#random subplots

[comradekiwi]

a heads up for anyone agonizing over 431 and it’s distinct oddness compared to the rest of the manga/as a last chapter:

tl;dr horikoshi asserts that 429 is mha’s final chapter and 430 is mha’s epilogue. he subtly implies he did not independently write 431 and less subtly implies he does not see it as part of his main storyline. basically up to us if we want to see it as canon or not, but to horikoshi, chapter 430 was the end of bnha.

[greatwyrmgold]

So, after the Dandadan dudududes beat up a kaiju, it shrank to human size and a girl popped out. That girl promptly kissed Okarun, causing chaos. Once they borrow a semi-functional translator from their local friendly alien, the girl says that her name is Vamola and she came to Earth looking for a powerful person to fight, and if she lost to that person she'd marry them.

Kinta butts in, pointing out that Okarun did not actually beat Vamola, emphasizing his contribution. Momo and Aira later bring up their critical role. Beating Vamola's kaiju suit was a team effort! Vamola ignores them and sticks with Okarun, because that produces the most romantic "drama," and that seems to be the entire reason for this plot point.

The two big problems I have with this are that it doesn't seem to go anywhere (which may be a premature judgement so I will not mention that again in this post) and that I've seen it before. Not only is "new character threatens to start a romantic relationship with one of the leads" something I've seen a million times before—three to five times in the Ranma½ reboot alone!—it's something that's happened before in Dandadan specifically, with a girl expressing romantic interest in Okarun, and with Momo reacting in a similar way.

If Vamola's going to introduce romantic complications, it should be something new. For instance:

Vamola: [...]and if I lose, the powerful person and I get married. Okarun: But I didn't beat you on my own. Heck, I fell out of the giant robot pretty early. Everyone beat you by working together. Kinta: Especially me! Vamola: Oh. I see. Vamola: So all of you beat me together? Momo: That's what Okarun said. Vamola: Then I guess all of you will marry me together.

[atissi]

well that sucked

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

i can't tell if i'm just not paying attention or if mouthwashing just doesn't make any sense

[roseworth]

i think its evil and pointless that they split wicked into two movies and the worst part about it is that the best songs are in act two so the first movie wont even have the bangers

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Principle of Moments

start of a scifi space opera series

a teen girl in the far future where humans are oppressed learns she has a destiny & a lost sister and escapes

and a young time traveler who’s given up trying to find his father through time, and is about to settle in 1812 with the prince he loves, but is unwillingly thrust into the future

they both learn their fates are entangled by a prophecy, and have to race across the galaxy, followed by a galactic emperor and the legacy of heroes from an ancient religion

[musubiki]

It feels like it was only yesterday I read about Oscar getting a mermaid girlfriend and now there's Ikasumi. I ship it, though! I'm curious what happened to the mermaid girl. Also, I think I'm experiencing what the rest of the guild is feeling when it comes to Oscar's lovelife, like since when was this a thing I want deets 😂

FUN FACT: HE STILL HAS THE MERMAID GF TOO!!!!!!!! this is what i mean when i say oscar has that playboy streak!!!!!!! hes like "Oh we have [problem]? I know someone who can help! ^^" AND ITS ONE OF HIS EX-GIRLFRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and FOR REAL this is oscars running joke. he always has things going on that for some reason he doesnt tell anyone about and doesnt bring up?? 1) his girlfriend changes often and 2) his other running joke is hes always doing part-time work at some different job every so often. mochi and coco go outfit shopping, trying to pick clothes, mochi like "What do you think of this color on me?" and oscar, somehow working at that clothes shop, out of nowhere is like "Nice it brings out your eyes!"

mochi & lime after some magic commission exhausted in a far off town, go to get dinner and sit down and the server (oscar) is like "Hey guys! I can get you a discount since I work here!" when theyre like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE???" he replies "Oh me? My uncle lives nearby and im visiting him for the weekend so i decided to help out at their diner. Pretty cool, huh?"

they go to some festival happening in town, walking around stalls and theres oscar managing one of those hacked, rip-off game booths like "Hey Mochi! We have this fluffy cat stuffed animal that looks like your style! Maybe you can solicit Lime into winning it for you! (overworld challenge noise)" (which turns into an aggressive "I'm gonna win that fucking cat." vs "I own this damn game and you're gonna empty your pockets before I let you win it.")

anyway, oscar is a psuedo-cryptid in his own right.

[figs-oliomedley]

There’s no way Euphrasia isn’t going to be relevant again. Even the seemingly inconsequential magician Diorama because a hugely-important recurring villain. She’s too big of a Chekov’s breadcrumb to ignore after setting up.

[bellzsad]

someone recommend me romance fics (or books w romance subplots - e.g. the cruel prince) like better than the movies and just that vibe please i'm desperate

[liceparade]

sorry for not posting/responding to messages i have a job now

[elspethdixon]

Last night I had this dream that was essentially a mash-up of Fallout 4 and the Fallout tv show, where I was essentially a Sole Survivor/Lucy fusion: After several years as a thawed-out Sole Survivor, I discovered that my father and brother, who I’d assumed were long dead given that I last saw them like 200 years ago, had actually also been frozen in a different vault.

They, unlike me, had been found and unfrozen a while ago by vault dwellers and had spent the past decade living in a perky, Stepford-style folksy Vault like the one from the Amazon Prime show, complete with mysterious people who get transferred in from “another vault” and never discuss their past. They’ve been there for a decade, so my younger brother that I last saw as a teen is now a few years older than I am (cause I’m like mid-twenties in the dream since I was a young 50s/60s-era newlywed with a newborn when I got frozen).

I’m thrilled they’re still alive and also awkward about the fact that they’ve been living in this safe, still-like-the-before-times Vault while I’ve spent the past several years killing my way through dozens of raiders gangs in the Wasteland and fucking Hancock, because they’re going to be so startled and have their innocent image of me shattered when they learn about it. But they want to see my new life, so I take my brother the vault librarian and my dad, who tells dad jokes and wears a cowboy hat and is apparently the Vault co-op board’s secretary (the Vault homeowners board are mostly mutated experiment survivors like the show’s Vault 4 and are very obviously up to something conspiracy-esque), up to the surface to visit my home in Goodneighbor.

This involves a massive shoot-out with a huge gang of raiders who were camped out outside the vault, where I yell at little/older brother for sucking at using a machine gun (Dad said you practiced! Dad said the vault had marksmanship training! Why are you so bad at providing covering fire!) and our dad is like, “Sole, stop being mean to your brother” *shoots raider in the chest* “You’ve clearly had more practice at this, nobody likes a braggart.” (Meanwhile I’m internally stressing about how to explain ghouls to them, and keep saying things like “Some people at our destination are going to look weird but don’t freak out, it’s just like Fred from the Vaultowner’s association board, okay? It’s because of the radiation, like Fred’s tentacle-arm.”)

We walk into Goodneighbor via an elaborate underground tunnel that leads into the bar, where Hancock is serving as the bartender and immediately grabs me for a kiss. Then there’s the world’s most awkward introduction ever as I’m like, “Uh, dad, this is my new husband who I remarried after husband no. 1’s tragic death. He’s the gunslinging anarchist mayor of disaster-town who does every drug.”

… only to discover that my Dad knows him, because the secret Vault conspiracy is actually that all the secretive and suspicious “vault transfers” are synths being given new lives, and Hancock has been his Railroad contact on the surface for years now. The ghoulification drug Hancock took was actually created by Fred-from-the-Vaultowners’-association-board’s grandfather. They’ve all been corresponding since before I was even thawed out. Dad is like, “When were you going to tell me your new wife was my daughter?! Also do fewer drugs and get a warmer, more practical coat. And a bigger gun, the Institute is dangerous.”

Also step-mom who stayed behind in the vault is actually a synth and therefore technically my great-granddaughter and my Dad and brother don’t know this they don’t know about Shaun/“Father” oh god explaining Hancock was supposed to be the worst problem.

[the-blue-phantom]

the whole thing about This Girl's a Killer by Emma Wells is that it COULD have been a good book if it had taken its basic premise (female serial killer that only kills abusive or predatory men) and gone one of two directions with it: either making it a full satire of that genre of book or by making it a more serious analysis of it all. Instead it played it completely straight.

Which, sure, whatever that's fine and the story they wanted to tell and I could have probably enjoyed it just fine if it weren't for the fact that Cordelia Black is sooooo fucking bad at being a serial killer and if Wells hadn't set up the first half of the book for a perfect twist of "Cordelia is absolutely losing it and spiraling further and further". Or even if Wells hadn't been so desperate for Cordelia to be someone you like and root for.

I spent the first 40 pages of the book being beaten over the head with Cordelia telling us how meticulous and careful and good at killing she is, and then the rest of the book she's stumbling around barely able to cover up the murder she impulsively committed (as opposed to the ones she carefully planned out). I could have forgiven that as a side effect of her being off her game, but I did get the vibe that I was supposed to think that all the bad decisions she was making were a sign of her meticulous planning and it was just other people getting in the way of it, rather than a fundamental flaw with the whole plan.

But really the biggest crime is everything with Simon, her best friend's boyfriend. Cordelia meets him and is immediately under the impression that he's a bad guy. He's a bad man and shouldn't date her best friend. And he is a bit of a creep--he's possessive and controlling, but so is Cordelia. And one of the first things you find out about her is that she's a control freak with a temper and has driven off all of her best friend's boyfriends! So when she kills him on impulse and was desperately trying to convince herself that he was actually a monster who deserved it I was like yes! yes! She's going to have to deal with the fact that she killed someone who maybe didn't "deserve" it! And we'll dig more into her negative traits and how they damage or affect others around her! BUT THEN A PAGE LATER SHE FINDS PHOTOS IN HIS PHONE THAT CONFIRM HE WAS A PREDATOR????? Which killed the rest of the book for me tbh, but I shouldn't have been surprised because two things we find out about Cordelia (and this world as a whole) is that a) only men are predators and women are perpetual victims and b) Cordelia can simply tell when men are horrible evil bad people she should kill for the betterment of everyone else.

There was also an absolutely laughable line where she says she "unlearned internalized toxic misogyny" which essentially means that she's a girly girl now and hates her past self who was a huge loser and pathetic or whatever and now every single woman she doesn't like (or that is just poorer than her) is an ugly redneck loser who is vapid and only wants designer bags, as if Cordelia herself isn't so shallow that she name drops every brand name in existence.

This book set itself up to have something interesting to say and explore and then completely dropped the ball at the halfway point because the author had no interest in anything other than making Cordelia a hashtag girlboss girl's girl with a ride or die bestie who was also way too chill with helping her best friend hide her boyfriend's body after finding his head in Cordelia's fridge. Also why did Cordelia leave it unwrapped? Why did she let her best friend help dispose of the body when the entire rest of the book she was desperately trying to keep her from getting involved? Who knows! I certainly don't and I'm not sure Wells does either outside of "ride or die best friends".

[greatwyrmgold]

On prior posts where I criticized/complained about Vamola (Dandadan) saying she wanted to marry Okarun, people said I didn't get it, that things would be explained later. "The translation is incomplete and a lot of context is missing from it." "You have to look beyond the surface, to understand Tatsu’s vision." That kind of stuff.

Well, I finished the Space Globalists arc, then the rest of Dandadan, and apparently I should have made this post after the Space Globalists arc, because they were talking about the really basic stuff in that arc.

I'll start with the people who implied there was some deeper reason for Vamola wanting to marry a strong guy. Chapter 105:

For the record, if you had asked me to guess why Vamola wanted to marry a strong guy when I read chapter 72, I would have said "eugenics" in a half-sarcastic way that refers to pretty much this exact scenario, except for it being something she wanted and not something her de facto mom told her to do.

Wanting to marry a strong guy to have strong kids is the obvious hack answer for why the super-strong lady wants to get beaten up and then marry the guy who beat her up. It's not interesting unless you find a new angle to dig at it from. It's especially not interesting if it's just something the lady was told to want.

Next, the people who said Vamola didn't just go for Okarun because she attributed the Great Kinta's victory to Okarun. Chapter 106 explains why.

So Vamola didn't decide to marry the person who beat her in a fight. Her suit says Okarun's power level is over 8,000 and decides that he must be the strong guy she should marry.

On one hand, marrying a guy you just met makes more sense than marrying a guy who spent several minutes beating you senseless. And it didn't make sense to attribute Great Kinta's victory to one of the guys who fell out before the fighting got serious.

On the other hand, this doesn't mate Vamola's interest in Okarun interesting. I was expecting something like "Vamola saw Okarun do something nice" or "Vamola saw Okarun being isolated and felt kinship," not "Vamola saw Okarun and his high power level".

That's the issue I had with Vamola's romantic declaration overall. Some people seemed to misunderstand that, arguing as though I thought it was illogical or a plot hole orunderexplained, or as though I just didn't like moving the Momo/Okarun romance plot forward.

That's just not true, especially not that last one. A big part of why I find Vamola's interest in Okarun uninteresting is that it's not moving the romance plot forward. Vamola saying she wants to marry Okarun doesn't really push Momo or Okarun towards their big confession, or add new character dynamics to the pot, or do anything that Aira trying to confess to Okarun didn't.

We saw how Okarun reacts to a girl expressing direct romantic interest in him via an unwanted kiss, and we saw how Momo reacts to a girl expressing interest in Okarun. The big difference is that Aira's an abrasive headstrong wannabe-protagonist who accused Momo of being a demon, while Vamola is a nice alien who doesn't speak Japanese but does want to be friends with people. Also Aira kept trying to convince Okarun to go out with her for a while, while I'm not sure Vamola mentioned marrying Okarun after chapter 72. Maybe Yukinobu Tatsu realized they were repeating plot points...

And not only had I seen this before in Dandadan, I've seen it before, over and over. Adding a third wheel to an unofficial yet obviously official couple is, like, Baby's First Romantic Subplot Complication. It shows up in series where the romance is a contractually-mandated detail shoved into one corner and where the romance is the whole point of the story. It shows up in web serials published by timid first-time authors and Broadway musicals produced by household names. It shows up in romances good and terrible. It is unavoidable.

Part of why I tend to dislike romance subplots and romance narratives is the laundry list of unavoidable clichés. Stuff I've come across in the past, that I continue to come across because it keeps being thrown into stories I otherwise like. That's why I dislike it. So unless you think a good romance story is definitionally comprised of cliché, do not hop into the notes to insist that I just don't understand Dandadan is a rom-com.

Anyways, that's why I made the second post. I like Vamola, I want to like what she adds to the ensemble, but the very first thing she added was a romance-subplot cliché that couldn't do anything that Aira's didn't do and also kinda slid out of relevance.

If Vamola has to introduce romantic complications, they should be something novel. And the polyamory punchline I dropped into that second Vamola post (Vamola declaring that she'll marry the whole Great Kinta team) would be very novel! It wouldn't just be unexpected, it would open up a bunch of unique possibilities. For instance:

A low-key but continuous point would be members of the Great Kinta team trying to figure out what Vamola thinks it means for all of them to be her husband, what sorts of expectations she has of them. Vamola thinks this is all very straightforward and is amused by how clueless her husband is about this.

Vamola gets very distressed about any conflict between members of her husband-team, regardless of context. She's not familiar with Japanese (or Earth) culture and also didn't know anyone her own age on Planet Sumer, so she can't tell the difference between a potentially friendship-ending argument and Jiji acting like Momo's kid brother.

Vamola gets suspicious about a new character trying to join the friend group. They're not part of her husband, after all! What if they disrupt whatever makes them work together so well? Or what if one of them cheat on her?

Kinta Sakata is the only part of the Great Kinta team who's 100% on board with the marriage. He actively schemes to male Japan/Earth's wedding traditions fit the lopsided polymarriage, to the consternation of his alleged friends.

I kinda want to write fanfiction about Vamola's polyamory proposal. Pluralhusbandry proposal?

[sonknuxadow]

jesus christttt im not surprised at all to hear that the knuckles series focuses on wade and other human characters a lot i saw this coming a mile away with how almost all the news we were getting before the trailer came out was about the human characters/actors and not about knuckles (or sonic or tails or any other animated characters) but the fact that somebody calculated how many minutes of screentime knuckles has and it came out as LESS THAN HALF OF THE ENTIRE SERIES' RUNTIME when the series is NAMED after him is ridiculous. after this show comes out wade will likely have more screentime and overall plot relevance in the entire scu than tails does. did they actually think wade is a popular enough character for people to be down with this. what the fuck

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

joining the other anon spamming your inbox cos no updates today - who is who in onminkey we bare bears? kb ice bear? jk panda? mh grizzly? this is very important

the way they got that nickname only bcs of their smcu outfits but like it was all wrong like who even thought that jinki = grizzly like 👤

[chiosblog]

Dirk Benedict in Blue Tornado (1991)