#no i do not have time to write a whole epic what happened on omega fic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

usagi-mitsu · 4 years ago

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Werlyt & Gaius - a bunch of thoughts.

I am a little late to the party. I know. But I just finished the Emerald weapon and before I go to try out the „not Zenos“ weapon as in „Diamond“, I need to get my thoughts on the story straight.

Perhaps I have been spoiled by 5.0s brilliant MSQ and cannot appreciate the inherent beauty of at least decent writing any longer. But this felt so wrong and out of tune with the rest of the game. I started writing this 2 hours ago! I wanted to one in bed by now! XD But I had to get it out of my system… so….

Spoilers for the MSQ and Werlyt incoming??? And no I did not re-read this so not just spoilers but also writing errors incoming. -.-

The good

These fights are epic! I have only ever cleared the normal versions, but I loved those. They are amazing. The callbacks to Eula (her being a woman here! When did they discover that???), Regula (may he rest in peace) and Gaius himself in his prime were delightful. But I could do with a little less rotating, ok? A dragoon has positional, you know? And being allowed to pilot my very own mecha was like *chefs kiss*. On that front? Well done Square Enix!

I am also glad they were able to get another use out of Porta Praetora! That place looks amazing with the wide open field and the lake – and Ala Mhigo across it. It was one of my favourite Stormblood areas and I am always glad to return there. And of course… being able to visit the allied camp again… And Werlyt itself. It’s simply a beautiful place. It reminds me very much of southern Greece. If you’ve watched the movie Mamma Mia you know what I mean.

The music too was really nice. But I don’t think I’ll… you know… listen to it on repeat as I am doing with other parts of the soundtrack.

I’ve also loved how much amazing lore we got about Garlemald and especially the garlean military. And the military abroad. The way soldiers not from the mainland get treated. I love learning about these things.

Gaius

The man. The legend. The guy yelling in Prae.

He’s so very boring here. He has so much potential as a character and maybe I’m missing something, but all throughout this story he has been nothing but passive. He’s a reactive character in this storyline. You know. The guy who made deals with Lahabread (the d is intended), tried to take over Eorzea, lead a whole army, stood idly by as the moon dropped, almost died but then decided just not to die and then though „hm… I’ve got so much freetime now. How about I go and hunt some ascians?“ That guy is NOT a reactive character. He is active. He goes out of his way to make shit he wants happen. And in here? He seems too starstruck and devastated by his adopted kids actions to actually have one clear thought.

The only explanation I have is that he might have gotten hit in the head by something on his way to the ruby weapon. I get why he would rely on Cid for help, but the WoL??? The alliance? If you wish to be an ally and help or something, fucking act like it. You were a former legatus and I expect you to live up to your name – even after retiring.

And yeah.. I guess it’s hard having to watch your kids willingly, knowingly dying. But you fucking raised them. You are a big part of the reason to why they are in that predicament. So like… Aside from that I don’t even get why you are in this story at all.

And for the record: I’m not sorry for him. I’m just flabbergasted by all the bullshit we’ve been learning about him.

To be quite honest, I think this story could have worked just as well or maybe even better, if we got another man as the „hero“ of the story. I am talking about none other than our engineering, hammer-swinging, ex-enemy - of course talking about Nero!

The MSQ has long established that his research into the Ultimate Weapon had been taken, twisted and turned – Estinien had to experience this first-hand. I’m not saying that Nero was in need of a redemption arc and I cannot remember if these weapons were of his creation or even stem from anything he did, but it would make so much more sense for me, to have him confront his past in the garlean military like this and be responsible for the death of his former colleagues. Soldiers that he served with, whom he faught with. Give me Nero and them working together to get the weapons going and him bonding with them as his pilots to a degree. Comrades. Not that strange familiar bond that Gaius appareantly has with them. … Scratch that: Let Gaius be the father figure. Him being that wouldn’t change Nero’s relationship with them, but maybe his with Gaius as his superior.

The story wouldn’t even need to try and redeem Nero: He has already gone through major character development with the MSQ and the Omega raid tier. It would simply be Nero, confronted with the things he created, hopefully instilling more morals and a sense of responsibility for his creations. Heck: Let Cid yell at the guy! Seriously! Cid sticking around to help out would make so much more sense if it was Nero instead of freaking Gaius! Cid hated the guy! He might be a professional, but he is not one to torture himself by staying around a guy he (as far as I know) detests.

Make Nero the central figure and give Cid and Gaius the roles of „angel and demon“: One desperately trying to reach out to his old friend, reminding him why they became engineers and trying to make him realise that he can’t just run around designing weapons and leaving the scematics for everyone to read; while the other has trouble letting go of his imperial past and is struggling to see the errors of his ways – if Nero was wrong, than he (Gaius) was wrong too -and of course they did all of this for their home, to further their cause, and to bring peace to the savage lands of Eorzea, who had been fighting amongst themselves for so long… You get the point.

And you could still have these gundam themed fights. But I think everything would make so much more sense in general.

But speaking of which-

The children

I do not truly care for any of them. And that is a shame: I do think there are great characters and dynamics hidden behind these very few cutscenes. When they were first introduced I was wondering why I was suddenly watching „heartwarming“ cutscenes of my foes as children – until I realised that I was supposed to care and that they were supposed to make me feel pity for Gaius. I was supposed to feel bad for him, because they died and he blames himself. But while their fates so far have been gruesome, I cannot say that I am sad they died. They chose to die as they did. There were a myriad more options. And they chose that.

Actually. Their whole story makes me feel like they were huge masochist from the very beginning. They could have just run away and gotten help from someone more competent than them, but they stayed in an abusive military arrangement just so nobody else got hurt?? Please. Use your brains next time. And for the Berserk-like torture scene? I mean. I get what was implied here. But was it necessary? As a writer myself I follow the rule that torture and sexual violence should never be used in a story, unless it must be in there for the story to work or to bring across a vital point important to the story or it’s moral (or if you are writing porn and you are into it – but we are talking official in-game content here). But the violence towards these „children“ seems unnecessary for the plot and the violence of their deaths by piloting the weapons is already gruesome enough. Sometimes it’s better to leave things like this out – the emotional torture of feeling stuck and having a martyrs complex would have been enough here, I think. If the rest of the story had been well written at least.

(I believe my utter lack of sympathy shows how little character developement they had. I love tragic characters, who choose to suffer for the good of other people – even better if those people don’t even like them. It’s just my thing. And those kids are just… well.)

Their reasons and especially why they were making Allie out as the one who would need to survive was also just… weird. Like. I feel like 75% of what happened would not have happened, if they actually talked to each other, used their brains and had done something about their problems. But no…

These characters are also so exchangeable with basic anime/j-RPG character tropes… I only remember Alfonse, Rex and Allie – because I just did the Emerald weapon. And right afterwards I thought, „huh. So… Fullmetal Alchemist?“ Which brings me to my third point …

…the story at large.

„Pacing is a virtue“ or was it patience..? Anyhow: The author of this story should have had more patience with his story and characters and taken a bloody break! And I am not talking about the obvious blunder of „How is Allie feeling?“, „she is in shock and you cannot talk to her“ turning to „oh yeah if you are careful you can talk to her now“. I mean. WTF. That was MAYBE 10-20 in-game minutes of dialogue.

But everything was moving so very fast – and not even in a good way. There are few things better than a fast paced, action rich story about a group of young people trying to safe (their) world. But if you try to cram in two expansions worth of character development and story telling into about two hours of content each patch.. Well, then you get whatever the hell this is.

Gaius is a very interesting character and while I did not understand why they needed to bring him back in 4.4 (?), I do see how he could be a good asset for endwalker. And his involvement in 5.0 with Estinien was just a dear delight. So I am not opposed to learning more about him, to watching his character grow and changed with time. But I am not ready for badly written content of which 50% get told by suddenly induced echo-sequences. I mean – weren’t there rules for the echo at some point???

I’m not sure which one of the devs said it, but the feature that let’s you play an NPC is super convenient for them to tell the story, because before they could only show what happened where the WoL was.

And that’s just it. Rule number 1 in writing anything is „Show don’t tell“. It feels like they literally turned this one around for these cutscenes. While Valens torture and diet-Fandaniel-routine were very much „show“, the rest of the story was one long cutscene of exposition: We get exposition by Cid, by Gaius, by echo, by Gaius and his crew again, then by Allie. Before having to watch scenes we are not there for.

BTW. Dear square Enix: Your writers are capable of writing amazing villains, antagonist and despicable assholes. You don’t have to write „asshole, must die“ on Valens name card. And I also think the „WoL, strike here“ sign above his head was a tad bit too much. Nuance, dear writers. Nuance. Or perhaps I just got spoiled by these last few foes in the MSQ.

When I said I wanted to just be able to punch a bad guy for once and not feel bad about it, I did not mean this! I meant that I just wanted to play training dummy with Danny-Boy.

(Oh! And as far as I’m concerned you can just… sideline Gaius … „would be killer“ and the lady? Make them targetable NPCs with Dialoge to read. Let them stand somewhere accessible and comment on the latest developement. But ffs don’t give me hour long speeches about how you are going to kill Gaius if he does something you don’t like. The guy could and would wipe the floor with you if he felt like it. -.- So. Please. Shut up.)

Conclusion

Basically. I have to finish the Diamond weapon. But I doubt it will change my perception of this story line even in the slightest.

To be perfectly honest though … bringing Gaius back, having this story with and about him, forcing a sort of redemption ark here. It feels like they are really „grooming“ him to be a morally grey ally in Endwalker, with perhaps a big part to play in the endgame. At this point I wouldn’t even be surprised if they pulled a GoT and made him „King in the North“. Or if they had him die a heroic death to save the world, but especially his country. And to do so they need us to think his sacrifice means something. Or that he is the right person to lead Garlemald into a new future (I don’t think he is). But: For one, neither we (the players) nor the characters need to find him worthy of throne or death by heroism for his sacrifice/ascension to work. To be a useful tool for the story, only the other garleans who might oppose the alliance and scions need to deem him or his sacrifice „worthy“. And only they. And Ishikawa-san has all of 6.0 to accomplish whatever the hell she needs him for. He did not need to be the center of his own botched redemption ark. If that’s what they wanted to do. Or maybe I’m looking at this all wrong and all they wanted was to give the writes in training some literal training grounds to test their abilities.

But! On a positive note: I have yet to be told that raids and other side content are canon to any degree. So when playing the next story quests I’ll blissfully ignore all that happened in Werlyt and if it get’s mentioned (because they do that sometimes when you’ve done certain content) I’ll just ignore it.

Happy ignoring! Also: GIVE ME MORE NERO CONTENT!

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solalunar-eclipse · 4 years ago

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Scars You Can’t See - Chapter 8

Chapter title: Countdown

Word count: about 3500 words

Author’s Note: I tried to make this one slightly more light-hearted, but we’ll see if that worked out! Also writing fight scenes is difficult.

First | Previous | Next

...

At this rate, it was honestly a miracle that Tails hadn’t had to buy a new carpet yet.

Thankfully for Sonic’s sanity, his little brother’s determination to preserve their house meant that he’d been given lots of free rein to run around outside whenever he felt like leaving. He’d also been given fewer chores lately, as Tails knew from experience that Sonic did not thrive on order and routine like he did.

It had been three days since their visit from G.U.N. and their last contact from Omega- and Team Dark in general. Though he never said as much, Sonic was really having an issue with the fact that Tails had gotten to contact his friend twice by now, while he hadn’t heard from Shadow in ages. He tried his best not to worry, but it had just been such a long time since he’d spoken with the other hedgehog.

And Omega had said that Shadow was struggling...had practically had to relive one of his most traumatic memories….

Sonic decided that he didn’t care about any of the hybrid’s usual thoughts about expressing emotions or vulnerability- the second he got to see Shadow for real, that guy wouldn’t be able to escape the hug he had coming. The hero was practically determined to drag his friend (because they were friends, no matter what Shadow might say) to a therapist, too, since Chaos knew the guy needed it.

The blue hedgehog slowed down considerably and began to stalk through the forest instead, trying to get the majority of his anger out through his legs and movement. It wouldn’t do for Tails to see him like this…

Sonic’s thoughts circled back to how his hands were tied by what he’d promised Shadow- the hybrid had been so insistent, but now Sonic regretted agreeing not to go after G.U.N. Truthfully, the only reason he hadn’t broken his promise already was because while Tails was an incredibly clever and talented person, he could never forgive himself if the young fox got hurt. Otherwise, he would absolutely have long since blasted into G.U.N.’s headquarters, grabbed the commander by the front of his military uniform and told him in no uncertain terms that he had better stop hunting Team Dark and he’d better do it immediately. The hero had had enough of his friends suffering while he was forced to sit safe at home and wait.

His phone buzzed then, pulling him out of his tangled web of thoughts. Tugging it out of his windswept mess of quills, he saw that it was Tails calling and of course picked up immediately.

“Yeah, lil’ bro, what’s up?” he asked, hoping that most of the frustration had left his voice by now.

“Uh, Sonic?” the fox said, sounding pretty tense himself. “Since those agents came to our house a couple of days ago, I managed to hack into G.U.N.’s main server and now I can see some of what they’re doing- mostly where the organisation's sending people and all that.”

“Epic!” Sonic cheered. He began to wonder- could they use this to help their fugitive friends?

“Well, yeah, it would be...except that they’re sending an entire squad to our house. Like, right now.”

His grin froze in place. A squad of soldiers? The hero almost felt a grim sort of delight in that- finally, he’d be able to vent some of his frustration on the organization that had caused this whole mess. He hoped the house would remain standing, though. Tails had built it around a tree from scratch and was really proud of it.

Sonic decided he’d work that out once he got home, and just a moment later, a sonic boom exploded across the landscape as he took off.

…

Once the hero arrived at home, the duo began to set up the house’s various defense mechanisms- since they were a) very famous, b) hated by one of the most powerful supervillains in the world and c) one of them was an engineer, it was only natural that the house would be at least as well defended as a high-security bank vault. Sonic practically bounced around the house as he helped activate certain parts of their machinery, nervous tension running high. G.U.N. wasn’t going to be pulling any punches this time, he was sure of it.

Tails, by contrast, was absolutely calm. The fox was ridiculously mature for his age, and Sonic suspected that he instinctively knew by now when he needed to counteract his elder brother’s wild energy. Once everything was set up, the two built a makeshift barricade as a last resort at the front door, and waited.

Thankfully for Tails’s sanity, it didn’t take long for the trucks to arrive.

As the three trailer trucks parked outside his house, ten soldiers poured out of each one, while several technicians began to set up some sort of weird-looking prototype laser device. The fox laughed for a second at the sight of it in a way that sent a few chills down Sonic’s spine. His brother could be downright terrifying at times.

Tails scoffed. “Please. That laser doesn’t have the power output to break my shields….wait.

“What the heck?”

The four technicians had begun to hook up the laser to- of all things- one of Eggman’s old power cores that he usually used in his bases.

The young engineer tugged at his tails in frustration. “That’s so dumb! Sure, it might boost the laser’s strength, but there’s at least a twenty percent chance it’ll blow up in their faces! A small machine like that wasn’t made to withstand the amount of power it takes to charge an entire Eggman base!”

Sonic blinked and looked at his brother. “Those aren’t bad odds….”

“They aren’t good ones, either! I’d never let someone use a creation of mine with a one in five chance of failure. It’s just embarrassing! And it shows how far behind their engineers are!” Tails’s fur was fluffed up in outrage and irritation.

The hero almost laughed. “That’s what you complain about first? Not the fact that they’re gonna try and blow up our house?” he asked, his tone light. He snatched up the fox and rushed them both away from the front door as a precaution- that was definitely going to be their first target.

Sonic pushed Tails into the highest room in the house, before launching himself out the window and curling up into a deadly sphere of razor-sharp spikes. He vaguely heard one soldier yell something in a panicked voice, but didn’t pay much attention to it. He slammed into the ground, still in a ball, and tore off towards the laser cannon at top speed, leaving a cloud of dust behind him as he went.

Irritatingly, the soldiers’ gunfire spattered all around the cannon, making it impossible to tear the thing apart. Sparks flew across the ground as Sonic careened around it before jumping up into a running stance and taking off in their direction. The air snapped around him as he broke the sound barrier and landed a furious kick on one of the trucks, denting the heavy steel and flipping it onto its side.

Sonic stumbled as a loud explosion rocked the ground, but kept sprinting after a glance assured him that Tails’s shields had held against the blast. The hedgehog smacked one man’s rifle out of his hand, the sheer speed of the blow bending it in half (and was almost certain he heard a distinct ‘why do we keep fighting this guy with guns?’) before he moved on.

A dozen soldiers were on the ground either unconscious or groaning in pain by the time someone thought to radio for reinforcements- which they’d apparently had on standby ready to be helicoptered in. The blue blur wasn’t sure whether this high estimation of his fighting skills was something he should be proud of...or not.

The fur prickled on the back of Sonic’s neck as a humming noise filled the air.

A moment later, he threw himself to the ground as a red-hot laser carved a wide arc above him, slicing through the area where his midriff was a few seconds ago. He heard a faint yell of outrage from inside the house above all the noise, and stuck out his arm for a quick thumbs-up to Tails.

A couple of seconds later, one very familiar and well-used earpiece landed in the dirt next to him as the laser swung back across the battlefield to refocus on their shields. Sonic shoved it into one blue ear before running up the side of the second truck and backflipping to land behind several soldiers. “Miss me, guys?” he asked smugly, before smirking and delivering several well-placed blows to said soldiers’ kneecaps that left all three doubled over on the ground. None of them had even seen him as he moved, which was really a testament to Sonic’s skill.

Tails’s voice crackled to life in his ear as he sent another person flying. “Awesome job! By the way, they’ve already fired the cannon three times, so either their luck is going to be great with this next one, or else…”

The cannon’s shot breached the shields, but Sonic noticed as he ran that its casing was burning red-hot, and-

A shockwave blasted out from the cannon, making all four of its attendants fly into the air, yet in the seconds before they hit the ground, Sonic had time to:

Heave a lengthy sigh at their overestimation of the cannon.

Decide that even if they were working for G.U.N., a life was still a life.

Run around and safely place all four of them inside of a truck...

And avoid the explosion as it tore up the ground within a ten-foot radius of the machine.

(The hero had known for quite some time that being the fastest thing alive meant that he could do some really cool tricks.)

Dirt exploded in all directions, leaving a crater and a smoking lump of metal on the ground. Unfortunately, though, the house’s main defenses were down, and any second now, the helicopter would be there with enough soldiers to take out the rest. And his little brother was still inside...

As though he’d heard the hedgehog’s thoughts, Tails’s voice crackled to life through the speaker. “Sonic! The reinforcements are almost here- we can’t take them all, even if I come out there!”

“Not happening, pal, not unless you’ve got your mech.” Sonic insisted, putting on his ‘big brother’ voice. “Hey, wait- where’re they going?” he asked suddenly, watching as the remaining soldiers retreated to take cover behind one of their trucks. That wouldn’t really help them, but Sonic knew that they knew he couldn’t take the whole organization on by himself.

“They’re waiting it out until the rest arrive...but we won’t be here by then.” Tails said, sounding confident.

“And why’s that, pal?” He folded his arms, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

“Because-” and here Sonic suddenly heard a loud roaring noise coming from the back of the house, “-we’re going to get out of here!”

That was when the Tornado soared directly over their heads.

The G.U.N. soldiers certainly tried to shoot the plane down, but of course, they couldn’t keep up with Tails’s expert flying. Bullets embedded themselves into nothing but trees as it flew away into the forest, a blue streak taking off after it at top speed. Sonic kept up with the red biplane easily, just waiting for the right moment to...there!

He launched himself off a particularly well-placed branch, flinging himself high into the air before landing perfectly on the wing of the plane. “Alright, Tails,” he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the engine, “where to now?”

The kitsune winced and tapped his ear. “Earpiece, remember?” he asked, and Sonic cringed, realizing that he had forgotten what it was like to wear the little speaker while on the Tornado.

“Ahah, gotcha.” he said sheepishly. “So?”

Tails sighed, but not in an irritated manner. “Angel Island- nobody can find it if Knuckles wants to stay hidden. I called him up while you were out front and he said we could crash there.”

“Oh, sweet!” Sonic said happily. “It’ll be like a sleep...over…”

He trailed off weakly, suddenly remembering their home. “Sorry about the house, pal...I know ya worked hard on it.” The hero ran a hand through his quills, unwilling to meet the other’s eyes.

“It’s okay.” Tails said bravely. “I brought a few things-” he gestured to the backseat- “including all my blueprints, so I can always build us another. And besides…” here he leaned forward, catching Sonic’s eye, “home is wherever we are, so long as we’re together.”

The blue blur quickly nodded before looking down pointedly at the biplane’s wing, hoping strongly that Tails didn’t notice that his eyes had begun to glisten just a little more than usual.

(He did, though.)

…

Knuckles was happy to see them, of course, if a little less obviously so than usual due to the circumstances that had forced the two into this situation. The guardian immediately began to move the island to a new area where it would be hidden from view, while Sonic and Tails just relaxed and looked through the various items that the latter had thought to bring: a spare pair of shoes for Sonic, a toolbox and the aforementioned blueprints for Tails, plenty of food for the three of them, and of course lots of important technology.

As Tails left to go check on Knuckles, the blue hedgehog stretched out on the grass and heaved a deep sigh. What he’d give to know how Team Dark was doing right now…

…

Two days later, he found out.

The very moment that the team released the video, all three inhabitants of Angel Island sat down to watch it on Tails’s screen. The fox had been constantly monitoring the Internet for anything about the other team, especially their social media, so of course he was alerted the second anything came up.

Before they started the video, the hero had been vibrating with energy.

By the end of the section about the ARK, he was completely still, his eyes as wide as they could go.

Tails paused the video there, as the massive wave of responses was already starting to flow. Sonic blinked back to reality to discover that his nails had nearly torn holes through his gloves- that was how tightly he was clenching his fists. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get the tension to leave his body, but he couldn’t stop thinking.

How in the name of Chaos did Shadow watch that?

They agreed that Tails would watch the rest while the other two stepped up to support their friends, and support they certainly did. Both of their tempers were running hot, and more than once the fox, glancing over their shoulders, had to remind them that caps lock was not going to be helpful right now.

Not long after Team Dark had stopped responding to questions, Sonic and Knuckles sat back down to view the other part of the video. They watched in shock as the peace and power of that meeting was violated, people arrested just like that, and yet neither of them had heard anything about this event.

Immediately afterwards, the latter got right back onto his phone and started typing out absolutely vicious responses to some of the more ridiculous conspiracy theorists. His violet eyes were narrowed in anger as he tore into their ideas- while he might not be able to convince the people themselves, he could hopefully stop more from being sucked in.

Sonic, meanwhile, just lay half on his side in the grass for a minute, trying to restrain the urge to scream. Why hadn’t he done more damage to G.U.N. when he’d had the chance? Why hadn’t he been able to see that this ran so deep?

Sonic turned his head to the side to look at his brother. “Tails?” he asked, trying to keep his voice under control. “Where’s Team Dark gonna go next, d’ya think?”

The kitsune frowned. “I don’t know...but if I had to guess, they’re probably trying to figure out how deep this whole problem goes. That’s what I think we’d do if we were in that situation, at any rate. To find that kind of stuff, though, they’d have to head straight to Central City and hack directly into G.U.N.’s mainframe...which would be incredibly risky on a good day.”

Sonic shot upright. “What if they are gonna do that next?”

Tails shook his head vehemently. “After running away from the entire organization for so long? That’d practically be a suicide mission! Even if they somehow managed to escape with the information, G.U.N. would be able to hunt them down in no time!”

The two brothers stared at each other. “But that sounds like them….doesn’t it.” Tails sighed, looking down at the grass.

“Knux!” Sonic yelled, rushing over to where the guardian sat. “We have to hang around Central City, man. If the team’s gonna head anywhere, it’ll be there. And if they’ll be in that much trouble by the time they get out of there, we have to be there to pick them up.”

Knuckles leveled him with a stare so flat it put sheets of paper to shame. “Sonic. Literally three days ago, I helped you guys escape G.U.N. and we have been hiding ever since. And now you want me to move my island, with the last ruins of my tribe’s temple and my Master Emerald, within reach of an organization that would give anything to be able to take it all for their scientists to look at.

“No. Way.”

The hedgehog widened his stance. “Knuckles.” he began, stabbing a finger at the ground for emphasis. “Literally ten days ago, Team Dark escaped G.U.N. all by themselves and have been on their own ever since. And now you want us to leave our friends, and remember, your girlfriend at the mercy of that organization, for the sake of a giant rock.

“Yes way. Absolutely.”

Knuckles scowled and blushed, avoiding Sonic’s stare after that mention of Rouge. “I guess….if we stayed away from the city itself and out of sight….”

Tails decided that this was a slightly safer moment to chime in. “I’ll try and monitor the airwaves in the area- we can move away if we think they’ve noticed us!”

“All of this is assuming that they’re even actually there.” the echidna replied, seeming slightly irritated at being outnumbered.

“It isn’t the most logical place for them to go.” Tails agreed. “It’s ridiculously dangerous, and G.U.N. probably knows that. But, it’s also their most powerful building, which means that it’s going to have all of the more recent files there.

“While this video is some damaging evidence, it’s not nearly enough to permanently damage their standing overall...they definitely have the cash to sneak out of this level of bad press. A bigger release- now that we know this isn’t a one-time event- is definitely the best way to deal with them. And what better way to do it than to find all their super-secret files at the source?”

Sonic sighed. “Plus, I’ve got a feeling G.U.N.’s gonna underestimate that team’s habit of suffering to save others.” His shoulders sagged slightly at the thought, but he felt a little bit of the weight lift off of them when Tails leaned against him slightly with an understanding look.

The echidna watched them sympathetically for a moment before remembering that he was supposed to be arguing against them. “Well, why don’t they just go back to whatever place they busted first? That sure wasn’t in Central City.”

Sonic rolled his eyes. “It’s ‘cause they’d be expecting them there, knucklehead. Never return to the scene of the crime. That’s what they say in all the TV shows, right, Tails?”

“Well, while this is not a TV show, Sonic, you’re right.” the kitsune said, sighing. “That’s another reason for them to go to Central City.

Knuckles gave a mixture of a sigh and a growl, stalking back to the altar where the Master Emerald floated. “Fine. But if this goes south, I am blaming your-” he pointed a vicious finger at Sonic- “spiky butt for all of it.”

The hero grinned at his friend in a way he knew got under his spines, and was rewarded with a huff and another grumble. Yet the island still began to move, shifting eastward from the center of the country towards Central City.

Hold on, guys. Sonic thought, feeling properly hopeful for the first time in over a week. We’re on our way.

#shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #team dark #scars you can't see #sycs #i tend to imagine certain scenes from fanfics as movie scenes #and i think that shows in the fight in this chapter #by the way #i'll try and release a new chapter every two weeks #but that schedule is very #very #VERY tentative #there should probably be about 13 chapters in all #give or take #hope you're having a nice day! thanks for reading!#(and i hope this chapter turned out alright too)#sol’s fanfiction

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thirstworldproblemss · 4 years ago

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You said writing It's All About What You Want was difficult. How so, and what did you do to persevere and finish it? Any advice for someone who starts a lot of stories but gets stuck and doesn't finish them?

Thanks for the question, anon friend! I don’t know how much help I’ll be with advice, but I’ll try. Also, this is hella long--Sorry!--so I’m cutting here. (I guess if you send me an ask that’s phrased like an essay question, you risk getting an essay back in reply ; )

Alright, so I already complained about the experience of writing It’s All About What You Want in the end notes of Part 2, but I can elaborate, I guess. Basically, this was a fic for a Secret Santa fic exchange (my first time participating in one; the request was for A/B/O smut with Din, Marcus or Whiskey). Unfortunately, writing it kind of turned into a comedy of errors.

Here are the 3 sorts of problems I ran into:

1) Murdered by Canon: I made the mistake of starting to write for s2 Din just in time to get repeatedly Jossed (Favreaued?) and emotionally devastated by canon in chs 13-16. I eventually decided to set the fic between seasons 1 & 2 instead which helped with the first problem, but it was still hard to get into the headspace to write for Alpha!Din while I was so invested in what was happening to canon Din.

2) *Feelings* about the Omegaverse: I’ve read a lot of A/B/O fics over the years, but it turns out that writing one is different than mindlessly consuming them (who knew??). Over the course of a bajillion false starts and rewrites, I did a ton of research, finally figured out why some A/B/O fics rub me the wrong way (it’s the inherent dub!con of a narrative where there’s a “biological imperative” that makes you desperate to have sex, even in situations and/or with people you might not otherwise want to), and eventually found a story I was comfortable telling and a way to (mostly?) maintain consent during heat sex. [Standard Disclaimer applies here that this is about my feelings only, NOT a judgement on other people who write and/or enjoy A/B/O or dub/noncon fics. I believe that people should be free to create and/or consume what they want, and that it’s on me to avoid things that make me uncomfortable.] Basically, my brain wanted this to be a 100k epic slow burn that detailed reader’s experiences as an Omega on her (crummy) home planet, in the wider galaxy, and on this new planet that flips the script; Din’s experiences as an Alpha; and the ways in which they come to understand and love each other as they travel together. (It would have been fucking awesome, but unfortunately I had neither the time nor the talent to write it, so we all got stuck with the 20k version instead)

3) Real Life: I am a mom of 3 kids (4-12yo); hold a couple of volunteer positions for which I do 10-80+hrs of work per week depending on the week; and suffer from anxiety, depression, and some undiagnosed but adhd-like executive dysfunction issues. (Basically getting any goddamn thing ever done is a struggle for me.) The volunteer stuff always ramps up toward the end/beginning of the year. Add to that some family issues, attempting to keep Christmas “magical” for my kids during a pandemic, and a stomach flu that took our whole family down over the course of about a week and half, and things were... a bit not good.

So how did I get it done? During those last few busy weeks, I stole every spare minute I could to work on it: I thought about it in the shower; talked it out endlessly to myself (or my poor husband when he was willing to listen); dictated into my voice memos while wrapping Christmas presents; typed and edited on my phone in the middle of the night while sitting up with sick kids (also while sick myself which I do not recommend--I think those edits actually made things worse). And I just kept fucking going, even when I didn’t want to.

And so, dear anon, I hope you see why I’m not necessarily the best person to offer you advice: I am also someone who starts a lot of stories and then gets stuck (plus I’m a hot mess like 85-90% of the time). But here goes nothing:

Things I learned from my experience writing this fic:

Lesson 1: Think twice about writing a long fic for a cannon that’s in progress. Next time I’m not going to start something if I can’t finish before the next episode/installment (unless I’m sure I’m willing to take it AU if/when canon veers sharply to the left).

Lesson 2: Plot (or at least think things through) as much as possible before writing. I wound up scrapping so much (like 2.3k of space!customs alone) because I wrote without planning things out first and then repeatedly had to backtrack/change things when I realized I actually wanted the story to go in a different direction than I’d written in. Was it good writing practice? Sure, I guess. Was it frustrating and discouraging as hell? You betcha.

Lesson 3: Find or make the time and just keep fucking going. It will be worth it in the end.

Other things I think are worth a shot:

[EDITED to Add THE MOST IMPORTANT Piece of Advice I Have To Give-- omfg, really brain? 🤦‍♀️]:

Reach out to friends and fandom for help and support. Sometimes you need an outside perspective or just someone to tell you they believe in you. I literally would not have finished this beast without the support of @keeper0fthestars who listened to my extensive bitching and encouraged me when I got bogged down. IAAWYW is also significantly better than it would have otherwise been because my poor beleaguered husband let me talk out plot points endlessly with him and because of @yespolkadotkitty‘s heroic beta job. My inbox and messages are always open if you need someone to talk to about Pedro character things. 😉

Think long and hard about how and where you keep getting stalled out and see if you can’t figure out why you’re getting stuck. What’s stopping you?? Knowing that is the first step to figuring it out how to get around it. For example: Posting stories makes me anxious. If I’m not careful, I lump “finish my story and post it” together in my head, and that makes me less likely to want to finish a story because then I’ll “have to” post it. (Yes, anxiety is dumb.) But if I can separate the two, then the anxiety about posting doesn’t kick in until later when it’s already too late not to finish. Do you see what I did there? Unfortunately, most of the other things I do to finish stories are like that: less generally applicable advice and more “ways I’ve learned to trick my wonky brain into doing the thing.” That just leaves just one final suggestion:

If all else fails, Google it. There’s tons of writing advice on the internet, and I can pretty much guarantee it’s from more experienced authors than me. I just started writing (again?) in October. 😅

Anyway, friend... Thank you for the ask! (Sorry about the essay!) And I wish you the very best of luck figuring out how to finish your stories!

When you do--and I know you will if you keep working at--please tag me in whatever you post? I’m looking forward to getting to read your stuff someday soon! 😘

🧡 twp

#twp speaks #(at length)#anon ask #writers problems #writing advice #(uh... such as it is....)#personal #twp is a hot mess #it's all about what you want

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kyoko0001 · 6 years ago

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Please feel free to use these!!

10 KuroFai Fanfictions I hope someone writes or I will have to get to them one day

All of these are for anyone to use and are ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. If you do like one/use one send it to me and I will read, review, and share!!!!! I have pages and pages of these so lemme know if you want more friends!

1 ~ Fai gets separated from the group and wakes up in a new dimension all alone. He is discovered by a group of warriors. One of those warriors looks suspiciously like Kurogane but Fai can tell instantly it’s not. He of course just so happens to be able to speak the language and surrenders peacefully. He is brought back to there village where he gets to meet the real Kurogane of this world. Youou is only 5 but is obsessed with the blond hair, blue eyes wizard who “is very pretty’ or so he tells his mom and dad. Fai spends a few weeks with the little family and gets dragged around by the overly hyperactive kid we see in the lecourt flashback. I want Youou to give him frogs and bugs cuse ‘arnt they cool!’ and show him all his extra secret hiding spots. I want Youou to get stuck in a tree and Fai to have to save him and he is just so freaking impressed that Fai can use magic to do that. I want him to be glued to Fai and hold his hand and just like climb up Fai’s side like a monkey and hang over his shoulders. I need a cute scene where Fai is telling him bedtime stories that are totally over the top and silly and for Youou to just freaking eat it up. I want him to just be so freaking cute and innocent and adorable that Fai is just swooning in cuteness overload and when Kuro-chan finally finds him Youou bawls his eyes out when they have to go and when they land in the next world Fai is crying too and Kurogane ends up snuggling him and telling him all about what he was like as a kid.

2 ~ This same shit but With Kurogane. He lands in a world separated from the group and is grumbling and stalking around when he runs into two adorable kids who wont speak to him but are constantly whispering in the other twins ears and shooting each other looks. Eventually Fai and Yuui bring Kurogane back to there house where they live with there Aunt Chii. Eventually the twins come out of there shells and they are both just terrors. Fai (the real Fai) is half 50% huge cry baby and 50% If-you-make-Yuui-sad-I-will-cut-you. Yuui(the one who takes his twins name in TRC) is mischievous but appears to be overly innocent and they cause no end of trouble. They are just cuddle bugs and Kurogane will walk into the house to find that they have stolen every blanket in the house and piled them in the living room like a nest/fort and are napping all twisted around each other at odd angles. They will also crawl into his bed in the middle of the night and twist around the same way and it hurts Kurogane’s pride as a ninja that they NEVER wake him. Bonus points if you write them in Ashura-ou’s care because he is the best underappreciated and well meaning father in CLAMP. Extra bonus points if they are little vampires!!!!!! And they get cranky and cry why they are hungry and there little eyes turn gold.

3 ~ A well written KuroFai A/B/O Fic. (I know I know shoot me) because I haven't read a single one in this fandom that didnt get abandoned after a few chapters or were terribly written. (all KuroFai is Good KuroFai but I want really good Kurofai) specifically I want I Dont-need-no-man omega Fai and a potty mouth Kuro-alpha who just doesn't know what to do with him. All the angst. Just modern day au a/b/o and I’ll probs be happy tbh. I have one in the works but I feel like I would get judged for posting it? I wanted something where Fai and Kurogane are both princes in neighboring lands. Fai is a first prince and Kurogane is like way down there on the succession so when they have an arranged marriage Kuro-chan gets shipped to Fai’s country even though he is the alpha. Fai is meh about the whole thing but ends up loving that Kurogane’s alpha pride is hurt because he was shipped off ‘like a blushing bride�� to his husbands home and teases him over it. I want Fai to have to teach Kurogane alllll about his new home that is culturally very different from each other in regards to gender rolls. (Kurogane’s comes from a patriarchal society and Fai comes from a matriarchal society.) So he totally freaks out that his delicate omega is a war mage who leads armies and fights alpha’s face to face. Of course I want them to grow a mutual respect for each others strengths and fall in love love and live happily every after.

4 ~ I want a fanfiction where something happens in a battle and Fai ends up saving Kurogane’s ass by stepping in and just using magic to absolutely obliterate the threat and we get to actually see him do more then just act as back up. Kurogane is totally turned on when Fai is a bad ass in a fight and even though he is injured he just really wants to take his mage home and erm... show his affection? Hehe.

5 ~ One time I wrote a fic where Fai and Kurogane went back to Celese when Ashura woke up and there were still people there. I was told of course by the readers that there were no more living people in Celese because Ashura had killed them or Fai had taken them all to another dimension? I never read that in the manga... (I knew there were no living people in Celese I though Ashura-ou had killed them not that Fai had rescued them) I dont think at least? But that would be a Fai thing to do. I want a fic where the gang lands in the world that Fai took all the people fleeing ‘The beast’ to and since they are all strong magic users they sense his presence right away and the court mages just swarm them. Of course everyone but Fai is super confused. I like to think that Ashura-ou didnt have have his actual son So Fai is the crowned prince aka king now that Ashura-ou is dead so they dont want him to go. It could go a few ways from here.

Fai was married for political reasons but he and his wife had been childhood friends and she is just so delighted that Fai and Kurogane fell in love and she is just all up in there business about how it happened. Kurogane of course is like what-the-hell-do-you-mean-you-are-married!? and Fai has to explain the situation and apologize for not being honest.

(sorry I ship TaiAsh-ou and it sneaks into everything I do) Taishakuten from RG Veda was super close to Ashura-ou and so also watched Fai grow up and was so freaking worried about him going back to Celese all alone. He has been in charge while Fai was gone and of course demands Fai stay so becomes there villain with good intentions if you catch my drift? Just like in RG Veda he promised Ashura-ou but this time it was to look out for Fai and keep him safe. So we get to hear all sorts of things about Fai that are never revealed int he Manga and Kurogane gets all twisted out of joint that Fai might actually stay when really Fai cant wait to go because while he loves him home the reminders of Celese brake his heart. Of corse Kurogane doesnt get why Fai would want to abandon his people so they have to have a talk and Kuro offers for Fai to live in Nihon when this is over.

6 ~ I really really reaaaaaaaaaaaally want a fic where Ashura-ou never rescued Fai so he kinda just hung out in Valerie in that timeless prison where he cant use magic. FWR still threw his brother out of the tower and he promised to bring him back if Fai kills the people who will one day. (just swap there names so Fai is Fai and the real Fai is now Yuui for this explanation) So Fai never grows older because timeless prison, never learns how to smile or joke or be a normal human because no Ashura-ou so he is just this tiny little starving frost bitten gremlin sitting in the snow holding his twin and waiting with the feather FWR gave him. So when the gang show up there like... WTFFFFFF. Kurogane brakes the timeless prison with an attack from his sword and Fai is just looking up at them terrified. he doesnt speak or move just looks up at them terrified. They take Fai and Yuui because Fai wont let go and find shelter for the night. Fai of course cant bring himself to kill the only people that have ever showed him kindness so he is beating himself up for not being able to do it to save Yuui. I love KuroFai but I also think that people can have close non romantic relationships as well so I would love to see Kurogane Fall in love with Fai and care for him in a parental way? No creepiness just Kurogane seeing a kid that needs him and showing him how to be a kid and live his life. I think this would be so cool if someone has the time to actually write out the healing from a traumatized 5-7 year old into a quirky teen. lord knows when and If I get to this one (I’ve had this idea for 7 years) its gonna be 500k + words.

7 ~ I want an epic AU where Fai and Kurogane live in different countries. I want it to be a tradition in Nihon that when boys turn 16 they spend some time training alone away from there families and its no different for Kurogane. I want his dad lord suwa to have gone to Celese when he had been Kuro’s age and become best buds with Ashura-ou. like war buddies. So when he ships Kurogane off for training he is trusting his old friend Ashura-ou(king of Celes) to look after him. (Ashura would be more like from RG-Veda and a master swords men if that makes sense) Kurogane is excited as hell to go and when he gets there he meets Ashura’s son Fai/Yuui. I want fun teasing between them, epic adventures, Fai taking Kuro-chans innocence!!! and tons of steamy love. I have so many diff Ideas for how this could go but I would love one where Kurogane helps Fai deal with Ashura going crazy like he does in Tsuba. Bonus points for awesome world building.

8 ~ I want an AU where Fai travels to Kurogane’s world when he is learning the spell to travel between dimensions and just sorta thunks down in the middle of his village and hurts himself on the landing. I want Kuro’s mama to patch Fai up and for Fai and Kurogane to become quick friends before Fai’s Dad showes up to bring him home. I want Fai to visit every few Years and for them to fall in love love!!! Bonus points if Fai has to sneak off to visit Kurogane and Ashura has to keep coming to get him and drag his ass home.

9 ~ I want and AU where Kurogane’s parents go on vacation without him so he is spending the summer with his cousins (Syaoran and his dad) and gets dragged with them while they explore historical sights throughout eastern Europe. they end up in this totally dilapidated castle that was abandoned years ago and is supposedly haunted. Kurogane doesn't believe in ghosts so when he hears a banging sound from the catacombs below his room he goes to investigate. He finds the source of the banging and it appears to be coming from a bricked up passage way. Kuro starts to get totally freaked out because he swears he can here crying and someone asking for help on the other side so he locates some tools and tries to get though the wall. while he is working the banging and the crying stop and when he pulls the first brick free he uses his phone to flash some light inside of the room and almost has a heart attack when a single gold eye stares back at him. after the first brick the rest of the wall comes down easy and Kurogane Finds Fai just standing there staring at him. Fai is a vampire that the villagers had entombed 500 years ago and as soon as Kurogane gets close enough to him--Fai bites him. Can you blame him though he is starving to death? the whole immortal thing is not as cool as it sounds when your’re bricked up in a dungeon. Luckily his stomach cant hold much and Fai apoligizes while he waits for Kurogane to come to his senses. Like the rest of these they fall in love love and Kurogane gets to teach Fai all about the convinces of modern day life.

10 ~ I want a fic where Fai gets sick for the first time in a long time. Usually his magic keeps him healthy so when he gets sick he gets siiiiick. Of course he hates asking for help so que Kurogane taking care of him.

#KuroFai #Fai centric Fics #TRC #I wish I had time #Can you all help my dreams come true #free to use #please just send them to me!!!!#I need these in my life #fanfiction #prompts #Kyoko rambles

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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How Batman Evolved During Tom King's Run

https://ift.tt/2Pxp0je

Bruce Wayne's adoptive father is the key to Tom King's conclusion to his run on Batman.

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This Batman article contains spoilers.

Tom King did the impossible. In a comics industry founded on the bedrock principle that only the appearance of growth should ever be shown, he’s told a massive, three-year, 85-issue story that has Bruce Wayne actually develop as a character.

With Alfred’s death earlier in the final story arc, "City of Bane," many would have expected Bruce to shun his supporting cast and dedicate himself to revenge, leaving Gotham littered with shattered criminals as he pushed his grief through his fists and his enemies’ faces. But that’s not what happened.

We got a chance to talk with King about character growth, how his epic tale developed, and what’s next for Batman, Catwoman, and King himself in the DCU.

Den of Geek: You talk about Vision, Omega Men, and Sheriff of Babylon being a thematic trilogy, right?

Tom King: Yeah.

Can we look at Mister Miracle, Heroes in Crisis, and Batman the same way?

Oh yeah, 100% yeah. That's what I think of it. Yeah. I'm glad someone noticed.

It's about heroes managing trauma, right?

It is. I call it the Trauma Trilogy. That's just too easy, maybe. I feel like the first story about my war experience and [the main characters of each book] were all someone naively going into a situation and finding it much more complicated than they thought. And then these three were all about, I’ve said this publicly a billion times, about this nervous first-season-of-the-Sopranos breakdown I had in 2016 when I first started on Batman, and sort of how I recovered from that. And I sort of wrote it three different ways. Yeah, it's like some fancy dish, you know. The Trauma Trilogy.

Read More: How Batman Will Change in 2020

So the breakdown in 2016 happened after you had already started on Batman. How far is what ended up on the page drifted from what you initially conceived it to be?

I mean it's pretty close. There's some stuff that didn't quite pan out. Batman isn’t like a series like Mister Miracle or our upcoming Strange Adventures that we're doing. You have to write Batman with some degree of compromise because it's a much bigger platform and overlaps a lot of other books. You have a lot more eyes on it in terms of editorial control. And so yeah, it wasn't entirely a straight line, but considering it was 85 issues of DC's best-selling comic, I think it was a lot straighter than I thought it would be in terms of going from one spot to another.

It was always supposed to be about a love story and that was there from day one. I remember talking about that with my first editor, Mark Doyle...being like, “What is this book about?” And me literally just searching and searching until I found an old clip of the Batman ‘66 TV show. It was just like, “Oh man, I love this." The Catwoman, Batman dynamic.

And it hadn't been in the books in a long time. Not since, like, Judd Winnick, New 52 stuff. So that part about it, the fact that it was just one big love story. That was the same and Bane was supposed to be the main bad guy. But the stuff with Flashpoint, Batman evolved as we went along. I'd say that's the thing that's evolved the most.

We talked that second arc, I think, about Bane, Catwoman, and Batman being three sides of the same shitty coin. But now with Thomas included in there, it feels like it's kind of four points on a graph, labeling each axis. You've got like Batman who had privilege but lost everything at a young age. You have Thomas on the other end who had everything for most of his life and then lost everything. You've got Catwoman, who was born into nothing and kind of hangs on to everything but keeps it at arms length. And you've got Bane, who kind of grabs whatever he can and crushes it to death. As Thomas evolved into this, does that sound like what you were thinking at all?

Yeah, I do think they all represent this idea of who's top of the mountain in their own way. I guess you could say who does Gotham belong to? Bane sees Gotham as a prize that he has to win. Thomas sees Gotham as a burden. For Catwoman, Gotham is just who she is and she's sort of queen of that city. And then for Batman, it's ... I mean that's what the whole question is. What does he mean to Gotham?

With Alfred's death, was it kind of a backdoor way of you taking a look at Bruce's origins? You know, using the death of a father figure to kind of shock him out of being Batman the way that he was shocked into being Batman?

Yeah, but it was also a way to show what the difference is between Bruce losing his parents when he was young and connected to them, and Bruce losing Alfred having been raised by Alfred. To me that was a tribute to sort of Alfred's parentage of Bruce for all these years and him guiding him through that trauma. Because you expect Batman in that moment to bury himself in anger and go insane and do all the things that drove him to be Batman in the first place. But instead of that, he hears Alfred's voice and he composes himself. To me it's sort of about the maturing of the character and maturing of it through the love of Alfred. I know I said this in the book, there are no good deaths. There's a nobility to death if you've treated your children right.

Read More: Batman and Catwoman Face Thomas Wayne in Final Tom King Issue

Well, I would quibble with that only because I think you could have killed Batman at any point in the last 85 issues and whatever was happening would have been a hell of a way to go. Right? Like he has a heart attack on a ferris wheel with Superman. That's a pretty okay way to do it.

Wait I did kill Batman! I killed him in annual number two.

Oh yeah! Yeah.

I gave him my ideal death. He dies instead as an old man surrounded by his family.

And that's the good death.

That's a good one. That's as best as you can do with no other choices.

After 85, it feels like that's kind of the direction, right? Batman for so long has been that traumatized little boy, to the point where it's almost a parody, and many of your predecessors have done something interesting with that. But it always feels like the traumatized little boy has been the dominant perception of him, at least in my adult life. Is this your way of kind of trying to push him through it?

The story of Batman is unending conflict. I'm sure whoever comes after me will embrace the Batman of their own and I bless him for doing it. I know James [Tynion IV, the writer taking over Batman with #86]’s stuff is going to be, from what I've seen, amazing. Batman's not a story that I have the power to end. I just kind of come in and take the reins for a while and then pass it onto someone else as brilliant as James and Tony [Daniel, the artist on the first arc].

But I can sort of, I don't know, tell my story. I don’t know, maybe I'm too old to write Batman. Frank was 29 when he wrote The Dark Knight Returns. I'm 41. But it seems like as you get older and you actually see your parents pass, you see your loved ones pass, you realize that everyone has to go through that trauma. Right? You sort of realize that it can become part of you and something you're proud of as well. The grief never leaves you. It never leaves Batman. It's a wonderful metaphor. But also there's a certain joy to that grief because it sort of unites you with your lost ones.

So hopefully, as you go on, you sort of mature into that. I hate to say that the greatest hero America's ever created, which is Batman, never got a chance to mature into it like the rest of us hopefully get to do. Yeah, I mean that's what that's about. He says, when I was a child, I did childish things and now it's time to grow up a little bit.

Read More: Why Tom King Is Leaving Batman

So the action sequences have been phenomenal through the whole thing. There have been some stellar fight sequences, especially Jorge [Fornes'] last ten issues. Every time he comes in it's incredible.

He’s ridiculous.

They've been phenomenal. When I think back on the run, what I think is going to jump out at me are going to be the quiet moments. The double date, 12 Angry Batmen, Bruce and Selina grabbing a beer and watching football at a bar. What do you think was about those quiet moments that let you make them sing?

I mean, the first thing is the art. All three of those things you mentioned, you've got Lee Weeks...there's not a lot of people who can draw a dynamic room with just 12 people talking. Clay Mann doing the double date. Just him elevating himself and becoming the best artist in comics while I was watching. And then Mikel [Janin]. I've been with Mikel for five years now since Grayson. He did the first Batman I did and he’s doing the last.

It's really hard. I mean, as dumb as it sounds, it's probably easier to draw a dynamic fight scene than a dynamic quiet scene. So those guys are doing the heavy lifting.

As far as the other stuff goes. You know, it's ... DC Fontana died yesterday, right? The Star Trek author, and she's famous for saying, “Star Trek is not about objects. It's about characters.” Like, that's her thing. If you're writing an episode of Star Trek, don't make it about the thing. Make it about the people's relationships. So I think that that's what those moments are about is we've had a lot of conflicts. Fantastic, amazing conflicts about things. But I try to make my conflicts about the characters. Just trying to follow what she told me to do. What she said. Not that I ever met her but I remember what she said to do.

So looking back, is there an issue that stands out in your mind as something that you just absolutely nailed? Like, it's the Batman/Elmer Fudd issue, right?

No, I hate it. [laughs] I love that issue, but there's two typos in it. It still drives me crazy. I'll never manage to get them to fix those. When I first got the comp finished, I threw in the trash I was so pissed. "Oh, I ruined this one. Oh well. I'll try again next time." And then I won awards for it, it was ridiculous.

All three of the annuals I really like. I like the dog story that David Finch and I did in the first annual, which was suggested by my daughter when she was like five.

And I liked the second annual, which has sort of the first dates and the beginning of the end of the Catwoman/Batman relationship. That annual's the jumping off point for the whole Batman/Catwoman series. So that's how much I like it, I'm trying to copy it.

And I like the fourth annual I did with Jorge, which was just sort of like a chance for me to do a thesis statement on what Batman is. And there was seven days of Batman in seven different genres and then it continued sort of forever. I like those three.

Read More: Why Tom King's Batman #86-106 Would Have Been About

Similarly, is there an issue that you wish you could get another crack at?

Oh man, there's a ton of issues I wish I could ... I mean, I look at the dialogue and I’m like, "Oh, I could have done that better."

It took me a while to learn how to work with Joelle Jones, who's one of the most talented artists out there right now. And I think, I feel like I did a Wonder Woman issue with her and I feel like I wasted two of them first of all, because the story I wrote turned out to be very similar to a story that Joe Kelly had done. I hadn't read the story but I was very...I would have changed it if I had known. I sort of understood how to write for [Joelle] by Batman #44, which I think is really nice, but I think it's 39 and 40, the two Joelle Jones issues, I wish I could have another shot at doing well.

I really liked those.

TK: They're beautiful! They're drawn beautifully, but I don't know, we could have done something...it was really fine, but I feel like it could have transcended. I missed it.

I guess. The Justice League flirting between the two of them in the cartoon is high on my list of preferred pairings. So like the way that you played with that made me happy. Is there a character you feel particular ownership of now? Like if somebody comes in and changes Kite Man, are you going to throw the issue across the room and scream, "Fuck no, that's not how this is supposed to be done."

No, I think that's kind of silly. It's kind of like when you sign up for this gig, that's part of the agreement and coming into comics is realizing that this is a medium that extends to other people and no one has benefited more from that than me, who's twisted the work of Jack Kirby and Marv Wolfman and Bob Kane and Bill Finger for my own benefits. I feel like denying that to others would be hypocritical.

Gotham Girl's named after my daughter Claire. Claire Clover is her name. So I do like her. Like I have in my daughter's room a David Finch piece or a page that he did and a page that Clay Mann did they gave to me for her. So I like her because she's named after my daughter.

Wow. That's got to be pretty sweet.

I know. I try to tell her brag, brag to your friends! But does she brag?

Read More: Why Batman Still Matters

She'll get there. As soon as she shows up in a movie, everyone's going to be like, "Oh, you're so cool." Would you do it again? Marvel comes to you tomorrow and says, “We want a hundred issues of Spider-Man. Do whatever the hell you want.” Do you jump at or do you run screaming?

I don't remember anyone ever saying, do whatever you want with Batman.

Well, fair.

It never happened. Would I do it again? I mean I have no regrets about doing it. On many levels, I feel like I'm artistically satisfied with what happened. I feel like I made my career and made my life and I had fun.

But it's that second thing you said, the control of it. As I move forward, I kind of want to do, I don't know, like, I want to do super ambitious stuff and it's hard to do super ambitious stuff in that environment.

I feel like I got as close as I could get with [Batman]. I had a brilliant editor in Jamie Rich, huge support from Dan DiDio, but I don't know if I'll ever get that much again. Going forward, we'll see. But I just want to do something, I don't know, big and ambitious and literary and I don't know if that's possible anymore. If it is, I'll go.

You did the Sheriff and Omega Men and Vision Trilogy. You did the Heroes in Crisis Trilogy, or the Trauma Trilogy. Where are we going next?

Yeah, something new. I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to move on from fat middle aged men looking out windows, thinking about their lives. I think it'll be like another trilogy of books. It will be Strange Adventures, [Batman/Catwoman], and another book that hasn't been announced yet.

And all of this will be these 12-issue miniseries, like these little novels and they'll all be focused on a new, bigger theme. The way things develop when you're writing, you can write it one way where you're like, "I'm going to write about this theme," then you go write it. But when I do that, it just turns out shitty.

The best way I think to do it is just to write straight through so your unconscious mind brings it to the surface while you fight doing the same thing over and over again. So I'm not 100 percent sure these things are still forming as they form, but it's going to be a lot about all the shit that's in the news every single day.

As much as Mister Miracle was about sort of the trauma of looking around our current environment, thinking, "My God, this can't be real. I feel like I'm trapped here," Strange Adventures will be about how do we fight back this pernicious stuff that seems to surround us. And I think that's what Batman/Catwoman will sort of be about too.

Read More: The Actors Who Have Played Batman

So hopeful.

Hopeful is the wrong word because some of them are dead dark books. I don't feel hopeful right now. But I feel like, I don't know, it feels like we're in the middle of the war and you don't feel hopeful in the middle of the war, but you still feel like you'd have to fight. You know?

Yeah.

It's more about that feeling, not the feeling that, "Oh God, we're going to win." But the feeling of, "Oh God, we can't lose or else."

And Strange Adventures, I've read the first one and it's ... I couldn't love it more. It's 28 pages. Doc [Shaner] and Mitch [Gerads] are doing crazy new stuff you haven't seen in comics before, which I think is cool in terms of mixing the two arts together. The two, I don't know, styles or whatever.

I couldn't be more proud of it. I remember Garth Ennis famously saying that with The Boys, you out-Preacher Preacher. So we're going to try to out-Mister Miracle Mister Miracle, to steal from Garth.

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Feature Jim Dandy

Dec 18, 2019

DC Entertainment

Tom King

Batman

from Books https://ift.tt/34z0t1B

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yamaguccikun · 5 years ago

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Omega Endeavor AU

Written because I was reading a bunch of Endeavor redeems himself fics and decided to try my hand at writing him in a similar but still different to canon way, like he's still kind of an ass because I believe that's just his way and he definitely still wants to be the best but he's... Not as bad?? Hopefully I did well with this. If you need any further explanation about anything then feel free to message me or leave an ask at your discretion~

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Todoroki Enji presented as omega just a bit after the beginning stages of puberty. With his father off on a business trip to seal some deal with whatever company he was in negotiations with at the moment his cautious mother was quick to buy him the safest scent blockers proven to work on the market. For a few years he never felt any reason to be ashamed of his status but dutifully kept quiet about it at his mother's insistence, never joining in with his peers while they bragged about whatever mundane skills they learned that week. He had no interest in stereotypical omegan hobbies and was far from an ideal omegan body type with his quickly increasing height and broadening shoulders. Of course he was very aware that the entire notion of petite curvaceous omegas was a completely artificial concept pushed forward heavily by the adult reading and film industry as a way to validate and profit from the emotional fragility of top and low ranking alphas alike. But really it wasn't like his speaking out would do much to change things. At least not yet. So he would clench his teeth and bare it until he could graduate from UA and get hired into a good agency.

His father eventually found out because of course he did, Enji never expected the man to remain oblivious forever. That didn't stop him from being angry at himself for just how exactly he was found out. It was the day of his graduation from UA and he was ecstatic, vibrating and in the verge of spontaneous combustion the entire day. So excited in fact, that he had been sloppy in his morning routine, blockers hastily applied without a single as thought to whether they would shift or fall off throughout the day and his father didn't hesitate to notice it during an overjoyed hug, the sweet scent of omega.

Things truly went to hell after that, his father was an influential and close minded enough person that he made it impossible for Enji to be hired to any and all hero agencies. The only explanation he received came in the form of a reproaching comment that the man was done humoring Enji and it was time that he fulfill his duty to marry a good alpha and bear healthy pups.

Rei really was not at fault for anything, had in fact tried with some success to stop the whole thing but was ultimately too soft spoken and not opinionated enough to deal with a man like his father, so by the time he was married to her three year later he was already well on his way to hating himself, his body, and everyone who wanted but couldn't stop this from happening. He was full of only anger on his wedding night when he was force fed some black market drugs that pulled him into an artificial heat and his now wife fed ones that would incite rut. He could never bring himself to truly hate her even as he went through almost two days of painful labor to pups he didn't want. As he stared down blankly at four squirming balls of newly born flesh he felt one of the worst feelings that had ever formed within him, something he had only read shaky descriptions of in well hidden blogs or difficult to find omegan autobiographies. His omega was rejecting the pups, feeding off of his disgust for the entire situation and forming none of the bonds that made omegas so notoriously overprotective.

Only some months after was when that his wife left. She said she could handle, could understand, his aversion to showing her any form of affection given their circumstances but that every day she was forced to watch as he stared at her pups with dead eyes and refused them even as they begged and whined to be cared for was too much. He was far from surprised really. Their bond was quickly dissolved and their divorce finalized almost in the same week. It was just his luck that his father's years of raging about and drowning himself in hard liquor and cigars caught up to him just a month before the birth of the pups.

Enji knew he should have been more saddened than he was, and some deep, desperate part inside of him cried out to him to go and prove to the female alpha that he was good enough, but a larger part of him was relieved. He'd finally be free to do what he had always wanted to do. Become a top ranked hero.

Of course his father's handy work was still at play but he wasn't above pulling his own strings with the help of his family name until he had dug up enough dirt that he could force an agency to hire him. It wasn't long until Endeavor was a well known name and as years past so did his popularity grow until he saw himself become the No. 2 Hero in Japan.

It was only a short time after he had adjusted to his place that he was introduced to that particular alpha. The one that didn't incessantly try to offer him a drink him after every joint mission. Who complimented his hard work, not his sugary scent. Who seemed to understand that he didn't become a hero because or in spite of his secondary gender but because he wanted to be a hero and that said gender had never even come to mind as he worked himself tirelessly reach that goal. The infuriatingly endearing alpha who softened him with his megawatt smiles without even meaning to, winning him over with his honesty where others tried to buy his affections with scathing insults pathetically disguised as compliments and shiny nicknacks he had no need for and made of point of burning as swiftly as he received them.

Oh but he was far from the first omega hero, because for as backwards as society can be about secondary genders no one could deny the tendency for powerful quirks to be bestowed to omegas. That's not to say that alphas or betas had weak quirks but the odds were that if a child had signs of an exceptionally powerful quirk that they would probably present as omega. This fact alone made it possible for omegas to become heroes as powerful quirks were always in demand. So no, he wasn't the first omega to become a hero but he was the first to break past the top 10 in rankings.

It was two years before the strange alpha hesitantly, almost nervously, asked him to accompany him on a date. Enji blinked once before smiling one of his own close lipped things that equated to one of the blonde alpha's most blinding. And so they went on that date followed by plenty more. However as much as Enji cared for and was smitten over his.. significant other (Enji refused to use such an infantile a term as boyfriend and they'd still not crossed the line to lovers just yet) he noticed that Toshinori had slowly become something not himself after the first encounter, nothing too completely off from the usual but just a bit more dull, more distant in his smile than he had grown used to from the larger man. When Enji's irritation finally came to a peak he snapped at his partner, saying in not so kind words that he needed to stop acting and he he truly didn't want to be with him then he'd have to speak up about it.

Luckily for him Toshinori had long since grown used to his abrasive, sometimes bordering on abusive, attitude and brushed it off with a small exhale of empty amusement and a promise that he'd explain everything that weekend. So as the very weekend rolled around Enji was told the story of a villain and his brother and a mentor who was like a mother. He was told the truth of his partner's gender, that for some reason he had only presented as alpha when he first gone into his All Might form and his no less muscled but still smaller normal state was very firmly a late presenting beta. Enji took the news with as much grace as he could and as things settled back down for the couple they went on plenty of outings, now in both of Yagi's forms.

They decided together, but it was brought up first by Enji, that pups weren't an option. He had suffered through it once before and the thought of going through it again made the contents of his stomach roll around in ways that were far from pleasant. Toshinori agreed readily enough however when he remembered that their positions and 1st and 2nd heroes would only place that much bigger a spotlight and target on any children they would potentially have. In return Toshinori had suggested that they not bond as alpha and omega as there was no way of knowing what would happen when he shifted back and forth from his All Might persona. They did however have a quiet wedding hidden away from the press in one of the many Todoroki estates.

More time past as it usually does and the couple lost themselves in each other and in their lives as heroes. One day Toshinori came home to recount the story of bumping into a most peculiar boy who had gushed and cried over meeting his idol, had desperately wondered if he could become a hero when he had no quirk only to be crushed as Toshi displayed his usual lack of brain to mouth filter and promptly said no. Of course Enji took it upon himself to give the No. 1 hero a scolding of epic proportions that burned both metaphorically and literally.

The very next day one Midoriya Inko was certain that her son was about to keel over any second as what they had planned to be a quiet weekend of video watching and comfort food eating was crashed by a nervously shuffling All Might who was closely followed by an intensely unamused Endeavor. The starstruck glimmer in Izuku's eyes only increased as he was informed over tea that due to All Might having the tact of a bull thundering through a china shop with a beached whale tied to it's back that the hero was planning to make it up to him by taking it upon himself to train the boy to become a hero in his own right. And Endeavor for all his lack of anything even remotely close to child rearing skills would possibly maybe help on occasion but would mostly just give suggestions here and there.

The boy flourished under their tutelage and it was only two years later that Enji noticed that glimmer in Toshinori's eyes. The one that formed just before he did something so completely moronic that his omega husband skipped through several stages of heart failure and went straight to catatonic with worry. A look that hadn't form since the year before when he went off on a fight that had almost cost him half his body had Endeavor not shown up with backup just in time to prevent disaster because there was no way in any universe that Enji could let himself sit around while his husband got himself killed. He really shouldn't have been surprised when he came home from patrol the next week to see a flustered Toshinori who promptly explained how he reacts did try his hardest but he was just so proud of Izuku that he broke down and told him the truth of his quirk and wanted to make the boy his successor. The man enjoyed helping others now just as much as he always had but he'd held the position of Top Hero since before Enji was even in the business hand he'd had enough of his time in the spotlight. Was even wondering if he could go into teaching the next generation of heroes.

Four years later Midoriya Izuku stood at the gates of UA by recommendation of both top heroes Endeavor and All Might.

But before that happened another significant event occered. It was during his time watching Toshi interact with Izuku, as he had seen the boy grow from easily startled to confident in his own skin he began to wonder about another person in his life who was perhaps too soft hearted for their own good. Where was she now? Was she happy? Did she meet someone new? Enji was never cold-hearted enough to completely separate himself from her life without a backwards glance. He knew she had kept his family name though for her safety she was on records as a distant cousin he had never met. And he had, for a time, exchanged messages with her over email and even sent money to provide for the children. But that was before he had been thoroughly entrenched in the life of a well known pro hero. It had been some years since they had spoken at all, though he did still send the occasional care package. Now he wondered what would happen if he tried to regain contact with her.

But Enji had not chosen the name Endeavor for no reason so shortly after his musing session he did just that. He contacted Rei and went about reconnecting, it was definitely strained but he had been able to finally admit his faults in his relationship with her and she was a sympathetic woman so it quickly warmed up into a pleasant friendship. They weren't the first person the other would think to contact in an emergency but they were better now than when they were supposedly husband and wife and that was good enough for them. When he finally did meet the pu.. no, they were no longer pups but mature teens and young adults of varying ages. (A common phenomena that occurred when omegas gave birth to more than two pups at a time was that they each tended to age at different rates, no exact reason was ever found but it was not surprising at all to see that though all four of Rei's children had been born on the same day that little Touya looked to be almost out of high school while Shoto still had plenty of baby fat to shed off) The second time he met them he brought along Toshinori as All Might to introduce to Rei and the kids and the fifth time Izuku was brought along seeing as he was apparently in dire need of friends his age. Enji was self aware enough to know that he really would never really be a good father to them, a fact that was only cemented with the complete lack of recognition or memory of him beyond their shared name, but he could become a really good, maybe even great, uncle.

Todoroki Enji lived his life, suffered through it for a short bit of it but thoroughly enjoyed the aftermath. The family he built up for himself was far from ordinary but he failed to see any alternative as better than what he had. And if Toshinori ended up unofficially adopting a student or two throughout his years as a UA teacher and if they were subjected to Enji's rough edged style of fussy worrying and support then no one was saying a word. Because what kind of idiot messes with an omegas pups? Especially when said omega is the current No.1 Hero in Japan?

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hellochildrenoftheatom · 6 years ago

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My World of Light Journey and Headcanons

I’m writing this all now at 2:30 am

So my overactive imagination decided to play as characters I thought were thematically suited for various sections and/or looking for their friends & loved ones. Made everything a lot more angsty and got me too invested.

Spoilers under the cut

It all about started when I was playing the Wii Fit Trainer and freed Snake.

In my angsty Snakus headcanon, Samus told Wii Fit about Snake and how she misses him so Wii Fit Trainer kind of knows who he is. Snake meanwhile is like who are you and where’s Samus.

Snake is then spends the rest of the time running around the board looking for Samus

I was playing Snake for a while on the first map

So I just imagine him running around to the point of exhaustion

SO MANY TIMES I THOUGHT I WOULD FIND SAMUS AND THEN SHE WASN’T THERE AND I WAS SAD

Especially the space section I was so disappointed

Snake also ended up being the one to free Isabelle

And I imagine the entire time he was like “I’m sorry TT_TT” because he had to beat up a dog, Galeem is the fucking worst man

Isabelle was OP and I like to imagine she was eager to help everyone even if they’re all strangers

Anyway it was great when I finally found Samus and Zero Suit Samus

And Samus was great for the Galeem fight!

Which brings me to… the dark map section. Super unnerving place.

I also really wanted Lucina. Which led to dramatic shit with Chrom looking everywhere for Robin and Lucina

Again, I really wanted Lucina and I figured Chrom wanted her back the most. Also Robin.

I’ve never played a Fire Emblem game so I read up on Awakening and got way too invested in the Chrobin ship and Lucina and Morgan as their children

Chrobin shippers you have so many good fanartists and writers you’re so lucky

I kind of sucked at Chrom but he was trying his best okay

That entire dark world section is an eldritch abomination, poor Chrom was probably like wtf is this

Poor guy just wanted to smash with his family and have fun

Instead this bullshit happens

Robin is in Dracula’s castle and it was extra tricky to find her.

So I imagine Robin is relieved to be free but then looks at Chrom and is like “where’s our daughter” and it’s all sad because they still don’t know where she is

Also when I was Chrom, I accidentally defeated Dracula and freed Richter, So I figured Simon would be very grateful

(Actually I used Simon to get Richter but I was using Chrom to get through Dracula’s castle which got me Richter so whatever)

So in my mind, Samus had to be the one to fight the Omega Ridley spirit

I just barely beat it too

Like had barely any hp left

Pretty sure I was sweating

Anyway right after that fight there was Lucina finally. Family reunion yay! Which I imagined as super emotional with Lucina being like “I saw the light hit you and I thought I lost you again” and crying in her parents’ arms

And of course Robin and Chrom are super grateful to Samus for helping them get to their daughter and Samus is just like “uh…” because my cursed headcanon that she didn’t like Lucina/was jealous because this bitch talks about her family all the time. But then she hears “lost you again” and Samus starts realizing something and feels secretly guilty

Samus was also OP for the Dharkon fight

Anyway then I got to the final battles

Pit now gets to worry over Palutena AND FEEL GUILTY AS HELL BECAUSE ANGST

She would have gotten away if she hadn’t been helping me and Dark Pit fly, he thinks.

Palutena says that’s bullshit

Also I had Samus free Bayonetta because I’d like to think they’d be friends who wear deadly weapons as shoes or whatever

So for the final fight I made sure to keep the map balanced because I read that was the way to get the true ending and damn I wanted that

It was very satisfying to free both of the Hands

Also both Galeem and Dharkon can suck my dick so I wasn’t going to favor one of the other

So it took me like five minutes to realize you’re controlling the hands now, and I thought I fucked up because Crazy Hand straight up died

CONTROLLING MASTER HAND WAS AMAZING ONCE I FIGURED IT OUT

And really hard too! It took me a few tries to win that one and I barely won when I did

Oh so Master Hand kicks my ass for years but when I’m Master Hand everyone else kicks my ass >:(

Final section. My first team was Samus, Simon and Ike. That didn’t work.

I switched to Samus, Snake and Isabelle. That worked a lot better.

My sister called it “a power couple and their lesbian daughter”

My sister is awesome obviously

Isabelle was especially aces in the boss battle part

It was funny in the Dracula section though. She’s so tiny and I had to keep jumping to attack Dracula’s head in the first part

And then the Dharkon /Galeem fight

OH BOY

My hands were shaking

I kept losing track of where I was

Truly an epic fight

Took me a few tries

And winning at the end was a miracle

Like I was on my last fighter (Isabelle) and was one hit away from losing.

GETTING THE TRUE ENDING WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT THOUGH

I'm not sure what it meant exactly but it was so pretty and peaceful

Anyway the whole World of Light was epic, 10/10.

Now I have to go back and get the spirits I couldn’t do lol

Fucking Pauline

Also fucking 9 Volt & 18 Volt

#super smash bros #super smash Bros ultimate spoilers #super smash bros ultimate #world of light #world of light spoilers #rambling #long post #some #snakus #and #chrobin #too #and my scattered headcanons

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one-girly-geek · 6 years ago

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My ultimate 14x20 thoughts post

Well, it’s finally time for me to type out my mess of feelings regarding the episode- and by extension, Dabb era as a whole. As a whole, feelings will not be positive. You have been warned...

If anything, this finale made me more certain that it’s time for the show to end (before Dabb runs it into the ground completely).

I realized once and for all how dissatisfying later seasons have been for me just before this episode aired. I was looking back at previous season finales and thought ‘when was the last time we had a season finale that was actually about our main characters?’ And I realized that there hadn’t really been one since, S11. An argument could be made that it hasn’t been since S10. 90% of the S12-14 finales have been about Jack...

Some small positives-

-The first half was fun. It is nice to see that truth-spells don’t have the same effect that they used to- early seasons, the boys would have been yelling nasty, ugly things at each other, but now it’s just affectionate teasing+ the revelation that Dean reads mommy lifestyle blogs. Everyone else was going nuts, but they’re so in sync with each other now, nothing really phased them. One thing the newer seasons have done well is to show that maturity between them.

-I was bracing myself for a big brofight, and was really grateful that that didn’t happen. I was glad that what really pushed Sam to not be okay with killing Jack was the knowledge that Dean would have to die too. It hurts, but he can go on without Jack. But not without Dean.

-Chuck was right, I liked the old Death better too.

-The last few seconds were an epic cliffhanger. I would have no qualms with if it wasn’t for what happened in the previous 20 minutes.

The rest- this is gonna be long. And probably incoherent.

Disclaimer- I personally am religious, but I firmly believe I would have hated the ‘twist’ regardless. I don’t and never have watched this show for theological accuracy. Fiction=/reality. Now in no particular order-

-Why is everyone acting like it’s some revelation that Chuck knew what was going on and didn’t do anything? They’ve known that since they knew Chuck existed. They had a whole conversation in S11 about it, they knew he was aware of everything that went on on Earth and usually didn’t interfere. So why is it some shocking reveal now that he...knew everything that was going on and didn’t do anything?

-Free will. Are they trying to tell me that Chuck was, in fact, interfering all along and nobody had any free will? If so, way to just kill the biggest overarching theme in the show. We’ve already had the big storyline of the main characters saying screw destiny, and how making their own choices is the most important thing. It’s arguably the most consistent theme over all these seasons. And now Dabb &Co is basically spitting on it and saying it never mattered anyway? I know a lot of the current writers don’ care about previous seasons, but how do you screw that up?

-Scream at me all you like about how I’m just ‘buying into Chuck’s manipulation’ and ‘all the foreshadowing was there.’ because this was a retcon, plain and simple. Coincidence is not foreshadowing. The Chuck originally created by Kripke was not like this, nor was he intended to be. Carver had his issues, but the Chuck he worked with wasn’t like this either. This a complete 180.

The Chuck at the end of Swan Song, who said that free will and choice were the most important things in the world, wasn’t originally written to be a lying manipulator who would start an apocalypse because people...used their free will and choose family. Changing the entire original intent of that scene is a retcon. The beautiful scene at the end of Don’t Call Me Shurly was not written to be ‘only putting on a cute guitar routine and playing us because manipulation.’ Forcing the viewer to look back at it now and assume that is a retcon. Chuck telling the angels to love and protect humanity (and he himself locking up the leviathans to protect the angels) but now saying he never really cared, is a retcon.

-This whole thing just retroactively taints so much that I loved, particularly S5 and S11. This about sums it up for me.

Not to mention, this definitely ruins the Sam/Dean/John Lucifer/Micheal/God parallels that were you know, kind of important in S4-5. Now I am definitely not a fan of John by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s clear he was supposed to parallel Chuck/God as a largely absent father who made many mistakes, but ultimately did love and care for his children. That’s out the window now.

A good foreshadowing is when you look back and say ‘Oh! That made sense before, but now I have a deeper understanding then I did then’ The example I’m most fond of is the E10 reveal in Yuri!! on Ice. It’s not that everything didn’t make sense before the revelation that Viktor knew Yuri first and had been in love with him all along, but it deepened our understanding of him. It fixed a few little things we wondered about, like why Viktor acted as forward as he did when first coming to Japan, but it didn’t fundamentally change who any of these characters were as people. You looked back at everything and were like ‘wow, that makes total sense‘ It was a well-planned, well executed bit of writing. It deepened our understanding of the characters, it didn’t change them completely and expect us to believe they were really that way all along.

-The amount of Lucifer/Micheal/Amara were right! posts I’m seeing around are frankly sickening. Lucifer made his own decisions. Even if Chuck was bad all along- Lucifer loved him. He hated humanity, not Chuck. He wanted to destroy humanity out of spite and jealousy. Are we now saying he was right to do that?? That torturing human souls to turn them into demons, killing entire towns of people to raise Death, everything he did to Sam, everything he did to Kelly, how much he admitted he enjoys crushing teenagers skulls (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg)- all of that is okay because Chuck was bad? Lucifer loved Chuck. He hated humanity. Whether or not he was right about Chuck’s motivations (and honestly, did he really care? so long as Chuck apologized to HIM, nothing else really mattered) doesn’t mean he was right about anything else. Ditto for Micheal.

Amara- she is a bit more complicated. It could be argued that due to her nature, and how she’s been locked up for eons, she doesn’t have much of a sense of right and wrong the way other beings do. But just because you don’t know something is wrong, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. I’ve seriously seen people saying that ‘Amara did nothing wrong and Chuck only locked her up because SEXISM’ *headdesk* Amara destroyed entire worlds before the current one.She wasn’t a totally innocent being, just locked up for the hell of it. She herself admits that she did what she did out of jealousy, and that in the end she was wrong, because creation needed to exist. She didn’t actually hate Chuck, and they reconciled. (Now, I suppose they expect us to believe that the whole beautiful end of Alpha and Omega was a lie/manipulation as well? Retcon.

- Basically, this is lazy. And that’s a mark of Dabb era as a whole. (He’s okay as a writer, but not as a showrunner). Anything that was weird in previous seasons? We can just handwave it say ‘Chuck did it because manipulation.’ SPN has had a problem with constantly trying to escalate its villains-from demons to Lucifer to Metatron to Amara-and now to God? It’s just the laziest thing to do. Dabb was just like ‘we need the BIGGEST, WORSE villain of all for the last season! Who’s the most powerful being around? GOD!’ It’s utter LAZINESS.

-It didn’t have to be this way. You could have done a final season as a love letter to the early show that started it all, not started another apocalypse. A lower stakes, character focused final season would have been great. A tribute to what came before, while showing how far the characters have come since. But no, Dabb had to be lazy and escalate everything once again, because the subtly and character driven plots seem to be beyond him.

-I don’t know how they’re going to write themselves out of this one without massive retcons. You can’t kill Chuck or Amara and not have all of creation perish. But Dabb retcons everything whenever he wants to (see: every inconsistency regarding Jack’s soul magic/powers/morality this season), so I’m sure he’ll find some way to do that. (Which reminds me, does everyone going like ‘oh, Sam is such a badass for shooting Chuck!!’ remember the whole ‘Sun will go out and creation will die’ thing? It was tremendously stupid).

-I am so, so, so sick of Jack. I’m tired of everything and everyone revolving around him, anyone who goes against him being wrong, and everything he does being so easily forgiven. I’ve realized that most of my issues with the later seasons go right back to him. I didn’t want him dead (because of how it would affect others I do care about, not really because of him), but I wanted him gone. Now, he is dead, but not gone at all. He’s hanging out with the Empty and Billie, which means a huge part of the plot of S15 is gonna revolve around him again. I stg if we end with Jack basically becoming God, Dabb is gonna catch these hands. Talk about being the ultimate Sue, who took over the whole show from the main characters...

-All I wanted was a lower-stakes season focused on the actual main characters and no one else...I guess that was too much to ask for.

-There’s some interesting theories going around that might make some sense of all of this, but I don’t know if I trust the currents showrunners to be smart enough to use them.

https://missjackil.tumblr.com/post/184463865432/theory-chuck-isnt-throwing-a-tantrum-at-all-he

-So that’s it. I’ll still be watching S15 because I’ve invested too much time into this show not too, and because I still care about the boys and J2,and of course I’m going to cons for the same reasons. It’s not their fault the writing is shit...

P.S You’ll not convince me that part of J2′s choice to end the show wasn’t due to the writing. They’ve said before that they would keep going as long as the writing was good- then S13-14 happened and they’ve decided to stop. They’re far too nice/professional to ever come right out and see it, but it makes sense. I also think they realized that they couldn’t get the time off they wanted and still make a show they were happy with. We’ll see what the upcoming con circuit says, since they’ve got less reason than ever to hold back their opinions.

#spn #I've spent my entire afternoon typing this shit that no one will read #but I just had to organize my thoughts

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dalekofchaos · 6 years ago

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What I love and hate About Moffat’s Doctor Who

Much like I did for RTD’s Era, I will be listing my What I love and hate about Moffat’s Doctor Who.

What I love

Eleven. Ten will forever be my Doctor but Eleven has a special place in my heart! I will always remember him in my heart, I will cherish the memories I had that he was The Eleventh Doctor, I will always remember his epic sense of fashion, his triumphs and sad moments, his eccentric childishness both as him and as a way to trick you and then you realize Eleven is truly terrifying. I will always remember Eleven as The Doctor!

Twelve. I love Twelve. He may have had some poorly written episodes given to him, but Capaldi still handled it like the professional he is. Twelve brought back the sternness of One and the dark manipulator of SevenI Capaldi’s ability to portray the extremes of human emotion make him, perhaps, one of the most skilled and diversely talented actors to take on the role. One of the most joyously mesmerising facets of Capaldi's interpretation of the role is the level of sincerity and gravitas with which he approaches every scene - it doesn't matter if the Doctor is being funny, Capaldi plays the Doctor with a sense of naturalism and realism which has breathed new life into the part. While Smith and Tennant each had a wonderful sense of humour in the role, Peter has taken the opportunity to play the straight-man when it comes to scenes involving a degree of comedy, making the Doctor all the more funny for it. I also love Twelve because I liked the fact that his sheer introduction brought back the idea that older actors (and now actresses) can play the character. Having been a lifelong fan himself, Capaldi would have accepted the role knowing full well that his life would never be the same again. Aside from this willing acceptance of the renown that comes with the role, Peter seems to be one of the warmest and most genuine actors to adopt the guise of the Time Lord. He regularly speaks warmly and at length of the entire history of the programme, not just the series since he joined. His knowledge and passion for the shown and it's fans is truly moving as Capaldi is regularly warm and inviting to those fans that speak to him in the street. Some actors can be somewhat short with their fans, especially if they're having a tough day, but Peter seems to be welcoming and charming regardless of the circumstances. In short, he's nothing shy of the perfect ambassador for the show. The Doctor was indeed in safe hands and we will miss Peter dearly.

Moments like The end scene of Vincent And The Doctor and Twelve’s brilliant anti-war speech in The Zygon Inversion.

Amy Pond and Rory Williams I loved Amy and Rory. Amy Pond is an incredibly layered, wonderful, and flawed character. She is brave and independent, she is scared of abandonment and commitment, she is rude and yet compassionate. She has a knack for creative problem-solving and can make connections other people can’t, whether it is realising the truth about the star whale or figuring out how to defeat the Weeping Angel.She has had a difficult life, but Amy is always changing and growing, as she holds onto the contradictory pieces that make up her own histoy. We watch her learn to love and to trust. We see her struggling with keeping up with both her travels with the Doctor and the normal life she comes to value. She experiences joy and loss and she just lives, passionately.What is so exceptional about Amy’s ending isn’t that she chooses Rory; she likely would have made the same choice two seasons earlier. But for the first time it feels like a decision that she can be happy with. Because she no longer is “the girl who waited” - and the Doctor didn’t keep her from growing up, he just became part of her story to get there. Rory is awesome. He’s one of my favorite companions ever, despite being on and off at times because of small things like being dead. Rory is smart, cool, actual husband material, and he keeps The Doctor humble. I adore their relationship. Amy and Rory loved each other. Their relationship is what made series 5 and 6 great. Beautiful soulmates and The Ponds are beautiful. I think my favorite part about the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, and Rory’s time together was the fact that most of the other companions in New Who were always talked down to. Not that the Doctor didn’t respect them. He did, immensely. But he was always the one to explain something, always the one looking smart, always the leader, always the one saving the day. But in the case with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, the Ponds were the ones figuring things out and saving the day while the Doctor tripped as he tried to simultaneously put on a bowtie and eat a fishstick. And that’s beautiful.

Clara Oswald Clara Oswald is a perfectly ordinary sweet natured girl, who’s compassionate and caring, who has shown herself to be quite independent on several occasions, who takes care of children simply because she knows perfectly well what they are going through, and saved the Doctor on so many occasions just out of the goodness of her heart. Clara Oswald is a scared but very clever girl, who becomes very good at playing the most dangerous of situations to get advantage and gets addicted to that thrill. From the beginning, she parallels the Doctor, with her whole era basically being a female Doctor origin story.

Bill Potts. Bill was wonderful. Finally, a companion who is not a forced plot device, Bill is finally a companion who is special just because The Doctor considers her special cause she’s The Doctor’s friend. Bill is a proud gay woman of color. Her introduction is brilliant, hella adorkable, Has immense respect for the Doctor without ever defining herself around him like so many other companions, strong and stands up to him without ever seeming condescending or ‘you may be the Doctor but I know you better than you know yourself’ and all the slapping him. The Doctor and Bill have the healthiest Doctor/Companion dynamic. Has a clear inferiority complex but never takes it out on the people around her. Her first reaction to seeing depressed Heather is to sit down and ask her what’s wrong, because that’s what she feels is right. Basically so incredibly kind and selfless to everybody. I love Bill so much

The Paternoster Gang. Anytime Vastra, Jenny and Strax are on screen, it’s instantly gold. A trio of associates to the Time Lord who didn't have hokey origins or contrived resurrections. They emerged fully formed and unexplained; Vastra was a lizard serial killer, Jenny was her servant/lover and Drax made some funny jokes about not being able to understand human biology.

Missy Michelle Gomez was so deliciously and hammy evil. I loved every moment she was on screen, it’s a shame The Doctor Falls ruins it. In her first two appearances she was firmly established herself as a force to be reckoned with. Suffice to say, you wouldn't want to meet this renegade Time Lord in a dark alley. She'd sing "Oh Missy you're so fine" and then obliterate you on sight. After taking a selfie with you, of course. Plus Missy always looks her best when she’s ready to destroy the world! When she gets her lipstick out, you know that something rather unfavourable is about to hit the timey-wimey fan. Anyone can kill someone but it takes a special sort of person to do it with as much attitude as Missy. After all, if you're not going to zap someone to death looking your best, you might as well not do it at all. It's rule one, guys. Though I do wish they just called her The Master. If Moffat doesn’t think she couldn’t keep calling herself The Master, I’m pretty sure he’d rename Thirteen The Nurse.

Simm!Master’s glorious return! Simm!Master returned and it was perfect! It was both what the fans of Classic Master wanted and what Simm wanted. John Simm always wanted to play a dark and evil Master, it was RTD who wanted Simm to play a dancing and giggling lunatic who acted like Frank Gorshin’s Riddler on crack. Pure and utter hatred for The Doctor and no regard for anyone but himself. Absolutely glorious. It’s just a shame that Simm!Master will not return and an even bigger shame that the surprise of Simm!Master’s return was spoiled by the trailer and bad make up and inability to hide Simm’s voice.

The Guest episodes in RTD’s era and the new monsters. All the guest episodes are great. Moffat is good at writing monsters. Moffat is responsible for creating the best monsters in New Who. The Weeping Angels, The Empty Child, Vashtra Narada and The Silence were all good. The sad part is Moffat is good at writing guest episodes.

What I hate

Plots that go nowhere and abandoning established ideas for his plots and just making up as he goes along. Moffat tends to introduce plots and either never intends to go back or explain them or abandons them altogether. In series 5, it’s introduced that Th Alliance, a group of The Doctor’s worst enemies all worked together to put The Doctor in the Pandorica, who brought them altogether, when and how are they joined together and when are they gonna return? Never brought up again....Okay? When we all heard “Silence Will Fall” it gave us a sense of wanting more. And in the series 5 when River went to Amy’s house in The Pandorica part 1 ending, I saw Omega symbols everywhere. This led me to believe that Omega is tied into the cracks in the universe and The Silence and maybe we would see Omega in series 6 and maybe The Silence were created by Omega. It never happens. The Silence are a religious order. It STILL could’ve worked because there were STILL Omega symbols all over in A Good Man Goes To War. And once again, nothing, I don’t know if Omega was ever planned to return but something was dropped. Moving on. I thought that the reason why The Doctor’s name was shown to be this terrible thing in New Who is because The Doctor used his real name to Timelock The Time War and saying it would unleash The Time War on the universe and...his name is dropped like it’s nothing. The Silence with a flip of a hat decide to join The Doctor despite it being their goal to kill him because...reasons. So glad that was resolved so easily. How did The Doctor and Clara escape The Doctor’s timestream? Never addressed. John Hurt’s character. I always thought he was gonna be The Other considering the 50th was coming up and it might be the Cartmel Masterplan. He’s a Doctor between 8 and 9 and was the one who fought in the Time War? Okay. Okay when Missy started appearing and when she talked about Clara “I chose you well” I got the hint that who this big bad was, that she created Clara to use against The Doctor, this led me to believe that Missy was The Rani. “Oh she’s the Master, but instead of calling her The Master we call her Missy now”....kay? The Master chose their name like The Doctor, I’m pretty sure they would not change it because The Master changed genders, but whatever. The Hybrid. Something so horrible that The Doctor left Gallifrey “it was The Doctor and Clara” are you fucking kidding me? Oh it gets better, The Doctor doesn’t even care that he found Gallifrey, all he wanted was Clara back despite Clara being content with dying. No seriously you fucking asshole, you wasted my fucking time with either dropped storylines or shit you made up cause we all fucking know you did not know what you were doing.

River Song The issue with River Song is she is simply an awful character. River stokes The Doctor’s PTSD really bad. She is a character forced upon both the audience and The Doctor. River is a character who kills at the drop of the hat and makes a Dalek scream for mercy. Yeah, call me old fashioned but showing mercy to a Dalek is more compelling. She encourages The Doctor to kill, and reveres him as some untouchable genocidal god, and constantly pushes herself onto him sexually, even though he pulls away. River Song is Steven Moffat’s Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. And there’s the fact that River is predatory. If it was a male character constantly coming on to the much physically younger female character, and being naked and doing so despite being asked not to do that like.... people would have freaked out and called River out for being a predator and had a fit, but because she's an older female and he's a younger bodied male this is... somehow badass and empowered? Oh and let’s not forget the fact that River is somehow part Time Lord? Being born in the fucking TARDIS does not make you part Time Lord. Jesus fucking christ, JENNY is more Time Lord, at least that makes more sense. And the revelation that River is Amy and Rory’s daughter makes no sense. Rory was erased from existence. How can River still be their daughter if Rory died at that point? But moving on. I hate that she is used as a plot device. Oh, by the way she can fly the TARDIS, and oh by the way, she can flipping regenerate. I’m sorry, but River Song should, by NO means, be able to regenerate. She pops in to get the Doctor in and out of trouble and then disappears to who-knows-where/sometimes prison. And fixed points in time? Excuse me? No. I mean, really. That was absurd. Special rules do not apply to her. Moffat is just trying to make her look cool and I am not sacrificing good writing for image. River Song is a sociopath whose entire life revolves around The Doctor, there is not ONE SINGLE decision she has made for herself. She goes around with a gun, shooting things, causing genociide and we’re meant to believe the Doctor is actually ok with that? Giving her a gun does not make her a strong, independent woman. It makes her a sociopath with a gun. Her smugness annoys me to no end. Fucking spoilers. Fucking hello sweetie. Her sensuality is forced. She has no chemistry with Matt Smith. Her line in the wedding of River Song. I’ll suffer if I kill you-more than the entire universe-yes. How selfish can she get? She is constantly rubbing in her knowledge in not only the Doctor’s face but the companions. It’s like when Moffat took over he wanted to one up RTD so he made River who lets everyone know how awesome she is, how well she knows the doctor, how she can fly the Tardis so well (you turned the “handbrake” off, congratulations) She has no reactions to her parents dying. And finally she is meant to be this brainwashed sociopath who exists to kill the doctor and in the space of literally 30 seconds she changes her mind. A lifetime of brainwashing and trauma and pain and she gets over it in 30 seconds. Like I said, I shit you fucking not River Song is Moffat’s Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. And yes, the marriage. It was forced. The Doctor flat out states that he doesn’t want to marry her and she pressures him into it because it’s the only way she’ll let him touch her. If there is any kind of pressure, blackmail or abuse to get someone to marry another person, the marriage is forced. The Doctor was absolutely pressured into participating because not participating would’ve ended the universe. Here’s the difference between Rose Tyler and River Song. Rose Tyler was a character who existed and had a romance with the Doctor. There was NO love at first sight. it was not Predestined, or anything like that; it was just some crazy old alien being like “oi, you wanna go and see all of time and space?” and rose was all, “yeah, why not!” and they were BEST MATES FIRST. they were just two best mates flying around in their stolen TARDIS, having a laugh, and then when the Stakes Were Raised rose kind of went - oh fuck. i love him. and the doctor went - oh fuck. i love her. it was just a natural, mutual caring and it was just two nerds, both of whom would raise HELL for the safety of the other while saving the universe together. River Song was a character who existed TO have a romance with the Doctor. We are instantly told, not shown by the first meeting that River is important to The Doctor. Someone The Doctor would give his screwdriver to and tells her his name. And eventually they meet again and she kills and The Doctor is okay with it...for reasons. No one ever bats an eye that another genocide happens, but whatever. “Never be cruel or cowardly” apparently The Doctor overlooks why he chose his title when River is around. Honestly, The Doctor would never fall in love with someone who would risk THE ENTIRETY OF SPACE AND TIME because she didn’t want to kill him, i.e. river. he would NOT love someone like that, much less he would certainly not marry her because of it. Okay. Why is River the only one who knows The Doctor’s name? You might say that River does have a life outside The Doctor cause she’s an archaeologist, yes, but that is barely shown. What do we really know about River? Even though she’s not consistently characterized, we do see that she’s violent, crazy, arrogant, overly sexual, sassy, and even bossy. Not much is known about her that makes us actually love her except that we are supposed to love her because of the Doctor. If I could change River’s character, it would be this. River should have been like a future companion who was mentored by The Doctor. Like Seven mentored Ace. In which he becomes like a father to River. She is hateful to him at first because of the conditioning done to her by The Silence. The Doctor saves her from herself and makes her a better person and slowly mentors her, I kind of got that impression when she told Rory about herself in The Impossible Astronaut. I would have prefered a father/daughter relationship more than a romantic one. And River getting over trying to kill the doctor in just one episode (Let’s Kill Hitler) didn’t really take advantage of the weapon turned companion plot, and it was such a waste! It’s so frustrating how much potential there was there to really tell a story, and instead they just rushed it and made it into a nonsensical mess, rushed into a mystery and rushed into a forced romance. And we will never be free of River, as long as Moffat guest writes for Doctor Who, River will always be there. Even when she is being sent to her death, River Song’s presence is forced upon us in series 10 and no matter how much we want her to go away, River will never leave. Fuck Moffat for forcing River on us.

Moffat’s perception of The Doctor. Moffat sees The Doctor as this angsty vengeful authoritarian god. The Doctor is important because They are the one being trying to make a positive impact in the universe not because they’re a god/angel/cosmic authority/vengeful deity

The Doctor’s Name. Since when does the Doctor’s name matter so much? He chose his own name, Doctor, for a reason. It stands for everything he believes in. and that’s what matters, not his birth name, they weren’t gonna do the Carmel Masterplan, so it really doesn’t matter. Furthermore, how could the Doctor’s name bring about the end of the universe? I just…I don’t understand? I’m really trying to and I can’t, because it makes no sense. Before Steven Moffat took over, The Doctor wasn’t this prophesied space messiah that all the evil beings in the universe were hell-bent on destroying because they knew that his name had catastrophic properties. Never explained why and all mentions of why his real name is important is thrown away, thus once making something built up entirely pointless.

The Silence Genocide. Here’s the difference between how genocide is presented with the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. The Ninth Doctor has the opportunity to destroy the Dalek Emperor’s fleet with the delta wave generator, but it would be at the cost of the humans and Jack on the game station. He couldn’t bring himself to commit genocide a second time, he would choose to be coward over a killer anyday. With Ten, he had no choice but to destroy the Racnoss and commit genocide, but he was ashamed of himself. The Silence had been on earth for thousands of years and had influenced human history and helped get humanity to the moon. One of them killed a human. The Doctor sanctioned a genocide of an entire race with a smile on his face and turned on by his psychopathic future forced wife(jesus I wish I was making this up) and the humans just go along with it, The Doctor might as well have just told Cletus to burn a cross on The Silence’s yard. What was The Silence’s crime exactly? furthering Man's achievements? I can only assume that no one knows about the killing of Joy in the toilets, but if the Doctor did its a bit harsh to wipe out a whole race because of the actions of one. I mean, holy shit we have a jail that is capable of holding aliens established in the beginning of the episode and apparently killing them all instead of holding them all away is preferable.

Apparently sexual assault is funny if a woman forces herself on a man. If someone forces themselves on you without your consent, it is assault. It happened with Amy(while she was on her way to being married), it happened with River, it happened with Clara, it happened with Tasha Lem, and it happened with Missy. It was not funny in absolutely any time, yet this immature fucking jackass always plays assault for laughs. If this were an older man forcing himself on a younger woman, there would be outrage. and the creepery of women who meet fully grown men as little girls falling hopelessly in love with that same grown man, usually throwing themselves at him and forcibly advancing on him. And him sexualizing them when they're adults when literally like 5 minutes ago for him they were children, it’s really vile.

Moffat’s inability to break the New Who companion formula with Clara. When we were first introduced to Oswin Oswald, I sincerely thought we were finally getting a new type of companion, FINALLY a companion from the future and not just another modern girl from the UK. Then Oswin was revealed to be a Dalek and she died. Sad but I thought she was a great character and I really wanted her to start traveling with The Doctor, Oswin and Eleven had great chemistry and unfortunately it was wasted potential. Next, we get Victorian Clara. Finally, a companion from the past. Her story was so great and once again good chemistry with Eleven and once again I wanted Victorian Clara to travel with The Doctor and she dies. What happens next? We are once again forced to have a “the companion must be special to travel with The Doctor plot device” and we have Clara Oswald from modern UK. Okay, fuck you. You complete and utter fucking moron. Not every goddamn companion needs to be from the modern UK. The Doctor has traveled with companions from the past, from the future and even aliens, hell, two of his companions were Cybermen. The Doctor traveling with a companion from the past or future works.

Moffat believes companions should only be female. Gee, it’s not like Ian Chesterton, Steven Taylor, Ben Jackson, Jamie McCrimmon, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Mike Yates, John Benton, Harry Sullivan Adric, Vislor Turlough, Mickey Smith, Captain Jack Harkness, Rory Williams and Danny Pink don’t exist or are important. Seriously fuck you, the male companions are just as important as the female companions.

Death always being teased but never executed upon and made ultimately pointless in the end. Rory has been dying in three fucking seasons until he actually dies in series 7. His death in series 5 was actually great. Then, when Amy and Rory ACTUALLY die in Series 7, it makes absolutely no sense and there are so many plot holes around it, it can be avoidable and The Doctor could simply just travel to a different part of the country in the TARDIS and just go back to New York on plane or car. Their death is completely avoidable and comes off as Moffat saying “He can’t save them because shut up” The Doctor let Amy and Rory go at the end of series 6. That is all you had to do. LET THEM GO, their deaths were avoidable and if you wanted to write them off, let them go. The most interesting Claras died and the last Clara died but was stupidly brought back despite the fact that Clara was content with dying. Ashildr had a great death protecting her people and of course deus ex machina technology makes her immortal. Even Heather, a girl from one episode had a good emotional death, is brought back in the finale. Bill Potts had possibly the worst possible fate. Bill was shot and everyone was shocked. Like damn, Bill is dying and the next thing we know is she is being converted into a Cybermen and who knows The Doctor is being forced to deal with the fact that he led his friend to a fate far worse than death. The emotional pain is there...and it’s ruined. Bill is fine and gets a happy ending like Clara and Ashildr. River is dead AND WE ARE STILL NOT FUCKING FREE FROM RIVER SONG! I don’t know why the fandom perceives Moffat as bad as George R.R. Martin, Moffat is a coward when it comes to death and never sticks with death, everyone HAS to come back and the deaths for every companion is undone and makes their deaths and sacrifice completely pointless. The reason Adric dying worked SO WELL is because he stayed dead and Adric’s death was a sacrifice and it worked. If Moffat was headwriter for Earthshock, I’m pretty damn sure he would find a way to undo Adric’s death. Death has no consequences in Moffat’s Who.

Until Bill Potts, every companion ALWAYS had to be special because the plot demanded it. Amy was “the girl who waited” River was River and Clara was “The Impossible Girl” no one could be special cause they are special to The Doctor, they had to be related to the plot

Day Of The Doctor was not celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. It celebrated New Who and The Time War. It only celebrates The Time War and Moffat’s Who. It makes Not only that, it makes it black and white, it makes The Daleks the true evil of The Time War and erases the culpability of The Time Lords. Remember it wasn’t just the Daleks who were the cause of The War, it was The Time Lords themselves who started The Time War when they convinced Four to try and stop the Dalek creation in Genesis Of The Daleks, it’s very important to understand that it wasn’t black and white and make the Time Lords the innocent party. And Day Of The Doctor ignores that and ignores that Rassilon wanted to erase all life and make The Time Lords beings of higher consciousness at the cost of all life in the universe.

Mishandling The Time War itself. Throughout series 1-4 The Time War was built up as this horrible war that was so horrible that if it did not end, it would’ve destroyed life itself. The Time War NEEDED to be more than a generic Sci-Fi battle. in the novelization of the episode Rose,

The Time War was meant to be bigger and more horrifying.“this wasn’t a fight like laser guns and spaceships and explosions, this was a filthy, stinking war that changed reality itself.” Instead, it became a generic Sci-Fi action movie. Instead of the enormous time-traveling, inconceivable concept that was painted. The Time War prior to the 50th was something that we COULD NOT CONCEPTUALIZE because it was not fight like a normal war, it spanned galaxies and time. The true tragedy of it wasn’t that the Daleks were going to destroy Gallifrey or Arcadia, it was that THE DALEKS AND TIME LORDS BOTH WERE RIPPING THE UNIVERSE APART WITH THEIR WEAPONS. You cannot show that. So instead, we got shitty action movie explosions. When I got real interested about the Time War before series 6, a fan trailer showed a concept that The Daleks wanted to capture the Eye Of Harmony and insinuated that the Daleks went to war with the Time Lords to gain Gallifrey’s resources so they can gain mastery over space and time. That alone is more compelling than “Daleks just wanna exterminate the Time Lords” it was lazy writing, even more so by portraying the Time Lords as the innocent party. The Time Lords tried to get The Fourth Doctor to stop their creation and The Seventh Doctor manipulated Davros into destroying Skaro. There is no innocent Time Lords, retconning their actions throughout classic who and ignoring Rassilon and the High Council’s plans was complete and utter lazy writing. Rassilon and the High Council were as scary and menacing as the Time Lords from War Games and Rassilon was a fearsome genocidal demigod. Choosing to ignore that was seriously dumb. Let’s go over Moffat’s depiction of children of Gallifrey and how he portrays the Time Lords waging War. Ignoring the concept of looming is dumb. “children of Gallifrey” I was just so mad when I heard about this. looming made Time Lords more alien and it is an interesting portrayal of Time Lords being asexual. Ignoring that, the concept of Time Lord Children is really dumb, Time Lord children carry stuffed rabbits. Because Time Lords children = Human children. Oh wait. Then Moffat’s concept of how The Time Lords would wage war. Time Lord soldiers have helmets. Time Lord soldiers have helmets to protect them from the rubble. There is rubble. Things are burning. No, I mean things are literally burning. Things are burning because the Daleks are shooting ray guns and the Time Lords are shooting back using their super advanced … ray MACHINE guns!!!! Just to remind the audience, the Time Lords are a superior race with power over time itself. The Time Lord soldiers have walky-talkies. No really, they do. When Time Lords make art, they make it in 3 dimensions. When Time Lords make war, they make it in 3 dimensions. “Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension?” Masters of time and you decide to make them have ray-guns? This isn’t the fucking Terminator. And also, it ignores the fact that The Doctor witnessed Gallifrey burned. The way The Time Lords were portrayed in DOTD, was just lazy.

Sonic Sunglasses. I believe that the sonic screwdriver needed a long break. It worked for Five-Seven so it would work for Twelve. I like the sonic screwdriver but I hate how they constantly made Ten and Eleven dependent on it and turned it from a time lord device that can open any door to a magic wand that can perform a deus ex machina. What happens instead of Twelve relying on his intelligence and wit? He gets a downgrade and gets himself Sonic Shades. It worked like the screwdriver, with a few added bells and whistles to justify this downgrade. One of the most noticeable problems with the glasses was that, unlike the screwdriver, their effects weren’t visible. Doctor Who is ordinarily a visual program that has always drawn attention to its colorful sci-fi/fantasy moments. Also, unlike the screwdriver they weren’t exclusive used by The Doctor, making them far less special. Clara, Ashildr and Osgood all donned the specs during the limited number of episodes in which they appeared. In series 10, the glasses committed their greatest sin. After the events in Oxygen rendered The Doctor blind, instead of having him deal with the extent of losing one’s vision, he popped on his magic glasses, thus cheapening the experience. While they didn’t restore his vision, the tech provided him with enough guidance to dramatically lessen the full extent of his blindness. Sadly, if the writers had allowed The Doctor to go 100% blind, the sheer vulnerability of such a powerful character could've made the Monk Trilogy a much stronger arc.

Hell Bent undid Clara’s sacrifice and made Day Of The Doctor completely pointless. Hell Bent STILL leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. All this mystery around The Hybrid and it was completely pointless. Gallifrey was completely wasted. We were given hope that The Doctor would see his home and his people again, but instead of The Doctor restoring Gallifrey, finding Susan, Romana, Leela and Ace again, Gallifrey is reduced to background noise and The Doctor doesn’t even care that he’s home. It was all just to bring back Clara. Clara was content on dying to save Rigsy. Clara paid for her mistakes by trying to emulate and be The Doctor. Heaven Sent was brilliant, it showed The Doctor trying to struggle without Clara, it was emotional and brilliant. Not only is her death undone and Gallifrey is reduced to background noises, Clara is rewarded by her actions by becoming a faux Doctor with a TARDIS and her own companion in Ashildr. This is the complete opposite of what should have happened. She gets rewarded for trying to become The Doctor when she shouldn’t be. She should be paying for it, that’s the whole point. Clara isn’t The Doctor, what makes her different is her primary strength and that’s why they need each other. Clara dying was the only good way to end this character and it ended up as a copout. It took her agency away and because Moffat could not let her go he had to bring her back, thus making Face The Raven and Day Of The Doctor completely pointless

Because Moffat STILL will not let River go, he has a portrait bigger than his own granddaughter’s Susan Foreman. There is no way within time and space that The Doctor will never believe River Song is more important than his own granddaughter. In my opinion, he should have picture frames of Rose, Jackie, Mickiem Jack, Martha and Donna, The Ponds and Clara along with Susan, but only River gets the big special picture. Fuck Moffat and his petty favoritism

Nardole For the majority of series 10, The Doctor was followed around by a cue-balled whiny crying cyborg known as Nardole. He first appeared in the 2015 Christmas episode with a purpose and then proceeded to just sort of hang out afterward with no discerning purpose. Then midway through series 10 in the episode Extremis, his purpose was explained. He was just a reminder that River Song is still there. We can’t be free of River no matter what and because of that we have to sit through this unbearable, annoying screaming robot. Kamelion is better than him and that should show you how bad Nardole is, but unlike Kamelion who had issues cause the robot malfunctioned and only lasted a few episodes, we suffered through the entirety of series 10 because of Nardole.

Bad make up and giving away Simm!Master in the teaser ruined the reveal. The series 10 trailer spoiled that John Simm would return as The Master at some point. However, since he didn’t appear in the first ten episodes, it became a given that’s he’d appear sometime during the two-part series finale. And while they might have been saving him for part two, it was likely they’d want to utilize him for the entire story arc. So with all that in mind, a character that looked and sounded like John Simm in heavy makeup appeared about 15 minutes into the penultimate episode, The World Enough and Time. Some viewers may have been as shocked as The Doctor and Missy were by the reveal, but it could’ve been handled better. Simm did his part by disguising his voice and mannerisms. Yet it feels like a lost opportunity with an easy enough fix, if anybody had cared. The whole thing could’ve been avoided by either not including The Master in the trailer, or by disguising Simm in even more makeup and prosthetics.

Ignoring Simm!Master’s character arc in End Of Time. I don’t like End Of Time for a majority of reasons, but even I understand that Simm!Master had an arc in End Of Time. Sure, he mostly wanted revenge for what Rassilon’s done to him, but he still saved The Doctor, he considered The Doctor’s offer and had a realization that maybe he doesn’t have to be bad. Simm!Master had sane moments in his insanity which all had in some way the Doctor involved, showing him listening, with tears in his eyes. And in The Doctor Falls, he is completely unchanged. Acts as if the character arc never happened, Simm!Master is sexist for no reason. Time Lords have no real concept of gender inequality. The Master had respect for Jo Grant, Nyssa, Tegan and Martha Jones and never harbored sexist attitude for them, he had ill feelings as an enemy, that’s it. Made to hate the Doctor so much he’d rather die than standing with him - Ignoring the fact that’s exactly what he did in The End of Time Part 2 and also the fact that the Master’s main goal over everything else was always his own survival. So he dies unredeemable, learns nothing, uncaring asshole, and completely disregards his character development in "The End of Time and all just to make Missy look good.

Missy had no reason for wanting to change and my annoyance at the name change. I don’t see or understand why Missy wanted to change. Obviously they are gonna give her a redemption story for...reasons. What are the reasons you might ask?...Shut up. Well, we obviously need her to fight her demons so why not give her absolutely no reason to want to change (except “I want my friend back” which apparently wasn’t enough reason for any other Master) I seriously do not understand why Missy would want to change. Missy/Master would want to fight a common foe with The Doctor and later betray The Doctor later and their game would go on as it always goes. Missy had no motivation, every chance The Doctor gave her, she always went back to her old ways. Missy’s “change” simply comes off as “let’s praise Missy She’s changed!! Why? Who cares. Motivation? Character development? Nuances? I can’t do that, I can only create a contrast between new and old so crass, everyone will see the change! Shut up and stop asking questions!” If Missy returns, I want them to stop calling her Missy. Call her The Master. The Master chose their name like The Doctor, I’m pretty sure they would not change it because The Master changed genders. You don’t just change that name. She can very well still call herself The Master, there is no reason why, they cannot call her The Master. Changing gender is not a reason to change the title The Master chose to be called as such as they believe they can rule and subjugate the universe. But The Master should at the very least return as a villain, despite the forced change.

The Daleks and Cybermen are misused and overpowered. The problem with the Daleks is that Moffat has no idea what he wants to do with them. This video explains it perfectly. When the Daleks returned in series 5, they returned with an awful new look but they are still the biggest threat in the universe and the emotional trauma and hatred with the Doctor is there. Then, The Daleks go away and nothing is done with them. In series 7, Asylum Of The Daleks they return. They are not treated like the unstoppable force they were once in Classic Who or in Davies’ Who or even in Victory Of The Daleks. They are instead treated like another monster of the week. It’s not a big deal for The Doctor to face them anymore, he doesn’t seem to have any kind of reaction to them still operating or prospering in the universe. So now with no explanation Skaro is apart of the universe again despite the fact that it was destroyed in Remembrance of the Daleks, there is a Dalek parliament, thousands of them exist, they have their own asylum(apparently the Daleks are too scared of their own malfunctioning Daleks) and they have death camps. Dalek death camps and The Doctor doesn’t care. Dalek death camps and The Doctor has no reaction to nor does he want to help anyone in the camps. While the execution of Evolution of The Daleks wasn’t very good, Dalek Sec was right that the purity of the Daleks would always destroy them in the end and must change if they are to survive, but that is no longer relevant. The tone of the Dalek appearances after Victory Of The Daleks shows their menace is no longer there. The Doctor goes from being enraged and consumed by grief by seeing The Daleks, to not feeling anything nor caring that the Daleks having death camps across the universe. The Rusty thing just didn’t work. The only thing that did work was the “you are a good Dalek” line. The Daleks have lost their menace and if The Doctor doesn’t care or show any fear or hatred towards them, then why should we as an audience care? As for the Cybermen. The problem is they are just the Cybus Cybermen with the symbol removed, the same monotone “DELETE” the only difference is they are too overpowered and well they are apparently Iron Man now thanks to the Nightmare In Silver all rocket boots and detachable limbs and superspeed. In Dark Water/Death in Heaven they are nothing but Missy’s slaves with no autonomy of their own rather than a true force to be feared. It hasn’t helped that more often than not, modern Doctor Who has repeatedly decided the only way to beat the Cybermen is to overwhelm them with the power of love, a trope the show falls back on far too often. What made the Cybermen scary in Classic Who is when they were first envisioned, they were meant to be a chilling extrapolation of what creators Dr. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis saw as the future of prosthetics and cosmetic surgery, humankind chopping bits of itself until what was left was more machine than man. Only their very first incarnation, the Mondasian Cybermen has ever tangibly captured the gruesome, tragic roots that sit at the heart of the concept behind them as monsters. Tomb Of The Cybermen also showed them as a true threatening monstrosities. So when the Mondasian Cybermen do return, Bill is converted and what happens? Bill retains consciousness and apparently it’s not enough to have the Mondasian Cybermen, Moffat just HAS to bring back his overpowered Iron Man knock off Cybermen. No true and utterly terrifying new designs, just the overpowered Metallic Gary Stu Iron Man Cybus Cybermen. So as usual Moffat has a genius idea and manages to ruin it in the end.

Moffat’’s sexist garbage ruined The First Doctor in Twice Upon A Time. I have seen EVERY First Doctor serial and One is not sexist at all. I get it, the sixties were a different time, Since the First Doctor was of that era, he wanted the audience to laugh at how different things were back then. Especially with the constantly horrified reactions of Twelve at his former’s self’s behavior. So what’s the problem? Short answer, it’s because the First Doctor wasn’t like that. Not even remotely. And this is the story that takes place before One’s regeneration, apparently Moffat doesn’t care about all the character development One went through with Ian and Barbara, he just wanted bad humor that goes against One’s character just so he can appear as the better party “see? My Doctor is better than Classic Who” no, asshole, The First Doctor was not at all like that One wasn’t a walking ball of sexism, he was a curmudgeonly grumpy old space grandpa who lightened up with his first human contact, grew warmer and closer to them and learned to help rather than… eh.. smash people’s skulls with rocks.

The real problem with Moffat is that Moffat is a good writer, capable of being a great one at times, but a terrible showrunner. Steven Moffat was a man who in the beginning had some marvelous ideas, and much like another BBC writer Terry Nation. When writing scripts once or twice a year were completely brilliant, but when stretched to almost write an entire series single handed, the outcome suffered. Doctor Who used to be a show full of heart, courage, emotion, character driven, cared more about the heart of the show and character than the concept of the over-complicated plot that will eventually be dropped at the end of the series. And honestly sometimes Moffat’s fans sound like Rick And Morty fans “To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Moffat’s Doctor Who." that’s what most of y'all sound like. After watching the teaser for series 11, I am finally really excited for Doctor Who. It feels like everything it used to be, everything that made Classic and Davies’ Who great. 13 and her new friends I cannot wait and finally it feels like Doctor Who

#Doctor Who #New Who #Anti Moffat #Anti River Song #Eleventh Doctor #Twelfth Doctor #Amy Pond #Rory Williams #Clara Oswald #Missy #Simm!Master #First Doctor #Bill Potts

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