#if the idea doesn't work out i guess i can simply make that alt someone their brain Made Up to explain how they ended up in the Neath

[szilverer]

gotta confess that although i decided to give reisz the amnesia trope beam just bc i wanted to start playing before having to settle on their background, i did have a barebones semi-canon backstory for them all along.

its just that. out of all the canon-compliant manners of messing with memories that i came across so far (mostly mentions of irrigo & bottled oblivion). the One idea that i like the most just had to be the most convoluted possible

it wormed its way on the back of my head from the very first week or so when i was thinking about making a seeking alt and came across random unmarked nemesis ending spoilers in the discord.

the idea is reisz as the returned loved one of a nemesis alt, yeah.

naturally, the whole thing didn't work out that well for the two of them in the end..........

(…whenever i make a new Main oc it's like a curse. it doesn't spawn on its own, no. it comes in twos and they always come with an unsatisfying enmeshed relationship from a shared past. so those nemesis spoilers made me point like the dicaprio meme and BOOM second doomed character materialised in my head instantly. and cuz im a simple cliche bastard, a sucker for foils and mimesis whose autism craves narrative patterns, these two would have had inversely parallel developments.)

nemesis is just about the perfect ambition for a seeking alt bc it seems like the natural next step for a ultimately compassionate person that decided to commit their life to a vengeance that did Not pay off (due to the whole. not remembering thing.) so if i do decide to canonize this idea the matter of her current whereabouts is already answered: NORTH. and now that reisz got their first (and last) weeping scar. well. they match <3

i'd be playing events from years past but going north means she doesn't get to do the railway or any of that other stuff, so it fits nicely in the phantom's timeline.

this also would give me two very good explanations for their memory issues:

somehow rebooted themself on purpose bc they simply Couldn't Deal (same reason the… avenger? scourge? went north. they got to watch the beginning of her self-destruction, of course.)

it's an occasionally reoccurring consequence of whatever the hell got done to bring them back to life (i do not know what it was . i know there's cider involved but idrk what cider is.)

the only reason im wary of canonizing this right away is that aside from vague ending spoilers i Do Not Know what happens in nemesis. i Do Not Know if this idea is viable for a pc or if the circumstances of being brought back this way would contradict what a pc can or cannot do.

am in a weird spot that i Need to know more spoilers to check if everything would fit in a way that makes sense, and bc i want to play the ambition someday i don't want to spoil myself by trying to look it up!!1 flops down on the floor.

alas. i promised myself i'd only make an alt once im way into the endgame with reisz, so this boutta be their Schrodinger's Past for a good while. and if i do get to the end of nemesis a year from now and find out it doesn't actually fit, well . that's a problem for future me

[merge-conflict]

#9 #10 #23 🔫

questions here, ty for the ask right out the gate with asking me about canon you know me so well :3

9. worst part of canon

listen I know it's because I'm in the field and so all the things that annoy me are just background noise to most other people but I really really hate the way hacking and networks and AIs and tech in general is handled in cyberpunk. I don't think it should be perfectly realistic or exactly what we have in real life. I do think it should have some internal consistency when it comes to power leveling and that it should make some sort of sense. cyberpunk worldbuilding is often its weakest feature and that it's a bummer.

and it's not just a matter of tech working basically like magic, but the fact that there seem to be no internal rules so you can never figure out what the consequences of anything might be. why do people not just shut off their bluetooth before getting in a fight with someone who has a netrunner? why does alt not simply archive the engrams instead of imply she's going to eat them in some weird digital cannibalistic fashion? (why not just delete them if she doesn't have the space) are we just adding arbitrary and tragic restrictions on at the ninth hour because it makes it dark and gritty? that's BORING. tell me from the start why I'm fucked because my android soul is incompatible with your apple hardware. maybe johnny's brain which has never dealt with kiroshi's might have vision issues. let's think about those restrictions and why all software sucks instead of doing weak philosophical gotchas at the worst moment because the game has made pains to never discuss anything fundamental about life after death until you have to suddenly make a decision.

you know what would be an interesting idea in this vein? that the AIs made before the fall of the net really did jumpstart all technology and since they've all been banished everything has stagnated because huge world-wide companies having their global communications axed is a huge blow to recover from- not to mention the literal brain drain. What if the reason everything's been getting shittier is because people have been slowly poking holes in software and infrastructure that's no longer maintained? That no one knows how to maintain? That society is doomed to slowly fail because of unsustainable processes and people are going to have to band together to- Oh, what's this? I'm hearing that the actual problem is all the AIs are mad and feral and will drive you mad if you commune with them and take over huge spider robots. Well. That works too.

10. worst part of fanon

I would like to get more fanon honestly. I so rarely see people's actual takes on characters or the game's story or the world. And that's not a dig at OC lore, which I do like. Sometimes my face-blind ass just gets tired of VP where someone is looking into my soul the camera.

Mild annoyance because I also write my own wish fulfillment fic so I'm not saying I'm any better half the time- if it was as easy to be a rebel as just quitting your corpo job with healthcare and a steady salary to become a merc or a hacker or something, then there wouldn't be much to be punk about. You know? The whole point is that life in cyberpunk is a grinding struggle, and you do have to make sacrifices if you want to fight against it. The "we're poor but happy" thing probably isn't going to work out that way.

Actually that's the start of another essay of how interesting Barghest's survival and its recruitment strategy is... and why there are so many powerful gangs in NC. Being independent ain't easy. But I guess that's really just an extension of the game's reality where V can turn into a hero-figure killing machine who no one can beat in terms of skill, isn't it? Probably why the tower ending is the way that it is!

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

Not really? I can't really think of any instances where I've changed my mind about a ship. Characters yes, ships no. I guess maybe silverv, before I finished the game? Johnny hadn't earned enough Felix points for me to care about him. But I think I came pretty willingly when it was time.

[demonsfate]

i think the reason i prefer dj being his own person rather than just jin but "corrupted" or an "alternate personality" is that it's a very fascinating story to be told with that. i guess the thing is - the character but corrupted is a story that's told often (see fellow fighting games street fighter and mortal kombat) and Good Guy but with an Unsuspecting Killer alt Personality is also an overused trope. (see twisted metal, elfen lied, danganronpa, etc. etc.)

there are also many stories about being possessed or having a parasite. but what about a story where we get to know the parasite and how it works? rather than just being a practical tool as a "demon" - we get to know it personally. that both the parasite, and the host are two very important parts of the story - not only the host is the character, and the parasite is simply a tool to tell the story of the host. it's fascinating to look at the parasite as another actual living creature. even if it works differently than its host because it's not human.

it also brings up the idea of how two people would behave if they are forced to share a body. it's an unpleasant reality to think that you may never have privacy because there's always someone around. but worse, it's someone you actively hate - who is essentially your enemy. yet at the same time... that person is always there. that means even when you're lonely or upset, you have someone there. therefore, it brings up mixed feelings. perhaps a bit of stockholm syndrome. you hate this person. they hate you. but you're always there for each other, you know each other more than anyone else will ever. enemies who are the closest to each other.

then the 2017 comics also depicted jin and dj very interestingly. instead of doing the whole "dj is just powers jin can't control" like blood vengeance did - it does show dj as different from jin. it shows a relationship that can be toxic and manipulative, but without it being romantic, or even familial. it shows a case how you can get trapped in a toxic relationship without it being any of the aforementioned two subjects. which is a very real, but a bit unique take on it.

like there's just so much here to write about and focus rather than "ohhh what if this person DIDN'T have any morals? well! they have an alt personality for that!" no. i don't think jin would ever be dj - even if he did discard his morals. he wouldn't act like dj even then. imo, they are completely different characters who only share the same body. it's tk5 that may make ppl believe that jin and dj are the same due to dj's monologue in the story mode. however, tk6 and tk7 seems to hammer in the idea that they are separate people. which make more sense than the possible thing tk5 was going with since as i've pointed out before, devil kaz has directly spoke to kaz before, and they've interacted like they were separate people. why wouldn't jin and dj be the same? harada has called dj a "split personality" from jin before - buuuuut. english isn't his native language, and he doesn't speak it much. so it could be that he meant persona / person / character but that bit got lost in translation. (especially as he apparently once tried to come up with a unique name for DJ, but actually went with devil jin because he realized it was a pun, as when the name is pronounced in english, it sounds like Devil Gene - which is what jin suffers with.)

anyways, i just really love this dynamic and find it sooo interesting to write. i love both jin and dj and find them to be compelling characters both in and out of their relationship. and it's why i do write them the way i do! i don't see them as the same, and honestly? i don't think i'll ever. i don't think dj's actions affect jin, and i don't think jin's actions affect dj.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

emergency blanket

prompt: emergency blanket (alt no.14)

whumpee: sakari nurmi

fandom: karppi/deadwind

hi this fic is a little different from other stuff in an undefined kinda way...it's set pre-series by a few years at a time in which i imagine sakari has recently moved to helsinki and doesn't work with the police. i enjoyed messing around with this but it is a bit different to my usual stuff idk. hope you like it anyway!

He’s ripped violently out of a deep sleep by the sound of an explosion. The building shakes. Things rattle. Plaster is falling from the ceiling. He knows this because it’s falling on him. 

He leaps out of bed, heart pounding. He knows perfectly well what to do in the event of an explosion, but he’s never actually had to act before - it was always just drills and being ready, but he’d escaped any actual explosions. 

Until now. Plaster is still raining down from the ceiling, which means he should get under a table, but he lives on the third floor. If the floor collapses, the table isn’t going to do him much good. 

He needs to get out. 

He slowly walks across the room and to the door. The floor creaks underneath him but holds steady. The fire alarms - those that work, anyway - are ringing. People are screaming. He feels the door, which isn’t hot, then opens it. 

He’s met with chaos. People are pushing down the hallway towards the stairs and only one of the lightbulbs in the ceiling is working so it’s sort of dark but the fire alarm is flashing and there’s debris scattered over the floor and at the other end of the hall there’s just a hole where there should be a floor. 

He joins his neighbors in the journey to the stairwell and has the brief thought that he should have put on shoes, or a jacket. Once he gets outside, he’s going to be freezing. 

At least you’ll be alive, he reminds himself. This thought is punctuated by a loud crashing noise behind him. Everyone collectively turns around. Something unidentifiable but very much on fire has fallen through the ceiling. People start screaming again, assuming they ever stopped. He nearly gets knocked to the ground as everyone suddenly starts shoving wildly in a now truly desperate attempt to get to the stairs. 

The heat of the fire is steadily growing, though it’s still a good distance away down the hall. Eventually, Sakari makes it into the stairwell. It’s crowded with people coming down from higher floors, but someone grabs his arm and pulls him into the throng and then he’s moving down, down, down, surrounded by people in various states of undress. Some of them are bleeding, burned. He guesses the explosion happened on an upper floor. 

The procession downwards is slow-going, but it is going. He makes it to the second floor, where a few more people push into the group. He supposes most of the people from this floor have already made it down. 

Finally, the exit is in sight. It’s a door marked ‘fire exit, use only in case of emergency.’ It’s been propped open and there’s a blinking light above it. Outside he can hear sirens mixing with the echo of the fire alarm. 

He steps outside. The sidewalk is cold beneath his bare feet, but at least it isn’t snowing. He moves along with a crowd of people. He has no idea where they’re going besides away, which is more than good enough for him. 

He turns back briefly and looks at the building. Part of it, starting on the fifth floor and extending down through the third, is simply gone. Flames lick out of the gaping hole where this part of the building used to be. Here and there he can see fires behind windows, smoke rising into the dark sky. As he looks, part of the fourth floor breaks free from the building and crashes to the ground. People scream. Someone runs into him from behind and he nearly loses his balance. 

“Hey, keep moving!”

He turns away from the horrible scene and keeps walking. At last he figures out what everyone has been walking towards: there’s a barrier being set up by police, who are shouting for people to get behind it. He passes the barrier, at which point the people around him begin to disperse. Some of those who are bleeding are being treated by paramedics. Groups of people huddle together, calling out for people they’ve gotten separated from. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have anyone here to join, doesn’t really know his neighbors. He’s not hurt, either, so he can’t go to the medics. Can he just leave? He feels like he can’t. And anyway, where would he go? His car’s broken. He doesn’t have shoes on. He’s kind of trapped. 

He briefly wonders whether any of his things will be salvageable. Whether the firefighters will extinguish the flames before they reach his apartment. He hopes so. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff, and what little he does have is all in there. 

But there’s nothing he can do about that. He forces his thoughts away from his apartment and decides to just walk around. After a few minutes of this aimless walking, he comes to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to simply sit down. 

He finds an empty section of the curb that has a view of the activity and sinks down. On his right is a mailbox, and on his left is a family with two small children. Neither one of them is crying, but their mother is. Something twists inside him. He stands back up, not willing to intrude. 

He walks around a bit more. Tents are being set up next to ambulances, and people are gathering under them, he supposes for medical treatment. There is one tent that has sides as well as a roof. He stares at it and wonders how many people have died. Wonders what exactly had happened. 

He finds himself walking over towards the tents without really thinking about it. He looks in on the scenes beneath them, half imagining that he’ll see someone he knows, but everyone is a stranger. 

“Hey!” someone shouts. He’s been hearing people shout “hey!” for however long it’s been (and really, he realizes, he has absolutely no idea whether it’s been seconds or hours), and only one of those shouts had been directed at him. He isn’t doing anything wrong, to his knowledge, so he figures whoever’s shouting isn’t shouting at him. 

“Hey, come here!” the person shouts again. He looks around, curious to see what’s happening, and makes eye contact with a paramedic. He figures she’ll just wave him along, but instead she nods and calls, “come here!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

He looks down at himself, suddenly wondering whether he’s somehow been bleeding this whole time and had failed to notice. But he’s fine, he thinks. 

“What’s the matter?” he asks, approaching the paramedic. 

“You’re shaking.”

He is? He hadn’t noticed. Now, though, he does. He’s cold. Really cold. And afraid, he realizes, even though the most imminent danger has already passed. 

He exhales sharply. His chest feels tight. He wraps his arms around himself as this whole barrage of previously-unrecognized sensations suddenly hits him all at once. 

Something touches him. He jolts in surprise, and the paramedic gently puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s only a blanket.”

It is a blanket. One of those silvery, reflective ones. He’s seen them a few times before, though he’s never actually had one to himself. He had always assumed that people had been stretching the truth, calling the things thermal blankets when to him they had resembled nothing so much as sheets of tinfoil. 

To his surprise, however, the blanket really is quite warm. He pulls it tightly around himself, tucking his arms in underneath it and holding onto it as though it might be taken away from him at any second. 

And then the paramedic gives him another blanket. This one is more normal. It’s thick and not terribly soft but it’s warm, too, and actually feels like a blanket. He draws this one tightly around his body as well, burrowing into the warmth of the layered blankets as much as possible.

“Please come find me or someone else if you don’t stop shivering soon,” the paramedic tells him, and he nods and watches her hurry off to help another paramedic with a man whose whole torso is covered in blood. 

Still shivering and overwhelmed, Sakari again finds himself a place to sit, this time beneath the tent, near the back of an open ambulance. 

The ground is frigid beneath him, and even when he adjusts the blankets so he can sit on them, he can still feel it. He tucks himself into as tight a ball as he can manage and wraps the blankets around himself again, trying especially hard to cover both his feet and his arms. Again he wishes that he had brought his shoes, or that at least he had gone to bed wearing socks. 

But he hadn’t, and now he’s here, sitting on the freezing, hard ground and shaking so hard he almost feels sick. He tries to focus on getting warm, tries not to think about the explosion. Tries not to imagine getting caught in the flames, trapped by the rubble. He’s lucky, he supposes. Bad things always seem to happen to the people around him, and not to him. 

It doesn’t feel like luck. It feels like a horrible mixture of fear and guilt squeezing him from the inside out. He pulls the blankets still tighter around his body and wonders if the shaking will ever stop.

thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed this even though it was a bit weird. i just love exploring his backstory and making shit up :) see you tomorrow!!

[fly-pow-bye]

DuckTales 2017 - “Beaks in the Shell!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Ben Siemon

Storyboard by: Sam King, Kathryn Marusik, Stephan Park, Emmy Cicirega

Directed by: Jason Zurek

We go virtual!

The episode begins with GizmoDuck and Huey chasing after Gandra Dee, who just stole a cube that causes shockwaves. While he does end up grabbing the massive short circuit-causing cube before it drops into Duckburg's water, Gandra Dee ends up getting away in the end. He wasn't really too competent in this quest, either, as he got caught in a trap and he had to be told by Huey that he can fly out of them. Huey's like someone who yells at the TV when a plot hole happens. Whether this failure is because GizmoDuck is still not as competent as he wants to be or something else is not too obvious, but anyone who watched the previous major Gandra Dee episode can guess that something would have affected his crime fighting when it comes to Gandra Dee.

Back in Gyro Gearloose's lab, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera has another project in the works that is a secret from everyone: a new virtual reality cloud space that is both a space for scientific collaboration and a potential romantic destination. Let's just say that it may as well have been that something else, and that something else is hidden from everyone else, including his own M'Ma, about as well as his secret identity. Not that he was going to tell his special someone that they didn't buy it.

We go into the aforementioned virtual reality cloud space, where Gandra Dee is already generating beakers full of green chemicals, the universal sign of science in children's cartoons. They can also kiss under the happy little pixelated trees, because they are still an item despite Gandra Dee's record of blinding children and threatening to short-circuit all of Duckburg. Fenton is almost ready to share this scientific breakthrough to the world, but Dee doesn't want to do that because she thinks people would shut it down because of all the purple glitches. This plot point made me wonder if there was going to be something more than just "oh, Gyro can fix those", like if they were going to be a major part of the plot, or that it was supposed to represent that this romance is not going to last.

We later learn that this cloud is also important because they can do dangerous experiments without worry of injury, and, combined with their ability to generate anything they can imagine, this could be a good set-up to an interesting creativity vs. creativity battle. Maybe the purple glitches will come to life as monsters, or maybe FOWL will find out what's going on here and invade it with their own creativity. I mean, who else would have the idea to invade this Gizmotopia?

Fenton: (putting his arms around his one true love) This is going to be...

Mark Beaks: ...the greatest scientific achievement in his-zizz-tory!

Oh, it's Mark Beaks advertising a new Waddle phone update that partially fixes a bug that makes the phones explode into flames. Granted, there's no hint that there's going to be any convergence between these two plots besides Beaks coincidentally finishing Fenton's sentence, with an extra "zizz", but, really, it's inevitable.

Now, Waddle only has one investor, and the investor tells the CEO that he has to come up with an original idea, which he simply can't do as every idea he can come up with, like coffee cups with apps, was already taken. This isn't really the episode's B-plot, and, as said before, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that he's just going to give up and attempt to steal whatever Gyro or his intern are doing. One other thing that's a bit confusing is that nobody seems to recognize Mark Beaks anymore despite being the CEO of a company that apparently still makes phones a lot of people use. It could work as another sign that his company is going down, and that's why he seems so desperate here.

Meanwhile, Huey ends up barging into Fenton's office with a new discovery about Gandra Dee that could lead to her capture, only to see Fenton doing a kissy face while wearing his GizmoDuck helmet. He puts two-and-two together and realizes this must be some sort of virtual reality cloud space. Fenton tries to get him away from that by saying that the GizmoDuck helmet only works on his head, and he just does not have any additional VR headsets for guests. Manny the Headless Horse makes his appearance in this episode with a bunch of VR headsets, apparently hearing that excuse as a request for those, and Huey comes into the world to marvel at all of its wonders, including that very special guest.

Gandra Dee: What...the...f...

Huey: FOWL?!

I see what they did there. Gandra has to generate a weighted blanket to calm Huey down after that revelation. At first, I was going to make some joke about how this is a really bad way for the Duke of Making A Mess to go out, but it makes sense. Stress will be one of the major parts of Huey's part of the plot, and weighted blankets are a good way to relieve that. It's also another reminder that this is a world where ideas can come to life, even if it's just a virtual one. I would question how a virtual weighted blanket would work, but this episode does seem to go with the "one's mind makes it real" scenario.

As Huey keeps asking questions on why Gandra Dee is working with Fenton, we get the little sad backstory on Gandra Dee courtesy of her generating a flashback of her losing a science fair to someone making that one volcano experiment. People just don't understand that she wants to push the boundaries of science with...okay, I'm not sure what that is supposed to be, but it does shoot a dangerous death ray. Because of her experiments need for danger, she can only do experiments on herself, which is why she happens to be a cyborg, and the only people who would fund her work happens to be people like the evil buzzard bent on world domination. She adds an additional comfort to Huey that she already plans to quit FOWL for good after using their resources to make this. After making puppy dog eyes at the little kid like a little kid makes puppy dog eyes at their parents, Huey accepts this for the sake of both science and love.

This leads into our actual B-plot: Huey trying his hardest to keep a secret, and his anxiousness and stress is really getting the best of him even in the beginning. One of the first people he has to confront is none other than Fenton's M'Ma, who, despite Fenton's words to Gandra Dee, did not buy that his project was not some sort of romantic exploit. This leads to an interrogation scene. Crackshell then shows up before M'Ma could actually interrogate him further, and Huey has to try to motion to him what exactly his lies were. It's the usual set up for plots like this, the guy gets caught up in the lie, and he tries desperately to keep the secret a secret. There's not a lot that I haven't seen before, but I can not say this is bad, either.

One creative thing they do end up doing is the very next scene where, after Huey "goes to the bathroom", Huey comes in a room with confidence to answer the big question on why Fenton would keep secrets from his own M'Ma. Eventually, he has to bail again after hearing that one of the secrets is that Fenton is GizmoDuck. Why? Because that was actually Louie playing the part of Huey, and somehow, the schemer of the three nephews is the last person in Duckburg to know GizmoDuck's secret identity. He tries to go back only for M'Ma to ask "Huey" about "Louie's Kids", that fake charity he had in The Other Bin, and Louie cracks under pressure and reveals Huey put him up to it. Huey runs to Fenton's house to essentially yell out that he can't take hiding this secret about the GizmoCloud anymore, thinking the only person in there is a still-in-the-GizmoCloud Fenton. He has no reason to believe there's any desperate CEOs hiding in the wastebasket.

We cut back and forth between this plot and the "Gandra Dee not wanting to open the GizmoCloud" plot, and it turns out to be more about her than anything else. We get the lines about how she doesn't want the world to think of her badly, and how he doesn't care what they think about her, and this heartfelt moment doesn't last too long. Mark Beaks may not be a creative man, but he at least knows how to hack into things. Honestly, it seems like this world didn't have that much security to begin with.

Mark Beaks shows up, locking them in a hashtag captcha before Gandra Dee can defeat him with the combined power of a Terry Bogard power wave and a Rolling Stones reference, and he decides he's going to use his new "WaddleCloud" to steal other people's ideas without anyone telling him. Fenton can still use his creativity powers, and he tries to do that to summon the GizmoDuck suit...only for Mark Beak's stealing powers to take it right from him, giving him the power suit and the ability to add Waddle logos to all the buildings in the skybox.

Fenton Crackshell can still use his creativity abilities to sneakily motion his hands to tap Morse code for help. By the way, yes, he is comatose. It's just like Sword Art Online or that one episode of Black Mirror. Also, how lucky that the one person taking a stress rest in the room, Huey, happened to know Morse code. He tries to take the VR headset out of Mark Beak's head, only for it to give him an electric shock, and the computer displays a little Mark Beaks head telling him that, "ah, ah, ah, you didn't say the magic word." I'm not going to give any hate on this episode for lazy references. If anything, this joke is perfectly fitting for Mark Beaks.

All of this convinces Huey that he doesn't need to keep the secret anymore, which pretty much ends the B-plot with him just randomly yelling out to a mail carrier about how Mark Beaks hacked into the GizmoCloud. He then says he's going to find people who can actually help. It's like he's aware what he did made no sense. Before GizmoDuck can use his finger lasers to delete Fenton and Gandra from the program, or whatever that would entail, his world is suddenly invaded by Huey, M'Ma, and Gyro. How did they manage to get in this hostile cloud takeover when it's implied Mark Beaks put Dennis Nedry-levels of security on it? Pineapples. Well, or Gyro helped them. Either way, it's not really explained.

It may seem like I didn't like this episode that much, so I'll say one thing I did like a lot besides the Louie scene: the weekly final fight scene all of that buildup led up to. The people all use their creativity in a pretty cool way here that I won't entirely spoil here. I also like how Mark Beaks' lack of creativity fits into what he does in it; he just combines everyone else's ideas into a super robot form. I was expecting him to fall over due to so many conflicting ideas, but they end up doing something else that was also pretty funny. Funny by Mark Beaks standards, anyway.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that the good guys win, but there is a little bit more to the ending. Namely, there is a major cliffhanger at the end of the episode. While it's a good cliffhanger, It does feel a little disappointing that a character that was built up in this episode essentially becomes a mere damsel in distress. Then again, I felt the same way about Lena in The Other Bin before the big revelation about her in The Shadow War. We'll just have to see what happens.

How does it stack up?

There's some good scenes here and there, like the blanket, the Louie scene, and the final fight scene, but with everything else, I just found it mediocre by DuckTales 2017's high standards. I'd put it below New Gods On The Block, which has a fight scene similar to this one, and I didn't really love that one either. I can see people disagreeing with this one, especially if they were really into Gandra Dee or Mark Beaks, and I'm sure the last minute of the episode is going to lead to somewhere fascinating. I really debated on whether or not this should be the first two Scrooges episode of Season 3, and I originally gave this a 2 just because I didn't think it was as great as everyone else thought it was. However, I then thought about some of the episode I would give a 2, and I think the good scenes in this episode are just too good to give the whole package a two.

Long story short, Three Scrooges.

Next, we meet some friends for life, through thick or thin, with plenty of tales to spin.

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