#my villain origin story is if i was the only member of a work group who went to twitchcon and had a blast playing with people

[riacte]

2022 me was so unnecessarily dramatic and unwell about the first gen of mcc hermits taking a step back like i know these tr teams would have her crying and writing disastrous vent fics to all too well lyrics

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

This is a fandom related thing. I will say that right off the bat, but I needed a few extra opinions on this since it feels like I am alone on this.

AITA for killing off my OC in a group rp?

For some context, I (using the name Snow for myself) joined a group rp with some other people where we would come up with a plot together. Everyone would be using original characters (OCs) It was agreed that the things that happened would be voted on, but people were not allowed to control what other people did with their OCs. It is the whole "my oc, my rules" thing. For those who don't get it, it basically means that since the oc is yours, only you get to decide what happens to them.

To the story. I had plans I wanted to do with my OC. I wrote her to be someone who was secretly working for the villains and was only tricking the others into thinking she was their friend. The only other people who were aware of this were the moderators, and they had approved of it.

What was the problem then you may be wondering? Well the problem was that another member, I'll just call them Star, had said that they had gotten an emotional attachment to my OC. Which I personally found weird, so I typically tried not to be stuck alone with them.

When it came to reveal the plot twist with my oc, Star had a freak out upon finding out. They started crying and complaining that it wasn't right to do that and they could not picture "their" emotional support character doing that. The other members decided to comfort Star. They always sided with Star and acted like they were oh so special. The others were saying that this was all just a joke and that it wasn't actually going to happen. "It is just a joke right, Snow?" they had said.

And I replied with. "No. It's not a joke. My oc has been working with the villains the whole time."

Star's response was to have a meltdown over it, saying that I was out to hurt them and ruin their day. So I ended up getting a message from the moderators asking me to change my OC's backstory as to not upset Star further. They ended up telling Star that it would be changed to just having my OC be mind controlled the whole time.

This was not something I agreed with, but I pretended to play along begrudgingly. I hated that the group decided to treat my OC like she belonged to Star. But I played along and came up with my own idea. There was a plot point that came up in the rp that would have someone die off, so I took it as my opportunity to kill off my own OC. If I wasn't allowed to do what I had planned for her initially, then she wasn't going to stick around anymore.

After I killed her off, Star logged off and vanished for an entire 3 days. All the other members constantly messaged them to try and get a response from her, but they did not answer until they returned. When they logged on, they said that they had to a panic attack over what had happened and felt hurt that I would do that.

I just responded with "my oc, my rules. I quit this group." Then I quickly went through and deleted every little bit of information I had shared about my OC with that group before leaving their discord. After, I got a lot of messages from all the members, about sending the information so that Star could continue playing with my OC since she was their comfort character and it wasn't fair I was doing this to them especially after their panic attack. I said no and blocked everyone who had asked me that.

Sure I feel bad that they had a panic attack, but I felt betrayed that everyone else was willing to bend the rules for them and allow them to control my OC. Even if I no longer use said OC, I still wouldn't let them have her. This is still my property and I stand by the "my oc, my rules" thing.

So AITA for killing off my OC?

What are these acronyms?

[mikeywayarchive]

My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way has a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comic with "anime inspired" art and a villain that goes back to the original '90s toys

By George Marston published June 24, 2024

Mikey Way is turning the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' greatest love into their worst enemy

Full article under the cut:

(Image credit: IDW Publishing)

My Chemical Romance is one of the most popular bands of the last 20 years, and in the time since their last official release, several of the group's multi-talented members have branched into comic storytelling - including bassist Mikey Way, whose latest comic is a short in the upcoming anthology comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Black, White, and Green #2.

A veritable teen idol of his own thanks to My Chem's beloved presence in the punk and emo scene, Way is tapping into a deep-seated love of both the TMNT and their personal favorite food of pizza for a story that captures the youthful energy of the Turtles in a way that only someone who was there for their meteoric rise and pop culture presence could.

(Image credit: IDW Publishing)

"I was a massive Turtles fan as a kid! Being born in the '80s, wave one of Turtlemania hit when I was about eight years old, so safe to say I was all in," Way tells Newsarama. "My older brother was into the black & white comics early, so I was at least aware of the Turtles prior to that big boom, but my fandom really came alive with the original cartoon series." 

"Followed up by the Playmates toy line and then into the live action movie, it really checked every box imaginable for me," Way explains. "The characters and the world building had something for almost everyone. While I was initially into Michelangelo, (because of his name and the nunchucks) I grew into way more of a Raphael fan. He's got more layers as a character in my opinion."

(Image credit: IDW Publishing)

Way's brother is, of course, Gerard Way, singer of My Chemical Romance and founder of the DC imprint Young Animal, which published Mikey Way's first comic, Collapser, which was co-written by Shaun Simon with art by Ilias Kyriazis. For TMNT: Black, White, and Green, Way collaborated with artist Nikola Čižmešija and colorist Lee Loughridge, whose art you can see in the newly revealed pages from the story seen here.

"I love Nikola’s style so much!," Way says. "He has this fantastic anime inspired quality to his work, and it lends itself perfectly to a Ninja Turtles story. I was floored by his pencils and he was a pleasure to work with."

As for the content of the story itself, it all comes down to something that many fans of the TMNT probably love as much as the Turtles do themselves: pizza. Way brings in a classic villain, Pizza Face, who first appeared in the original TMNT toy line in 1990 as a villainous pizza chef, before being revived in the 2012 animated series as a mutated pizza blob.

(Image credit: IDW Publishing)

"I wanted to do a story that was an ode to '80s horror, with a nod to Candy Man or the urban legend of Bloody Mary," Way says of why he chose Pizza Face.

"The character of Pizza Face fascinated me as a kid, because he looked like the mascot on most Pizza boxes mixed with a 'Freddy' or 'Jason'," Way continues. "That mythology I created in my head as a kid really stuck with me. When the opportunity arose to write a Ninja Turtle story, it was literally the first thing that popped out of my head."

And yes, Mikey Way does have a favorite pizza place: 

"Star Tavern in Orange New Jersey. Hands down the greatest there is, in my opinion."

(Image credit: IDW Publishing)

Though Way's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Green story is only eight pages, Way does plan more comics to come very soon - though he's not quite ready to say exactly what just yet.

"I feel like I have more stories that I want to tell," he hints. "At the risk of sounding vague, I would say one can expect an announcement of some sort very soon."

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Black, White, and Green #2 is on sale now.

[escapedaudios]

Fun fact! My second ever series was slated to be a fantasy series, but I absolutely shit canned the whole thing. I'll never, ever produce it so I'm gonna yap about it here. It was an adaptation of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I wrote and DMed back in 2020 called Cobañera.

The story began with the listener attacking the main speaker (Thorne) with powerful magic. As he struggles against her spells, he tells her to try and remember their journey, that she doesn't really want to kill him. The story flashes back to one year prior, where they first met.

In a world where magic once thrived but is now heavily repressed after a prophecy fortelling the progress of magic would cause a world-ending war, two young and hungry directionless youths meet. They take on an odd job to transport a sealed crate containing a decommissioned and illegal magical artifact to be fully disposed of. On their journey, however, they are attacked by a member of a radical rebellion group (Plague Covenant) determined to restore magic to the world to it's former glory by forcefully infecting people with a plague that imbues them with dangerous and unstable wild magic.

They try to flee, but can't outrun their attackers. The listener tries to save Thorne from the Plague Covenant, and to her surprise, manages to do so using magic. The Plague Covenant yields when they see she is gifted with magic and leave them alone, with both the Listener and Thorne absolutely in shock that she could cast spells.

They become fearful that if someone learned of her magic, they would believe she was infected with the plague. They seek the help of the few who still understand magic, and find themselves entangled between three warring factions, all with different interpretations of the prophecy.

Anyway I got writer's block before I could write the middle of the story. The big plot twist towards the turning point of the plot was that the prophecy never showed their world's future, but rather the past of a long-dead world from a parallel timeline where the magic equivalent of nuclear armageddon took place. The bigger plot twist was that a few hundred powerful individuals from the old timeline escaped to their world before being annihilated. The records of their past were shown to the people of the main story's timeline as a "prophecy" to ensure that the only weapon powerful enough to stop them (the magical doomsday device from the other timeline) would never be built.

The bigger BIGGER plot twist was that the listener originated in the other timeline, AND her parents were the leaders of the super secret super evil final boss faction, ANDDDDD they had been engineering her entire life behind the scenes to make her into a powerful magical prodigy ANNNNNDDDD they brainwash her into becoming their leader and like AAAAAAUUUUGGGHH SRTFFHJG.

Anyway, my cat destroyed my laptop and I had to take a hiatus and work on a smaller, shittier backup laptop that could barely edit sound. I got writer's block and started writing another series instead called San Sequestro 1987, which later became The Neon Barbarian.

Anyway, I never came back to Cobañera. Why? I was struggling to convert a (thirty game long, four-player character) Dungeons and Dragons campaign into an eight episode game. Also, things that work for a tabletop RPG story just don't always work well as an audio roleplay story. There were like a million bazillion plot twists and the abundance of factions that made the story more interesting in the tabletop game made the story worse in the audio RP by just absolutely bogging everything down and making everything messy and convoluted.

I ended up just hating the whole thing. I hated the chosen one plot point, I hated that the plot hinged on the introduction of a bullshit multiverse plot device, I hated the fact that the final villains were randomly the listener's parents. I hated the countless tropes I peppered into the script that are forgivable in an interactive medium like a Dungeons and Dragons game but absolutely dull clichés in a scripted story.

Also my character had a funky fantasy British accent but I hated every rehearsal take I did with that accent. The listener's nickname was, I kid you not, "Cheeky". Around the time my fat idiot cat sent my computer to the shadow realm, I discovered a much more popular VA who's audience seemed to heavily overlap with mine named Scythe Audio. His flagship series featured a similarly impertinant speaker with an English accent and a Listener nicknamed Cheeky and I just stared at the YouTube video thinking "you're fucking kidding me lmao hahaha what the FUCK".

I think that was the last straw for me and I just abandoned the project entirely. A million zillion rewrites and then I found this uncanny similarity to this other VA and I just decided the rewrites weren't worth it for this fuckass story. I ended up becoming friends with Scythe after discovering him through that though lmao so silver lining.

[suzannahnatters]

Having shared my RINGS OF POWER s2 eulogy, and while assuring you all that I am also mourning the loss of one of the best things about the show, I would also like to take a moment to defend the decisions being made by the showrunners and writers here.

Before I get started, I just want to acknowledge the members of my writers' group. This post owes much to our discussions. Anyway, when it comes to Adar's death, there are three reasons why I'm not calling his death pointless, or blaming the showrunners for bad writing. The overall reason is this: Adar represents the show's efforts to treat Orcs like people. In this sense, his character was a blazing success. Look at us all, with a hopeless crush on an Orc? Success.

But let's go a bit deeper.

SIMON TOLKIEN'S EXECUTIVE MEDDLING

The fact that Simon Tolkien made an EXCELLENT call in asking the showrunners to keep Adar around for an extra season...still doesn't stop what he did from being executive meddling, or from causing tricky ramifications in the second season. Adar was a first-season antagonist, brilliantly well-written, but ultimately only intended to be a supporting character. The decision to keep him on, suddenly made him more charismatic, more mysterious, and more sympathetic. Given how he'd been set up as a warm-up baddie...season 2 suddenly turned around and made us think he was here to stay. The writers had cornered themselves: on the Tolkien Estate's behest, they had a dark horse who was about to run away with the show. I'm not going to fault them for going ahead with their original plan, because they would have had to retool subsequent seasons massively in order to fit in an Adar redemption arc, and you can't necessarily do that when the whole arc of your story is already planned.

JRR TOLKIEN'S LEGACY

All of us have written things we're not proud of. JRR Tolkien wrote a story world with something problematic hard-baked into the foundations: an entire race of beings for whom genetics determined ethics. Can you even imagine what it must have taken for him to get to the end of a long life spent in the dedicated pursuit of this story world, and to have the courage to admit that he might have been wrong? That really isn't something most authors are capable of. When Peter Jackson went to make LOTR and HOBBIT into movies, he did nothing to scrutinise this issue. His Orcs are flat: monstrous, comic, but never people.

TROP challenged that, and exercised significant skill, care, and wisdom in doing so. But they are still attempting a faithful adaptation of Tolkien's source material. We know where this story is going. Galadriel will end up in Lorien with her elf wifeguy. The Orcs will fall under Sauron's dominion and become his tools, enslaved to his will with the Ring. I did fantasise about Adar being Celeborn, and possibly some of his "children" getting to nope out of Sauron's dominion or even be turned into Elves. But we now know that was never on the table. The Orcs were always meant to fall to the Enemy. But here's the point: for the first time in the history of Tolkien works and adaptations, TROP allowed them the dignity of a fall. Going forward in the show, the Orcs won't be monstrous cannon fodder: they'll be people we knew, people we were pulling for, people whose deaths matter. They are, not a waste, but a tragedy.

TOLKIENIAN TRAGEDY

Look...there's nothing more Tolkienian than a beautiful disaster of a man who dies far too early.

And yes, I know that it's something we've seen before and wish storytellers would move away from - the Moment of Grace that never becomes anything more than a Moment. The villain who has a five minute redemption, then dies conveniently so that the heroes never have to work through the messy business of forgiveness and accountability (although I always did wonder how it would play to see a redeemed Adar, possibly Celeborn, living the rest of his life as a redeemed Uruk among people who hold an undying enmity with his children). It's happened so often that when I, Suzannah Rowntree, sit down to write a six book series where the irredeemable villain has to live and build a new and more accountable life for himself, there's startlingly little template for it, at least in Western media. We live in times that are starved for happy endings and genuine redemption arcs. I wanted so badly for Adar and his "children" to be blessed, and not cursed, by this narrative. So I get the rage. I get the grief.

But tragedy is still a valid art form. Again, all this is a function of the show successfully making the Orcs matter. And the reason the Orcs needed to matter is because they are about to be enslaved to Sauron. They were so close. They genuinely could have been good. Adar could have led them into an alliance with the Elves against their enemy - but instead, just like Celebrimbor, just like Galadriel, they are deceived by him. They turn to him out of fear that their father figure is treating them like cannon fodder, and now they have no one to advocate for them. And that's the tragedy of their situation.

We might all be a little tired of tragedy, but it's still valid, especially insofar as it never, ever forgets to treat its characters like people. Did the writers have to choose tragedy? No. Adar might have lived and undergone a redemption arc.

But the writers didn't have to give Adar a redemption arc, either. Any more than they had to so deeply humanise the Orcs and their father. It's not perfect writing, but it's not bad writing, either. Indeed, for a Tolkien adaptation trying to both honour the author's work and scrutinise his failings, in my opinion it's doing brilliantly.

And...honestly, I'm kind of happy that they left me wanting more, and better, for Adar. Because now I get to write that story myself.

[daydreamerwonderkid]

I was a part of an PMMM rp group ages ago and since I was last to join I was saddled with the role of Kyubey.

The original goal of the group was to try and create an alternative ending for a new cast of original characters. I believe the plan was to find a way to rp everyone into a happy ending if possible, but no one was against it turning out dark like the source material.

I don't remember a lot of the rules except for one because I purposely exploited it as much as humanly possuble. The rule was that if you had conversations with other players outside the main group chat you had to inform the GM of it and provide screenshot evidence of your conservations.

These private messages were meant to be used as filler rp where players could further develop their characters and relationships outside the main story. I want to clarify that I had full permission from the GM to use this option with less restrictions as they agreed it would be in character for Kyubey to seek out more private conversations versus participating more openly in the group chat.

Long story short I fully dived into my role as Kyubey and systematically went after everyone in private messages to turn them against each other. Again this was forever ago so I'm a bit foggy on all the details but I managed to convince at least 2 members to kill each other, got 1 to turn into a witch by manipulating their character into thinking another player's character was cheating on them with someone else from the group, and then managed to trick another player into doing a contract with some clever word play on my part that the GM later backed me up on when that player denied agreeing to it.

The group didn't last long mostly due to scheduling issues but I still hold some fond memories of it. I haven't been able to pull something like this since then.

But I'll never forget how it felt to watch all my machinations fall into place and the demented giggle I let out when that player finally realized I had tricked them into a contract.

I am ... good for you? XD

Tbh I have no idea how text based rp works, but your GM must have had really trusted you not to abuse the game and/or derail the story by making you fucking Kyubey a;dljkfa;lgjal;dajga

Personally, I've only ever played villain characters when I've been the GM/DM myself. So in that aspect, I can absolutely relate to that giddy feeling that comes with rping a villain and pulling one on the heroes.

But HOLY FUCK, man O_O

[finalgirlminamurray]

remember when halloween 2018 (or as i like to call it, halloween h40) came out and people were making those flowchart-style diagrams explaining the various halloween timelines? i like when people try to do that for the texas chainsaw massacre series because it is a fool's errand. you cannot divide that series into distinct specific continuities because there aren't any. there's a good argument to be made that every single film in that series takes place in its own completely separate timeline because it so often does not bother to meaningfully connect them beyond the single recurring character of leatherface.

i've mentioned before that tcm2 is my favorite sequel and the only one i actually like and will accept as a canon sequel to the original film, and part of that is because despite the complete 180 in tone it does, it's the only one that bothers at all to be a sequel. i think it's the only one that makes sense as a continuation of the first movie - the only glaring continuity errors are confined to the opening scroll text, which you can take or leave as part of the films' canon. (by this i mean the first movie's opening implies that the sawyers' crimes were discovered after sally's escape, while the second film explicitly says no evidence was found. also it retcons sally's last name to be "hardesty-enright" instead of just making lefty's last name also hardesty, for whatever reason.) there's one newly introduced member of the family but you can infer why he wasn't there in the first movie, and the one who isn't there this time has a good reason to be absent (he's died.) one of the main characters in this movie is a relative of the first film's final girl and his involvement in the plot is explicitly connected to what happened to his niece and nephew. the events of the first movie clearly happened in this universe. low bar, i know.

this could be attributed to this being the only sequel also directed by tobe hooper, although the original film's screenwriter did not return, and him having more of a vested interest in continuing the story of his own work. most of the original film's cast did not return for this one (can't say i blame them), but they work with that pretty well. i do think the film ends in a way that pretty decisively puts the brakes on any possible continuation from there, which could be attributed to hooper not really wanting to do a sequel in the first place and trying not to get asked back for another one. (i agree this was not a film that should ever have had sequels, much less become a full-on franchise. but you can tell that upon having to do it they were just like fuck it, let's have fun. hence the tone.) not that that stopped the studios from valiantly trying again and again to profit off of this title.

which might explain why the later sequels are so particularly weird. they don't really have a lot to go off of, i guess. i think part of the problem is that this is one of the few slasher films where the villain is actually a group of people, not a single recurring killer or identity various killers take up. they do have a silent, masked slasher who can be played by whichever new stunt guy you get for each film, but what about the rest of the family? it's always felt important to me that there isn't anyone outside of this isolated little unit in the first movie, but sequels keep inventing totally new characters out of nowhere with no explanation as to where they've been in previous installments. doesn't matter - we're in a new continuity now. tcm3 does not logically follow in any real way from tcm2 or tcm1. it's not a sequel despite the number in the title. it's a reboot.

(i've kind of come around on tcm4 aka tcm: the next generation. i used to think it was the worst sequel but now i think i get what it's trying to do a little better, although it is a pretty stupid movie in a lot of ways. some people have described tcm2 as a deliberate parody of the first film but i think that applies way better to the next generation, seeing how it follows a lot of the same plot beats but done in a more outlandish and parodic way. also, hey: same screenwriter as the original, returning this time as director.)

then the remake made a shit ton of money and kickstarted a new direction for 2000s horror (great. thanks for that.) and got a prequel that also actually made sense as existing in the same continuity as the film it was a prequel to. (again it probably really helped that they were able to get most of the cast back. no need to invent new family members when you still have all the same people playing them.) then in 2013 we got a sequel that promised to Finally be a Direct sequel to the original movie and...it made no sense as one. they try to pick up right where the original left off but right away there are once again a whole bunch of new characters who definitely weren't there in the first movie suddenly appearing in the house, including a baby whose existence is crucial to the plot.

(i'm sure everyone knows about the bizarre timeline decisions of this one, namely the main character ostensibly having been born in the same year as the events of tcm1 but only being about 18 years old during the main events of texas chainsaw 3d, despite it seeming to take place in the modern day. however there is an explanation for that! originally the film was supposed to take place in the early 90s when a character born in 1973 would have been that age, but studio meddling forced them to reshoot it to be 2013. you might notice that any mention or depiction of the exact year the opening scene takes place seems conveniently obscured in this film, implying that it is yet another alternate timeline where the events of tcm1 occurred sometime in the 1990s. this also serves as further demonstration that 1. studio executives are the dumbest people alive, and 2. people really don't care that much about the first movie. more on that later.)

leatherface 2017 is an attempt at a prequel that also makes little to no sense as a backstory for its titular character; i wouldn't be surprised if it started out as an original screenplay that got retrofitted into a tcm movie. there are no new sawyer relatives invented for this film (i don't think), but it does seem strangely insistent on keeping its leatherface away from the family for as much of the film as possible, making it feel especially like it didn't actually want to be a tcm movie. (the twist of the titular character's identity is clearly meant primarily to be surprising and not to make sense, but i can only say: there's no way that the original film's leatherface grew up apart from his birth family for that long and also used to be a "normal"-by-neurotypical-standards, verbal kid. different continuity.)

then in 2022 we get yet another attempt at No Guys Seriously For Real, This is a Direct Sequel to the First Movie, and i should have known things weren't looking good when it was announced this was actually getting dumped on netflix in february but my expectations plummeted to rock bottom when that teaser came out that thought the most relevant part of the movie to sell to people was a "canceled" joke. jesus. tcm:tng i'm sorry, this is the clear worst sequel. (if it was just that one dumb joke it might not be, but there's so much more that's awful in this movie - whatever.) anyway continuity-wise i guess this isn't completely disconnected, there is clear acknowledgement that the events of the first movie happened, but it's really not relevant to the main plot at all, when you get right down to it. pro tip: if a slasher sequel advertises the return of the original film's final girl, she will most likely not be in the film for more than five minutes. there's some implied backstory about leatherface running away to this neighboring town and being taken in by the lady who runs the orphanage, but honestly this could easily be yet another different continuity where leatherface is the adopted son of a kindly old lady (who still has a confederate flag in her window, jfc, i think this is the first time that imagery has ever been used in this series and it's associated with a character who's supposed to be sympathetic??) who was keeping a lid on his murderous tendencies before she died. points for effort i guess but i don't think it deserves much.

i really don't know why this series in particular is like this. most horror franchises will have their movies clearly follow each other and exist within the same continuity, sometimes with a reboot or two if they've gone on long enough (see: halloween having at least three different timelines, but all clearly branching from the same source.) if it's supposed to be an anthology series, they'll just...say that. i've heard it said that this series works best when viewed as variations on a theme, like the original film's events are an urban legend of sorts being told and retold around the campfire and every version is different because everyone remembers it differently or makes up their own. i do like that and think it makes the franchise make more sense but i know most people watching these movies aren't thinking about it like that, they're thinking of them all as sequels to the same movie, with the remake and its prequel being the only ones clearly existing in their own separate continuity.

it's a little sad to see how no one making official movies in the series seems to really care that much about the ostensible source material. maybe i'm biased because it's the film my brain latched onto the hardest when i started really getting into horror, but i think this movie is so interesting and there's so much there to explore with the little we're given about these characters and their dynamics and what they do and why they do it, and even if you can't really dive into all that in a movie you could at least use what's already there for your sequel and most of them just...don't. like they don't seem to have watched the original movie even before writing a sequel to it, just going off their own vague memories about that one scary movie about a guy with a human skin mask and a chainsaw. i know i shouldn't be expecting any more from a slasher franchise on its 9th installment but...whatever. it is what it is. this was never supposed to be a franchise in the first place. at least i can shout into the void about my thoughts and feelings on here.

(i think i read somewhere that the filmmakers were actually forbidden from referencing cannibalism in the script for texas chainsaw 3d and if that's true...oh boy. talk about missing the point. if you feel like something significant is missing in the later films in this series that's probably part of it.)

[generallemarc]

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me right back in

This shouldn't work. I'm too cynical, too over it. Seeing all these comparatively-lesser-known characters should make me start speculating about garbage-ass spinoff tv shows, not excite me. This shouldn't work. And yet...and yet @apintofguinness talked me into watching Guardians 3, a movie that actively went against Endgame by making the assumption that "hey, Gamorra's back" into a plot point that was the fault of the crew in general and Peter in particular for treating a separate version of her with massively different experiences(almost a different person entirely) as if she were "their Gamorra" simply because she had identical DNA. And I saw three things that I hadn't then, and still haven't(barring Deadpool & Wolverine) seen in any Marvel movie for well over half a decade: jokes that were actually funny, a story that was actually compelling, and most importantly of all, heart. Guardians 3 was made by people who cared about telling a good story and who cared about the characters they were telling it with.

So when I see Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific, I don't see cynical attempts to set up spinoff shows, I see the creators drawing on less-prominent JLA members and, for the first time ever, the JSA, the Justice Society of America. Yeah, it's obviously not the original Mr. Terrific, but we're to the point where the original JSA members either need to all be dead or have a different backstory than "they were the WW2-era League", because even if Marvel hadn't laid claim to the easiest way to transplant a character from WW2 into the present it'd still be impossible to do that on all of 'em(I think I saw something about Jay Garrick having the Speed Force slow his aging, but " his powers conveniently stop aging!" won't work on anyone else except maybe Hourman, and after that you'd be unable to do it anymore without it being an obvious attempt to keep them going forever with that backstory). Also, I read some of the second-generation JSA comics, and Mr. Terrific was a damn cool hero, being the Society's tech guy in the same way Batman is for the League, but using and relying on his tech to a much greater extent, to the point where while he can absolutely still fight on his own, the shot we see here of him letting his tech do the fighting for him is usually how he prefers to operate. And that's great! That lets him be "the group's tech guy" in a way that provides all the plot-support of Batman's tech while not making him as a hero just some Batman derivative. Listen to me, I'm already going into mini-essays on this shit!

The only thing I can think of that's an issue is "Luthorcorp"-that's just dumb. It's called Lexcorp for a damn good reason, and that reason is because that name sounds both more intimidating and overall better, even if it does make less sense to name a company after your first name instead of your last name. But yeah, besides that I'm hyped as hell. One question though: who's the guy in the black suit? The one punching through the wall and tackling Superman into the stadium? For some reason my brain is saying it's Mr. Terrific, but that makes zero sense for any number of reasons(his tech doesn't let him fly or give him enhanced strength, he's too smart to misunderstand things in a Batman v Superman way and James Gunn is too smart to write that, and also we're clearly getting more villains than just Lex so this will be the one who matches Superman in raw power).

[quill-beetlewing]

So I've been working on a Thunderbolts fanfic lately, and since writer's block is being a bitch I thought maybe I could try breaking out by writing about some thoughts I've been having since I finished reading the series.

I'm also hoping to maybe find some Tbolts mutuals to talk with, because I just KNOW that's gonna be impossible when the MCU movie drops; and also my boyfriend who doesn't even read comics needs a break from my yapping. So, my actual thesis:

Redemption is impossible, and the Thunderbolts are a fundamentally broken concept. And also they're dead.

As of Semptember 2024, there is not a single member of the original Tbolts that has been redeemed. Or at least, if they have been, they're not alive.

Zemo, Fixer and Moonstone are villains, no nuance to it (Karla having been hit the hardest, yeeesh-).

Abe Jenkins is dead. Granted, they didn't show a body so who knows what I'm supposed to think. Still he's under ice for 7 years now so eh.

Songbird, Atlas and Jolt have just been gone since 2017. No explanation, they just don't appear in anything. And it's even weirder if you consider there's been not one but TWO whole Thunderbolts rosters since then (three if you count the one that appears in the Punisher, but they're so shallow and ooc I really wouldn't. Seriously why and how the fuck is Chen there).

The redemption was a core theme of the 1997 series, it was part of the premise, after all. I actually have a lot of thoughts about how the original series handles moral ambiguity as a narrative hook (very well, at least to me), but that's a rant for another day. But as the series went on, the idea of "redemption" just became more and more vague, so much so that nowadays I'd consider it practically non-existant.

The series never goes out of its way to define redemption. For the entirety of the og run, one has to assume that a character would be "redeemed" when they stop committing criminal acts and firmly abide by the other heroes' morals. And that never happens.

The Thunderbolts being morally ambigous has always been a massive part of the appeal of the series, but over time it just became the only appeal.

Thunderbolts 1997 is a story about redemption, and about a group of villains growing as people and learning to find their place in the world.

(This next bit references how each of the runs treats the premise set up by 1997. It has nothing to do with the quality of the work or my personal enjoyment of it, unless I downright state so, obviously.)

Avengers vs Thunderbolts. The whole point of that mini-series being that the Avengers can't bring themselves to consider the Thunderbolts actual heroes, and they're admittedly proven right when the Tbolts almost cause a cataclysm. Hawkeye tries to give them the benefit of the doubt, but by the end of the story he sides with the Avengers, which only drives the point home further. The Thunderbolts aren't trustworthy heroes.

New Thunderbolts and the Civil War period. None of the team members seems genuienly interested in the concept of redemption (the ones who come closest being Blizzard, who frankly isn't much of a character, Swordsman and maybe Radioactive Man. They all end up turning back into villains though, so I can't bring myself to cite them as good examples). The Civil War period is even worse, because here is where the Suidice-Squad-y idea of forcing villains to do good deeds surfaces, and trust me we'll be seeing a lot of that.

Secret War and Dark Reign are...fine. They are, by all means, awful Thunderbolts stories. They take the premise of the original series and spit it in the eye...but that's by design. Normal friggin Osborne took over the Thunderbolts, no wonder they're gonna be awful. The blatant disregard for the original series is, in my opinion, what makes these chapters of the Thunderbolts series so fun to read; especially because the characters themselves point out the sorry state of the Tbolts "brand".

Fear Itself (and I guess Dark Avengers, for a bit).

So Fear Itself is an interesting one. It starts out on a similar note to the previous two: the Thunderbolts are once again the Suicide Squad, except this time they're kept in check by some of the original Thunderbolts. Originally I was gonna bash this run because, from my recollection of it, I didn't think it made sense for Songbird, Mach and Fixer to be down to form a new Thunderbolts team so conceptually similar to Osborn's. But then I re-read a few parts to make the post, and it's way more complicated than that. (Don't mind the hellish visuals and try to hunt for Mel and Abe's panels. It just so happens that the one conversation I needed to quote is scattered like this, L. Although these panels do rock).

The characters are NOT okay with the way things are, and they criticise the circumstances they find themselves in . This story desperately wants to be a about redemption...but at the end of the day, it still isn't.

None of the convicts actually redeem themselves, Luke Cage drops out of the project, Fixer quite literally kills himself, and Songbird and Mach-V are saddled with a failure. This also happens to be the last time the government funds a Thunderbolts programme.

The previous two chapters were more of less about "Hey, isn't it fucked up that the Thunderbolts are like this now?", Fear Itself says the same thing, but with a somber tone. It is, by all means, a send-off to the original series, and I hate it almost as much as I love it.

On one hand, it's admittedly a finale that works. It's cynical, but it doesn't take pride in that, and it treats the old characters very respectfully.

On the other, I don't think this series should end on a cynical note. We know characters CAN be redeemed, Songbird and Mach are right there, so why should we just accept the Thunderbolts programme ending in a failure? Isn't it the original run's moral to keep fighting to better yourself even against the odds?

With all of that said, Fear Itself isn't an actual finale. Because we have....

2017 (and Pleasant Hill).

This is the Thunderbolts' Megamind 2. This run just feels like MCU pandering, and I frankly don't think it holds anything of value.

The Winter Soldier is now the leader of the Thunderbolts; none of them seem to have any thoughts about it, despite having literally never met him. The characters are brought together off-screen, the only character arc that happens, and that is admittedly tied to morality, ends with the character in question deciding to, LITERALLY, not do anything.

Abe Jenkins not beating the most boring Thunderbolt allegations I'm afraid. And I say this with love because I'm practically a stan of his. They fucked this character over in so many ways, it's so sad that it's kinda hilarious.

Back to 2017, it ends with the team fragmented. Half joins Zemo, Jolt fucks off no idea where, Mach-X literally dies and Songbird is left alone in an actually interesting cliffhanger that is never picked up again. And that's without mentioning that Pleasant Hill could have been the PERFECT setting for a Thunderbolts story, and the fact the morality of its existence wasn't explored in the slightest is just plain tragic.

How were the people under Kobik's control affected? How come Atlas and Blizzard are in there if they had their criminal records cleared? Why is Abe part of the staff? Doesn't he have any thoughts about keeping his own friends trapped like this? What about Songbird? What does she think? Is Pleasant Hill conceptually evil? Should anyone be able to hold that kind of power? How would the Thunderbolts, a team fundamentally created around the idea that villains can be redeemed, handle this situation?

We get no answers, of course. But hey, at least we get the Winter Soldier hanging out with a magical 6 year old. Yippeeeeeeee!!!

Yeah, I'm kinda salty about this run specifically. I don't know how you could tell.

After that, there are two more Thunderbolts runs, which I can't really talk about since I haven't ready any of them in full. The 2022 one I just skipped because I find modern Hawkeye to be a pain to read; might circle back to it one day, but it'll take some convincing. As for the 2023 one, I did read a few issues, I eventually dropped it because it had nothing to do with the Thunderbolts, and I also had trouble getting invested.

So, where does all of this leave us?

At this point in time, I don't think Marvel could pull off a good Thunderbolts story. The MCU inspired mindset wouldn't allow an exploration of the admittedly deep theme that is redemption, nor does it seem interested in doing so. There was this sort of "in-universe aura" that surrounded the Thunderbolts in the early 2000s; most characters were distrustful of the them, sure, but there was also some kind of underlying respect most seemed to feel, because the idea of villains becoming heroes and making up for past mistakes is definitely an incredibly noble one.

That aura is long gone, and I genuienly believe modern Marvel is way too cynical for this kind of approach.

And I'm frankly just sad about it. That a series which so much potential had to be squandered by a complete disinterest to use said potential. I still find 1997 to be, flawed as it is, an incredibly interesting story that handles grey morality in such a charming manner. And what's even sadder is seeing the remaining Thunderbolts walk around in modern comics as shells of their former selves.

With the MCU movie on the horizons, I doubt we'll get to see the original team (or themes) appear on page again. The Thunderbolts tag here on Tumblr has already been swarmed with clips from the trailers, character edits and the such (which is also why I'm planning on tagging my future posts as "Thunderbolts og" hopefully it helps), and the future is not looking bright.

But that's most of my thoughts about this matter. So, three remaining Thunderbolts fans, what do you think? Do you agree? Do you think I'm wrong? What's something you miss from the original series and that you'd love to see in its future? Or is it officially Joeover?

Any thoughts you have, I'd love to hear them. :>

[v0rd1g4n]

The Thundermans Return

All right, I've finally watched the movie and just like old times, I have to give my honest opinion.

But first things first. It's been 6 years since the finale was aired and I must say I was so excited when Kira shared on her Instagram account, that they were making a movie and she was executive producer.

Since there was practically nothing filmed back then, I thought it was going to be for teenagers or adults, just like the revival of iCarly or Zoey 102, but I was wrong.

After watching the trailer I realized it was for kids, just like the original show, which wasn't that big of a deal and I watched the movie two days after the day of its release on Paramount+ and here are my thoughts.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The movie starts with the family saving Metroburg from a meteor shower, using every one of their powers, something Hank could've easily taken care of, but still, it was pretty cool though.

And I have to say, those suits were awesome. They remind me of those kind of tactical suits wore by a few characters from TV Shows like Arrow or Supergirl. It was good to see the whole cast together after one more time. Also, those who were kids back in the day, looked like different actors, after only 6 years.

But anyway. After that, the title rolls and the family gathers in the headquarters, ready to spend a family night, but all Phoebe wants is to keep saving the day and is implied that she and Max have been doing that for quite some time.

They find a crime in progres but instead of letting other supes to handle for that night, the twins force their family to go stop a villain from robbing a bank.

They all teleport to the crime scene but things don't go as they expected, and due to Pheobe's orders, they end up injuring one of the V-Team members, as the other two stop the villain and save the day.

I don't know know they lost control of the situation like that. 7 supes against 1 villain, that's just too much. This is something Max and Phoebe could've screwed up by themselves, but well.

Soon, President Kickbutt shows up to inform that due to the injuried hero, they are gonna be replaced by the V-Team as well as get kicked out of the Hero League, which brings them back to Hiddenville.

And this is when we learn that the Thunderman family have been working as the T-Force at Metroburg for solid 3 years, leaving their old lifestyle behind.

Now everyone try to fit in their old town again. Max goes to his lair and finds Dr. Colosso having a tiki party with his furry friends. They talk about what happened and then Phoebe shows up to speak to him and they both seem to agree on using their powers for good, to which Dr. Colosso just laughs at them.

Then we see that Nora has finally outgrown from wearing bows and she makes it very clear by lasering the one Barb was holding for her. Then she and Hank see that Chloe is getting ready to go to the park while carrying a skateboard. They're scared something might happen to her, but let her go anyway, which makes them feel useless parents.

See the pattern here?

In the meantime, Billy and Nora are now attending to Hiddenville High, which by the way, doesn't make Principal Bradford and his ponytail very happy.

It was refreshing to see Billy and Nora as teenagers. Just like Max and Phoebe at the beginning of season 1.

As for the twins, Phoebe meets with Cherry at Splatburger, hoping to find a job soon and Max on the other hand, meets there too with his friends from the band, for old times' sake.

It was really cool to see all these funny characters once again. I had a lot of memories from "Never Friending Story", "Parents Just Don't Thunderstand" or "Exit Stage Theft".

At the same time, we see the V-Team is visiting Metroburg Superjail and we find out that they're actually a group of supervillains posing as heroes; the children of King Crab, Strongdor, and Dark Mayhem.

Their plan is simple: create an army of supervillains with a secret object hidden by the Hero League. The old guys had a plan that only boomers would understand, but is discarted immediately.

Later, Max and Phoebe are still trying to get back in the Hero League as the Tree Force, but then realize that their family doesn't want to fight crime anymore, so they're alone with this.

And man, this is always funny. I always liked all those jokes involving Max and Phoebe wearing costumes or disguises to go unnoticed. Not to mention that dweeb thing at the end of the scene xD

So much memories!

Then, back Max's lair Dr. Colosso helps Max to find out who the V-Team members really are, as Phoebe does the same by herself. Now both of them are aware that the V-Team is a group of villains.

And this is when Pheebs finally suits up as Thundergirl to go stop the bad guys alone. I wonder why they used the old suit, instead of the one with the skirt.

Who am I fooling? She looks good with both.

Back in Hidennville High, Nora and Billy are trying their best to make new friends and they only succeed the moment they start showing off their powers in front of everyone.

Leading to a small arguing between them, that ends with a tragedy for Bradford.

Meanwhile in Metroburg, the V-Team is desperately looking for the object they need. Then we learn that Dark Mayhem Jr. has the same sadistic habit Nora has; to laser poeple willy-nilly, ever since he was a kid.

Then Phoebe shows up, trying to enter by force in their old headquarters and stop all of them, but Max surprises her from behind and drags her back to hide from the villains, while watching them closely.

However, at some point they screw it up and get caught by the V-Team.

Back in Hiddenville, Hank and Barb are still worried about Chloe hanging out at the park with some new friends, so they ask uncle Blobbin a helicopter to go take care of her from the sky.

I never was a fan of uncle Blobbin, but it was cool this character was included for a small scene.

And yeah, looks like Hank and Barb are going throught the same crisis they went, when Max and Phoebe decided to celebrate their birthday by throwing a party at Wong's Pizza Palace. Their victims back then were Billy and Nora, now is young Chloe.

Anyway, they have a little accident (thanks to Cherry) and the helicopter crashes on the park. The two of them are fine, but all this makes Chloe realize that they've been spying on her all along and gets mad at them.

At the same time, Max and Phoebe are being interrogated by the V-Team, tied up with their own capes. I wish they were shown losing a fight against the villains at least, because it is implied that's what happened off screen. Just saying.

To me, there's no way they could've lost a fight against those villains, not with their multiple powers. Frozen by freeze breath, knocked out agains a wall with telekinesis, electrically shocked with the twin power, etc. And these are only non-letal options, but anyway.

Their goal is to get the Acacía Fantasticus, a very rare plant that can give people superpowers, either good (blue) or evil (red).

They mention that people from the past known for demonstrating superpowers had eaten the seeds of this plant, which is interesting, since they're finally revealing the origin of superpowers in the Thundermans world.

However, the way is gonna be presented seems like a terrible idea, but I'll talk about it later.

Since the twins don't have any idea where the power plant is, they're taken to Mayhem café, Dark Mayhem's old lair with a special booth perfectly designed to torture every member of the Thundermans family.

They activate it, and this is when the Thundertwins die horribly ☹️

Nah, I'm joking 🤣

I'm gonna have to leave it here, since Tumblr has a new limit of 30 pictures per post, so here's the end of Part 1.

Stay tunned for Part 2.

[suchusoid]

my version of my villain academia

the mva arc is a very popular story arc within mha community and even the mha critical community. But at risk of sounding like the tenth dentist here, I cant stand this arc. Its essentially a new villain group that exists solely to get streamrolled by the lov through plot armor and flashbacks just so the story can brainwash its fans into thinking tomuras character arc amounts to anythung. So ive decided to make my own mva arc, which is a lot more literal this time based on my personal rewrite.

Thus far, japans most infamous vigilante, herpeton, is finally on the up and up. The people arent as scared of him, hes made a fair share of allies, and people are starting to be more proactive with helpingnone another instead of waiting for the heroes to solve everything.

This did not sit well with one president mirai sasaki(formerly known as the pro hero sir nighteye). Since herpetons debut, he and the commision have been trying to take him down. Hiring the volcano thieves, sicking hawks out to "do away" with him multiple times, creating the nomu, yet none of it has worked. Then, sasaki got an idea, an awful idea, sasaki got a wonderful, awful idea. The next day at tartarus, the prisoner known as the maestro was paid a visit. The maestro was a gorilla with the quirk esper which gave him your run of the mill psychic abilities, and he was the self proclaimed arch nemesis of herpeton. Sasaki and maestro struck a deal. Sasaki would let maestro use a new and improved version of the quirk amplification device(based on the blueprints of dr shield and dr wolframs original idea) to allow him to use his telepathy to find herpetons true identity. In return, maestro would be released back into the african jungles where he had been living the dream. Maestro was successful in finding out herpetons name, led to a elite squad of heroes including hawks, mirko, and president sasaki was along for the ride as well with a secret weapon. The ambush ended with herpeton being shot with electrical bullets and having his spine severed by hawks before they dumped his body in the ocean for good measure. Too bad for them, old herpys got the healing factor of an axolotl so he was able to recover an make it back to japan by running across the water with the propotional speed of a namib gecko. But when he finally got back japan was a different place from when he left. The maestro had double crossed the commision and used to the device to mind control every hero and hero student in japan to do his bidding. Aside from a few pros and fledgelings that escaped his control the people only defense against the simian masterminds terror was vigilantes and reformed villains. Now, its up to the villains to save japan from the hero it once worshipped, and stop the maestro once and for all. Eventually herpeton and maestro have one last mano y mano with herpeton knocking .aestro out and releasing the mind cintrolled heros from his grip. During the aftermath hawks tries one last time to kill herpeton in a fit of rage, but is knocked out by gang orcas sonic blast. Orca reveals that he and centipeder have secretly using their status to gather damning evidence against the hpsc and exposing their crimes to the public. The commision members and the heros involved in their scheme were arrested and herpeton was put on temporary probation. Herpy was cooperative with it as he needed a vacation fron vigilantism after the shit hes been through.

And thats the end of my rewrites mva arc! very curious what you guys think. I may make a post about my rewrites epilogue arc later which civers what became of hero society. Anyways see you guys later!

[rubykgrant]

I'm TRYING to re-think the order of some of the events in my RVB story-line, so it flows a little better as an actual plot (to be fair, the actual series would often leave the end of a season sort of up in the air, and come back with a non sequitur after a lot of time passes, so. shame on me for trying so hard, I guess). I have a lot more little details involved (I'll ramble about those below), but these are the BIG PICTURE aspects that everything else is framed around

The Interviews involve the Reds, Blues, former Freelancers, Doc, Locus, and a few friends from Chorus talking about what they've been through (with some flash-backs thrown in, showing what they aren't all telling). During the Vacations, Donut goes on a big spa-spree, the Grif sibs go back to Hawaii (without a big fuss, Kai may like the attention, but Grif doesn't want people bothering him about being the Famous Orange Soldier), Simmons tries to track down his family (he can't find them), Sarge goes back to sulk in Blood Gulch alone, Wash goes looking for the Triplets, Doc spends some time with Dr Grey and thinks about trying for a medical degree again, Lopez is allowed to just be by himself (and he's honestly kinda bored), Caboose goes back to the Moon, Tucker searches for Junior, Carolina attempts to dig up info about how deep Charon/Project Freelancer really got into all the crime BS, Locus tries to turn himself into the authorities on Chorus (being all "I deserve to die" about it) but Kimball gives him a "life sentence" of community service. Everybody misses each other, and are drawn back together like a bunch of planets caught in the same gravitational pull

-Sarge is contacted by a UNSC group that wants to give soldiers who were Sim Troopers and members of the Flag Zealots "new training", and he doesn't hesitate. He has fun with it for a while, and this is where he meets Poppy... she is how he finds out a lot of the people here were given the option "join this training program or face prison time", which really isn't much of an option at all. He thinks about how the Red VS Blue war was a lie, he thinks about Project Freelancer manipulating the agents, he thinks about Wash having a villain moment to avoid being locked-up, he thinks about Locus believing soldiers are supposed to kill without ever asking questions... and Papa Warcrimes decides he actually hates the military (it's a sign of the apocalypse!). Meanwhile, Carolina has finally gotten some leads about Charon, and she meets Junonia, who helps her find out more regarding the past and what Hargrove is still up to. Gene has also been around, trying to be a solo villain, but he's BARELY a one-man Team Rocket. Finally, the insidious purpose for all this new training is exposed, and Red Team (with their new member, Poppy) gets to have the spot-light when they fight the villain

-Everybody finally goes back to Earth together, and this time, a big celebration is held for their return. They spend most of their time out of armor on Earth, so the general public leaves them alone. Some fun shenanigans with everybody finding ways to amuse themselves (Sarge doesn't like going outside, the sky is too BLUE). Now that she knows where they are (thanks to the welcoming celebration), Tex finally catches up with everybody, revealing that when Epsilon Deconstructed, the information from his memories transferred back to the original Beta unit, reviving her. The Director had this whole plan for eventually bringing Allison back with a synthetic human body made from her DNA sample, but he could never make it "perfect" (Tex isn't an identical clone, more like a genetic "sibling" to Allison). She isn't the only one who found them; the parents Simmons went looking for finally show up (now that their son is a famous space hero). He's more than happy to get their attention, and they have him join their work at a bio-tech company (everybody else immediately recognizes the parents as a-holes, and the business as shady, but try telling Simmons that). Tex was initially hesitant to reveal the other AI Fragments were also revived, what with some left-over sore feelings regarding Sigma and Omega (Wash is ironically more willing to forgive them for everything; he wishes he had been able to do that BEFORE, instead of fighting against them as the Meta, and the whole spiral from there). Carolina talks through emotions with Sigma, and Omega compliments both Doc and O'malley for finding their back-bone. Everybody else is happy to get to know the Fragments better. Some Drama happens with the Reds, but Simmons finally sees his parents don't really care about him, and they all figure out that the bio-tech company has the original Alpha Unit hidden away. They rescue Church, who has the chance to be in his own synthetic body based on the Directors DNA (again, not identical, just similar)

-Everybody gets to CATCH THEIR BREATH, Caboose and Tucker have Church back, Church and Tex get to do people things, hooray! A distress call out there in space tricks Tucker into thinking Junior is in trouble, so he heads out to find his kid (most of the others join him, but a few stay behind because of recovering injures, etc). This turns out to be a trick, Hargrove and Temple are both being jerks. The rest of the gang arrives for a rescue, and Church has each of the Fragments assist his friends for the escape; for Hargrove, this was his attempt to test out a "new version" of scanning a mind to make his own AI (his tech is wonky, and will definitely kill people it scans). For Temple, he's under the impression that if he helps, he can have his own mind scanned, thus giving him a "recreation" of Biff from his memories. Hargrove REALLY wants people who have interacted with the AI Fragments as experiments, since he thinks there is important data to be found from minds like that. Temple just wants to kill the main group because he hates their guts, and it isn't FAIR, why do they get their dead friend back? Also, everybody finds the AI file for Sheila! When things settle down, Grif and Simmons talk, and at last they are on the same freaking page

-After the rescue, Hargove escapes again, and the group hears a distress call from Chorus. Some old problems are going on again, so they swing by to help out. Hargrove has one last-ditch effort to get what he wants in terms of AI experiments... Felix didn't just come back wrong, he came back WORSE. Well, everybody has the chance to work through some unresolved negative emotions aimed at him (Kimball, Locus, Tucker- everybody gets a stab in!). Felix wants to use his sword again, but it recognizes him as "dead". He tries to use a temple that "revives echoes" for key holders, but this just gives him a ghost of Doyle ("It was mine before it was yours"). The Echo also brings back other AI like Santa, who have been programmed to make certain events happen... while everybody tries to deal with Felix AND finally catch Hargrove for good, the Echo creates a whole third problem. At last, a group of aliens arrive, alerted by the Echo, and in the group is- Junior!

-Some happy family reunion time for Tucker and his boy. Junior explains what he's been doing for so long; he wasn't trying to avoid his father, but there are dangerous groups out there trying to kill him, and he's been hiding while also trying to save others. The strange "prophecy" about him, as well as things involving a "Great Destroyer" is indeed true (Gary admits he kind of just made up what it was about, but it really WAS real!) have become more urgent. Somebody who wants to take over and wipe-out anybody who opposes them has been targeting Junior. There are also many other half human/aliens like him, an attempt to create as many potential "prophecy children" as possible, but all were rejected by their human parents and only seen as tools by the other aliens (except for Junior, who is actually loved by his dad... even though they haven't been able to spend much time together). Another temple out in space supposedly has the power to give "continuous life", and the villain intends to use that to win. Tucker and the others try to protect Junior, but the temple doesn't work the way they all think...

-Back on Earth again, life seems to give them all a break... but unusual things begin happening. It eventually becomes clear that there are "new AI gods" toying with them (some are just playful, a few are genuinely malicious). This involves somewhat amusing, if a little annoying, shenanigans (like Wash getting turned into a cat, and a tiny 7-year-old Sarge showing up), but also very dangerous situations. Alternate time-lines and realities collide, some arguably "worst-case scenarios"

-It finally becomes necessary to confront the cause of all this. The group gets pulled into a pocket dimension where a lot of realities intersect. One AI god demands people fight for their amusement, and the winner will get to return to the "reality they want". The group really just wants weird paradox stuff to STOP. Church, Tex, and the Fragments figure out a way to keep everybody from dying, even the enemies they have to fight, until they have the chance to take on the one trying to control everything. Just when it seems like that issue is solved... Donut throws up. Weird, cosmic throw-up, like if the big-bang was a liquid. Being the one who has been traveling through time and reality the most, he's kind of absorbed a LOT of cosmic energy, and he can't control it. A big monster-transformation happens, but everybody figures out how to fix it so they can save Donut. Are we done? Are we DONE now???

-Yes. Everybody has the chance to live their lives, whatever that means for each of them. They get to be happy. Sometimes, bad things still happen, it can be difficult and unpleasant to live- but they still LIVE. Eventually, they pass on too (and that also means different things for some of them). When all is said and done, they're mostly glad they all got to be here~

[writebackatya]

DuckTales Team Ideas:

You know what love about DuckTales?! A lot of things. But more specifically the found family aspect of the show and all of its characters!! I love that within this found family are groups/teams built up from this group of badass adventurers. You got your Team Science, Webby and her friends, the Duck Boys, the Original Three, etc. But you know what? We can make even more teams out of these fun characters! So here’s a list of team up ideas that I think would be fun! Post-canon stuff up ahead so beware of spoilers:

Rules for teams:

1. Must consist of at least three people, cause Disney loves their trios

2. Must have a team name

3. A third rule, cause trios

The Moon Crew: Della, Selene, and Penumbra

I made a post about this team up before but I’ll post it again. We need Della to go on adventure with her badass Amazon girlfriends. It’d be fun. Personally I think the adventure should be a fish out of water story in Duckburg. I mean think about it, one’s a goddess, one’s a moon lander, and the final member hasn’t been on earth for an entire decade. Imagine the shenanigans! Well I can, I’m working on a story about that. Well not about that particularly but it’s an aspect of the story. Anyway moving on

Team Webby: Dewey, Lena, and Violet

Do you know what I’d like to see? Webby’s best friends (yeah I don’t care what Scrooge said, Dewey can be Webby’s family and best friend) team-up to save Webby from Magica. I think it’d make for a fun adventure.

(Also at one point Dewey needs to say Bippity Boppity Dew! Like at the moment the group stops Magica and her evil plan)

SEA-Nior Junior Woodchucks: Fethry, Huey, and Violet (Also Launchpad and BOYD, but I’m picking main threes here cause trios)

Who doesn’t love these three? Jerks! That’s who! We need more Fethry! Huey is great! Violet is underrated! They’re all Junior Woodchucks! And they need to go on a sea related adventure! Also they’re all…

Bad Bit Rebel Squad: Gandra, Gosalyn, and Lena

Stop me if you heard this one before: a good natured loving hero gets paired up with a snarky street smart loner. Anyway. What if we put all that sass together in one killer trio? No villain would be able to stand up to that much sass

Bad Bitches would be a group that consists of Della, Gandra, Gosalyn, Lena, Penumbra, and Goldie. And you know what? Throw Louie in there as well

Spy Team: Dewey, Gandra, and Webby

So…anybody else think it would’ve been so great to see these three team-up? They all have a spy background! Webby’s granny is a spy, Gandra is a spy, Dewey dew-geared Double O Duck with Launchpad*. It would be cool to see Webby and Gandra fight on the same side. Plus I think Dewey and Gandra has great comedic potential [shameful fanfic plug] Also you Beakley and Launchpad could also be a part of that team. Now the question is: Would the Beakley and Gandra dynamic be more Beakley and Lena 2.0 or Beakley and Della 2.0? Only you can decide!

The Yahoo Community: Della, Gyro, Huey, and Manny

Larry, all these actors were on DuckTales and Season 6 of Community

SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE!

Clone McDucks: May, June, and Webby

Yeah, we needed to see these three get in their own adventure together. It would’ve been great. I think they’d embrace the fact that they’re clones but they’re own person. Also Clone McDuck sounds similar to Clan McDuck. I thought it was cute. Also I really just want to drive the point home that they’re clones just to irk those reading this who didn’t care for the final twist. I mean I thought it was cool and I loved rewatching the entire series a second time while knowing the twist. It gave me a whole new perspective on the series and they really foreshadowed in parts I didn’t notice on my first watch through but hey everyone is entitled to their own opinion

The Justice Ducks: Darkwing Duck, Gizmoduck, Storkules, Penumbra

Any fan of the original Darkwing Duck should be familiar with the Justice Ducks. Well I always thought if that team were to ever be brought into the DuckTales 2017 universe that both Storkules and Penumbra would fit in perfectly with that group. Both Penumbra and Storkules are warriors that fought for their people and have struggled to fit in with the world, so why not have a job that involves doing what they do best? Fighting for those they care about

The Tremendous Triplets: Huey, Dewey, June, Louie, May, and Webby

It’s twice the amount of triplets! The six of them would be unstoppable!! This show needed more than three seasons damn it!!!

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this rambling! If you have any team ideas please share them! They don’t all have to be trios and if you can come up with a name too, that would be great! Also if you come up with a better name for any of the groups I made up, please share them! I know The Tremendous Trios isn’t that great. I just love alliteration and thought it would be cool if their name had 3 T’s cause…trios.

[peachiecure]

A reflection on Project: Dimension (logo made by my friend Petal I’m so sorry your work is never actually getting used)

Hello everyone. I’m here to talk about a project that is now defunct. This will be a reflection/info post on what I have personally done for it. Project: Dimension (PD for short) WAS a group project between me and 3 other members, combining our precure fanseries together to form a crossover story with new and familiar characters. It was originally considered a Project SFA spinoff for some reason (looking back at it now, it is MUCH more precure than SFA so I don’t think this really stands anymore), and it was going to be told in comic format. To sum up the plot… Phantom, the god of death, summons the other villains to form a group to take down the precure for their own personal reasons. The precure join together to try to take them down… but a certain turn of events happens. Chaos ensures.

During the project’s beginnings on the platform we were using, the team created teasers, making it interactive with hidden clues so people could dig in and discover what the project is about. We ended up stopping the teasers when we found out only one person was actually trying to find the clues rather than a group of people… I’m so sorry Nitro😭😭 Please take care of yourself. I drew many things for these, some are pictured.

The majority of my work was art, of course, I did have a say in aspects of the story considering that the main character it was focusing on was indeed still my own, Larissa Frausto. Others that were from my projects included Pixelena (Larissa’s precure team’s crazy mascot alpaca), Princess Sweetheart and Dimentio. Yeah, the character choice from my stuff is honestly really funny looking back at it. Like how did Sweetheart and Dimentio get here?? I guess it doesn’t matter now. The main villain, Phantom, was also my own from a RP which was then adapted for PD, and let me tell you I HATE HIM. Like not even in a “oh he’s a good villain because everyone loves to hate him” way NO HE’S LIKE GENUINELY SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN MADE. His whole premise is built on a harmful stereotype, and I’m only acknowledging such things now because I have grown since then. Please do not let the teenagers cook sometimes because this… yeah please don’t make a yandere type character and PLEASE don’t make them a GOD. Please. Learn from my mistakes. On my knees BEGGING. Sadly, the whole project REVOLVES around this dynamic between Larissa and Phantom as the plot progresses and I think I don’t need to say where this was gonna go, so I’m just not gonna. It was beyond saving and thus the plug being pulled was for the best. I will enjoy the memories of the team working together, but canning the project was the right decision in the end. It does suck that I put in years of work for it to not go anywhere, but it is what it is.

The final thing I will talk about is Raguel’s old lore for PD. Well… all that I know of it anyways. Raguel in PD is still the god of life, but Phantom, then called Azazel, was like his little brother figure for many many years. Raguel deeply cared for him, even if Azazel was a bit… stoic and didn’t seem to understand emotions. Raguel also had a precure team of his own that he viewed as his daughters. But one day, something was going to happen and Azazel was going to like??— go against him or something… (I DONT ACTUALLY KNOW WE NEVER FINISHED) which then would have resulted in Raguel stabbing out his eye and Azazel killing Raguel’s whole magical girl team. Yeah. Then Azazel gets sealed away by Raguel for 700+ years and when he’s finally freed again, he’s the way you see him now as Phantom who has this BURNING hatred towards him and the precure which was his whole motivation. The prologue pages start when he’s finally freed from the seal… so yeah. I realize this project is a total departure from my usual bubbly stuff.

In the end, PD wasn’t going to affect any of my main project’s lore because it quite literally was going to be revealed at the end that none of it was canon and just someone’s fanfic. PD’s aspects that I liked are being used in other projects. Raguel has been moved to my new persona project, the comic format has been moved to tell SFA’s story now, and Phantom will stay 6 feet under!!! Everyone cheered!!! I want that twink obliterated. Anyways, I feel that I finally have closure on this and can move on so um… thank you for reading me ramble about this. I feel better. NOW TIME TO DRAFT THE NEXT SFA PAGES WITH BLUMIERE AND TIMPANI— (I am dragged away)

I think it is important to me to acknowledge this project and the work I’ve done for it, even if I don’t agree with content included in it now. As humans, we change and grow, and I’ve learned so much since the time this was originally made. Below are the prologue pages that I finished, the final bit of work I did. Thank you for your support.

[lediz-watches]

Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon

AKA, cooking, with world building. And dragons.

Quick overview for the uninitiated: Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi) is an anime following a small group of adventurers in a vaguely first-edition Dungeons and Dragons setting (except also very much not DnD, despite the pun) as they attempt to find one of their lost party members. To ensure they survive without money, and to indulge a kink of their leader, they resort to hunting the monsters of the dungeon for food. The show is very heavily influenced, to the point of affectionate parody, by cooking anime, with stillshots of the final meals and the original manga including mock-recipe and nutrient maps on said stillshots.

I didn’t watch it for several months because Tumblr’s manga community had presented the show as being one of those shows where everyone is queer and neurodivergent and it’s all about their struggles and love conquering all and I was just like “that’s cool, you have fun, kids”. I can't remember why I decided to watch it - I think I saw a Netflix trailer and decided I was bored enough to try it. But it is not that.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Two characters are almost definitely autistic, one of whom is probably a lesbian, and the closest thing she has to a love interest is maybe bisexual, but honestly, despite being fifty years old, she’s probably too young to really know. Half-elves, man, they’re problematic. But none of that is the point of the show. In fact, it's mostly entirely platonic the whole way through. At most, the show is about self-acceptance, personal sacrifice, and the difference between what you want and what you need.

Also good nutrition.

There are a few things I love about it, one of which is my personal kink, which is worldbuilding and poking at the strangeness of a world until it makes sense. The characters are products of their environments and backgrounds, with prejudices and conceits that make sense to not only their backstories but also their respective ages (which is further problematised by their varying maturity rates and race profiles). The world itself is an evolving character, created by a flawed and (I suspect, haven’t finished the manga yet) sympathetic villain. It’s so juicy and good.

I also love (most of) the characters themselves and how they interact. With my favourite, of course, being the emotionally repressed father of three that looks like a fourteen year old kid.

Chilchuck is everything I love about the series in one character. He’s so complicated. He’s a half-foot, which is the equivalent of a halfling, and therefore always looks very young and cute, to the point that even half of the main characters see him as a child. However, because half-foots are the shortest lived race, he’s actually the equivalent of a fifty-something. Add to this that half-foots do legitimately seem to use teen vernacular out of habit, no matter how goddamn done they are with these frikking kids around them. Add to this that he became a married father of two when he was still the equivalent of a teenager, was immediately thrust into a toxic work environment where he was confronted with the fact his whole race is mostly considered greedy scum-sucking thieves at least positive and outright monster-bait at most positive…! ADD TO THIS that he is a self-sacrificing idiot that would rather the whole world—including his family—think he’s a vile, narcissistic, cheating coward than admit even to himself that he just can’t handle seeing people he cares about hurt and is trying to keep them out of trouble the only way he can.

And he’s the main character with probably the least amount of screentime, it absolutely kills me!

There are a few things I don’t love, however.

I don’t love Senshi. The dwarf hermit that enables the story by being an essentially dungeon-native with a love of cooking. The story starts off with him being the all-knowing, down-to-earth, reliable old man, which rubbed me the wrong way because he was also stubborn and self-righteous and the story seemed to be entirely on his side. But in the story’s defence, it does poke and prod at him, and showcase his prejudices, but at the end of the first season (and I think halfway through the story) I still mostly just tolerate him.

I watched in English, and… look. Look.

This is one of the few examples where I think subs not dubs might have worked in its favour.

Normally I don’t agree with that, because dubbers are not given nearly enough credit for their skills. Voice acting is hard, and dubbing even more so. Also, while the Japanese actors may be very good, they are not infallible. Sometimes, the reason you think they’re incredible is because you don’t understand what they’re saying and so can’t tell whether they’re good actors or not.

BUT. In this specific case. I think that last point might have helped.

Because there are long stretches of exposition and cooking narration in this series, told in quite monotone, matter-of-fact ways which are perfect for the character and tone of the series but are not actually that entertaining to listen to. And so I suspect that hiding behind another language may have really helped mask that. There are things that work in written form that just don’t in audio.

I wish the series could spend a bit more time poking at its characters. Especially Chilchuck. Seriously, this man’s instinct when confronted with his own good qualities is to stop moving. I love it so much. Marcille, the half-elf, is interesting to me because of her unique growth rate. Half-elves live to be a thousand, and she’s only fifty. She was still a toddler at thirteen. She thinks of herself as an adult. She sees the twenty-something tall-men (humans) as young teens. As the series goes on, she seems increasingly more like a seventeen year old to me. I want to know how much of that is intentional.

The actual main character, Laios… I want to understand his head more. It’s hard, because he’s clearly autistic and canonically struggles with other people’s feelings, and self-reflection, so in many ways I think he legitimately is as simple as he seems. But because of that, he’s one of the few prophesised kings/chosen ones that I find myself… not rooting for. His instincts entirely revolve around monsters, he doesn’t get humans, and I just… can’t see that working out for a king long-term without some serious infrastructure and look at me getting all political world-building again and I’m just not invested enough in Laios to explore it myself, so I want to see it happen in-series.

But it’s generally so good. If you’ll forgive the pun, it’s meaty and tasty and it’s so good. I think it’s what I needed. Unfortunately, the fandom isn’t what I wanted it to be, so I don't know how much fun I'll have with it outside canon, but I’ll be honest, that’s pretty appropriate for this series.

Sometimes, it’s not about what you want.

Sometimes, you just need to chew on what you need, and keep looking for what you want next.

Probably a good life lesson, all things considered.

[nememachine]

BLOODHOUND.masterpost (WIP)

A terrorist attack has left Britain in the midst of a zombie pandemic. The ‘Disease’ turns humans into monsters - mutants beyond recognition, turning cities to dust and drawing innocents into their evergrowing hivemind.

Enter the Bloodhounds; a superhuman spec-ops unit, and one of the country’s last hopes.

When one of their members loses their memory during an arson attack, the Bloodhounds are determined to locate the group responsible. During their investigation, however, they learn of a much darker terrorist plot that could not only destroy them, but what little remains of society.

~

Tldr; I've been writing a book for 10+ years and I'm finally posting it!

If you like action, body h0rror, and B-Movie cheese, please consider giving it a read.

Trigger warning for violence and gore.

Currently available on Wattpad!

What is BLOODHOUND?

Bloodhound (stylised as BLOODHOUND.) is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi project. It revolves around a group of superhuman soldiers - the titular Bloodhounds - fighting a biomechanical plague and the terrorist group that spread it. The project has been in the works since late 2013, and is primarily a novel series.

The lore of the Bloodhound universe is inspired by the works of Digital Extremes, Gen Urobuchi and Hideo Kojima.

The book is currently unfinished, but I don't know if I'm ever going to finish it, so I'm putting the current draft up for everyone to enjoy (ironically and unironically). Any feedback is appreciated, as I have a lot of passion projects in my backlog that I'd love to share with the world as well.

The Story

The year is 2048. A terrorist organisation has infected the world with a biomechanical virus, known simply as the Disease. Victims are dragged into a hivemind, skin hardening like steel, their bodies twisted and warped beyond recognition. These Diseased have only one goal; to continue its spread.

Scientists around the world began to collaborate, in search of a cure. Britain - the first target of the Disease - managed to reverse-engineer the virus while trying to create a vaccine. The nanites in this ‘Anti-Disease’ not only acted as immunity against its counterpart, but granted superhuman abilities and protected hosts from injury by hardening the skin, without permanent damage. 

And so, the Ministry of Defense came up with a unique proposal for defending its citizens. They transformed this early vaccine into a Psionic system that grants powerful abilities, through a neurolink that connects to complex military technology. The result was the Bloodhounds - a special operations unit dedicated to fighting the most powerful Diseased thralls and saving what remains of humanity.

One day, however, one of its members is lured away by the same terrorist group that started the pandemic. He awakens with no memory of his past life, only to discover he’s been infected, the virus having slipped through his Psionic’s defence system. The group bands together to get their revenge, only to discover that their enemy is planning something far greater - something that could wipe out all of them.

Characters

The protagonist designs were initially inspired by AT's Secret Weapon line of theme park rides, and later on took inspiration from gods from greek mythology. Originally conceived in 2010, the cast was repurposed with their own lore, setting and story.  

Unfortunately, I don't have character refs for all of them at this time, but here's the best I've got of the main four: Jesse, Andrew, Chloe and Zora.

There are other characters with the same design principles, but I won't be including them in the post until later updates.

The villain of the story - an entity known as Lynx - doesn't follow the same design trend as the other characters. Instead, they're based on biomechanical entities such as the technocyte plague from DarkSector and the WAU from Soma.

(TBC)