#no combat so far so that’s a major dub too | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thegoodomensdumpster · 5 years ago

Text

I WATCHED GOOD OMENS IN FRENCH SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

and it wasn’t that bad. Here are my thoughts, barely edited as I wrote most of them while watching the show.

EP 1

OK i like god’s voice so far

possibilité d’embarras gastrique is a good formulation, I wonder if it’s the same in the book ( I think I kinda need to read it in french now...)

aghghdhgs « primo-délinquants »

of course subtitles don’t match the audio for a variety of technical reasons but when you get things that have very different underlying meanings i find it… not good This one about Crowley being evil / a demon : subtitles : « c’est ton travail » - « it’s your job » audio : « c’est dans ta nature » - « it’s in your nature » i mean dang

crowley sounds like a little shit asking az about his sword

« T’AS FAIT QUOUA » - he just loses his shit (kinda giving me some le coeur a ses raisons vibe)

ok crowley sounds very nerdy when he tries to explain that he took down the phone network, i think i actually like this voice acting

ligur sounds… very suave (im a little ill at ease)

crowley getting called mon chou by satan freddie mercury is a thumb up from me

i see the part where aziraphale speaks japanese wasn’t dubbed over and we can still hear michael sheen. it’s a bit disturbing considering french aziraphale has a higher pitched voice (and he sounds soooo much more anxious than sheen, give this angel a xanax )

“sandwich bœuf cresson” ( beef and cress sandwich ) deirdre really who makes this kind of sandwiches

im being reminded that the chattering nuns prepared little cut outs for their explanation about the antichrist switch… such dedication to useless crafts (it made me laugh on my first viewing and it’s still funny to imagine that some of them either ordered or built these things themselves just so they could make this two minutes long presentation for the most important act of their satanic nun careers)

retire-toi vil démon infernal, créature des abysses XD i swear az doesn’t sound even remotely convinced when he is saying the « get thee behind me foul fiend » line in french, it’s just too over the top for credibility, it sounds like it’s straight out of some super intense dnd session

they still can’t say bouillabaisse (which, like, weird because french, but still valid). nice touch is crowley couldn’t say soupe de poisson (fish stew) either and said poupe de soisson (sish ftew)

warlock mah boy how can you be a teenager and not like dinosaurs

c’est un dinosaure un nullosaure plutôt - apply burn heal

La façon dont warlock s’est exclamé « C’EST NUL » m’a fait penser au nain de naheulbeuk

the english version has nothing on french speaking aziraphale for the second hand embarrassement during the magic tour. it’s over 9000 i literally hid my head in my jumper when he was presenting harry the bunny. Horrible experience, 0/20, would not recommend

EP 2

oooh agnes has a lovely voice !

why is young newton having such a quality dub for the three sentences he has to say

dick turpin’s name is jesse james (tbf dick turpin is not known AT ALL in france, i discovered him reading good omens)

shadwell is pure chaos (as expected). No particular accent for him though, the chaotic energy was probably enough. Would have made me laugh if he had like, a chti or a marseilles accent.

aziraphale is so fucking stressed out by crowley’s driving i thought he was gonna explode

« tu es un gentil garçon » => « you’re a nice boy » said az to crowley DANG THAT’S SO INFANTILIZING AZIRAPHALE YOU’RE TALKING TO A DEMON FROM HELL NOT TO PINOCCHIO

ARGH FIRST MON ANGE OF THE SERIES i’m hit straight in the heart

anathema’s mom doesn’t have a spanish / latino accent at all when talking in spanish…. why...

dog being called toutou is definitely adorable (it’s basically « doggy » but way cuter imo)

tickety-boo has become ça gaze. that’s valid. it’s corny but i still use it unironically from time to time so ... i stan

EP 3

« je répands la fomentation » « i’m here spreading foment » « quoi tu fais des crêpes au froment ?????? » « what you’re making crêpes with wheat ??? » love the fact that we shoehorned in one more ref to crêpes

az called crowley mon cher camarade, unintentionnal communist propaganda ftw

« pas de repos pour les… bah, pour les bons » « no rest for the… good » – az was so deflated about the ineptitude he realized he was saying, he felt zero percent commited to his sentence

i was wondering how they would play aziraphale not being able to speak french in the bastille and they opted to have him stutter a bit and say to his executionner « excuse me i’m anxious » XD

« vous êtes le 999e aristo à mourir par mes soins. Mais vous êtes le premier en costume beige » « you’re the 999th aristocrat I’m going to kill, but the first one in beige attire » yeah i guess now that az isn’t english anymore his most noticeable feature is his cream aesthetic

« c’est au cas où ça tournerait en eau de boudin » « j’ADORE le boudin » => « in case it all goes pear shape » - the literal translation featuring food in french is « turning into black sausage water ». I don’t know what pear shaped inspires to english native speakers but the mere mention of boudin always make me giggle, it’s such a funny word and such a funny food

OH !!! no terrence rampa for the tv series, we’ve got anthony J. rampa. Rip terrence petit démon parti trop tôt :’(

« tu roules trop vite pour moi rampa » SERIOUSLY i know we can still infer « rouler » (here as in driving, but literally rolling) as a metaphor for their relationship but you could have said TU VAS TROP VITE that would have been so much better argh

has anathema got an emergency stock of potteries to break in case of emotionnal crisis ?

« Rampa, un démon très futé, il m’oblige à redoubler d’effort » « crowley, a very clever demon, he forces me to make double the amount of effort » oh so admitting you’re making an effort there aziraphale ? :))))))

dang i really want to know how shadwell said that major milk bottle died because not only did he die in combat but aziraphale’s reaction is a bit intense, it must have been quite a tale (this could be a crack fic prompt : «The Epic Tale of the Death Of Major Witchfinder Milk Bottle, by Sargent Witchfinder Shadwell» )

des sorcières et des phénomènes sorciéreux x)

CROWLEY CALLED AZIRAPHALE DUCON ?????? EXCUSE ME ????? #NotMyCrowley #CrowleyWouldNeverDoThat #CancelAnthonyJRampa2K20 => ducon would be an insult, the gathering of du and con, con being a very nasty but common swear word, and associating it with du- makes it extremely patronizing. it’s like « absolute pathetic digraceful moron +++ ». thanks i hate it *frowny face *

EP 4

l’apocalypse c’est pour aujourd’hui juste après le goûter : it could be translated as « apocalypse is scheduled for today right after tea time » except that « goûter » is not quite tea time but rather the little sugary snack kids take when they come back from school and that most adults drop out of (i haven’t and i’m sure az hasn’t either). thanks aziraphale for having exclusively food related notion of the time because tbh same

ligur has no right to be this sexy between ariyon bakare and his french voice actor that’s just not allowed

radio crowley’s voice vs french ligur’s voice, who has the sexiest voice : FIGHT

(jk french agnes nutter’s voice is by far the sexiest)

gender neutral doesn’t ‘quite’ exist in french but pollution has been assigned a female voice actress and masculine pronouns (i’m saying it doesn’t quite exist because officially we have no gender neutral, but it’s a serious wip among lgbt+ circles to the point where it’s started being used in a few medias)

hastur « en attendant qu’un plombier vienne » / « while waiting for a plumber to come » does hell have a special plumber unit or do demons have to call on human plumbers for their pipes damages ? Dang hastur having to call a human plumber for hell’s plumbery is another damn good writing prompt for a crack fic

Michael is called Michel in the subtitles but Michael in the audio *shrug emoji*

EP 5

to get a wiggle on has become « il faut qu’on se remue les fesses », literally « we need to shake our butts » like, yes, se remuer les fesses is a common expression to say « we need to act in order to get things done » but it really casts the image of people shaking their booty to some music and obviously crowley thinks the same Weirdly enough I have almost nothing to say for that episode. Sorry. But we’ve discovered most voice actors and actresses so far and no bit of dialogue really struck me as worth discussing or pointing fingers to mock it.

EP 6

« on va BROUTER quelques derrières » - « we’re gonna lick some butts » OK THIS IS UNQUESTIONNABLY FAR SUPERIOR IN FRENCH THAN IN ENGLISH you thought LICKING butts was good ??? you really thought that ???? AZIRAPHALE HERE SUGGESTS TO GRAZE BUTTS. TO NIBBLE THEM. TO EAT THEM. TO. MUNCH. ON. THOSE. BUTTS!!!! not just licking, guys. This is as serious step beyond licking. (oh yeah he should have said « botter » instead of brouter btw, which is really just kicking, fyi)

« moi je crois en la paix, pétasse ! » wow, language, pepper (fyi i think « pétasse » is far far worse than « bitch » even if it means roughly the same, pétasse is almost never used while bitch is rather common, so it’s a swear word +++)

Dagon sounds like she’s got a nasty cold. #GetDagonIbuprofen2K20

I can confirm that Crowley offers Aziraphale to not just stay at his place, but to move in with him. « tu peux t’installer chez moi si tu veux ». omg they were roommates.

Bad translation strikes again : i don’t know why, but the french dub doesn’t have the « tickety-boo » / « ça gaze » being referenced as Rampa / Aziraphale is being knocked down, which is… a real mistep. It was narratively significant and I’m quite mad the translators missed it.

The Jesse James explanation from Newt has become very nonsensical, instead of the neat and to the point pun « wherever I go I hold up trafic » we’re getting a circonvoluted « because it’s a crime to mechanic’s diligence ». I’m not judging that one too hard, I have no idea how to make it better, and that’s probably how it was translated in the book as well thirty years ago, but it definitely doesn’t have the same impact. On the other hand, it definitely IS a very bad joke that doesn’t even deserve a chuckle, so Anathema’s embarassement really matches the audience’s (aka mine).

OVERALL :

I wasn’t convinced by Crowley… I mean, Rampa’s voice at first, but as the nerdiness showed up it really grew on me. I still think that french dubs have often problems with some voice inflexions every here and there, and for instance in Rampa’s case it was when he was annoyed or frustrated ( at the Globe when complaining about horses and Shakespeare’s plays that aren’t comedies, and also when discussing Azirphale’s magic tricks, it’s like… there is a step between having the right amount of grumpy complaining and overdoing it that is overlooked. It’s overacted, it should have been a bit quieter imo. I don’t mean to criticize voice actors too hard either but as an audience watching french dubs this is a very recurring problem and it always feels off to me. It’s actually one of the main reasons I avoid french dubs whenever possible.)

I have a hard time judging Aziraphale’s voice dub because it clashes so much with both the idea I had formed with it when I read the book and Sheen’s delivery that I just… kinda filtered it. It was too high pitched for me, and too anxious (though for this last point I must admit it could be funny at times, but I’m not fond of this character portrayal). The rest of the cast was rather good, nothing to complain about. There wasn’t anything stellar either, but everything that needed to be conveyed was and it was professionnal. It was also very homogeneous, no voice really struck me as being way too bad or way too good compared to the others, so it was really consistant.

So I don’t have much to complain about overall despite a few wonky translations here and there, BUT there is one thing I felt very robbed of : Crowley calling Aziraphale « mon ange » happens only once, when giving a lift to Anathema, and I’m almost certain they translated it that way because otherwise the joke about Anathama mistaking them for a couple wouldn’t work. So, they were forced to make it that way. The rest of the time Crowley calls Aziraphale « l’angelot », and despite being literally translated by « little angel », it feels sarcastic more than anything else ( the « L’ » in front of « angelot » is part of the reason why, it creates some distance, the other reason being that this word in itself has a very corny vibe and people being affectionnate to each other wouldn’t use it as a term of endearment). So, that’s a shame.

I like the English dub much much MUCH better than the French, but the french wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. The voice actors and actresses were quite good, the dialogues mostly faithful and endearing despite a few really missed steps. It really had its moments. Props to brouter des derrières, that one was fantastic.

#good omens #french #french omens #tv omens #my stuff #meta #review #long post #text post #i hope you found this entertaining :)

591 notes · View notes

incompletionism · 3 years ago

Text

Hands On with... The Outbound Ghost

“Back after so many years?” booms a mysterious voice as we’re transported to an otherworldly realm, filled with glowing orbs that speed towards the titular spook of The Outbound Ghost, “I wonder how you’ve changed.”. Whoever they are, they could just as easily be talking about the Paper Mario series that inspired the game.

Originally an RPG spinoff of the core Mario games, the Paper Mario games soon became a strong series in their own right, characterised by witty dialogue and 2D sprites in a papery 3D world. As the series went on, the games began to move away from their stat-based RPG roots and closer and closer to puzzle/action/exploration hybrids.

This, plus the introduction of new and often intrusive gimmicks in each subsequent entry from Super Paper Mario’s flip mechanic on-wards, alienated a lot of the series’ original fans.

Fans of the first two (Paper Mario on the N64 and The Thousand Year Door on the Gamecube), have since taken matters in their own hands, most notably 2020’s Bug Fables, but with The Outbound Ghost’s Kickstarter coming to an end tomorrow, I thought it was time I took at this promising successor to TTYD’s throne.

The demo (Currently available on Steam!) begins with a car careening down a quiet country road at night. Suddenly, the screen cuts to black and we hear the shriek of tires before a ghost steps out of the flaming wreck.

A cute, blue-glowing 2D sprite that wouldn’t look out of place in a Paper Mario Ghost Mansion, the nameless ghost wears a simple, often neutral, expression and a little tuft of hair. This baby-faced apparition reminds me of Casper the Friendly Ghost just a tad, and the thick white borders around this and every other character sprite calls to mind the borders of stickers, which fits the paper theme well.

Although the first impression of it is consumed by fire, I have to say now that the world in this game is gorgeous. Each individual blade of grass wafts in the breeze and makes the world feel like our own, rather than a series of dioramas. Whether that’s going to be a bridge too far for fans of Paper Mario’s handcrafted world, I’m not sure, but it certainly means this would not run on the N64, and I have to confess that my laptop struggled at times, which makes me question how well it’ll run on the Switch.

That’s a shame, as The Outbound Ghost’s controls feel like they’re better suited for a console than a PC. Even though it uses the classic WASD/arrow keys and you have some kind of crystal that allows you to dash with the space bar, one glaring example of this was when equipping a shovel. Each of the four slots were at 45-degree angles, which was not the most intuitive thing to navigate with four directions, but would be a breeze with an analogue stick.

Also easier with more than four directions to move in are what I call the “faint and have an out-of-(non)body experience in a weird purple dimension where orbs and a mysterious voice just won’t leave you alone” sections. Two of these appear in the demo, and both of them award you with a Brave or Timid soul (represented by a yellow or blue puddle in your inventory) based on how many orbs you let hit you. This feels rather counterintuitive considering the bullet hell sections, which involve dodging projectiles heading your way as usual.

Fans of Danganronpa and Undertale will recognise the bullet hell mechanics well - you control an icon representing you (a mini silhouette of our spirit here) and do your best to dodge a series of obstacles coming your way. These take the place of turn-based combat in The Outbound Ghost and come between dialogue options that slowly fill the meter at the top of the screen.

The only example of this in the demo is a scene involving helping an Outbound resident through the stages of grief over her death. On each turn, you have the choice of three verbs along the lines of Insult, Console, and Explain to best respond to their current stage.

Common sense usually serves you well here - don’t insult an angry person to reason with them, for example - but the choices being coloured Red, Purple and Green does muddy the waters a little. None of the dialogue exchanged in this segment is actually seen, which does detach you from the impact of your choice, even if there’s only one right answer to progress.

I’ve been keeping things light on plot so far, but I’ll divulge a bit now. After you leave the aforementioned car wreck and head into the town of Outbound, you encounter the local (deceased) teen detective, Michael McFly, who suspects you of murdering the entire town some time ago.

You play as the accused ghost, who conveniently has forgotten everything about themself except their name, which is where you come in. As far as immersion goes, a lot of RPGs go the “amnesiac protagonist that you can name” route, but most offer a canon default name (think Chrono in Chrono Trigger) or easter eggs for certain names, neither of which I could find here. However, the ghost is referred to exclusively with they/them pronouns, so absolutely anyone can put themselves in the spectre’s proverbial shoes.

Outside of regular world traversal and picking up everything not nailed down, there are a couple of other mechanics revealed in the demo that I haven’t mentioned yet.

A couple of times, you’re faced with a locked door or gate and have to collect enough lockpicks to complete a slide puzzle, which involves getting cylinders of metal out of the way of a key so you can push it to the lock. Later puzzles involved tilting a 3D box (officially dubbed the girabox) to fit a square peg into its respective hole, so I imagine the full game will push puzzles even further.

Beyond that, star-shaped pads appear on the ground towards the end of the demo, allowing you to traverse the way back to the town with a spot of platforming. A Cards section can be found on the game’s menu, which will be part of the Spades n Souls minigame in the full game.

Over the course of 30 minutes, the demo introduced me to the majority of characters and possibly locations, but I have the feeling that a lot of the game will be spent fleshing out each of their backstories.

Utterly charming and a sight to behold, The Outbound Ghost is certain to make waves next year, but I do wonder which platform it’ll be at home on. Initially aiming for the Switch and PC, the lower technical capacity of the former and the unsuited control scheme of the latter do suggest that its stretch goals of PS and XBox will be the superior versions. But then, it is being ported to phones too, so hopefully I’ll be proven wrong when it releases.

The Kickstarter has a hair under a day of funding left to go, so jump in now if you want to support the project. Do you think this game will be the answer to the question “Where’s my Paper Mario?” or will the lack of traditional RPG elements alienate fans of the series?

6 notes · View notes

danceofsins · 4 years ago

Text

ASHLEY WILLIAMS is a BISEXUAL MERCENARY that works with NEUTRAL (LINS) and some say HE looks awfully like RYAN REYNOLDS. The DEMON-WITCH HYBRID (FIRE) is 1213 years old and has been said to be CHEERFUL & OPTIMISTIC and CHILDISH & OBNOXIOUS. Let’s see what they bring to Maladh…

⇘ ⇘ ⇘ NAME: Ashley “Ash” Williams ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ AGE: 1213 ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ GENDER: Male ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ HEIGHT: 6 ft 2 (188 cm) ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Aromantic ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ SPECIES: Demon - Witch Hybrid (Fire) ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ PROFESSION: Mercenary ⇘ ⇘ ⇘ D.O.B. : 1st April 823

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

FACTS

- Fluent in Gaelic, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Welsh - Is TERRIBLE at normal magic, basic spells are beyond him. - Illusion Magic on the other hand... He’s very adept - Loves to fight and does know various combat techniques. - Favourite drink is a bubblegum daiquiri or candy floss Daiquiri (has a major sweet tooth) - Obsessed with Glitter and Skittes can be bribed with either. - is afraid of ducks ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

HISTORY It was in a brief period of history where Demon-Hybrids were encouraged. In the depths of Glencoe, the williams clan settled. They would actively summon demons to possess their women to then birth demon-witch hybrids. That was how their Father was brought into the world and how Ash and his twin Ross were brought in as well. The Williams had a lot of land. There they cultivated plants for potions and even kept magical creatures. The land was well protected and wanderers would get lost in the woods that surrounded their land. They did not have the best relationship with the rest of the witches that lived in Scotland at the time but they were self sufficient as a community. Still are to this day.

Ashley had a lot of expectations of being the oldest twin. He is expected to take over as family head. Have his own family and pass on the tradition. Ash was never a fan of tradition. Nor was he a fan of behaving. He skipped classes constantly and was dubbed the treickster in their wee community. No one was safe from his pranks growing up, and it was how he learned to use Illusion magic. He would also venture to nearby villages that had regular humans and would prank them too. This did not go down well with his father and he would come back to a beating.

Eventually, when Ash was old enough, he left and took Ross with him. Though Ross was more sensible, he went with his twin to keep an eye on him. Though his father sent ment to track them down and drag them back. This has happened many times. Soon enough Ross took the hit and decided to stay. Hopeing that by having one of them maybe they can placate their father. This pissed Ash off and he was about to destroy the family home when Ross managed to stop him. Told him to see the world now that he couldn’t.

So Ash was on his own, moving from town to town living a vagrant life. Though at least this way he could be unapologetically him. His life has taken him many places and the thing he liked to focus on the most was fighting. He often got in fights for winding up the wrong person or flirting with the wrong person. So he learned to fight and found he rather enjoyed it. So travelled far and wide learning from those willing to teach him different combat skills.

Ross eventually called him to Maladh, a city where Ash did not need to hide what he was either. Ross has settled there with the family and though he knows Ash won’t patch things up with dad he wants him to be slightly more involved with his own family.

#Intro :: Ashley Williams #Ashley Williams

1 note · View note

hwalovs · 5 years ago

Text

Humanities Wings | San

Pairing; San, Reader Warnings; Mentions of gore and death, Attack on titan Au! San’s a baby boy, You’re a fat bitch oops Genre; Angst, fluff Word count; 2k Summary; San decides to drop in while you’re doing paper, taking it upon himself, he decides to bring up an event from the recent expedition.

A/n; i wrote this randomly while re-watching attack on titan edits over bts’ Not Today.

The sun from the large window behind you wasn’t casting light in as it once was, and the soldiers once in the training grounds below were inside the mess hall eating the same boring food they got everyday.

Your back and neck hurt, pains shooting down to your legs and hands cramping from the continuous paperwork Hongjoong insists you have to do as the captain. Commander Hongjoong was a great guy, the perfect person to be called Commander, truly. He had a stern gaze, did what was best for the rest of the regiment, and always knew when to call it quits while on expeditions outside the walls.

You were the captain of the Special Operations squad, a squad containing soldiers that were more talented than the others; stronger, faster, more intelligent during expeditions. Your squad was the first made, you always picked between the top two from the top ten soldiers fresh from training. It wasn't a surprise that you’d lose one or two members from your squad every expedition. Always having to add a new person or two every spring after the most major expedition in the winter. Between the 5 members on your squad, one was never killed, always making it back by your side with only a scratch or two. His name was Seonghwa, top of his class and extremely skilled in all categories.

Being said Captain of the Special Operations squad, it made you extremely important in the regiment. Being dubbed ‘Humanities Wings’ and Hongjoong’s closest friend.

The other squad leaders didn't mind not being on top, they were all ranked by talent, the lowest being Squad Wooyoung. Wooyoung and his squad focused solely on experimenting and collecting data on the titans that lurked outside the walls surrounding the cities. Above him was Squad Yunho, Yunho was a quiet, gentle giant. Being one of your close friends and always giving the best hugs, he always lost the most squad members while on expeditions, some leaving a mark on his heart more than others.

Last but not least, the man that came a close second to you, was Squad San. San was dubbed ‘Humanity's Strongest Soldier’ and with good reason, he was once a criminal in the underground city, fighting everyday to live. You were the only one that was able to beat him in hand to hand combat, which made his ego deflate just a little every time. His squad barely had any casualties, maybe once every two years. He got to choose his squad members just like you did, but got to choose from the top ten, not the top two like you.

Glancing to the top of your desk, there laid a large bulky yellow envelope. Inside contained the two patches from the fallen in your squad, you reached up and grabbed said envelope. Opening it and holding the two bloodied patches in your hand while leaning back in your chair. One belonged to a new recruit, she looked scared before the expedition, and screamed bloody murder while being chewed in half by a titan. She hesitated going to kill it, causing her own doom. The other belonged to a boy you picked a few years ago, you didn't think he’d die, you blocked off how he died in your memory.

Leaning down and opening the last drawer on your desk, you dropped the patches in, letting them lay with the other patches that already occupied the space. Sighing, you grabbed an empty sheet of paper and began writing a letter to their families, saying how they served humanity strongly and bravely.

A knock at your door took your attention away from your writing, saying a quiet and rough “Come in,” before looking back down.

The sound of the door opening echoed throughout the room, clicking of the uniforms leather boots against the floor coming closer to you before you heard them sit down in a chair in front of your desk.

“You’re going to permanently form your neck like that if you continue to sit like that,” You sighed, looking up and meeting eyes with San.

“I cant write sitting up straight like you can, you idiot. Now, what do you want? I have paperwork to sign and letters to write and send out before dinner,” You replied back, looking over his attire. The light brown cropped jacket every soldier is required to wear is nowhere to be seen, most likely propped up on the back of his office chair down the hallway. The cravat he wears around his neck blends into the crisp white shirt he wore. Contrasting deeply against his pale, yet healthy, skin. Usually after expeditions, every squad leader is assigned a mountain of paperwork, taking their attention away from social events, like meetings with their squad, and food, causing the usual glow they give off to fade into a pale color.

“Just came to check on you- after all, you are my favorite squad leader,” he says while giving you a wide smile. His pearly white teeth on display, you glared at him, lips turned down into a sneer.

“I’m your captain, higher ranking, you better remember that.”

“Oh, I remember. I just really, really, like to tease you,” he said, arm coming up to drape over the back of the chair, leg coming up to cross the other. You shook your head slightly, sighing out softly before leaning back down to continue writing.

Some days, San would bring in a book and sit down on the sofa, which was positioned along one of the walls in your office. He’d sit and read until you were ready to go eat, you always thought nothing of it. Other days he’d come in with arms full of packaged sweets and two cups of tea, exclaiming how you needed to cook off and to replenish your sweet supply so he wouldn’t have to worry about his own supply. He’d drop all the sweet on your desk abruptly, yet carefully put down the two elegantly decorated cups filled full tea. Each time he brought a cup, it would be different for you, yet the same for him, always black tea for him.

“I was worried about you this time, you know,” he broke the silence, speaking softly. The pen scratching against paper stopped suddenly, breath coming short. Never, ever did you like talking about expeditions. It was a waste of time thinking back to how your comrades died gruesomely, grieving over people who you weren’t close to. San notices when you stop, not bringing your attention back to him.

“You shouldn’t have gone after him, you know, you both couldn’t die. Seonghwa would’ve been fine-“

“He would’ve died if I didn’t do what I did, he would’ve been torn apart and devoured if I didn’t push him,” you glared hard at him, he knew he shouldn’t be talking about it, he knew that you always get harsh and close yourself off anytime he brings up a close death to young Seonghwa, you always managed to save him.

“How do you know? Maybe he was luring it so he could make a clean kill, maybe-“ you cut him off once again,

“Wooyoung checked his gear when we came back, it was broken, must have locked up when he went in for the kill. If I didn’t do what I did, he’d be dead right now. My best- my top soldier would be dead, and I cannot have that,” you stressed out, finally looking up to San. His lips pursed, looking down to the floor and grimacing slightly at how dirty it was.

“I know you did what you thought was right, but it would’ve cost you your life. Don’t you see that? The regiment would’ve lost their best soldier,” San said, his voice rising slowly as he continued. You narrowed your eyes, leaning back once more.

“And what if It did, hm? I bet you’d be damn happy if I was gone, at least you wouldn’t have to fight for my title anymore,” you sneered, voice staying level. Sans featured morphed then, eyes narrowing and mouth opening slightly while scoffing. He rose from the chair, slamming his hands down on your desk, a loud ‘bang’ resonating around the room.

“My god, (y/n), you really think this of about some damn title?! I almost had a heart attack when I saw you go after him, I almost lost you. And for the love of god, I am not fighting for your title. I think you rightfully deserve it, not me. I came in here to tell you that I was worried and I was happy you’re alive, but you’re always that bitch aren’t you? Making everything about everybody else,” he yelled, you sat in shock, San never yelled at you like this.

“Let me worry about you for once! Let me care about you because I want to, not because we’re comrades.” He stated, pushing up from your desk. He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back from his eyes.

You felt your chest contract then, heart dropping at what he was saying. Your stomach did a few flips, taking in how his eyes were full of hurt and anger. Have you taken it too far this time?

Silence filled the office, his gaze casted to the floor. Either he was trying to find something to say, or waiting for your reply.

“You know I don’t want anybody to worry about me, not with our line of work, San” you said softly back, finally finding your words. He chuckled softly, hands finding his hips. He looked back at your, red beginning to rim his eyes. You felt a bolt of worry shoot down your body, mind blurry and feet getting cold from blood loss.

“Then I guess I should’ve found a different line of work, huh?” He sounded so hurt, so lost.

“What did you come in here for, San, really,” you spoke softly, the thought of being any louder scared you, for the first time something scared you.

“I came to talk to you, about this,” he gestured between you both, “but it seems like you don’t feel any type of way I do,” voice cracking, San takes a step back. You stand suddenly, and his eyes shoot up to yours as if you suddenly screamed out. You rounded your desk at the speed of light and wrapped your arms around his middle. You could feel his breathing stop, he didn’t move.

You and San, captain and squad leader. There were unspoken feelings from between you both, you did take note in it all, in all of his hints. From the way he glanced at you during meetings, the way he sorted the candy so that you got all the good kind. How his brows furrowed when you took it too far during training, how he seemed close to tears when he saw you get smacked out of the air like a fly on an expedition years ago. How he would be the one waking you up when you slept in, making sure you got the best looking bread and the hottest soup during meals. How he would offer to take some paperwork so you didn’t have to overwork yourself.

“You never know what another person feels, San,” you began, cheek pressed against his chest.

“I didn’t say anything since I wanted to protect us both, I didn’t-don’t-want to start anything if it means one of us will get hurt in the end,” his check collapsed with a sob, taking in your rejection hard, beginning to pull away. You quickly tighten your grip, fear lacing your veins.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything for you, because I do. I feel for you as strongly as you feel for me, but the last thing I want is for you to grieve over me,” finally he wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly against his chest.

“I could protect you, we could protect each other, we could make it work,” he pleaded, tear dropping from his nose to your cheek. You felt your eyes get hot, you never cried.

“I just don’t want to lose you after this,” he whispered softly, leaning his chin on top of your head.

You knew it was wrong, wanting to start something with him when the possibility of death was inevitable, but the never ending thought of having him, holding him, finally basking in the feelings you kept locked away in a cage so long, felt too good to let slip away once more.

“Okay”

A\n; oops

#ateez #ateez san #san #ateez seonghwa #ateez angst #ateez imagines #ateez oneshot #hongjoong #ateez yunho #mingi #san imagines

45 notes · View notes

spinji · 5 years ago

Text

50 Games in Quarantine (Part 2: My Busted Ass Nintendo DS)

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded

WHOOOOO boy I can see why this entry in the franchise has been kicked down five stories worth of stairs by the community. Story-wise it’s…it’s Kingdom Hearts. It’s convoluted, it’s complicated, and it directly impacts the major entries in the series so study up. The way Kingdom Hearts is written has never bothered me because of how fun the gameplay is. BUT that is exactly where this game’s problem lies. This was when KH started getting a bit too cute with the skill tree system. It’s the DS so of course combat is going cramp your hands to shit. But you don’t get to be comfortable with any battle systems since ever world changes up either the boss fights or the entire level. The Wonderland boss took me TWO HOURS because I was still working out the controls for it. The cutscenes on my 1.5 remix is enough for me. 3/10

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days

We’re not done with this series by a long shot, buckle up. While re:Coded is frustrating 358 is just kind of…dull. I do enjoy that we got a story with Roxas and the organization, but the mission system makes the game feel like a slog and extremely limit your exploration. Also, your level ups take up inventory space…. I’m get real fucking sick of your stat systems Nomura. 6/10

Cooking Mama

This may be one of the oldest DS games in my possession outside of the nintendogs game that came with the system itself. It’s old enough that my mother wrote my name on it in case it got lost. That’s how far we’ve gone back. Looking back on it now though…it’s pretty bare bones. Cooking each of the meals boils down to the same 12 minigames with a few more that only show up maybe twice in the whole game. It was great for me to relax with as a kid but now the game does not hold my attention to be much fun playing. 5/10

Boing! Dokomadake

Fucking uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh mushrooms. 3/10

Winx Club: Mission Enchantix

Okayokayokay! Hear me out here! This game is fucking great! I admit that part of that is nostalgia blindness because the 4kids dub of Winx Club is my childhood with season 3 being my favorite. I remember trying to track this game down for years after getting my paws on it through gamefly. When I finally did I didn’t put it down for entire weekend. A decade later and I just did the exact same thing! I do think you need the context of Winx Club for a game like this because not only covered season 3 and ONLY season 3 but it also cuts the story to ribbons with most plot points mentioned in a single dialogue box followed by a bit crushed clip from the show. The story mode isn’t all that exciting, I beat it on hard and only died to three endgame bosses. But the real gold is in the arcade games. Each game is an interesting take on its respective genre and works well for each of the characters they represent (Musa’s is a rhythm game, Techna’s is a big brain puzzle, etc) but just…stuff like needing to change between instruments in a rhythm game or a time-based match-3 game. You don’t see that often and when it comes to DS licensed games they did not need to go this hard. 10/10

#50 game quarantine #game reviews #cooking mama #kingdom hearts #358/2 days #re:coded #winx club #dokomadake

7 notes · View notes

simonsaidthat · 5 years ago

Text

First Time Reading All of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, 4th Best

Trying to catch up on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure so that I can even the playing field with my friends, I’ve decided to list off which Parts I’d be genuinely interested in seeing the Anime versions of. So far my ranking includes:

8th Place: Phantom Blood (Part 1) 7th Place: Battle Tendency (Part 2) 6th Place: Stone Ocean (Part 6) 5th Place: JoJolion (part 8)

I said this one was a toss up between itself and JoJolion, but ultimately I think having a less bizarre continuity than Part 8 helped tip the scales in it’s favor.

Part 5: Vento Aureo/Golden Wind

(Because this one is the latest to have an anime adaption, and I have at least one friend who has not finished watching the series, I’ll try to keep spoilers to an even greater minimum.)

One of the problems I had stated concerning Stone Ocean was “it’s reverence for Part 3″ trying to be a direct sequel to Part 3 or at least try to elevate the “Legacy of Part 3″, which burdened itself onto the story of Jolyne Kujo who had nothing to do with DIO or his posthumous plans. It isn’t even really about Jolyne reflecting on the relationship with her father. The entire story is kinda weighed down by the continuity of being a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Part 5′s Golden Wind on the other hand strangely isn’t. It’s not trying to be a sequel to Part 3. It just... kind of ends up being another Part 3.

You’d think that that the story of Giorno Giovanna, the son of the major antagonist for 2 separate JoJo Parts would have a greater focus on his complicated legacy, being technically a member of the Joestar family. Or for there to be one character who had met DIO somehow recognize Giorno as the vampire’s offspring, resulting in a brief period of mistrusting the main hero.

But nothing really comes from being DIO’s son. There’s lip service to the audience about “Nature vs Nurture”, but ultimately as far as I can tell, the sole purpose of having Giorno be DIO’s son, is solely for the Audience’s benefit and for the Author’s justification of having a Joestar protagonist without skipping too far into the future.

And to be perfectly honest, Part 5 is all the better for it.

The lesson I learned through reading Part 6 was that too much continuity causes a lock-out for potential new readers if they just want to jump into any one of the individual 8 parts. So the less continuity there is, OR the less the story actively cares about the continuity, the quicker it’ll be to just enjoy the ride.

(References are safer and not the same as continuity).

As far as the Continuity of Part 5 is concerned, it starts with a cameo from the previous entry to serve as the point of view until the story is comfortable focusing in on the protagonist, then the cameo character is completely dropped, never to be seen again. Giorno is the son of DIO but his lineage is never meaningfully brought up in the story, and the Golden Arrows established in Part 4 as a means to grant Stands to individuals are brought back to justify an entire organization spread out across the country to have enemy Stand Users.

Incidentally the application of the Golden Arrows are fairly straightforward in Part 5, with a great “initiation” ritual that makes the organization feel grander, but I still think the Golden Arrows as a concept are a step in the direction of “over-thinking things”.

(While there are explanations for Stand Powers in Part 7 and 8, the origin becomes less of a focus and people can “just have stands” for narrative expediency. I’m sure by Part 9 or 10 we’ll finally just have X-men “mutants”).

The last thing I’ll say about Continuity is that Golden Wind probably fairs best among the entire JoJo Anthology (second only to Part 2 being a direct follow up on the story of the Stone Masks and Vampires as established in Part 1), and even though there are few characters with direct connections to previous Parts, it treads through familiar enough ground to become probably “the best version of itself”, or at least the “best sequel series”.

What I’m trying to say is: Part 5 is an argument in favor of advancing the continuity of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure... but Part 6 is an argument against it, resulting in the Part 7 soft-reboot.

But even if Part 5 is the “Best version of itself”, maybe even the “best JoJo”, if we’re talking the culmination of all these stories from Parts 1-5; I don’t know if I liked any of the characters.

When writing about Part 2, I said that Joseph, Caeser and Lisa Lisa had the best group dynamic/personalities, and I said that Part 8 had my favorite Stand Powers, but I think Part 5 has the best “Team of Stand Users”. To be clear I’m not saying I like any of the individual members of the Hero Team, or that the Hero Team has a better dynamic than the Trio in Battle Tendency; but as a group, a gang, a unit, a party, an armed force, a team, the hero cast of Golden Wind might be the most strategically cohesive and complimentary group of mercenaries of all 8 JoJo’s.

Like most JoJo’s will have a dedicated healer in the Party, but we’ve also got 2-3 Fighters, 1 Extreme Heavy (that was so broken that the Author had to kick the character out of the story) and 2 different Support/Reconnaissance members with their own unique fields.

They display the best visually engaging teamwork during combat, but outside of it I thought they were kind of “amusingly obnoxious”. Their dynamic/relationship to each other kind of reminds me of the O.G. Ninja Turtles from the 80′s Cartoon (this was probably the best compliment that I could have given them when it was sort of intended to be a criticism).

Also, and I feel like this is kind of a cheap shot, but I think their clothes are dumb. Granted Josuke of JoJolion is still the silliest looking JoJo, but Giorno is definitely a close second.

I’ll say this though, Part 5 character designs might be the most... “Araki”, of all 8 JoJo’s as well (lending further to the idea that Golden Wind might be “Peak JoJo”), and even I’m not entirely sure what that means. Like, all the Men have transitioned from being impossibly bulky to androgynous thin, everyone wears some degree of revealing clothing, their gunman in tiger pants looks like he’s wearing a ball of Ham on his head, it’s kind of distracting.

Of the characters that I might like, the closest I can think of is Bruno Bucciarati and Doppio, the former being the cool-headed, mentor type (the Piccolo of the group) and the latter for... okay I genuinely like Doppio, but he might just barely be spoilers for the production of the English Dub of Part 5, so I won’t say any more.

I like their pet turtle-and-living room.

I’m admittedly a little disappointed in the main villain though. He’s perfectly functional for getting the story where it needs to go, but I kind of wish there was more to him than what seemed to be just a reveal of what he finally looks like. And honestly outside of his hair colour, I wish the villain looked more like Trish, maybe even being a female villain or Trish herself. I don’t know, something to help justify why his paranoia locked himself away so completely that no one knew what he looked like, only for the audience to finally see his true form and... it’s just another dude. A JoJo, androgynous dude sure, but still just a dude.

Golden Wind might be the most Clever, most Cohesive chapter in the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Anthology.

...it’s just not as fun as some of the other entries.

(Also could we maybe not have a stand that impregnates a woman to manifest a robot baby to attack the hero when your stand could instead be, I don’t know, a robot baby that attacks people without the r*pe?! Is that so hard to ask?)

#jojo's bizarre adventure #vento aureo #golden wind #giorno giovanna #part 5

10 notes · View notes

geneticmisfit · 5 years ago

Text

TIMELINE.

HIGH SCHOOL:

Freshman Year

-DECEMBER OF 2015 -Gains his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider during a class trip to Doctor Curt Connors’ lab in Empire State University. -Spends the Christmas Break discovering and learning about his abilities, makes his First Suit out of some old pajamas.

-JANUARY 2016

-Being a kid and wanting to make a quick buck with his abilities, he enters a wrestling competition against Crusher Hogan.

-It’s the classic wrestling origin. Peter gets swindled out of money, a burglar steals money from the fight manager, Peter lets the Burglar go out of anger and spite for the manager. -Uncle Ben is murdered, Peter goes after the assailant and is horrified to discover it is the same Burglar he had let go earlier. -When you do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you. -Guilt stricken, he realizes the importance of Power and Responsibility and starts to fight crime, initially stopping small crimes, petty robberies, etc.

MARCH TO JUNE 2016:

-Rumors of an Insectoid-Man spread quickly throughout the underworld, it is initially believed to be a Lie made by crooks who want to dodge blame, but more and more YouTube videos of a man in a red and blue pajamas doing extraordinary feats quickly kills that possibility. -At the recommendation of his teachers, Peter starts interning at Connors’ Lab in ESU, it allows him to get a closer look at the kind of spiders that bit him, and leads him to discover that the irradiated spiders are a project Connors is working on under the funding of Oscorp. -During his crime fighting, he unknowingly halts several of The Big Man’s jobs. -Frequently swings into and stops the crimes of Alex O’Hirn and Flint Marko. -He runs into his first Out of the Ordinary Bad Guy when he ends up fighting Stilt-Man, instead of going for his legs he just punches him out cold.

CIVIL WAR INCIDENT - JUNE 26TH 2016

This is where the first of the several big canon rewrites comes in. For starters, the Airport Fight happens in New York instead of Germany, and Tony does not recruit Peter for his cause or give him the new suit. What happens is as follows,

-Peter sees the news of The Winter Soldier’s attack on United Nations. ( For the purposes of this rewrite, let’s say Bucky gets extradited to the U.S. for interrogation and trial and he is held in the same SHIELD base Steve woke up from his coma or whatever ) -Peter and Ned argue about Spider-Man not going for Stilt-Man’s legs during their fight. -Hearing the news of JFK suddenly closing down and rumors of people spotting ‘Very Serious Government People’ , Peter puts the two and two together and leaves abruptly, heading to the Airport in hopes of ‘Auditioning’ for the Avengers, because that’s what you do when you are a 15 year old with superpowers. -Beginning of the airport fight and Steve and Tony’s argument happens the same, majority of the fight happens the same way. -Peter, as Spider-Man, jumps into the fray during the Line Up. He immediately swings to Tony’s side because Iron Man is the hero he idolizes the most at that point in time. -Tony and Peter banter, with Tony not wanting a kid there and Peter being a dumbass kid and wanting to impress Tony. -Peter does not fight Steve, he is only there to take down Bucky and Prove His Mettle as a superhero. -The entire sequence with Bucky and Sam versus Spidey happens as shown. -Seeing Giant-Man appear and grumbling himself about the whole Stilt-Man argument still, Peter realizes he can go for Scott’s legs to take him down and does the whole AT-AT takedown move. -Gets knocked back onto the ground like in the movie, Tony goes to check on him to make sure this dumbass kid didn’t get himself killed, seeing he is alive and well, Tony is impressed but he tells Peter to go home. -Bedroom scene occurs as a post-credits scene, it becomes less about Tony recruiting Peter to his side and more about figuring out what the deal with this Spider-Man Kid is, leaves the suitcase with the Stark Suit as he leaves, says they’ll be in touch.

HOMECOMING - END OF AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 23RD 2016 / SOPHOMORE YEAR

-Peter turns sixteen in August 10th. -The movie happens largely the same -a Film by Peter Parker and the Limo Conversation naturally doesn’t happen considering the afromentioned changes to Civil War. -Tony does not save Peter from drowning, Peter gets out of the lake on his own. Reason for this change is that this scene makes Tony way controlling and uncaring towards Peter? Which, compounded by the following scenes, really paints Tony in an awful light. It also makes it more impactful that the next time, and thus the first time, Peter properly interacts with Tony since Civil War is in the direct aftermath of the Ferry Fiasco when Tony comes to collect the suit. They are then both valid in their arguments in that Peter has let the Stark Suit’s abilities get to his head and act way reckless than he should, ( Stark Suit thus serving the same narrative purpose as the Symbiote Suit ) but it also makes Peter valid in that Tony has been completely ignoring Peter ( at least on the surface / from Peter’s point of view ) until it was too late. -Rest of the movie unfolds as shown. -Toomes is Peter’s first proper Super Villain.

OCTOBER 2016 - MAY 2017

-Toomes’ arrest causes his Alien Weapons empire to fracture and for alien tech to be more readily available to the highest bidder ( In the movie it seems like Toomes really wanted the sales to be more gradual and under the radar ) -Shocker breaks away from Toomes’ crew and ends up joining the Enforcers, working for Hammerhead, who works as the Right Hand Man for The Big Man. -Spidey’s encounters with the Enforcers leads Peter to learn about the existence of The Big Man. -Phineas Mason is still at large, Peter dubs him ‘ The Tinkerer behind Toomes ’ toys ’ because he does not directly know who he is but highly suspects his existence. -A Mysterious Benefactor starts bankrolling experiments for Super Mercs, armed with the alien tech, with the, initial, goal of ‘distracting’ Spider-Man from the Finer details of The Big Man’s organization (if he’s too busy fighting Super Villains, he’d be too busy to stop Illegal Shipments ya kno). -Alex O’Hirn undergoes the procedure to become the Rhino, having the experimental alien armor fused to his skin, and only able to perspirate through his face. It is due to this fact Peter manages to take him down the first time, ‘ overheating ’ him to get him to pass out. -During this incident, Spidey gets Rhino to spill the identity of the Big Man, one L. Thompson Lincoln, aka Tombstone. -It is also during this time Spidey has his first run-in with Captain George Stacy. -He goes to visit Tombstone to tell him he knows about him, promptly gets his ass kicked and high-thwips it out of there.

THANOS INCIDENT - MAY 2017

Welcome to the Big Canon Rewrite Number Two, here, Peter does not go to Titan. First part of his appearance happens as shown, with Peter seeing the giant Q ship up in the sky and sneaking out of the bus to help Tony and co. fight the Aliens, but after losing Strange to the ship’s tractor beam, he stays on Earth and helps with the clean-up in the aftermath. Maybe even bumping into a few Defenders while doing so wink wink nudge. As a result, he does not get the Iron Spider-Man suit, sorry Marvel’s toy department.

ENDGAME - DATE UNKNOWN

Okay here’s the deal, it literally does not matter how long it has been since they’ve been blipped. Literally anyone important to a plot has been Conveniently Snapped, only reason there is a five year jump is so they can age Cassie so she can become Stature in Ant Man 3, and have Tony have a family for the Drama of it. Literally that’s the only reason, there is a reason why Far From Home makes a joke out of it. So for the purposes of sanity, let’s just say they were snapped throughout the duration of the summer and they conveniently get brought back at the beginning of the school year. -This means Peter is a part of the Final Fight but in his Stark Suit instead of the Iron Spidey suit, he also does not activate Instant Kill (why the FUCK would he, Russos!!!!!) I don’t care either way about the hug, so that’s up in the air, but he definitely does not cling onto Tony’s body lmfao nah. It is nevertheless very upsetting and near-traumatic for him to see someone die in front of him (again!)

JUNIOR YEAR

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2017

-Peter is now seventeen. -And he’s got PTSD like a motherfucker lmfao. -Getting turned into dust and coming back has everyone rattled, so the Criminal Underworld is working overtime. - Captain Stacy comes to Midtown to teach about Criminology, and also to keep an eye on his kid considering the circumstances. -Silvio ‘Silvermane’ Manfredi, head of the Maggia, is also due to be released on parole by the end of the year, so various Mob factions are trying to prepare themselves. -As a result, schematics to make more Rhino-like people hit the market, Spidey and O’Hirn actually end up teaming-up together to destroy the schematics, resulting in a three way fight between them, Hammerhead, and the Manfredi mob. -Hammerhead’s recent repeated failures shakes Tombstone’s faith in him. -The Enforcers get fancy schmancy Combat Enhancement Suits, courtesy of The Tinkerer, and Spidey has to deal with them. -Hammerhead stops the Enforcers’ getaway attempt in secret, signaling a rift between him and Tombstone. -Manfredi is released right before Christmas.

JANUARY 2018

-The Gang War(tm) begins in full force. -Spidey’s hands are full navigating the powder keg of a situation, with Tombstone and Manfredi vying for control, with Hammerhead planning something behind the scenes.

FEBRUARY 14TH 2018 -Hammerhead arranges a meeting of the factions in Metropolitan Opera House, without Tombstone’s knowledge. -Once revealed, Tombstone does not take kindly to this disobedience. -Hammerhead reaches his breaking point and attacks Tombstone. -Silvermane decides to take both of them out to eliminate the competition fully. -Silvermane, in a mechanical combat suit of his own (because comics bebey) attacks Tombstone and Hammerhead, resulting in a three way fight. -Spidey arrives and has to fight the three of them. -After a long and exhausting battle, Spidey prevails, Silvermane is arrested once again, L. Thompson Lincoln is publicly revealed to be The Big Man of Crime, and Hammerhead is nowhere to be found. -Tombstone posts bail, but Captain Stacy tells Spidey that his crime empire is crippled and there is a power vacuum. One that a certain Wilson Fisk will take advantage of soon.

LATE FEBRUARY - JUNE 2018

-Spidey is basically doing clean-up duty in the aftermath of the Gang War(tm) -He is trying to find where Hammerhead is, but comes up empty. -All Spidey can find are the rumors that he went back to his old employment under the Maggia. -He takes down last of the known Manfredi fronts before preparing for his Europe trip (it’s the restaurant fight from the FFH trailers)

FAR FROM HOME - JUNE 2018 -Happens largely the way it is depicted in the movie -He does not have the Iron Spider Suit still, in case you forgot. -Smaller differences being Peter being pegged the ‘New Iron Man’ less because of his ‘Mentorship’ under Tony and more because people are just fucking desperate for a new Big Hero, which is where Mysterio comes in. -He sees Ben’s grave instead of Tony’s during the Mysterio Fun Tour of Trauma, Zombie Iron Man still comes out of it tho because Symbolism ( not because Tony is a new Uncle Ben figure, but because it represents Peter not always being able to save everyone, even though Tony’s condition was out of his hands.) -BIGGEST DIVERGENCE: Unless plotted, I generally DO NOT recognize Peter’s identity being outed. There are two options / variations I could go with -Peter IS claimed to be Spider-Man, but after a Movie’s worth of adventures, he enlists the help of either a skrull or Chameleon (Dmitri the Bus Driver in FFH) to have Spidey appear in the same room as Peter and re-establishes his secret identity. -Mysterio just brands Spider-Man as a menace and that’s that. In any case, this leads to..

SENIOR YEAR

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2018

-Peter turns eighteen. -Branded as a menace, Spider-Man is now disliked and hunted by most authorities. -Captain Stacy, however, does not believe Mysterio and is one of Spidey’s few friends still left in the police force. -He also makes numerous remarks towards Peter and Spider-Man that suggests he figured out his secret identity on his own. -Anastasia Kravinoff arrives in New York with the intention of Hunting Spider-Man. -At the same time, Mac Gargan is hired by The Mysterious Benefactor to undergo the Super Merc procedure to hunt Spider-Man. -Kraven has her first encounter with Spidey, in which she manages to tear off a piece of his suit that she later uses to track his scent. -Mr Harrington’s class trip to Bronx Zoo is promptly ruined when Kraven shows up tracking Spidey’s trail. -The publicized skirmish in the Zoo attracts the attention of Gargan, now in a mechanical suit with a long, poison-tipped tail, stylized after Gargan’s favorite arthropod, which easily earns him the nickname ‘Scorpion’. -Spidey manages to escape, but barely. -It all comes to a head in New York Botanical Garden is a totally epic final showdown. -Maybe Rhino gets involved too and it’s a full on Survival of the Fittest in the jungle. -Peter gets stung by the poison tail but manages to shake it off. -He gets speared in the thigh at least once during the battle. -Scorpion and Rhino get imprisoned in the Vault, Kravinoff gets arrested as well but she posts bail and gets out scot free because she’s got Powerful Connections(tm)

JANUARY - MAY 2019

-Doctor Connors achieves a breakthrough on his Cross-Species formula -He tests it on himself, and initially achieves great results by regrowing his arm. -Over the following weeks, however, more and more side effects start to show by patches of green scales on his skin, increased aggression and hostility and occasional lapses in intelligence. -Around March, he has his first Lizard transformation. -Peter suspects it’s Connors, but he does not figure it out until April. -With each transformation, Connors stays as Lizard longer and longer. -I am basically ripping off the plot of the first TASM movie. -Peter and Gwen manage to synthesize an antidote. -Connors has a similar goal as to his movie counterpart, but he decides to Unleash the Lizard virus on top of Empire State Building. Because a) King Kong reference with Lizard climbing the antenna, and b) Connor going from Empire State University to Empire State Building, it’s a fun progression. -Spidey and Lizard fight on top of Empire State, with George Stacy coming to Spidey’s aid. -Spidey manages to administer the antidote to the Lizard, reverting him back to Connors who retains no memories of his actions as the Lizard. -Stacy gets injured by Lizard and before succumbing to his injuries, tells Peter to keep Gwen safe and ‘out of it’. -Lizard’s true identity remains unknown to the public, but Connors decides to relocate his family to Florida to get away from the noise of the city. Before leaving, he tells Peter to seek out his old colleague Otto Octavius if he wants to further his studies.

END OF MAY 2019

-Peter Parker graduates Midtown School of Science and Technology. -He applies and is accepted by Empire State University. Peter does not consider any other college as he wants to stay in New York for obvious reasons.

FRESHMAN UNDERGRAD

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2019

-Peter is nineteen. -He starts his studies in ESU -He is still not the Most Popular -Peter reconnects with Harry Osborn (they are Old Childhood friends and Harry used to be in Midtown for the first year but then he went to Europe, as you do.) -Spidey is still branded as a menace and hunted, though not as ferociously as before as the public’s opinion starts to turn positive ever so slowly. -The Mysterious Benefactor has Alistair Smythe build robotic spiders to hunt and slay the Spider. Like Spider Slayers. Catchy name huh. -Peter has various encounters with Slayers while trying to figure out who is behind them -He eventually discovers it’s Alistair Smythe and tracks him to Oscorp. -Smythe unleashes the Ultimate Spider-Slayer, The Black Widow to try and stop Spidey once and for all. -Fight spills to the power plant, an Oscorp employee who is currently working on the plant, Max Dillon, gets caught in the crossfire and gets electrocuted. -Spidey manages to take down Smythe, Dillon is hospitalized. -Norman Osborn publicly denounces and distances himself from Smythe ( he’s The Mysterious Benefactor if you haven’t caught on yet ) -Norman profits both from making Super Mercs and Spider-Hunters for various factions behind the scenes, and for building housing units to hold said Super Mercs and Spider-Hunters, Vault is his creation. -He is also a terrible dad, but he does genuinely care for Harry, go figure. -Harry starts taking Gloublin Green, an experimental enhancer, to boost his academic and athletic life, as his body is regularly failing due to a hereditary disease (NOT the Goblin disease, the one Harry’s mom had in the PS4 game) -Max spends Christmas in the hospital and gradually transforms into Electro. -Black Cat drops in to give her Christmas Greetings by saying the mob is salvaging the parts from Spider-Slayer fights to re-arm themselves, also notifies him to the existence of a new Big Man consolidating power. -Peter thinks it’s Hammerhead, the only loose end from the previous Gang War, and starts his investigation into him. -Peter discovers Hammerhead leads the Maggia now, having quickly climbed through the ranks after the fallout of the last Gang War.

JANUARY - MAY 2020

-Harry joins the ESU football team, his performance enhanced by The Green. -Electro is Born and he’s Angry -He blames Smythe for his condition and tries to attack Oscorp, not knowing that Smythe is imprisoned. -Spidey arrives and fights him, fight eventually spilling to Times Square -Is it obvious I’ve started ripping off TASM 2 yet or.... -Electro is arrested and sent to Ravencroft for rehabilitation. -The news of a new Big Man starts making the rounds. -Harry’s Green Juicing gets bad, he starts blacking out.

SOPHOMORE UNDERGRAD

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2020

-Peter is twenty. -He starts interning for Otto Octavius after Doctor Connors’ suggestion. -Flint Marko returns after a long absence in the streets, Spidey learns that Marko left the life of crime when he fell in love and got married, but returned back into it once he learned his baby was born with a disease and he needed the money for surgery. -Bet you didn’t expect me to rip off Raimi in this. -Marko is offered money to undergo a Super Merc experiment of his own, inspired by the Elementals Mysterio faked back a few years ago. Experiment uses bio-electricity generated by Electro, but it goes ‘wrong’ and Marko is turned to dust. -Sike he can control it, he’s Sandman now. -Spidey and Sandman fight, once Peter learns of his motives, he tries to get him to stop. -Marko is told to stop the movement of an oil tanker so the new Big Man can siphon it dry. -Spidey and Marko fight on the tanker, tanker explodes, Marko expresses remorse for he only wanted the money and not to hurt anyone, so he helps usher the ship crew to safety and contains the explosion, turning into glass due to the heat. -Sandman is presumed deceased, but he survived and just blew away gently in the wind. -Maybe he’s out there somewhere who knows.

JANUARY - MAY 2021 -Norman discovers Harry’s Green Usage, he gets Harry to stop. -Stupid boy drinking the Green instead of inhaling it like his dad did I mean what -Harry discovers the Green exacerbated the progression of his illness. -Spidey meets Yuri Watanabe, who is the lead detective and later Captain who is after the Big Man and the Mob. -Peter discovers the identity of the actual new Big Man, it’s Wilson Fisk, quickly filling the power vacuum after Tombstone’s defeat. -Spidey and Fisk fight, with Fisk seriously injuring Spidey and him having to swing away.

JUNIOR UNDERGRAD

September - December 2021

-Peter is twenty one. -As Harry’s illness progresses more and more, he and Peter’s friendship is strained, Peter is unaware of the illness. -Norman starts winding down Super Merc experiments as he turns his focus into curing Harry. -He also readies for a mayoral run because he’s nothing if not a multitasker. -Harry wonders if Spider-Man’s abilities can cure him, wants a bit of his blood, Spidey is like ‘ew no wtf’ -Great Harry hates Spidey now. -Desperate, Harry springs Electro out of Ravencroft to sic him on Spidey and make him bleed. -Electro is like ‘Sure’ but once freed, he immediately goes to the Vault to try and kill Smythe. -You just can’t trust bio-electrical beings nowadays. -Spidey fights Electro in the Vault. -Electro cuts the power to the Vault and releases a bunch of inmates, but Spidey stops him before he can cut the power that holds the more super powered inmates. -Electro is imprisoned in the Vault.

MARCH - MAY 2020 -Yeah Peter had a quiet winter for once can you believe it. -Norman is elected mayor of New York, using his role in the building of the Vault to boost his approval ratings, motherfucker was playing the Long Game. -Norman revives his old genetic experiments to find a cure for Harry. -Devil’s Breath experiment is resurrected. -Harry’s condition worsens, Norman decides to send him to ‘Europe’ to heal. -In truth, Harry is in Oscorp in ‘stasis’. -Spidey’s attention turns yet again to the rising gang activity, he channels his focus into taking down Fisk.

SENIOR UNDERGRAD

SEPTEMBER 2020 - MAY 2021

-Pete turns twenty two. -He spends most of the year working on his thesis like a good nerd. -Spidey is occasionally tipped toward Fisk fronts by a Mysterious Goblinafactor -Norman wanted to bust into the Crime Scene being the Goblin and taking over the Big Man’s turfs but Fisk beat him to it so he has to be content with just being the Mayor for the time being -Goblins am I right. -He’s also the one who supplied Silvermane with his own armor. -Also the one who maaaay have broadened the rift between Hammerhead and Tombstone by sabotaging Hammerhead’s plans behind the scenes. -He is the Big Man behind the Big Men if you will. -Anyway back to Peter -Turns in his thesis, graduates ESU. Strength of his thesis is what convinces Otto to have Peter also come into work with him in the Brand New Octavius Industries. -Norman is content to just play the Mayor and let Fisk be as Spidey and Yuri gather more and more evidence.

POST-GRAD / INSOMNIAC’S SPIDEY STUFF -Events of the game happen broadly the same -Fisk is taken down, Mister Negative enters the scene, Devil’s Breath Incident happens and Spidey gets his ass thoroughly kicked by Sable, etc. etc. -Otto turns into Ock. -Ock facilitates the Vault Breakdown (MCU got a Raft up and running and it ain’t in NYC sooo, Vault it is) and forms the Sinister Six. -However instead of Vulture being part of the Sinister Six, it’s Kraven. She’s back for a proper rematch. -Unless plotted, May does not die from exposure to the virus, she just gets really messed up and hospitalized, but she gets cured later. -Events of the DLC happen largely as shown as well, Hammerhead techs himself up, Yuri goes Wraith, Sable kicks Spidey’s ass again but also grows a Heart. Aw. -Osborn resigns in disgrace, but as luck would have it, Fisk and Li’s arrest leaves a nice Goblin-shaped hole in the criminal underworld for Gosborn to fill. -Norman discovers Harry’s ‘cure’ is sorta sentient.

WILL GORMAN GOSBORN FINALLY FACE OFF WITH SPIDER MAN? WILL SPIDEY LEARN THE REAL MASTERMIND BEHIND EVERYTHING? WILL HARRY GET GOOPED? WILL PETER FINALLY DISCOVER WHY KIDS LOVE THE TASTE OF CAP’N CRUNCH?

ALL THAT AND MORE, NEXT TIME ON, THE SPECTACULAR ADVENTURES OF THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN!

#oh yeah this is still canon motherfuckers #after the amount of work I put into it I ain't throwing it away #timeline.

15 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 5 years ago

Text

Headlines

Very few Americans back full school reopening (AP) Virtual instruction. Mandated masks. Physical distancing. The start of school will look very different this year because of the coronavirus—and that’s OK with the vast majority of Americans. Only about 1 in 10 Americans think daycare centers, preschools or K-12 schools should open this fall without restrictions, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. Most think mask requirements and other safety measures are necessary to restart in-person instruction, and roughly 3 in 10 say that teaching kids in classrooms shouldn’t happen at all. Many of the nation’s largest school districts have announced that they’ll be entirely virtual in the fall or use a hybrid model that has children in classrooms only a couple of days a week.

Remote learning? (NYT) The topic of home schooling is suddenly hot. Parents who never before considered home schooling have begun looking into it—especially in combination with a small number of other families, to share the teaching load and let their children interact with others. Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who writes about parenting, has predicted that clusters of home-schooling families are “going to happen everywhere.” Reporter Eliza Shapiro said she thought many families, across income groups, were likely to consider pooling child-care responsibilities in the fall. Children would remain enrolled in their school and would come together to take online classes in the same house (or, more safely, backyard). In some cases, these co-ops might morph into lessons that parents would help lead.

Pompeo wanted to shake hands. Foreign diplomats offered shoulder pats and elbow bumps instead. (Washington Post) During a trip Wednesday to Copenhagen for meetings with the foreign ministers of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the top U.S. diplomat, did not wear a face mask. That led to an awkward diplomatic dance. When he extended a hand in greeting, Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s foreign affairs minister, kept to social distancing guidelines and refused to shake back. Undeterred, Pompeo tried again with the foreign minister of the Faroe Islands, who also declined. The third time was not quite the charm: Pompeo and the foreign minister of Greenland successfully navigated an elbow bump. The diplomats in question were all in proximity to one another and did exchange some shoulder pats.

Trump deploys more federal agents under ‘law and order’ push (AP) President Donald Trump announced he will send federal agents to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration’s intervention into local enforcement as he runs for reelection under a “law and order” mantle. Using the same alarmist language he has employed to describe illegal immigration, Trump painted Democrat-led cities as out of control and lashed out at the “radical left,” which he blamed for rising violence in some cities, even though criminal justice experts say it defies easy explanation. Crime began surging in some cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia when stay-at-home orders lifted. Criminal justice experts seeking answers have pointed to the unprecedented moment: a pandemic that has killed over 140,000 Americans, historic unemployment, a mass reckoning over race and police brutality, intense stress and even the weather. Compared with other years, crime in 2020 is down overall.

Will changes to print outlast the pandemic? (Columbia Journalism Review) More than a hundred news outlets have scaled down their print production since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Some publishers had planned to cut print eventually, but the financial setbacks of the pandemic forced their hand. Others, however, say their print suspension is temporary and worry about their audiences that still largely depend on print. As recently as 2016, the Pew Research Center reported that around half of newspaper readers relied exclusively on the print edition. And last month in Australia, News Corp’s decision to end print production at a number of its newspapers reportedly left older readers feeling isolated and underinformed.

Luxury jet spurned by Mexico’s president returns from U.S. without a buyer (Reuters) The luxury presidential jet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to sell returned on Wednesday to Mexico, more than 1-1/2 years after he sent it to the United States in search of a buyer. Mexico has struggled to sell the opulent Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which the leftist Lopez Obrador has cast as a symbol of excess and corruption under previous governments in a country where around half the population lives in poverty. The jet was acquired by former President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2012 and fitted with marble-lined bathrooms. Reconfigured to fly only 80 people, the plane has a “presidential suite” and a private bath. The sale has been hamstrung in part by Lopez Obrador’s unwillingness to accept offers below a United Nations-backed valuation of $130 million, even as the plane was potentially losing value as it sat unused in southern California.

Virus slams Bolivia as hospitals say: ‘There is no space’ (AP) Police in Bolivia’s major cities have recovered the bodies of hundreds of suspected victims of the coronavirus from homes, vehicles and, in some instances, the streets. Hospitals are full of COVID-19 patients and short of staff, keeping their gates closed and hanging out signs that say: “There is no space.” And the Bolivian government says the peak of the outbreak is not expected until August. Desperation is growing in one of Latin America’s poorest countries, which seems overwhelmed by the virus even as it endures political turmoil stemming from a flawed election and the ouster of President Evo Morales last year. A plan to hold elections in September, seen as a key to stabilizing its democracy, is increasingly in doubt as the pandemic worsens.

Coronavirus cases in Latin America pass 4 million—Reuters tally (Reuters) Brazil registered a new daily record for confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, pushing the total confirmed cases across Latin America past 4 million, according to a Reuters tally. Brazil registered 67,860 additional cases of the virus on Wednesday, along with 1,284 related deaths, bringing total cases in Latin America’s largest nation to 2,227,514 and deaths there to 82,771.

With no Brits, cash-strapped Algarve fights for survival (Reuters) In his near-empty pub in the Algarve in southern Portugal, Samuel Tilley is fuming that coronavirus regulations in his home country Britain are keeping tourists away, further jeopardizing an already gloomy summer season. Usually packed with tourists at this time of the year, Vilamoura is quiet, leaving bar staff at Tilley’s O’Neills pub without much to do but brood over Britain’s decision to leave Portugal off a list of more than 50 countries safe enough for travel without restrictions. Portugal initially won praise for its quick response to the pandemic but a persistent count of several hundred new cases per day concentrated in and around Lisbon in the past two months has worried authorities at home and abroad, leading Britain and other European nations to impose restrictions on travel from the southern European nation. Last year, Portugal welcomed about 2 million Britons, with 64% of them heading to the sunny Algarve, famed for its sandy beaches and golf courses. So far in 2020, only 92,000 Britons have made it the region. Lonely waiters stand outside restaurants with menus in hand but no holidaymakers to speak to.

Turkey’s quiet offensive (Foreign Policy) Turkish forces have moved deep into Iraqi territory in an effort to root out Kurdish militants, who the government claim use northern Iraq as a staging post for operations inside Turkey. Although Turkish troops have been in northern Iraq for some time, the government recently adopted a more aggressive approach, seeking “to destroy the threat from where it begins.” As part of the campaign–dubbed Operation Claw Tiger–Turkey has advanced 25 miles inside the Iraqi border and established 30 military bases. The operation could serve as the prelude to further incursions into Iraq.

India reports record 45,720 new coronavirus cases, deaths rise by 1,129 (Reuters) India reported a record jump of 45,720 in coronavirus infections on Wednesday taking its total number of cases to 1.24 million, the health ministry said on Thursday. India also reported 1,129 deaths for Wednesday, taking the death toll to 29,861. India has the third-highest number of cases after the United States and Brazil.

Beijing’s summer is more oppressive than usual, but most prefer the heat over the virus (Washington Post) All the signs of Beijing’s infernal summer are in evidence. Men playing cards on the sidewalks are sporting their “Beijing bikinis,” their shirts hoisted up over their beer bellies for better air flow, while young trendy types carry personal fans as they walk down the street. People are cooking meat at outdoor restaurants or on little grills on the sidewalk. It’s so hot that Beijingers—usually insistent on body-temperature beverages—are even drinking their beer cold. It could almost be any other steamy July in any other year. But even here, where life is almost back to normal after months of strict controls, the coronavirus remains a lingering menace. Restaurants and malls are open, but to enter, customers have to activate a health code on their smartphones. The code tracks their movements and determines whether they have been to any risky places. Only those with green codes are allowed in. Many offices insist on green codes, too. A red code, or even an amber one, is the scarlet letter of 2020. As countries around the world try to find the balance between health and economic considerations to deal with a second or third—or in the case of the United States, first—wave of the coronavirus, China has found its sweet spot. These controls involve immediate lockdowns, mass testing and the use of surveillance technology to a degree that the ruling Communist Party could have only dreamed about when this year dawned.

China tells US to close consulate in Chengdu in growing spat (AP) China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the western city of Chengdu, ratcheting up a diplomatic conflict at a time when relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades. The move was a response to the Trump administration’s order this week for Beijing to close its consulate in Houston after Washington accused Chinese agents of trying to steal medical and other research in Texas. The Chinese foreign ministry appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision.” Chinese-U.S. relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.

China launches ambitious attempt to land rover on Mars (AP) China launched its most ambitious Mars mission yet on Thursday in a bold attempt to join the United States in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet. Engines blazing orange, a Long March-5 carrier rocket took off under clear skies around 12:40 p.m. from Hainan Island, south of China’s mainland. Hundreds of space enthusiasts cried out excitedly on a beach across the bay from the launch site. It marked the second flight to Mars this week, after a United Arab Emirates orbiter blasted off on a rocket from Japan on Monday. And the U.S. is aiming to launch Perseverance, its most sophisticated Mars rover ever, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next week.

Saudi king, 84, undergoes surgery to remove gallbladder (AP) Saudi Arabia’s King Salman underwent a successful surgery that removed his gallbladder, the kingdom said Thursday, just days after being admitted to hospital over an inflammation of the organ. The king serves as an absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s top oil producers and the site of the holiest sites of Islam. His health remains a key factor watched by observers of the kingdom, as next in line to the throne is his assertive 34-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who could rule for decades.

Going cold turkey in Somalia (Reuters) COVID-induced khat shortage adds to Somalia’s health woes. In sweltering Mogadishu, Sharif Ahmed, 22, tried to attack relatives and neighbors, resulting in an emergency trip to a psychiatric hospital in handcuffs. He is suffering withdrawal from the narcotic leaf khat. Somalia shut down flights in late March to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, meaning the drug could no longer be imported by air from Kenya. That affected users, causing some to go for long periods without sleep. The price of khat surged when the flights were stopped, putting it out of reach for most users and straining resources at Mogadishu’s Habeeb Psychiatric Emergency Hospital.

#headlines #news

1 note · View note

medea10 · 5 years ago

Text

My Review of One Punch Man 2

#one punch man #one punch man 2 #Saitama #genos #garou #fubuki #bang #king

23 notes · View notes

dlamp-dictator · 5 years ago

Text

I’ll keep an eye on this anime. If anything, it definitely looks pretty, the fight scenes have been [done] well so far, and seeing Melida be cute in full color is great. If I just get a decent action series out of this anime, I’ll be happy.

-Allen X, October 22 2019

Well folks, Assassins Pride wrapped up last week and I can safely say I got what I wanted. In the end, I think this was a pretty fun and passable anime to watch weekly. Decent action, decent plot, and a decently written story. Nothing was too offensive or annoying save for one or two moments in the middle, and as much as I felt the show stumbled compared to the manga and possibly the light novel I have hope that this might just get an official translate and... well, you know, do the pacing thing better.

But since I had a habit of covering this thing after every arc I figured I’d give the show some closing thoughts and an overall opinion of the thing at the end. I hope I don’t spend a 1000+ words on this, but... well... I can get pretty wordy when I get a groove, so we’ll see.

But anyway, let’s start with...

The Good

The Visuals

Let’s not mince words folks, this anime is pretty. It might be because I’m a sucker for night aesthetic, but the one disadvantage of the black-and-white manga is that were really never got to see just how dark the world of Flandor really was. To quote myself again:

(This is a) world trapped in perpetual night with warriors of light being the only thing keeping away further darkness, along with the last bastion of humanity being a literal chandelier city in case you missed the symbolism

And nothing makes you really feel that more than that first scene of Kufa walking through the quiet streets on his way to the Angel estate, seeing not only how dark the world is from the night sky above, but also how artificial the light within it really is. The dark aesthetic really helps a lot of the other characters pop out a lot more in terms of the actual color. Mana is literally a glowing, flaming aura that lights the darkness like a candle. The two main girls in this series are a bright blonde and white-haired girl that stand out against the black night sky like the sun and stars.

Again, symbolism.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

The Action

Not to say this is Trigger or Madhouse or Perriot, but it is pretty nice that we get a decent action scene every arc. Something I definitely appreciate is that they show contrast between Melida’s kind nature and friendly attitude with her brutal and dirty fighting style.

See, Melida is a kind and gentle girl that would rather not use violence save for fighting demons, but if she has to fight she’ll use every dirty trick in the book. She’ll throw sand, she feint attacks, she go into brawling when close enough, she fake being injured to make her opponent let their guard down. It’s a nice little story detail that shows you this noblewoman was, in fact, trained by a ruthless assassin that taught her to actual fight for survival instead of like a nobleman. Her taking down stronger students by doing all but outright cheat is almost hilarious to watch sometimes.

The Overall Narrative

For as fast as the pacing was I feel like I got a good idea of Melida’s story and the trials she has to endure as the “Incompetent Talented Girl”. This story focused on Melida more than Kufa, which is something I’m very thankful for. It’s always tempting to switch over the OP male MC to overpower his way through things, but to my pleasant surprise this only happened in one arc, and it was an arc that had some justification for it, though I really didn’t care it myself. Save for the third arc everything was to show Melida’s growth from a shy and bullied girl to a competent swordswoman that can even hold her own against the other heirs of the three noble houses.

But that’s enough of the good, so now we have to talk about...

The Bad

The Pacing

There’s no getting around this. Even if I didn’t already read bits of the manga online ahead of time the pacing for this show is still insanely fast. Even taking out the fact that this is an adapted story we’re never given enough time to absorb certain scenes. And the worse is that a lot of the arcs have a focus on intrigue and mystery. Luna Lumiere Selection Tournament Arc had two major mysteries: who was the one that changed the plaque and who is Black Madia masquerading as? They especially took care to make Mule seem like a very suspicious party only to reveal it was a third party in the very same episode. The mystery of Black Madia was done better, though by necessity as she couldn’t reveal herself until the very last moment of the arc. This was fine in the anime, but it could had used an extra episode or two of build-up between scenes. The arc at Rosetti’s hometown was a huge mystery that had Kufa under believable suspicious, and was actually done pretty well by not revealing the true culprit until the last episode of it, it also helps that Kufa was under suspicion from the first episode of it. The Library Exam Arc was... done alright, but it could had used an extra episode or two to cook and add some more tension between the Angels and the other nobles, but it was done well.

And that’s the main issue. Every arc could had used one or two extra episodes to really set the scene. Nothing was done poorly in terms of structure and narrative, but everything could had been better had things slowed down. Despite the action this show isn’t a shounen or action genre, it’s a political drama with a combat school setting.

This might also be just the issue of this being a 12-episode anime adapting a novel. A novel has the advantage of progressing its plots slowly with the knowledge the reader has the entire book to finish either that arc or at least most of it. If that reader skips around because they’re bored that says more about them than the author. With an anime or television show you don’t have that luxury, you only have a few episodes at best to keep a viewers attention, especially for something like the seasonal anime lineup where you have to keep audience retention every week and your competition is the other 50+ anime out there that might possibly be more interesting. I pity whatever decent anime has to contend with the newest My Hero Academia season along with everything else.

I understand the need to want to just show off the cool bits to keep audience attention, but it came at the cost of the narrative. Even if this thing still holds together well it could hold together much better if they only focused on the first two arcs of this series instead of trying to shove in four, but alas...

In any case...

Other Smaller Issues that Bugged Allen

Really, the pacing was the biggest issue in this anime, but I do have my fair share of gripes and nitpicks too. I’ll keep this in list form for the sake of simplicity.

Kufa having access to potions/medicines that can not only kick-start a mana-less person into having it, but one that can also turn half-Lyncrophyes back to humans opens up quite a few plotholes and issues. I’m sure the light novel and manga explain their existence better, probably something to the effect of them being extremely experimental and a deadly risk, but the anime doesn’t explain that and it can take you out of the story if you care about the world-building.

I feel like side characters like Nerva, Mule, and Salacha were suppose to get more screentime, or at least more development, but just didn’t due to the pacing and runtime. You get the basic idea of everyone, but it feels like the show wanted to do more with them, or at least that the source material probably did more with them.

The occasional moments fanservice don’t work too well in this series. It’s nothing to the level of Senran Kagura or Ikkitousen, but when your cast consist of mostly middle school aged girls the most fanservice that should be seen is a beach episode or a sleepover episode. And while this anime did have a sleepover episode it still also took time to put some of this girls in... compromising positions. My general rule of fanservice is that high school age characters doesn’t really count due to the wonky-ness of hormones act and how most media east and west tends to treat high school characters anyway, but middle school kids... yeah no. That’s just my morals, but it’s still a detractor from the anime.

The third arc kind of felt pointless since it tried to focus on Kufa’s relationship with Rosetti. I didn’t really need to know about Kufa’s past, and connecting it to Rosetti just... doesn’t feel right given how he dismissive treated her in the first arc. Making Rose a half-vampire was also pretty pointless to me. It feels like they were trying to give Kufa a harem when this show is mostly focused on Melida, and the most interesting part about his past is a mix of his life in the dark zone of the world and his past as an assassin, not his relationships with his apparent adoptive sister. It just felt... really focused and a waste of time. They could had cut out this arc, gave each other arc an extra episode to build up some things and be none the weaker for it.

The Dub

The nice thing about VRV is that I can see the HiDive dubcast along with the show. I only watched a handful of episodes, but here are my general throughts for those curious. Overall, the dub is fine, but like most HiDive Dubcasts it feels... off. Not bad, but it feels like they needed to be 4 or 6 weeks off the original release instead of 2 or 3 to get the director in the right place. I feel like most of the issues with this dub come from the direction and scripting rather than the actual voice-acting. But just to keep this short.

Kufa sounds too flat. This was a pretty common dubbing issue back in the early 2000s when trying to translate/localize a stoic, serious character. The director is probably trying to make the actor emulate the original Japanese voice acting and Kufa just sounds too flat and bored at times because of it. Most character like this tend to be given a more deadpan and sarcastic edge to them in English to make the have a little more emotion. In Japanese that flat tone is meant imply stoicism, resolve, and masculinity. In English... that’s just sounding flat and bored. Again, most characters like this are usually given a different kind of tone to keep them from sounding bored. For Kufa I’d say a more strict and stern tone of voice would help given he’s an instructor, almost like a even-toned drill sergeant issuing orders. He does sound like that from time to time when actually instructing, but I wish he kept that persona. Though that’s just my take.

Nerva and Rosetti... just don’t hit it for me. I don’t mind the difference in tone, but the script doesn’t lend itself to it. Rosetti’s actor makes her sounds much more like an adult in English, but her actual lines are still childish, which makes her come off as a little... cringe. Same with Nerva, but I’m willing to overlook it since she’s more of a side character anyway. Mule actually sounds pretty good in this regard. Her tone sounds less like a middle schooler and more like a young college woman, but since a lot of her actual lines has an air of condescending smugness it works out, though her actor sounds like she’s reading the script and not acting from it.

The scripting in general seemed to really want to follow the subbed version and it falls flat because of it. When I read the subtitles that take the world, systems, and general wackiness of this subpar anime so seriously it’s fine. But to actually hear it in a language I understand... it kinda’ shows how lacking the series is. I’m not saying they should had added jokes or anything, but it feels like they could had made the dialogue a bit more casual than it was in the subs so that the lines flowed a little better. HiDive dubs, their dubcasts especially, tend to feel like a product of the early 2000s rather than something current.

Thoughts and Recommendations

Overall I do recommend this series as a decent action show with some nice colors to it and a killer OP and ED, but there's a lot better I could recommend too that does everything this anime does but better.

So... here are a recommendations I have if Assassins Pride didn’t really click with you as much as you hoped.

A bit of an odd recommendation, but I’ll stick up Goblin Slayer first. This anime is actually a lot like Assassins Pride, being a character-focused story with decent side characters and does a lot of its world-building in the background. However, it does its arcs far better than Assassins Pride since they aren’t intrigue-based and the cast is solving much simpler problems in the grand scheme of things. It’s also an anime based off a light novel just to add to the similarities, and said anime also has four arcs to it. I will say this is a series that’s not for the faint of heart, and I almost recommend skipping episode 1 if you’re of a weaker constitution if you plan on watching this one.

Next up would be Chivalry of a Failed Knight. It does the combat school aspect of Assassins Pride much better, taking some strides to show that each of its students are, in fact, warriors capable of harming and killing others and going to a school to hone those skills. And if you that Melida was a ruthless fighter Ikki probably takes it a step further. And this is also another light novel adaptation, though the manga did technically finish its updates online if you’re curious. A side recommendation to this one would be Armed Girl's Machiavellism.

My last recommendation will be Katana Maidens. This is another combat school anime that I feel is honestly average, but it’s an anime-original series that has 24 episodes behind it, and quite a few decent action scenes. I recommend this one more to action junkies as I feel the story really starts to drag in the second half, but an overall decent series that does do itself world-building a little better than Assassins Pride, or at least I’m not asking as many questions at the end of it.

And those are my thoughts on Assassins Pride. Now I have a Rambling on video games to work on, so I’ll see you all later.

#assassins pride #your dictator is speaking

6 notes · View notes

toaarcan · 5 years ago

Text

Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already. Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either. Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic X #IDW Sonic #Archie Sonic #Emerl #Gemerl #Emerl the Gizoid #Gemerl the Gizoid #Critical #Sonic Heroes

14 notes · View notes

littlemisssquiggles · 6 years ago

Note

It seems like the majority of the FNDM, even the folk at RWBYRW plus Shannon has taken the notion that Ozpin will take over Oscar or that the merge is parasitic in nature. How do you feel about it?

Honestlyanon-chan,I’ve never viewed the Merge that way. I acknowledge that the Merge is a seriousphase that both Oscar and Ozpin will essentially have to go through once thattime comes. But if I’m being completely truthful I’ve always leaned more towardsthe positivenotion that Oscaris going to be completely fine by the end of the change. It’s whyI’ve never quite dug the idea of other fans treating Oscar as Ozpin or as ifhe’ll just come out as another carbon copy of Ozpin. Technically… any mannerisms we’veseen Ozpin do that Oscar adopts as well came from Ozma. I’d like to think that theWizards inherited traits from their past lives, not just Ozma. Just as how theyall adopted Ozma’s formal way of talking, my belief is that the Wizard personais comprised of traits inherited from all past lifetimes.

Anyways,I’ve always first and foremost viewed Oscar as his own character with his own personality, story and journey to take in this plotthat differentiates him from Ozpin. It’s mainly why I’ve been vocal about thecanon fleshing out Oscar a lot better. Thus far, RWBY hasn’t frankly done muchfor Oscar, despite having source material that’s practically begging on itshands and knees to be used. I’d love to thinkthere is a lot more to be desired of Oscar as his own character besides hispart to play in the Ozma Reincarnation Cycle.

I’deven like to raise the point that there has been canonical evidence to highlight that Oscar isn’t the one who isexpected to change with the Merge. I talked about that in this musing post right here. Backin V5 when Ozpin was explaining his curse to RNJR for the first time, hedescribed it more along the lines as something he has to go through.

Ozpindidn’t even talk as if he was one person. He described himself as culmination of men—ofall the lifetimes that the Wizards have spent combating Salem and her forcestrying to save humanity.

Ozpintold the group that with each rebirth, his soul iseventually merged with another and he is changed but his memories remain.

Ozpintold RNJR that hewill change. He never once said that Oscar is going to change. Hedidn’t even describe it as if he and Oscar are going to change. Ozpin is theone destined to be affected the most from the Merge. For this, I stick with myown theories. My theory is that the closer the Merge approaches, it’s going toaffect both Oscar and Ozpin in different ways.

ForOscar, he’ll probably start to have frequent, dreams that involve him reliving memoriesfrom the lives of past Wizards as if the memories were his own. I’d actuallylove to see Oscar dream about the Great War with the King of Vale because he’sone life we have yet to learn more about.

Andas for Ozpin, Ozpin is going to begin to look more like Oscar physically. Forthe longest while I’ve been hoping that the CRWBY would give us a visualrepresentation of what the inside of Oscar’s mind looks like. When Oscar told the JNR_QRWBY that Ozpinlocked himself deep inside his head, I got super excited at this because Ifigured it would mean Oscar ultimately deep diving into his mind to bring Ozpinback home.

Y’know have Oscargoing on his own little journey to Oz tofind the Wizard locked inside his lonely Emerald tower deep within theuncharted corridors of Oscar’s psyche behind curtained doors that contained themost cherished and forgotten pages of Oscar’s past.

Theidea I had was that the CRWBY would reveal more about Oscar’s life through his memoriesas we looked at his mind. My idea even was that Ozpin had hidden himself behind a painfulmemory thatOscar had repressed; buried so far in the back of his mind that hedared not look at it again because it’s a memory he hasn’t come to terms with;even as a teenager.

Mytheory was that Oscar was going to have to face his past in order to findOzpin. AJourney to Oz about a farm boy in search of a wizard who he wants to take home. That was my hunch and it’s one I hold dear to myheart because it’s a Pinehead headcanon Irefuse to let go of.

Although we got Ozpincoming back briefly in the V6 finale, I’m still holding out for this. Why Iwant the show to highlight Oscar’s inner mind palace or the Dreamscape as I dubbed it is because I personally want to seehow Ozpin appears inside Oscar’s mind.

Howdoes Ozpin look to Oscar inside his head? Right now I’d like to believe that ifOscar were to meet up with Ozpin inside his head, the old Wizard would probablytake the shape of his previous form—the one we’re most familiar with. The personaof Professor Ozpin, headmaster of Beacon Academy.

Butmy idea is as the Merge draws closer, Ozpin will come to physically resemble Oscar as aclear indicator. I got this idea from Ozma’s lifetime as Henkle. During that moment withHenkle having dinner with his family, you could see Henkle kind of acknowledginghis other soul—the past Wizard before him but what was very interesting to meis that the past soul looked exactly like Henkle but exhibited all the seriousnessof past Wizards before him.

Whenwe first met Henkle, he and the past Ozma before him has already co-existedlong enough that they were now working together in unison. The last time we sawHenkle, it was when he was an old man, possibly years after the Merge hadhappened. So by this point, the two souls has become one.

I am notscared for Oscar with this Merge. I stand firmly by my hunch that Oscar is notgoing to lose himself to the Merge. Ozpin is not going to take over and all essenceof Oscar won’t be erased. I don’t think any of that is going to happen. On thecontrary, all this talk about Oscar becoming someone else he doesn’t recognize—thatmore sounds to me like a reflection of Oscar’s fears of the Merge. Oscar is the one who believeshe is going to disappear while in reality, I think he’s going to be made whole.

Besides,even if I’m proven to be wrong and the Merge does become as serious as everyoneelse imagines it to be, nevertheless, I still stand by my hunches and anotherone I gave is that Oscar’s experience with the Merge is going to be differentthan any other Wizard before him.

MyPineheadheadcanon is that Oscar is meant tobe the last life. He is one I expect to change it all or at leasthelp to end it all. There are a few canonical signs pointing to Oscar’sscenario being different.

Oscaris the youngest of the Wizard reincarnates. There is also the titbit in theseries to suggest that Ozpin’s pairing up with Oscar might have been unexpectedand premature. The villains all reacted profoundly surprised that Ozpin wasback so soon.This is why I shared this musing post talkingabout the Ozma Cycle.

Thenthere is the detail about Oscar and Ozma—the first form, sharing the same VA.This could be just a coincidence here but…again I am sticking to my guns. Mytheory is that Oscaris special. He is meant to be the last life because I think Oscar is one truereincarnation of Ozma.

WhenOzma was first revived, he never got back his original form. Instead it’s been his soul that’s been revived and paired up with the souls ofother chosen warriors throughout the years. Although Ozma’s soul returned timeand time again, his body never did. Or…so we believed.

Iknow this assumption sounds like a stretch however this squiggle meister stubbornly believes that Oscar is the reincarnation of Ozma’s originalform reborn in Modern Remnant. I have watched too many anime overthe years where a character who was another person in a former life gets rebornas someone else in modern time. Although RWBY has brought its own spin toreincarnation with the merging of souls, the thought still remains. It ends where itall began. Ozma was the first. He was the one who started all this. Butthe Gods never granted him back his old body. The unfortunate thing about thecycle is that the Gods had Ozma rope other innocent men and people into his warwith Salem which is where all the guilt and mistakes lie.

Butit began with Ozma so naturally it should be him tofinish it. If Ozma was the beginning then Oscaris the end because Oscar is not like the others. He’s not another life for Ozmato life. He is the last life. Oscar is Ozma. His true reincarnate.

Iknow in a cycle where one man has been paired off with other men to the pointthat we don’t know if it’s either him in control all the time or him plus allthe other men in there, putting all that into consideration, this hunch soundsweird. Buuuuut…dagnabbit, I’m running with it. Even if I have to stand alonewith this theory, I’m sticking with it. You can’t deny that there is somethingvery unique to Oscar’s situation that will set him apart from all the others.

Anotherinteresting detail that I liked that connects Ozma to Oscar is that Ozmasignature colours that he can be seen wearing during his scenes in the LostFable are the colours that correspond to Oscar’s name. Ozma is wearing pine green with oscar gold. Coincidence, I think not.

Ican’t sit by and join the brigade in saying my precious freckled farm boy isgoing to end up just like his predecessors when the very show itself has toldme otherwise. So until then, I’m on the side that believes Oscar will be justfine in Merge and I’m also (probably all by myself) on the side that believesthere will be a twist to Oscar’s story with the Merge.

The twist that he is Ozma’s trueincarnate. He may not look like it now but I have a feeling as Oscargrows older and matures into a fine, young huntsmen, he’ll begin to resemble Ozma.But y’know, as always, these are just my views.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #professor ozpin #oscar and ozpin #rwby theories #oscar and ozma #Anonymous #pinehead headcanons #squiggles pinehead headcanons

39 notes · View notes