#i was 6-7 for both

[egophiliac]

like mother, like son, but less wholesome this time?

(I couldn't decide whether or not to put them together, so have them in all the different ways!)

[dykedvonte]

I think it says something that Jimmy absolutely destroyed the crew and ship in half the time Curly was captain. Like he couldn’t even get them past 2 full months before breaking down.

Like he really couldn’t be half the man he thought Curly was.

[artsy-1diot]

drawing kudos managers as I beat them part 5

I am still so scared for the next guy i'm gonna fight but we ball

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Reading the fleetway Sonic comic now and

I'm convinced that Tails is his special little guy??

I mean, he's an asshole, no doubt, but he passes up a party (mind you, he loves being celebrated as a hero so much) to go looking for Tails

He goes looking at his "favorite place" and literally dons shades and a worse attitude at learning Tails was taken

He genuinely cares about him as his buddy? Sure he complains about him or insults hin fairly often, but he clearly likes having Tails around enough to want him back??

Are we gonna talk about how Tails breaks free from Robotnik's control because he can't bear to keep hurting Sonic, because he cares?

This scene too reminds me so much of that scene from Fang the Hunter issue 1 where Tails called for Sonic and Sonic bid himself to be patient and not lash out because Tails is his friend. Like again, Fleetway!Sonic is an asshole, but he's holding back when it comes to Tails even a little bit

There's just constant proof whenever Tails is put in danger or captured that Sonic cares about his well-being. In fact he cares so much he just kind of is just indifferent about those he puts in danger by zeroing in on saving Tails (and those he saves he doesn't necessarily save with intent to). In this issue specifically, Sonic, the animal companions with him, and an unconscious Tails get washed away in a current of water, and rather than worry about his own well-being or those of his companions, he yells at them to keep ahold of Tails in the water so he can take care of the badnik.

Personally I feel like this sequence speaks for itself? Although Sonic is fairly confident, he risks his life on the chance that he can steer the Death Egg off course (and we're not even factoring in whether he can escape in time), and sends Tails away in the only escape pod. He literally gambles his life on this act of saving Emerald Hill and worries first about securing Tails', even if only Tails may end up escaping.

There's also the setting? Tails crying for Sonic and calling him the bravest hedgehog he ever met, Sonic reacting like he didn't just narrowly avoid death and that Tails is just stating the obvious, the two of them floating down in the escape pod during the sunset

I don't have the picture space to show it, but there's also another part of this issue where Sonic continuously nags Tails to stay out of danger and to let him handle everything alone, and then (after falling into a trap), starts talking to himself about how glad he is that Tails wasn't around to see him make such a rookie mistake. It's easy to read as Sonic always leaving Tails behind because he doesn't think much of him or thinks he'll be in the way, but I don't think that's completely true! I get the idea that Fleetway Sonic likes having his buddy around just as much as he wants his buddy to be safe. So he brings him around everywhere he can, but he forces him to hang back during the dangerous bits. And that's not to mention how this issue showed just how much Sonic values Tails' opinion of him.

And BOY does this scene get me

It's like

This is the first time Super Sonic ever appears in StC. Are we going to ignore that Fleetway!Super Sonic stops attacking and reverts back into regular Sonic because of Tails?

This is like Mecha Sonic in Archie's Mecha Madness special all over again, except Fleetway!Super Sonic is under no one's control. He stopped attacking because Tails bids him to remember them.

There's just so many little things about them in my reading so far that I almost can't believe it (and would hit the tumblr photo limit a number of times if I were to show it off)

If I had to label their relationship in StC, I'd say that, to Tails, Sonic is someone he admires greatly. He doesn't seem to be fond of Sonic's attitude (largely when it's aimed at those other than himself), and he expresses criticism as to how vain Sonic is and his eating choices, but ultimately he cares about Sonic enough to stick around with him and go on adventures from time to time. For Sonic, I think Tails is someone he secretly likes having around. He often criticizes him, and depending on his mood he'll do it whenever he gets an opening, but he's also just...bad at feelings. When Tails is in danger, he'll zero in on saving him, almost above all else, and then when he saves Tails he's going off about how he can't trust Tails to be alone, angry and annoyed. He's a jerk, but a jerk who cares more than he lets on about Tails. Tails isn't just some admirer, he's important to him, and at the same time, Tails' is someone whose opinion of him he values. Ahsjsjs and....he's also the kind of guy who would say something like "Hey, that's enough! Only I get to bully Tails!"

Is their relationship healthy? No😂 But also in StC it also comes off like...they're both choosing this. Despite everything they choose to be buddies

Idk I'm fascinated so far😂

The Sonic the asshole and his special little fox

[arty-e]

Some gen 2 kids

[cubbihue]

due to my adhd urge to make everything line up and be nice round numbers

i'm stretching out chimmy's arc with an intermission between his leaving his parents' house, and his arrival to the new location

that man will be TORMENTED

he will SUFFER

he's gonna get HIS WALLET STOLEMB

[ladynoirzeddison123]

Dad’s Season 7 Theory

So my dad just came back from a few weeks abroad which meant we finally binged the new season together. Anyway… as we reached the end of the last episode he had a thought that I found pretty interesting so I thought I’d share.

Runnan has been released from the coin as we know, meaning there’s still one Quasar diamond in Callum’s possession. My dad noticed that when Runnan was freed his previously occupied coin it became empty (obviously) and that Callum picked it up to look at it. Now this can easily be framed as simple curiosity, but perhaps also foreshadowing? My dad’s thought here is, since Aaravos cannot be killed, and hence needs to be trapped, will Callum end up performing the coin entrapment spell on Aaravos? Instead of doing it the dark magic way he’d use the last Quasar diamond to trap him, almost like a reverse release spell?

It seems like an interesting thought and would be a pretty rounded conclusion to Callum’s arc, he would keep his promise of not using dark magic, we would see the final diamond be used, and trapping Aaravos in a coin would parallel Viren trapping others for his own gain, while Callum would have trapped someone to not only save the world but also assure himself that he is free from the threat and influence of Aaravos (seeing as he is absolutely going to spiral once he finds out Aaravos is free and he didn’t take the real Pearl).

Yeah anyway this is why I like watching shows with him we always end up having interesting discussions.

[ace-s-fav-dp-posts]

Currently cooking up an AU heavily inspired by the magical girl concept.

And I am going ahead and making Danny a girl in this AU.

Her name is Danae, pronounced exactly the same as Danny.

Yes it's because I think Vlad hearing "Danny" and being convinced it's short for Danielle, is funny.

Mostly because I've also loved the AU that Maddie isn't short for Madeline but some other name, like Madison, since I was 14 myself.

I've just always thought it suited Vlad's character, and his more or less parasocial (remember they haven't seen each other since the Vlad's accident before the 20 year reunion happens, this is 100% parasocial) obsession with Maddie that her real name doesn't actually matter to him.

He loves her as an object, a prize to be one and then flaunted/hoarded as the mood strikes him.

We know this from the episode where Danny goes back in time to mess with Vlad's accident, and Vlad ends up married to Maddie.

Because unlike Maddie and Jack who're ecstatically happy and ridiculously in love with each other even after 20 years.

Maddie Masters is unhappy in her marriage and constantly lies to her husband, and Vlad is completely dismissive of Maddie's continued interest in ecto-science and pressured her into giving it up.

Personally I love it when the nickname actually comes from her middle name, and her first name is something completely different like Amelia.

But she's gone by Maddie for most of her life because Amalia and Alicia (her older sister) sound pretty similar, and both start with the same letter, and end with the same two letters. And she was sick of getting called Alicia by teachers who'd previously had Alicia as a student.

[Can you tell me and my older sister have very similar sounding names, that start with the same letter, and end with the same two letters. And I spent most of elementary school getting called her name by teachers.]

But enough about Vlad's misogyny and inability to view women as anything more than objects. Back to the AU I was originally talking about.

Magical girl Danae.

Who I can't decide if I want her magical girl alter ego to be Phantom. Considering in canon how Phantom operates is 100% based on superheroes, and not magical girls.

With all of Phantom's abilities being treated as superpowers and not magic, and the use of scientific gadgets to supplement where said superpowers don't suffice.

I'm honestly leaning towards Phantom being like part of all the names of those in the magical girl group.

Like with Sailor Moon all their magical girl names have Sailor in them, or with the Star Guardians they're all Star Guardian Blahblahblah.

So Danae's magical girl name is Phantom Infinity, but most people only know her as Phantom, until other magical girls going by Phantom start showing up.

[Phantom Infinity is in reference to both Danae's love of Space, and her status as a being of protection of both the Infinite Realms and her home dimension.]

Danae however is still 100% a halfa, and remains the only 'turned' halfa other than Vlad himself. The others who join the Phantoms, aren't half ghosts.

They're magical girls by way of more stereotypical magical girl methods. IE being given power by an exterior force in order to fight to protect peace.

Anyways, yes, Danae does eventually gain the ability to turn people into magical girls. If, they're ecto contaminated to a certain level, and the person's personal ecto doesn't conflict with what Danny does to turn them into a magical girl.

Said magical girl gains magical girl powers an a transformation, but they don't get ghost abilities. At least not most of them.

Like Sam becomes Phantom Arcadia (she successfully fought off Undergrowth's claim on her, but adding Danae's own claim to her keeps him from ever being able to try it again as long as Danae's claim remains in place), Valerie is Phantom Athene (she joins the Phantoms after she learns the truth about Cujo, and Axiom Labs, and ghosts in general, which allows for Danae to transform her into a magical girl. Which also keeps Valerie from being at the mercy of Technus again), Paulina is Phantom Wondrous, and Star is Phantom Songstress.

As Aracdia Sam obviously has powers over plants, but also has a soothing aura towards animals in general. She doesn't command them into battle, because she's not comfortable enough to even try something like that, but she does influence them into wanting to leave the area of the battle.

Her powers are best described as influence (possibly even outright control) over the natural world. Her colors are purple with green and black accents.

Athene (Valerie) still has access to all of the ghost hunting gear like blasters that the suit Technus infused with her body. It's infused with her body after all. However it's not as anti-hero tech-y as it used to be, instead reformed and reshaped by her new magical girl magic.

Her powers is best explained as weapon manifestation. Her colors are now shades of Orange with no red (Red was chosen by Vlad, not Valerie), with black and yellow accents.

Valerie is one of the team who can fly, due to her having a bio-suit before becoming a magical girl.

Wondrous (Paulina) had no real influence from a specific ecto-being before her transformation, so her powers are based entirely on her own personality.

This being attention manipulation, the ability to move and shift an opponents attention how she wants. Most easily being able to pull it towards herself, but can also push someone's attention away from her, even to the point she more or less disappears from their perception. Her colors are primarily pink with blue accents.

Songstress (Star) is much like Paulina in that her powers are rooted in no one else but her own personality. Her powers are (obviously) based around music.

When first starting out they thought the extent of it was being able to influence the emotions of her opponents (which is pretty powerful when fighting ghosts), but the more they experimented the more they found she can do. She can sing songs that have different effects based on intention. Songs that heal, songs that make people sleep. It's eventually discovered that singing a song with someone else in a duet or as a group will boost the other person's own powers.

Her colors are blue with pink and orange accents.

Infinity's (Danae) ghostly powers are mostly the same to canon Danny's powers with a few exceptions/tweaks.

Primarily being that instead of sending blasts of energy out of various body parts (hands, fingers, eyes) Infinity manifests a magical girl wand and uses that as a conduit by default.

Which essentially placebo's her brain into thinking she can't use her powers without her wand summoned, which does prevent most of the embarrassing accidents and power mishaps Danny has in canon. But also fully locks her out of using her powers without her wand before meeting Vlad and learning he's also a halfa.

The other being a power (obviously) unique to her in this AU, this being Appointer of Champion(s). The power to give someone else a portion of her own power/energy, with certain rules and restrictions applied to it.

Which actually within this AU calls her to gain the same power classification as Desiree, who's a Wish Granter. This being the Bargainer classification, ecto beings who use deals of varying types to gain power by way of spending power.

Anyways Tucker can't be made a magical boy because he's a reincarnate soul who's thousands of years old.

And Duul Aman isn't going to give up he's accumulated power he'll be able to access once he's back in the afterlife, all so his current mortal lifetime can coast on some infant's power.

Boy has to man up and learn sorcery the old fashion way he did the first time around. (So Says Duul Aman. Who'd love to angrily shake his scepter and tell all these upstart brats to get off his lawn.)

Jazz can't be made a magical girl because she's extremely liminal, and has been so longer than Danae's been alive. She has a personal ecto signature that's too potent and too established for Danae to turn her without possibly wrecking her health in the process. So she remains a sci-fi action girl who uses the Peeler.

Anyways if you couldn't tell this is also based around those AUs were Danny, and Tucker were friends with Paulina, Dash, and Star back in elementary school.

But they have a falling out, or rather Dash and Tucker have a falling out, and the girls are made to pick sides. Over an accident, which boils down to Tucker tripping during lunch and spilling his food on Dash. Making him have to go to the office to change his clothes, resulting in multiple people asking if he'd had an accident (peed his pants).

Originally Danae tried to do her best to play mediator, while Star just wanted everything to blow over because it's not a big deal, but Paulina sided with Dash.

And someone openly siding with him just made him get louder and more insistent that he's right in the situation (even though it was a dumb argument over an accident). Escalating into him intentionally dumping his tray on Tucker the following day, in order to "make things even".

Which Tucker didn't appreciate at all, and went as far as to declare him and Dash not friends any more. Because Dash did this on purpose, while Tucker did it on accident.

Danae, having known Tucker her whole life and being fiercely loyal, instantly sided with him.

Paulina was of the opinion that Dash dumping the food on Tucker made things fair because both boys ended up humiliated and having to go change. So she thinks Tucker ending their friendship over it is a complete over reaction.

While Star was of the opinion that Dash intentionally dumping his food on Tucker was going over the line, and he should have just let it go. But also that Tucker immediately ending his friendship with Dash over getting food dumped on him was too far.

Considering Tucker was telling Dash that people would forget about him having to change his clothes in a few days and how it didn't matter. But it did matter. It mattered to Dash. Who Tucker inadvertently humiliated and didn't really sincerely apologies to.

Star eventually ends up remaining friends with Dash and Paulina. Because Tucker tells Danae that because Star didn't side with them, she sided with Dash, and if Danae keeps being friends with Star he doesn't want to be friends with her anymore either.

[The kids are like 6-7 year olds when this happen, and it happens over the course of a single school week.

By the end of the school year, Tucker's completely forgotten he'd ever said anything like that to Danae. Mostly because he never would have actually followed through with it, he was just angry.

Danae is basically his sister, he's known her his whole life. He'd never be able to just end his friendship with her the way he could with Dash, Paulina, and Star, who he'd only started hanging out with that school year. Danae isn't blood, but she's as good as, as far as the Foley family is concerned.

Heck Tucker barely even remembers the three-ish months where he was friends with Paulina, Dash and Star. Most of what he remembers is the blow out fight that ended it, and in his mind, the three of them ending up as A-lister bullies in high school only makes sense to him.

If you can't tell being the reincarnation of an ancient pharaoh who was worshiped as a living god by his subjects, along with being a doted upon single child as his current reincarnation, has resulted in Tucker being a bit self-centered in general. He's not evil though, just deeply flawed.]

A situation that results in Dash, Paulina, and Star hating Tucker for a pretty long while. Star mostly lets it go, but remains bitter over it. While Paulina and Dash are never really able to let go of their anger. It's a massive part of why Dash bullies Tucker specifically so much, and why Tucker, and Danae by association, end up as social outcasts.

So Paulina and Star get brought in after her and Danae start repairing their friendship. Dash gets kind of locked out of the dynamic for a pretty long while, under the guise of it all being "girl stuff".

Star befriended Valerie back in Middle School, while Dash befriended Kwan, which is how Valerie and Kwan end up as part of the A listers. With Star and Valerie ending up best friends, and Dash and Kwan ending up as best friends.

Tucker never really rebuilds any kind of friendship with Paulina, Star, or Dash. They can eventually work together without constantly insulting each other, but it takes a while.

Tucker doesn't even remember being friends with them in the first place. Only clearly remembering how said relationship ended, and just assumes they were probably crappy friends considering how they act now. So he's completely disinterested in trying to build a friendship with them beyond the potential for popularity.

Dash finds Tucker the most irritating guy in the world. Considering that for the few months they were friends, he considered Tucker his best friend. When they originally had their blow out fight, Dash spent basically the rest of that school year convinced he and Tucker would patch things up and be friends again by the following school year.

That's half the reason why Dash held the grudge for so long. The other half being that he heard from Star that Tucker basically forced Danae to stop being their friend.

Anyways this post got way too out of hand, and I have to stop it now or I'll never be done with it.

[fallingtowers]

so i'm watching dollhouse currently, and watching a non-buffyverse whedon joint has got me thinking about the phenomenon of whedonspeak. it's fascinating to me, because there have been plenty of moments in dollhouse where a character has said something patently whedonesque and i've been like :/ ahh yeah i see why people can't stand this style of writing. but on btvs, where the dialogue is generally a lot more heightened than on dollhouse, it really doesn't bother me at all (outside of a handful of really egregious examples).

the big reason for this, i think, and the one i always bring up when i'm defending the dialogue on btvs, is that on btvs it always felt like a tool of characterization. at first blush it may seem like e.g. buffy and willow have very similar voices, but the truth is it's all stylized, but in different ways. and btvs is so good at characterization (a lot better, i would argue, than dollhouse) that by the end of the show you know the characters' voices so well that you can clock it instantly when a line isn't 100% in character. it helps, i think, that btvs is patient zero for this kind of dialogue -- it became an established style of the show, but it wasn't yet an established style of writing in general (note that before it was known as whedonspeak, it used to be called "buffyspeak"). it works well because it's tailored to the tonal sensibilities of btvs, whereas if you just slap it onto any old story it's bound to feel incongruous and grating.

(also, as a sidenote, by and large, btvs knew exactly when to drop the banter. that's another thing -- these days whedonspeak as a concept is so bound up in people's minds [and with good reason!] with that particular brand of annoying mcu-ass ironic storytelling that has to mock itself at every turn for fear of coming across as self-serious. but btvs is a very heartfelt work of art! it [not always, but often] takes the emotions of its characters seriously! when buffy comes home and finds her mom dead on the couch, she doesn't go "well that just happened." you hit a certain threshold of dramatic weight and the whedonspeak falls away.)

there's another reason it's become so pervasive, though, i think, and it's one i kind of sympathize with. it's got to do with the demands of television as a medium. i think modern tv and film is the form of storytelling that has the biggest gulf between Showing and Telling. like, in a novel or a comic or whatever, you can just use narration to shed light on a character's thoughts or plans or whatever, but on screen you don't have that luxury, and these days voiceovers and flashbacks and stuff are generally regarded as being kind of graceless. so you've got Showing, which always runs the risk of being too vague and confusing, and you've got Telling -- and dialogue is really your only method of Telling -- which comes with a whole host of potential pitfalls. it might feel too on-the-nose, or too stiff and contrived. or it might commit the cardinal sin of 21st century entertainment: being Boring.

that's the thing, right. screenwriters are always trying to figure out how to do good exposition. one instance of dialogue i found grating on dollhouse is a scene where echo is dreaming, and the audience needs to be told she understands she's dreaming. so what do you do? in writing, you'd just describe her moment of realization, but on tv you can't do that. so instead, they have echo go, "oookay... i think we can all agree this isn't real." which like, if we view it as an attempt to content with the limitations of the medium, it makes sense! she's alone, so she has no reason to say "this is a dream," so we solve that problem by having her make a little joke to herself. but in practice, it just kind of falls flat.

in conclusion, the art of writing dialogue is one thing and the art of writing exposition is another, and neither is at all easy, and in screenwriting specifically they often dovetail in a particularly torturous way. we're still gonna be trying to figure this out when the sun burns out probably. i certainly don't have an answer. i do have a piece of advice though: watch buffy the vampire slayer. it's really good, and the dialogue is only a little annoying

[transmechanicus]

That prev post reminded me how much it weirds me tf out when someone only interacts with specific subsets of a minority group and learns their associated niche behavior patterns, and then tries to apply those patterns to every member of that minority that they meet afterwards only to be shocked when it doesn’t work.

[egophiliac]

starting off with an amuse-bouche of some of my initial favorite bits! y'all, this update was WILD.

[general-cyno]

not to get ahead of myself but thinking abt future opla zolu made me a little emotional bc depending on how many seasons the show manages to get, there's high chances of seeing so many of luffy and zoro's moments. and the thing is - there's a lot of them? their relationship is built upon all these moments and interactions, some small, some big, some when they're not even together but still end up referencing or mirroring one another in some way. it's just so good. I can remember more than few off the top of my head in alabasta, jaya, skypiea, water 7/enies lobby, thriller bark, sabaody etc and that's just pre-timeskip. opla has so much potential to go absolutely bonkers with these two I'm unwell

[ducktracy]

reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

[kaythefloppa]

Enough time has passed to where I think we can openly admit how WK has gone through seasonal rot within its previous 2 seasons and how the hype of Season 7 along with the generally positive reception is a really green flag for the show's quality.

[why-the-heck-not]

I’m painting a clementine and made the fatal error of not having any in my fridge. Then I went and made another fatal error of not buying enough of them, bc who tf just buys two?? Could eat a whole 1.5kg bag of them, how are they so addicting???? Gonna be another clementine-grocery store trip tmrw; I’m hooked again

[indigo--montoya]

one of my favorite things is elves having base 8 math. so you can have Situations™️ when someone in the dragang has a birthday. take for instance this hypothetical

Rayla: I'm so glad my parents and Runaan are back! And just in time for my twenty-fourth birthday!

Callum: your WHAT.

Rayla: My birthday!

Callum: no hold up a second. go back. you're HOW OLD???

Callum: so you were. you were twenty when we first started dating?

Rayla: yes? Is something wrong?

Callum: I was FIFTEEN

Rayla:

Rayla: WHAT?!?!?! How-- who-- what-- I think I'm going to be sick. You seemed older than that! I can't believe I-- so that means now you're--

Callum: Nineteen.

Rayla:

Rayla: what's nineteen