially creating new timelines.  For example, Zamasu killed that Barbari warrior 1000 years from now.  I’m pretty sure that change in future events isn’t “locked in” or anything, and if someone were to destroy Planet Barbari in the next thousand years, that wouldn’t create a second timeline where Barbari survived so that the one poor dope could get murdered by Zamasu on schedule. 

And I guess it makes sense that Beerus failed to take the Time Ring’s powers into account, since only the Supreme Kai of each universe is authorized to own and use them.  Zamasu never even heard of the Time Rings until recently, and he was supposed to be training to eventually assume the office of Supreme Kai.  It figures that Beerus, a Destroyer, wouldn’t know everything about how the Time Rings work and what they do.  

In short: If Beerus had any influence over the rules of time, it was canceled out by the Time Ring.  And since Beerus only knew to destroy Zamasu because he saw Goku Black wearing a Time Ring, he can’t unring that bell.  There must have been a version of Zamasu who successfully obtained the Ring and became Goku Black.  Beerus cannot undo this.  All he accomplished was to branch the timeline so that in one branch, Zamasu no longer exists. 

In the other branch, Goku Black continued with his plan, as seen in this flashback.  He used the Time Ring to jump ahead one year, gathered the Super Dragon Balls in Age 780, and wished to swap bodies with Goku.

This left Goku trapped in Zamasu’s body, and in this timeline, Goku has never met Zamasu, or even heard of the guy.

Then Goku Black teleported to Earth and killed the Goku of that timeline. 

And he killed Chi-Chi and Goten too.  No surprise there.  After that, he went to the Universe 10 of Future Trunks’ alternate timeline, recruited the Zamasu native to that world, jumped ahead one more year with the Time Ring, and used the Super Dragon Balls a second time to give that Zamasu the indestructible body.

Then they went to the Future Trunks timeline and started carrying out their Project Zero Mortals thing.  First they destroyed the Super Dragon Balls, then they started hunting down all the other gods in the twelve universes.  This would ensure that there would be no one to stop them as they destroyed all other life in the universes.  Wait, how the hell did they kill Jiren?   And Broly?

Finally, the duo saved Earth for last, and they invaded one year before the events seen in Episode 47.  Black says they’ve specifically reserved Earth for the grand finale, because they wanted to make the people there suffer the most out of everyone. 

See, they thought about all this and decided that Earth is the root of all of this.  Specifically, Trunks and his time machine, since his tinkering with history led to the creation of alternate timelines, which is what led to Zamasu being introduced to Goku in Episode 53, which resulted in Zamasu becoming Goku Black and kicking off Project Zero Mortals.  So when you think about it that way, Trunks is responsible for all of this.  If he had left well enough alone, Goku would have died of a heart virus and Zamasu would have never met him.

Actually, that doesn’t quite add up, but this post is running longer than I wanted, so I’ll try to explain what I mean later.

So I think I’ve covered all of the backstory stuff.  Now let’s talk about the fighting in this episode.  It sucks.  Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks got their asses beat the last time they came here, and the only thing that’s changed is that they remembered to bring some senzu beans.  Not that it matters, because the baddies quickly overwhelm Vegeta and Trunks, and corner Goku.  They tell him the bit about how Goku Black killed Chi-Chi and Goten in his origin story, and Black stabs his hand-energy sword through Zamasu and into Goku while they talk about this. 

And that gets Goku all fired up, so he raises his power and starts going on a tear.  Okay, so there’s a difference of opinion on this scene. 

On the one hand, you could say: Hey, cool, Goku’s had all he can stands, and he can’t stands no more, and he’s gonna kick some ass because he loves his wife and kids.  I can’t dispute that.  This is a factually accurate statement. 

However, on the other hand, this scene is dumb as hell, because Goku’s powering up while he’s got an energy beam sticking through his liver.  Remember when Vegeta got stabbed this way and it didn’t kill him, but it kind of took him out of the fight for several minutes?  Then he got up, went Blue, and fired a Final Flash anyway?  Then he passed out until he got a senzu bean later?  Yeah, well, that was really fucking stupid, and now we have Goku doing the same bullshit, only faster.  He doesn’t even wait around for Black to pull out the beam.

Also, what exactly did Goku do to turn the tables here?  He was already in his strongest form, so what has he powered up to?  He’s just Super Saiyan Blue Goku With a Hole In His Liver, and somehow that makes him stronger than he was before, when he didn’t have a hole there.

Like, he’s a house of fire in this scene, and it looks cool, I won’t dispute that.  It’s kind of nice watching him dominate Black and Zamasu like this... except...

Black just suddenly decides it’s time to start winning again, and he turns the tables on Goku without even trying hard.  

So why is this hurting Goku when the gaping hole in his torso didn’t?   Also, is one of those beams going in his dick?  Why doesn’t Goku just power out of this like he did before?  He’s still mad about Chi-Chi and Goten, isn’t he?

See, this is why this saga sucks.  They tried to do this “Power Awakened by Rage” thing like they used to do in DBZ.  Toddler Gohan vs. Raditz, Goku turning Super Saiyan for the first time on Namek, Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2 against Cell.  These are all classic moments, and this episode tries to borrow some of that magic. 

Except it’s all wrong.  Toddler Gohan ran out of gas pretty quickly, but he still hurt Raditz enough for the others to finish him.  They didn’t just have Raditz instantly recover from all the damage that headbutt did to him.  And Super Saiyan 2 Gohan didn’t just start getting his ass kicked when it was convenient to the plot.  He never stopped being angry at Cell, and his power never wavered.  Cell got stronger, but not strong enough to prevent him from getting his just desserts. 

Here, I think the idea is that Goku Black provoked Goku on purpose, then allowed Goku to pummel him a while, because somehow that helps Goku Black get stronger, like he claimed back in Episode 49.  So I guess he was just toying with Goku?  Which kind of makes Goku look like a total geek here.

But the rotten cherry on top of this moldy sundae is Goku screaming at them before he attacks.  “’Cause now I’m mad!  I’m really really mad!” 

Seriously?   That’s what they came up with?  “I’m really really mad!”?

I mean, why stop there?  Why not have Goku shout “I’m really really really mad!”?  It’s pathetic.  I forgot what he said in the subtitles, but I’m pretty sure it was equally unimpressive.

Okay, so after they take out Goku, they move on to Vegeta and Trunks, and that’s when they try to make this out to be all Trunks’ fault.  And this makes Trunks mad.  In fact, it might make him--dare I say it-- really really mad. 

In fact, the way everyone’s reacting, it’s like Trunks has never been this mad before.  He may have surpassed a level of anger beyond really really mad.  Can it be?

Trunks has ascended to becoming really really really really mad!  Like, these guys killed his mom and destroyed his whole world.  They also attacked his girlfriend several times.  But when they said a bunch of dumb stuff about time travel, that’s what pushed Trunks over the edge. 

So the episode ends on this new power-up, so I guess this is the one we’re expected to take seriously, but it’s a little difficult to care when we just saw Goku do the exact same thing and get his ass kicked.  I mean, Trunks’ form looks like something new, sort of?  But even if it were legit, they completely undermined this story beat with the whole Goku thing they did. 

Okay, enough of Episode 61.  Let’s try to push forward.