#I mean the kaiju makes infinitely more sense

[purplepenguintime]

does anyone remember when the suf intro dropped and we all thought Steven was going to turn into a worm?

good times

[paragonrobits]

so my original setting has gotten more complex (which is good) to thee point that I'm honestly intimidated about it (which is bad) and I really want to talk about it even though I honestly don't know half of what I've rambled on about on multiple different places or people and trying to keep it straight is scaring me because it gets complex (which is technically bad in a 'this is a good problem to have because i guess it means there's interest' way) so i'm thinking of getting down to brass tacks about it, and putting down what i actually WANT in the setting, so if anyone is interested or offers thoughts, they can suggest stuff that's closer to what i actaully want

an important note; this is not about the multiverse stuff (which is a pretty solid set up) or things like the world being technically infinite or having a sky that is a solid object doing some kind of calculation; the actual problem is the nature of the material world and how it impacts the setting. it feels like I'm putting in contradictory setting elements and its a chaotic mess that's making it hard to think about stuff.

so here's what I actually WANT out of the setting, to help figure out ways to implement it:

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom setting feel. The cozy, brave new world feel of BotW is by far my biggest inspiration; the world was destroyed but a new world has grown, which the characters must deal with and figure out. (The fate of the old world, and if it is around in some way, is an important consideration.) The world is vast, unknown and relatively new, and while characters may remember the past, its not necessarily reliable and there is no going back to what they knew.

A key point here is that while organizations and nations EXIST, they're not very big or powerful, and have not existing for that long (a couple generations or a few hundred years, however long it is for it to make sense that people have not completely rebuilt); the job of the characters is to connect them and build more. If there are pre-existing civilizations and powers, they are a shadow of what they once were. Whatever people remember is not something they can just bring back.

Something blew up the whole thing. As with the BotW influences, SOMETHING happened to destroy the previous world (or worlds) of mortalkind, usually referred to obliquely as a cataclysm. It is assumed to have been the work of an unknown alliance of villains who now remain as a mysterious and useful source of antagonists, and was in such a massive scale that the entire MULTIVERSE itself was destroyed as a result.

This means there is no going back to the world people knew, provided they knew anything at all (which I just realized HAS been a default assumption, so perhaps by making most characters products of the new world, this might fix a lot of my issues!). The cataclysm is usually assumed to be a kaiju-like monster visually inspired by a meteor; it might have been a fallen hero, a naturally occuring disaster, or a completely unpredented and anamalous peril. Finally it MIGHT be a progenitor of the monsters fought by most characters, which are functionally mindless creatures purely hostile in nature.

World of Adventure! The setting is, from the ground up, meant to facilitate adventures; characters are usually assumed to be in teams of like-minded groups with a similar ideology, agenda or common bonds, exploring the world to do adventure stuff. Fighting monsters, exploring dungeons and strange realms, performing works of magic, augmenting themselves through cybernetics and magical training to get stronger or lean new abilities, uncover new magical styles, engage in tournaments... that sort of thing.

These teams are also assumed to gather groups of followers, usually weaker beings inspired by them and become more powerful as they learn, creating military groups working on the behalf of these heroes or adventuring orders in their own right. Over time this transitions to establishing new nations and elements of political intrigue enter into the stories.

Focus on creating settlements or building nations in a Points of Light setting. A points of light setting defined here as 'an adventure-friendly world with points of light as stable civilization, and between these distant points are dangerous places filled with ruins, dungeons and adventuring opportunities'. The general idea is that magic outsside of high-population densities grows more chaotic, so these places become deeply unpredictable and populated by dangerous monsters that are functionally deadly chatbots, fueled by malicious ideas.

A key point is that established nations otherwise do not exist; finding stable regions, devising means to ensure long-term survival and working together are big setting elements, pitting these elements against a world that is very dangerous. As such, conquest is NOT a default assumption; the term empire-building may be used, but its not normally literal.

The world is really weird. Earlier versions have it as functionally infinite in scope; magic pervades the world, producing all kinds of bizarre phenomena, generating both magical beings and dangerous monsters, empowering beings with souls to perform intuitive feats of magic. It is NOT a conventional real life world; planets don't really exist, and the world (or worlds) are nigh-infinite in scope, just continuing onwards or doing some kind of procedural generation of new matter.

Originally the idea was that there is a single mortal world; should I instead make multiple worlds, or even a limitless number? This would allow for some greater versatility as well as bringing back some concepts I had trouble figuring out but felt narratively rich (such as one world that is relatively well-off and tends to look down upon the ones the main characters come from).

Dream Worlds, the heck do they work? One fun idea I had was the concept of dream worlds; magical realms created from imagination, wishes and personal desires, making a sort of magical simulation that plays by the rules you put in. Originally these were preserves created to safeguard mortal souls by angelic beings while the world was being repaired or replaced, and later mortals worked out how to make their own, with my original idea being that these function as magical realms they can travel to as desired, and exist as the heart of their own territory (brought there, or the territory transforming to reflect this dream).

It is in some ways inspired by the Chancels of Nobilis.

All organizations, teams and nations are, by default, very new and don't really predate the start of the story, and a big question is how to have this make sense with characters. One of the biggest issues I've had is things like adventuring guilds and unions, which handle quests and giving out missions; its fun and a great plot hook, especially for when you want characters to just go on a mission without having any real set up required, but reconciling that with the brave new world approach (so therefore these organizations CAN'T exist beforehand) has proven challenging. Do I drop this idea, or have it implemented through other characters who thus serve as authority figures of a sort?

Gym leader types, and where they come from. This isn't really a setting direction so much as a plot hook that's become hard to figure out. Powerful heroes and respected champions having settled down in a territory somewhere and occupying a niche similar to pokemon's Gym Leaders, with an inherent gym challenge motif; they invite any willing people to come there and train under them, learning their techniques, combat skills, non-combat skills and improve themselves, and challenge the Gym Leader when they feel ready.

This is a built-in plot hook; characters wanting to learn, grow and test themselves, especially against a Leader who can instruct them in improving something they feel lacking in, is a solid idea. But if everything is new, where did they come from? Why are they respected?

People want to be adventurers and to establish a home that is their Wish Come True. This is perhaps one of the big questions; adventuring, seeking out unusual situations, finding magical technologies born from imagination or magically generated artworks, fighting monsters, engaging with other adventurers in Jolly Cooperation or Friendly Battles (and, more rarely, Fuck You In Particular). So why MIGHT this be so common, to the point where most people tending to wander about as adventuring is a default asssumption?

Genuine evil is a rarity. One of the biggest twists I made that freed up my thoughts on characters is that as a general rule, genuinely evil and purely malicious characters are an extreme rarity. Villainous characters originally made to be human supremacists or unspeakable vile monsters were revised to lose those elements, or soften them to the point of being mildly quirky at worst; a human supremacist character being revised into a spoiled vampire brat with an entitlement complex and prone to getting in over her head, but with none of the genuine malice originally core to her character.

Villains are rare. Antagonists are not; many adventuring groups will conflict with one another, even if they are otherwise friendly, if they have a need for the same object of a given mission, but these are generally not malicious; you go to the same tournament, and afterwards, everyone has some barbeque. Rivalry, dislike and genuine hatred are not unusual, but pure malice IS unusual.

This means that when legitimate villains show up, its cause for some alarm; the setting generally works on white and gray morality. These worse evils can include fiends (as close to a truly pure evil entity as you can get) and mysterious villains of unknown purpose. To answer the question of where they came from, they MIGHT be incredibly evil ghosts of long-dead evils, having established some kind of underworld as a result of the cataclysm (which they might have engineered, for this purpose) and arising from it now and then for their own uncertain ends. This means that their genuine cruelty is unusual, and a big threat (as well as opportunity to unite others against them).

[xtrastorageblog]

I have thoughts/theories/questions about Monument Mythos but I'm going to put them here because I don't want to get yelled at on the discord/reddit lol

Also I've only watch wendigoons vid, like 3 of the MM videos, and read through the wikia/tvtropes/discord/reddit. It's because I scare easily and would like to sleep, if anyone reads this and sees something that's already been confirmed/talked about, please lmk!

The guys that started Maize, Rob & Rob, I know they have different last names but I think it's weird they have the same name. I think it's going to be revealed they had a similar experience like that happened to Virginia, except somehow the met their mirrored version and became like evil or some shit. Kind of like the lettuce twins in bioshock infinite. I just think it's weird how they literally started technology in America and have the same name.

Ok, when Freedom finally made it to the US, Reed said that there was a woman in the box, that was like....an actual person. If Freedom covers herself completely in skin will she a la Pinocchio, become a real person OR was Reed's brain just not able to handle seeing a 20ft+ statue covered in human skin. Like I know the statue can move around, but..does it magically transform into a normal looking person after acquiring enough skin or his brain just stopped working.

A lot of the events in the series reference irl ones like the Jan 6 raid at the Capitol or operation mongoose, was the latter half the Suez canal crab, people raiding it and stealing stuff, a combo of the Area 51 event and the looters during BLM protests/riots, one or the other, or just...not meant to be related

Is it confirmed that ONLY the heads cut off by the glass swell or does every other body part do to? If only the heads why? Or why does anything swell at all? ALSO those images of people walking around without heads at the grand canyon, are they just...living their life? Are they just stuck roaming there since their heads are just giant meatballs now? Like a chicken with it's head cut off?

I hope other countries get... shout outs as well, I find it odd how important Egypt is in this story. Like I know it's supposed to be like ~Ancient Aliens~ but then why not also talk about the Mayan people? Although I might be jumping the gun with how many Native American references dropped in the latest vid ( the section names and the horned serpent)

Also about the popular Freedom doorway pic, I think that is her with the skin on. I say this since alot of people are theorizing that that is her victims head..meatballing but that doesn't make sense I'm my book, how long it takes for a crown to form + also dont aren't the heads that look in the room angled the same way, like freedom bends down to look inside, kills/skins lady, bends down again. I don't get people who think she's too tall to peer into the room since she was able to bust out of some crates, grab the kid, run up the island, dig a whole, and sharpen her sword.

ALSO is freedom her OWN person and the Crawfords have just...lost themselves in there, mentally I mean. Or is this like a Trojan horse situation since the guy hated America, so as long as he's able to kill Americans he's happy? Like I know people think it's fucked up that he killed his daughter but, it ties into her wanting him to make a statue of her and they're together again....🎉

What would happen if you tried to cut the "trees" with Giza glass I wonder. Thanks for the info!!

Rockefeller states that Hughes was the next president after him, that has to be in reference to the guy that lost to Wilson. So did Rockefeller only serve one term like Wilson or did he also take up Theodore Roosevelt's term too. (I'm not looking at the list of presidents rn so it's either Roosevelt or...is it Taft? Cleveland?)

Also fav character rn is the Angel. What'll probably happen is they'll be used for an epic Kaiju style battle between Government/Freedom vs ADA/Angel but, I hope they'll be more heroic or have more sentience than they appear to have rn. It be hard to have 17 consciences at the same time, and it helped all of them hated Rockefeller but...I'd like to think when they're not being the deadliest laser beam in the world, they are chill. (I'm using they/them btw for them since it's 17 guys) they remind me A LOT of the villain/antagonist in Oxenfree, if anyone's reading this and you like elements of government cover ups, the possibilities of radiation, the Angel, and/or sci fi then check out the game Oxenfree, it's superb

Thanks for reading 💞

[fruitchakra]

haikyuu fic recs

the fic: but for me, there is a storm by authoress

the reader, me:

1. watched pacific rim when it first came out and thought it was a cool idea but never understood the hype around it in fandom AUs 2. started this fic and decided to rewatch it to brush up on visuals/worldbuilding 3. promptly gave up halfway through the movie because it was a waste of time when this fic does the entire kaiju/jaeger/drift concept SO MUCH BETTER

i’ve been bumbling around the haikyuu fandom looking for things to read and picking some stuff up and dropping them halfway (picky reader problems) and i finally came across this fic from someone’s rec post (i can’t remember who it was now and i’m kicking myself for it because i need more recs from people who enjoy the same stuff) and i honestly gave it a shot because of the summary and word count (276k!!!), not because i was interested in pacific rim (this was more a turn-off than anything else actually lol).

insert my tropey fanfic oh realization moment here.

this fic is a tour de force. i couldn’t stop reading it - it was the last thing i read at night and the first thing i opened at 7am because i had to continue. dogs (itachi/shisui) was the fic that used to live in my head rent-free and now it is this one. 

i can honestly say this is the best plotted fanfic i’ve ever read and i truly want to cry because this is the first haikyuu fic i’ve sunk myself into and the payoff is phenomenal. 

it’s not one that is recced widely today even though it seems extremely popular (haikyuu fandom was much more popular in 2015-2017 i noticed?) but god dammit if i missed out on this. i never believed or understood it when people say they would read fics fandom blind but if there is one, this is it. it doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about these precious haikyuu characters. it doesn’t matter if pacific rim’s concept doesn’t make sense to you. read this and everything will click into place.

reasons to read it (fandom blind or not):

the depth and breadth of the characterization is breathtaking, especially when taking into account it spans all the main pairings: daichi/suga, kageyama/hinata, tsukishima/yamaguchi, kenma/kuroo, bokuto/akaashi, ukai/takeda, oikawa/iwaizumi and asahi/nishinoya. not only that, it delves into the psyche of each character as well.

the word count: long fics don’t mean they are automatically good, but it is infinitely harder to write a good long fic than a good short fic (from my experience). i cannot imagine the amount of effort and soul it takes to pour into 276 thousand words. when i was writing 50k, it took me months and absolutely drained me.

the plot. oh boy, the plot. everything makes sense, from the things introduced in the first chapter to how it all comes together by the end. the twists and turns were fresh even though i knew the gist of pacific rim, and it really elevates the source material (PR) at the same time incorporating volleyball-related themes and lessons from the manga into it at the same time (how?? i know, i was thinking the same but it works so very well). it is just tight and this type of plotting cannot come easily. it takes work and planning and then some more work.

the angst. came for the angst, stayed for the angst, in awe of the angst even now. it’s not hopeless like some fics - this is angst and despair with hope interwoven into it and it somehow makes the angst even worse and i LIVE for it. one of the chapter’s notes sums it up perfectly: one of the underlying themes of this fic is 'everything was going so well until it went spectacularly wrong'. i will say though that it’s not all doom and gloom because the payoff is worth every single second you put into this.

last thing: how the title absolutely fits into the fic. many fics don’t utilise the title well enough but this one? when you hit that moment, it is perfection. of course i don’t think this fic is perfect because no work of fiction is (there were themes i didn’t enjoy and a few typos) but everything is easy enough to overlook and this fic gets very, very close to ultimate perfection.

--

i know this says haikyuu fic recs but right now i only have one fic (i’m going to add to this as i begin a new longfic that i can hopefully rec soon too! and i’m also compiling a list of published fiction recs) but i can honestly say if there is one fic in the haikyuu fandom you need? it’s this one.

[ckret2]

I cannot believe I found a person who is a fan of both Godzilla and Hazbin Hotel. And is also a fanfic writer. I've been bouncing around the idea of a crossover fic between those two for quite some time, and there's a lot of fun stuff I can do with it... But something that worries me is the potential power gap between the Titans and overlords. Do you think Godzilla would potentially stand a chance against someone at Alastor's power level?

Ohhhhohoho, do it. Do it.

Also boy I hope you wanted a long reply cuz you got one. Tumblr is in a mood to delete my read mores tonight (I TRIED to put one in!) so apologies for the dash stretcher.

I think that, at this point, we know so little about the Hazbin characters' full power sets that you can say just about anything you want about how they'd fare against each other, and as long as you make up appropriate rules? You're golden.

Do you want Godzilla to be able to curb stomp Alastor? Then say that the reason Alastor is so powerful in hell is because in life he directly caused so many deaths—but then that means that Godzilla, flattener of Tokyo, is automatically a thousand times stronger than Alastor in hell. Or, say that 100% of Alastor's powers are dependent on having access to a specific free AM radio frequency that carries his ~magic~, and say that one of the forms of radiation Godzilla gives off just so happens to match that frequency, completely negating his power.

Or you want Alastor to be able to defeat Godzilla but only with extreme difficulty? Then say Alastor can still use that frequency but only from a safe zone of like 50 miles away, so he can only use less effective long range attacks. Or say that the frequency only happens when Godzilla uses his atomic breath, so usually Alastor can use his magic but every single time Godzilla counterattacks it kills all the magic he's got going and he has to restart it all once the breath is over. Or say that he slowly and difficultly learns to broadcast his magic across another frequency that saps his energy twice as fast but isn't blocked by Godzilla.

Or do you want them on roughly equal footing? Then say that Alastor has all the powers we see in canon—he can teleport, call up specters, giant thorny vines, tentacles pits—BUT say that even though his power is magical, all of the things he summons are non-magical, just normal objects and monsters, and let Godzilla duke it out with shadowy tentacles the same way he'd duke it out with any other kaiju. Then the fight is about which happens first: does Godzilla run out of energy or does Alastor's army run out of monsters to summon? Or maybe Alastor's army is infinite but he's the one at risk of running out of magical energy while Godzilla is looking for him to stomp on. Or maybe the monsters Alastor summons are strong enough kaiju they could take Godzilla down, but Godzilla slips into a portal into their dimension and is trying to survive long enough to destroy whatever magic-radio-tower-or-whatever lets Alastor summon them from there.

Or do you want Alastor to curb stomp Godzilla? Have him summon Cthulhu to break Godzilla's neck with his tentacles and also drive half of hell insane. Or have his magic just go pure off-the-walls overpowered and have him teleport Godzilla's guts to a parallel dimension. Whatever. We don't know that Alastor's powers can do that—but we don't know that they can't, so it's up to you to decide whether you wanna say gut teleportation is possible or impossible or possible-but-only-if-Alastor-does-a-long-draining-ritual-first-and-he-only-has-one-shot-to-get-it-right.

And there are a thousand other factors you can play with to manipulate power levels. Like:

- Is Godzilla in Hazbin's version of hell, and if so does he get new mutations/powers the way the dead humans all do—and do those powers help him? Or are they in the living world, and if so does that increase or decrease Alastor's powers? Do they bounce back and forth between the living and dead worlds? Are they in some third new setting with new rules?

- Does this Godzilla have one of the canon backstories (whether that be old school Gojira '54 backstory or newer monsterverse backstory or something else) or is it a new version of Godzilla made for a Hazbin AU, and if it's a new Godzilla, might he have a new method of creation that impacts his power levels? Did Sir Pentious accidentally make him while experimenting with nuclear weapons near a swamp in hell? Did Sir Pent INTENTIONALLY make him? Is Godzilla a demigod sent from heaven to assist with the latest extermination and therefore imbued with angel-level powers as well as Godzilla's usual skill sets? Can Godzilla only be killed by angel weapons too?

- Do either of them have allies? Does Alastor mind-control Ghidorah and Gigan via radio waves to help him out? Do Mothra's god rays disintegrate sinners just like an angel weapon does, and force Alastor to hide while she's swooping around? Does Vox with his electricity control decide to give Godzilla a power line power boost just to spite Alastor? Are any of Godzilla's mortal victims in hell, and do they jump in the fight—and are they as useless as soldiers in Godzilla movies usually are, or have their experiences and post-mortem mutations given them an advantage? Or does Godzilla command or get commanded by a legion of souls, with some GMK-ish vibes? Do higher-order hellborn demons like Stolas get involved? Or angels? Or Lucifer? On which side?

And all questions of their power levels aside—you can always change the advantage in battle in an instant by having Godzilla trip over a bridge, or by having someone hire I.M.P. to infiltrate Alastor's control room and attempt to shoot him in the head and distract him from running the fight.

The important question isn't "does Godzilla stand a chance against Alastor's power?" It's "how do you want the story to go?" Who do you want to win, and how difficult do you want the win to be? And is there anything specific you want to see happen before that victory? (Do you wanna destroy a city? Do you want people to freak out about Godzilla until Alastor steps up to fight him and then they go "oh the Radio Demon's worse actually" and start rooting for Godzilla? Or vice verse? Do you wanna end it with friendship instead of a one-sided victory? Do you want a specific symbolic/moral message? Do you want a romance subplot?)

First you figure out the basic plot you want. Then you fudge around the sci-fi & fantasy worldbuilding however you need to in order to ensure that their powers and abilities facilitate the kind of story you want to tell. Even staying firmly within the limits of canon, there's always room to make up a "previously undiscovered" detail of biology or rule of magic, or to develop a new headcanon about how their respective abilities and biologies uniquely interact with each other. The power levels of the characters never need to control the plotline—and never should control the plotline, because what's most important is telling an interesting story. Everything else is subservient to that. Tweak how their abilities work until they serve that interesting story.

Once you know how you need the story to go and how you're going to manipulate their powers to make that happen, you've just got to introduce that early on and stay consistent. The earlier you present it in the story, the more it looks like a part of the plot rather than a detail you made up specifically to make the plot go the way you want it to. If you want Godzilla to negate Alastor's powers via radio frequency, then have Alastor start hearing white noise and getting a migraine and losing control of his powers and wondering wtf is happening while Godzilla is still out at sea slowly swimming toward land. If you want Alastor to slaughter Godzilla with some eldritch Lovecraftian monstrosity, then have him say as soon as they hear about Godzilla approaching "well, I've got a friend who could kill him in a second!!" and have every single person in hell from Moxxie all the way up to Lucifer go "DO NOT DO THAT" and have the plot be them trying to beat Godzilla and trying to persuade Alastor NOT to unleash Cthulhu while he rolls his eyes and slowly loses patience.

Foreshadow early—make sure readers have a rough estimate early of what factors are going to affect the characters' odds against each other in battle before the battle even begins. The exception, of course, are any plot elements you want to be a surprise, but you at least have to have them make sense with canon and with the worldbuilding you've already done in the fic.

[thepastisaroadmap]

Transcript:

A monster is necessity and impossibility at the same time. “Breaking strain” redirects here.

What Scares You the Most?

“Breaking strain” redirects here.

What Scares You the Most?

What Scares You the Most?

What Scares You the Most?

What Scares You the Most?

What Scares You the Most?

1. The object of fear needs to be “something bad” 2. There needs to be a non-negligible chance that the bad state of affairs will happen

What are the best ways to deal with untranslatability, e.g. lexical gaps?

Although many fears are learned, fear is part of human nature. A monster is stated in various forms, poetically by Paul Valéry: “Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable.” we are far from understanding the whole picture, in particular in truth we see argh tin front of us. more real than reality.” the narrator in this story seems detached from, or perhaps numbed by, events that one would normally expect to be registered with horror.

A monster is to deform, until it ruptures. (“Poetry is what gets lost in metamorphism, or deformation) no equivalent can be found 1. there is not; nothing

A monster is 1. House, room 2. Filth, filthy to defile There, she meets a wolf he unwraps the wound to discover it rotting and covered with maggots. Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into a “monstrous vermin.”

Munch recalled that he had been out for a walk at sunset when suddenly the setting sun’s light turned the clouds “a blood red.” He sensed an “infinite scream passing through nature.”

“The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind.” person is bound to the new form. condemned to repeat it. “transform into wolves” Long live the new flesh.” Seth’s final transformation, shedding his decaying flesh to become a monstrous, insectoid-human creature. (2) perversion of reality; needs to be understood in relationship to two other aesthetic ideals: the beautiful and the sublime. beauty is seen as an experience that has nothing to do with artistic merit: Beautiful works of art may be without any merit whereas good art is not necessarily beautiful.

A monster is the symbol of a world one wrong, a work of man that once created cannot be taken back or deleted. “War is Peace.” “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” near Santa Monica Pier, the screenwriter imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. “They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things.” He later conceived the machine as “a substitute for explaining the situation we’re in.” or a revealing stain which cracks the veneer and superficiality of everyday circumstances and exposes its cruel essence.

Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori: Raleigh’s co-pilot who lost her family in a Kaiju attack and was adopted by Pentecost. Though Mori possesses a strength and fury this time, and holds him tightly. He warms her that the fairies will attempt to make her drop him by turning him into all manner of beasts (see Proteus), but that he will do her no harm. A monster is (Death, Malformation, Untranslatability though the meaning persists. A monster may be the last remnant of his humanity.

the only way she can save him is saying that she loves him.

A monster is “a love story without a love story. It’s about all of the necessary elements of love without arriving at love itself.” Both Becket and Mori have suffered Every Window Is A Mirror “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” The epitaph engraved on his tomb is an excerpt from his poem “The Lesson for Today”.

“The Girl as Wolf” bursts into tears and laments that she should have learned how to love the Beast in the first place, as a poet must.”

A monster is a distorted copy of reality.

You Come Too.

"Monster," poem assembled from quotations drawn from Wikipedia articles

[twitchesandstitches]

Okiko the Fairy Pred

Basic Concept: A tiny insect alien fairy girl with the ability to gulp down anything she can kiss; the ultimate tiny pred girl!

Species: Unnamed insect-like fairy species from an isolated world that has been retroactively called Igbolan; these apex predators are survivors of an ancient cataclysm that reduced their civilization to pre-Stone Age status, but they have rebuilt over the ages and had achieved a technology state on par with the Industrial age, with basic electronics, prior to her leaving the planet.

Height: Approximately six inches tall.

Appearance: Imagine a fairy, the classic image. A tiny humanoid, likely super cute, with a pretty little dress and glittery wings. Now, imagine that… and forget pretty much all of it except the most basic image because she is actually an insect-like being with no apparent connection to the Fae.

She fits the look, admittedly. Her thick and super short stacked body is covered in black chitin that glistens in various colors against the light, with bipedal legs able to support her body and resemble the legs of a grasshopper, but adjusted for biped stance. She is extremely thick, several times wider than she is tall, almost a foot and a half across with sheer curve volume, with massive breasts massing nearly as much as her entire body (and producing a sweet sugary substance), and a equally massive butt. She has a belly big and plump enough that it stretches past her chitin, a lighter color than the rest of her.

Her face is cute, with multiple eyes, and extremely large, luscious lips that dominate her face and make up the bulk of her sensory organs. Do not let her kiss you. It’s a bad idea. While she has no hair, a cluster of antenna around a primary pair gives something like hair.

She has not just one pair of wings, but dozens, perhaps over a hundred or something in between there; they grow in many rows from the back of her head all the way down to her chins, each set larger than her and beating furiously with a helicopter effect. These wings are beautiful and glittering, shining gorgeously, and resemble stained glass. They also give her an impressive turn of speed.

She’s become something of a fashionista and likes to wear random objects as clothing; scraps of flat as a sash, bottle caps for boob covers, or ‘clothing’ herself in stolen jewelry. Her chitin is no less decorated, painted in vibrant and beautiful patterns that might make a biologist reminded of venomous animals that have bright colors to warn predators of the danger.

Backstory: Originally from a very obscure world forgotten by surrounding systems, her people lived in peace and tranquility as they recovered, tending to their jungle and delicately maintaining it, harvesting it and feasting upon every single thing that lived in it the instant they felt even slightly peckish. These fairies possess the unusual power of swallowing whole anything they can press their mouths to, instantly gulping it down into their infinitely expanding bellies. A natural glutton, Ikiko was content with this to the day she saw the sky come down.

A ship crashed, carrying a traveler from across the stars who rampaged through the jungle in a hissy fit, only stopped with Ikiko swallowed her whole in self defense. This invader, Yatruiga, was brought back to her village and in her recovery over the years, told the people there about how things had changed in the multiverse over the ages. Ikiko was entranced, eager to see the galaxy, and incidentally wanted to sample all the delicious two-leggers walking about up there!

Since then she’s become Yatruiga’s best friend and rival, acting as something of a calming influence on the cantankerous warmonger.

Personality: Take a magpie, make it sapient, and set it loose on a multiverse where everything is VERY INTERESTING and new; you have the basis of Ikiko! She’s a deeply inquisitive, massively curious and impulsive gal, with all the self control of a crow that’s been tossed into a shiny thing factory.

She’s even prone to stealing random things, on the basis of ‘i want it, therefore it is mine’, and places where she goes tends to have random things vanish, and show up again on her person or in her various hidey holes.

She’s not a bad person, nor is she cruel. Her recklessness means that she really doesn’t think things through, which is ironic considering that she is the calming voice of moderation between her and Yatruiga. The distinction between them is that Ikiko rushes into things after she takes time to consider them, and while she is bad at consequences, she simply doesn’t have a ‘stop now maybe’ button.

One of her faults is that she’s still hazy on the distinction between ‘animal’ and ‘being’. She will happily gobble up humans, orcs and anything else in a single swallow as she would a rampaging monster or livestock, without any second thoughts or hesitation. Her people were the only sapients on her homeworld, and their outlook on the world has lead her to view other beings as ‘animals that can talk’; people, yes, but not fundamentally different. She eats animals, so why not the ones who talk?

A glutton and gourmand, she regards her travels across the multiverse as an excuse to snack on everything, and she intends to sample at least one of every being in the cosmos, and this suggests a more hedonistic aspect of her personality in general. She wants to enjoy life, and doesn’t care much about success or personal ambition. She even has rather cynical outlooks on ambition as a concept, deeming it a zero sum game that’s just wasting time when you could be having fun.

She is also very practical and pragmatic, with no real room for sentimentality. When she sees a jungle burning down, she thinks of the ecological devastation and problems this will pose for the inhabitants, but she won’t cry for the despoling of nature, because she wouldn’t understand or care about what that even means. This somewhat grim outlook explains a lot of how she thinks.

However you may not realize this at first glance. She is very bubbly, excitable and friendly, with a somewhat airheaded way of talking (“OH MAH GOSH YOU GUYS! CHECK THIS THING I FOUND OUT! ISN’T THIS SHINY JUST THE SPARKLIEST!?”) all full of exclaimations, run-on sentences and overflowing excitement at everything, forever. Her default mood is just immense pep!

Fandom: Original character! Her influence maps to general notions of fairies as ‘not nice, but not malicious’ archetypes, and she is heavily inspired by the original incarnation of Tinkerbell from the first Peter Pan novel.

Abilities: As a fairy, she can fly extremely fast and far, so much that she moves around like a rocket, and is ludicrously hard to pin down. She is also much stronger than her size indicates; she is weaker than a human or even a goblin would be, but she can pick up and carry large objects without much problem, and her strength increases for a short time whenever she eats, getting stronger the more she has eaten.

She’s very durable as well, about equivalent to her strength. You couldn’t stomp her, but you might be able to crush her, but that’s still a very bad idea.

For all fairies like her have the ability to swallow whole anything their lips touch, instantly sucking down the entire prey. Size doesn't matter; she has eaten things as big as humans, cars, small buildings, elephants, kaiju, giant robots and even bigger, without any problem. Her stomach will expand to fit anything she swallows. In theory she could gobble up a city, if only she thought to try it, and anything in her stomach will be digested, with the exception of tough metals and minerals. Gems would be in no fear of her, for example, and Transformers would probably find this a mild inconvenience, but to organics, it is certain doom. Digestion will happen almost instantly, and she experiences digestion as another part of the tasting process.

She will devour anyone, anything, any time, and with the emotional awareness of a flytrap grabbing its latest victim. At this point it's an automatic reflex.

While she has yet to acquire a multiverse standard education, she is learning fast, and may even be gaining the knowledge of those she consumes, or at least believes she is. In any case she has amassed a respectable amount of technical knowledge and is doing her best to learn more. However she thinks she is a lot more skilled or knowledgeable than she actually is.

Relationships: She has a wide variety of friendships and makes friends easily. She might tend to instantly gobble them up the instant she decides they look tasty, or to examine them more intimately, but she genuinely likes people… and not just in the ‘you’re delicious’ sense. Accordingly, she will quickly befriend people with ease.

She gets along well with the MILF Fleet, finding kindred spirits with them. She really doesn’t get their concerns with morality, and can find them self-righteous to her pragmatic views. Still, they’re nice ladies… but she’s worried about eating them. They seem like they might bite back.

She would probably join the Cobalts if she wasn’t already tied up with Yatruiga, relishing their carefree attitudes towards life and indifference to collateral damage. As it is, she has accepted a freelancer status with them, doing small missions on their behalf in exchange for some loot and prestige in their ranks.

Yatruiga is her closest friend and rival, the two of them constantly competing to outdo one another and denying that they really like one another. Yet at the end of the day, Ikiko knows that she is Yatruiga’s only real friend, and sticks to her in order to take care of the big goohead. Additionally, Yatruiga is very powerful and can protect Ikiko, so there is an element of self-defense involved. The two of them are growing inseparable, even just in a ‘those two people in the background making funny comments’ way.

Pred Level: Extremely high. She will eat anyone and anything, and she will eat them at any time without a second thought or awareness of timing. She’s not a random eater, and regards it as fine dining; she likes exotic, interesting meals, not random fare she could anywhere! She loves fighting monsters for this reason, since they are all unique and totally interesting wonders. Horrible murderous brutes and abominations, but tasty ones. Note that her rating is partly due for how easy it is for her to eat someone; all she has to do is lock her lips around them, suck, and they area inside her stomach and already digesting. Due to her extreme speed, agility and small size, this makes her terrifyingly effective at devouring, though once she eats enough, she is effectively immobilized and can no longer consume unless they are foolish enough to touch her lips.

Prey Level: Fairly low. Her sheer voracity and the ease she can consume others makes actually consuming her extremely hard and pointless. To be in a position where you can swallow her, you have to be close enough for her to swallow you, and she’ll have an easier time of it. She can be eaten and has no special options, but it is very hard to see how it could happen.

Relevant Kink Material: Extreme size difference (she’s the tiny), shortstack, hyper proportions, vore (soft vore, predator), xeno monster girls.

[dumbfinntales]

Alright, Bayonetta 3 is beaten! That was quite the journey and it offered just the right amount of PlatinumGames silliness that I almost started to miss. Although I enjoyed the ride, I couldn’t help but to feel that I’ve seen this before. My full thoughts are below and I warn you, there’ll be spoilers.

One of PlatinumGames’ best features is just how over the top and ridiculous their games can get. Bayonetta 3 has giant kaiju battles and you surfing in collapsing buildings with a giant demon. Hell the game begins with a tsunami that sweeps over a city and you battle monsters on top of a yacht all the while that is happening in the background. But the thing is. For Bayonetta at least, that’s nothing new. Nothing really felt super over the top because I could already expect it. It’s not a band thing per se, but it fails to impress like before. Maybe I just have gotten too used to their shenanigans.

The combat was as good as ever and I enjoyed the demon slave mechanic where you can summon demons in the middle of a fight and control them. It’s not a mind blowing change to the formula, but it’s fun and it works. I also really enjoyed the ability to include your demons at the end of your combos. That’s some real team work.

The level design is also a lot more open than before. I heard that this was supposed to be a open world game, so it makes sense. The remnants are there. I don’t really have anything bad to say about the openess of the levels, it’s nice. Although on future playthrough it’ll probably get annoying to have to hunt down all the verses in the big open spaces.

I quite liked the new threat of the Homonculi as they were distinct and mysterious. They all had names in Latin which was cool to see. Some of them had cool names like “Cumulonimbus” which roughly should mean “gathering storm clouds”. But for some they picked completely random names from a dictionary, names like “Stratus” meaning “pawed” or “spread across”. Oh and there’s Pannus which just means a type of cloth they used to wear in the ancient times. I did read somewhere that they were named after cloud formations, but I don’t know how true that is. If so those are some strange names for clouds.

The story was kinda ehhh, I really didn’t like the multiverse idea. I dunno, maybe Marvel is to blame, but I find the whole “infinite universes” thing just boring at this point. Singularity was also a very underwhelming villain. His final fight was cool as most PlatinumGames final bosses are, but that’s it. I don’t even remember why he wanted to destroy the multiverse. There were other confusing things like “is Bayonetta still alive or not” or “why did Luka turn into a werewolf” or “what was the even twinkier magic Luka”? The new character Viola turned out to be Bayonettas kid, and to be honest I saw that coming from miles away. They weren’t exactly subtle with this “big reveal”.

Talking about Viola, she’s the next big thing this game has to offer. When I first saw her I thought I’d dislike her. There was something about her design that I didn’t like. Then before I even played the game I read how people really disliked playing as her and I dreaded another V situation from DMC 5. But much to my surprise I really ended up liking her. She’s this goofy and clumsy character who tries really hard to be badass, but fails most of the time. She can still kick ass just like her mother, but she isn’t exactly as elegant as her. She was also used for some almost Looney Tunes level of gags which honestly made me love her. I guess she inherits that from her father? Makes sense. She wants to be so cool so bad, but you aren’t just there yet honey.

I also quite enjoyed how different her combat style was. But I do have some issues with it. She wields a big ass katana and can summon a big cat demon to fight with her. The cat demon works a bit different as it fights on its own and you can still move around and punch shit with your bare hands. She also relies on parrying to activate witch time. The parry was kinda hard to get used to as you tend to spam dodge as Bayonetta, but Viola is a lot less forgiving. You have to be precise and that’s honestly where my issues with her come from. She’s not equipped to deal with some of the enemies and bosses. You try to focus on parrying, but you fuck up once and you get stunlocked. Her dodge is nowhere near as good as Bayonettas either. It made some fights really frustrating. I do hope they adjust how she works for future titles.

Bayonetta 3 is a weird mixed bag. It has a lot of good things, but also weird decisions. There are honestly too many gimmicks in this game that take away from core combat. The special challenge rifts are also gimmicky with some really frustrating encounter design. Why couldn’t they just be normal fights and none of this “don’t touch the ground for two minutes” bollocks. I honestly don’t know what to fully think of it. I just might have to come back to this once I beat the new God of War. The game gets a AVAVAGO out of ten.

[themattress]

My Disliked Pokemon Adventures Arcs

I love Pokemon Adventures, but there are three arcs that I don’t care for at all: the Ruby/Sapphire Chapter, the Emerald Chapter, and the OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire Chapter.  

In other words, all the Hoenn arcs.

Why I dislike the Ruby/Sapphire Chapter:

- The tone. It’s inconsistent - it goes from a children's version of "Around the World in 80 Days" to a political thriller based around Team Aqua and Team Magma to a freaking Kaiju movie as Groudon and Kyogre wreak havoc, and none of it really gels together or works well, and I feel that this arc is the only one to have this particular problem.

- Ruby and Sapphire.  I personally don't care for Ruby and Sapphire's personalities here. I think Kusaka wanted to subvert expectations based on the characters' designs, but it's still done in a pretty hamfisted, over-the-top way, with Ruby being stereotypically feminine and flamboyant and Sapphire being stereotypically tomboyish and wild.

- The story's whole set-up is flawed. Ruby and Sapphire argue about which is better: Pokemon battles or Pokemon contests.  They make a bet to see which one can master their preferred goal in 80 days.  The problem is that this makes much less sense than an alternative bet: to have the one disparaging contests to try to master them and the one disparaging battles to try to master them.  How much more interesting would that have been? That's why I'd have had Ruby be masculine yet still end up doing and enjoying contests, while Sapphire would be feminine yet still end up doing and enjoying battles.  But if Kusaka really wanted to do them the way he did, then the contest-loving Ruby should have challenged the gyms and the battle-loving Sapphire should have performed in contests.

- The whole Ruby vs. Norman conflict. It is so forced and so badly-written.  It starts out as a thinly veiled metaphor for a bigoted father who can't accept his gay son (which is stupid since, when you strip the metaphor away, Ruby not being gay and being in love with Sapphire is kind of a big plot point later on), yet we're later expected to sympathize with Norman because it turns out he was going to allow Ruby to do contests before Ruby ran away and that he has been protecting Ruby more than Ruby knew for a long time, making him running away come off as particularly ungrateful.  But is this really a good excuse for Norman outright beating his son in a physical quarrel in which Ruby is hopelessly outclassed?  Yet Norman is still called a "good father" immediately after this! What!?

- Wally.  All the build-up he gets to being the "Emerald"-representative Dex Holder, and it amounts to absolutely nothing because he ends up having to turn in his PokeDex back to its rightful owner, an actual character named Emerald who doesn't work nearly as well as Wally would have.  What was even the point?

- Archie and Maxie.  With Archie, Kusaka gives him an interesting position as the head of Hoenn's primary TV station and thus Ty and Gabby's boss while secretly being the leader of Team Aqua, but his personality is all wrong - he is now Faux Affably Evil rather than genuinely Affably Evil, ruthless to the point of discarding (even lethally) his own grunts in order to get what he wants, which Archie from the games would never do, ever.  Maxie's personality is on point, but his position as a total shut-in at his cavernous lair undermines him as a character, since in the games he's a badass who is just as active with his team as Archie is because he's just as committed to his extreme vision of a new world.  They get worse when they decide to team up to awaken Groudon and Kyogre, despite knowing the risks and the fact that they'll have to betray one another in the end, anyway.  But then they get driven mad and even flat-out possessed by the Orbs they are holding and seemingly get killed.  But then they show up still alive in the end for one pointless final battle, no longer possessed but evidently permanently insane and sadistic. They meet an unceremonious defeat within an electrical forcefield.  This is a severe bastardization of the well-intentioned extremists from the games, who were the series’ first (somewhat) fleshed-out villains!  Just what was Kusaka thinking?

- Tabitha's design. Seriously, wtf!?  I get that Tabitha didn't exactly have the most interesting of designs in the games, but you could have come up with better than this!

- Courtney. When she first shows up, she's fine. But then she faces Ruby one-on-one, and we get a very uncomfortable one-sided flirtatious dynamic, with Courtney finding Ruby "interesting" due to him being an innocent, beauty-loving Coordinator like she used to be before becoming an evil pyromaniac (a backstory and transition which is never explained, btw!)  She then gets so obsessed with Ruby that she looks up all sorts of personal info on him before getting called back on her mission, in which she takes innocent people hostage and threatens to kill them in order to avoid being defeated by Roxanne - a low, cowardly action.  So we're supposed to dislike her, right?  Well, apparently not, since she receives an abrupt redemption as she helps Ruby in stopping Groudon and Kyogre, even at the cost of her own life until the Celebi Ex Machina happens.  Very little about this character adds up, yet she receives the most exposure and supposed "development" out of any of the villains in this arc. I was so sick of her at the end that I wish she'd just stayed dead in the Cave of Origins - or better yet, back when Ruby dropped her into a flaming inferno at Rusturf Tunnel!

- Shelly's disappearance.  Shelly came off as more likable than Courtney, and yet not only did she not receive as much paneltime, but she also just disappears without explanation. Following her defeat at the hands of Winona and Flannery, who she had good adversarial chemistry with, she retreats on a Vibrava and is never seen again.  She's the only villain to not receive a conclusive ending at the end of the arc, and that really bugs me.

- Matt. Apparently, Kusaka thought it would be too boring if he was just the generic tough guy he was in the games, so he made him more sensitive and accident-prone, which should have made him more sympathetic.  But like Courtney, he really isn't, particularly when he attempts to drown Sapphire and Flannery and set a Sharpedo on them, grinning and laughing with maniacal glee while doing so.  Kusaka must’ve realized this by the end, since he's ultimately left to die (by drowning, karmically enough) - and unlike with Amber, nobody saves him.

- Ruby crosses the line.  Late into the arc, after Kyogre and Groudon are awoken, Ruby pulls a two-punch move that kills all likability his character had. First, he refuses to swallow his pride and call off the bet in order to join Sapphire in saving all of Hoenn when she pleads with him to, flat-out saying he doesn't care about what happens and just wants to keep doing contests. Sapphire is understandably pissed about this extreme display of selfishness. What's worse, afterward he blames his Feebas, whom it looked like he was coming around to liking for a while, for losing a contest and kicks it out of his party, yelling about how it's weak and ugly.  Yes, Ruby played the "You're not beautiful enough for me!" card well before Lusamine did!  How am I supposed to root for this guy after this?  I don't care if he felt remorseful afterward, this was too selfish and mean-spirited for him to come back from.

- Ruby and Sapphire's backstory. OK, this was just stupid.  Out of nowhere, it's revealed that Ruby and Sapphire actually knew each other as children and don't recognize each other in the present day.  Even worse, we find out that the reason they developed the personalities they have was because of a misunderstanding - a Salamance attacked Sapphire, and Ruby viciously fought it off all by himself, at the cost of getting a scar.  He and Sapphire were separated afterward, leading Ruby to think he traumatized her with his viciousness and becoming more gentle and feminine as a result, while Sapphire thought that Ruby must have gotten in trouble (in addition to getting hurt) because of her weakness and becoming more rough and tomboyish as a result.  Really now? That's what we're going with?  Ruby and Sapphire's romance, IMO, would have been much more engaging without this "bombshell”.

- Groudon vs. Kyogre.  This starts with round 53, in the fifth volume.  It ends with round 83, in the eigth volume.  So that's 30 chapters of this big climactic event happening!  It just goes on, and on, and on!  What's worse, it keeps getting sidetracked by other things, like the Gym Leaders fighting the Aqua and Magma Admins, or Norman training Wally, or Ruby and Sapphire's quarrel and reconciliation and backstory reveal, or the introduction of Juan and his training program on Mirage Island, or Courtney's whole Redemption Equals Death...and then, even after Groudon and Kyogre are finally put to rest, we get another climax when Archie and Maxie turn up alive and ready for one more battle!  It just never seems to end!

- Sapphire being locked in the car during the big climax. Fuck you too, Ruby!

- The infamous Celebi Ex Machina.  So, after that prolonged climax, we have had three casualties: Courtney, Norman and Steven.  That seems fitting - you shouldn't do such a huge, lengthy, perilous event and have no prices be paid at the end of it all.  But nope - Ruby reveals that he's had Celebi all this time, and uses it to do some time mumbo-jumbo and resurrect all three characters.  This remains one of the most criticized parts of the entire manga series, since it's such cheap writing and feels like a slap in the face to readers who read through this arc.  It was completely unnecessary - Courtney never appears again and Norman doesn’t do anything that couldn’t have been done by another character, so it's fine for them to stay dead.  And as for Steven, his father could just resurrect him in the OR/AS arc with the whole Infinite Energy / Ultimate Weapon ritual that he is canonly well-versed in.

- Finally, the arc's length and what came from it.  This arc taking so long, particularly due to the Groudon and Kyogre battle getting so dragged out, screwed the entire manga's schedule over for the next decade.  Gen IV started and Gen III was nowhere close to being wrapped up in the manga.  Gen V started and Gen IV was nowhere close to being wrapped up in the manga.  Gen VI started and Gen V was nowhere close to being wrapped up in the manga. Only with Gen VI have we finally gotten back on track, with the manga wrapping its Gen VI arc just as that generation came to a close - and even then, we still have yet to see Gen V's B2/W2 arc conclude.  And it's all thanks to this one, long, BAD story arc.

Why I dislike the Emerald Chapter:

- Emerald himself.  There is almost nothing likable about this guy.  He's a battle fanatic who only cares about Pokemon as tools of battle, he's an insensitive jerk to everyone around him, he's got a very unappealing design, and he's actually freakishly short (and his sensitivity about this is nowhere near as funny as Ed Elric's.)  The worst part is that Wally was supposed to have his role, but for some reason or other, Kusaka became convinced that he needed to pull a Yellow and create an original character with the game's name, and that Wally is too gentle to fit in the Battle Frontier...which is exactly why Wally would be so interesting in the role, and it would fit his development from the games (even more emphasized in OR/AS) and this very manga!  

- The tone. It's by-the-numbers shonen action style.  C'mon, Kusaka - you're better than this!

- The big twist.  It turns out that Emerald is actually under hire from Professor Oak and Kris to catch Jirachi so that it can use its wish-granting powers to revive Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Silver from the petrified state they were inexplicably left in at the end of the previous arc. The problem is that everyone predicted this already, and it makes it seem like the whole reason that cliffhanger was even put in to begin with was to make the Emerald Chapter more "epic", like the Gold/Silver/Crystal Chapter.  It didn't work, at all.

- Ruby and Sapphire return.  As if things couldn't get any worse when it comes to the main character, he ends up having to deal with Ruby and Sapphire inserting themselves in as his teammates midway through the arc.  Their already excessive stereotyped personalities are even worse here - they seem to have gone through Flanderization, and it’s annoying.

- Guile Hideout.  Nothing about this arc's villain works.  It's a lone man in knight-like armor with the absolutely stupid name of "Guile Hideout", who wants to capture Jirachi for his own evil purposes. Again, it's a blatant attempt to copy the epic quality of the Gold/Silver/Crystal Chapter and its Mask of Ice.  They even throw in a red herring and make it look like Guile Hideout is actually the resident old man, Spencer, just as Mask of Ice was Pryce.  But nope, the villain's true identity is actually....Archie!?  And he's even crazier and more evil than before - the armor he's wearing is space armor that keeps him from dying as an aftereffect of his possession by the Orb and he murdered Maxie in cold blood to get it.  And now he wants to create a demonic version of Kyogre and take over the world?  Kusaka, just stop it, please!  You've fucked this character up enough already.

Why I dislike the OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire Chapter:

- The Delta Episode. The postgame scenario of OR/AS is the basis for the arc.  I did not like that scenario in the game, and while there are a good number of improvements made to it in the manga, I still can't say I like it.  There is just so much about the plot that feels contrived, from the Draconid tribe we'd never heard of until now to the Grand Meteor Delta itself that we're supposed to believe is a threat to the entire planet even though the Pokemon World has survived worse before.  Kusaka did his best, but he can't fully salvage this.

- Zinnia's Villain Sue-dom.  I love Zinnia, but her use in this arc was iffy.  It keeps in that she was undercover in Team Aqua and Team Magma, and that her guidance was crucial for Archie and Maxie to discover how to awaken Kyogre and Groudon...but without the stipulation the games had about it being in an alternate timeline, thus making Zinnia responsible for the villains' plans in the R/S arc.  If this wasn't enough, it turns out it was her Salamance that attacked Ruby and Sapphire as children, caused the trauma that made them change their personalities, caused Ruby to get scarred, caused Rayquaza to escape and Norman to take the blame in order to protect Ruby...all of that (with Rayquaza escaping being retconned into being the goal all along rather than a freak accident Ruby caused, meaning that Norman did what he did for nothing).  So Zinnia is literally responsible for everything that went wrong in the R/S arc.  Every bad thing that ever happened in Ruby and Sapphire's lives can now be summed up with "THANKS, ZINNIA!"

- Emerald's new design. OK, I take back the criticism I had for his old design being unappealing.  This one's even worse.  Kill it with fire! 

- Archie and Maxie. Didn't see this one coming - it turns out that Archie and Maxie's spirits were somehow transported to the Distortion World due to the supernatural nature of their deaths, merged together and then split apart, which cured them of their evil and insanity. Now resurrected into new bodies (their OR/AS designs), they are finally in-character and finally get to redeem themselves before dying again.  While I should be pleased with this, and to some extent I am, the convoluted way it happens and that it had to happen at all only reminds me of how badly Kusaka botched these two in the first place. Sometimes I question if they weren't better off just being left dead and forgotten about.

- The Codenames.  How does Kusaka work in the OR/AS designs of Shelly, Matt, Courtney and Tabitha?  He has them show up as entirely seperate characters, and reveal that "Shelly", "Matt", "Courtney", and "Tabitha" are actually codenames that Admins of Team Aqua and Team Magma use, and that they weren't the real names of the originals either.  Lame!

- Crazy Rayquaza. In the R/S arc, Rayquaza was unquestionably a heroic Pokemon.  In this arc, however, it's suddenly prone to mood swings of psychotic anger, and it keeps switching from a protagonist Pokemon to an antagonist Pokemon at the drop of a hat.  This, along with it eventually doing battle with Deoxys, calls "Destiny Deoxys" to mind - and I don't want to be reminded of that crappy movie!

- Needless Relationship Drama. For no good reason, Ruby decides to start keeping secrets from Sapphire, until he suddenly doesn't and starts being open with her.  In between is all the expected relationship drama between the two, and it all feels so forced.

Now, let me say that none of these arcs are actually bad by regular manga standards, IMO, and there are also several things I like about each one.  And Kusaka doesn’t half ass-it, he always tries his best.  It’s just that the bad stuff overshadows the good stuff for me, and that by the standards of this usually excellent manga series, they fall disappointingly short.  

[lilietsblog]

one punch man 10-12: the aliens

huh its episode 10 already man this anime is so short is it flashback time yet?

hi terrible Godzilla oh yeah its the S class introduction time

gotta love that theres actually competent military in this anime why is it such a rare thing jfc

seriously tho Saitama's superpower is NOT superstrength, that's just now how physics works I think he has sped up perception, and I suspect he had that to a degree even before he started his training, judging from how easily he managed to take on the crab guy, if not all of it but what his strength training gave him (awakened in him?) was basically reality warping no wonder he's bored: he ACTUALLY REALLY doesn't have to put any kind of effort into his punches, as it's not his physical strength that's doing any work there, it's literally reality bending to accomodate him that has got to suck reality warping ennui I love my egg son

I love how all of these monsters demand acknowledgement and don't just try and step on pesky human distractions that ignore them

okay yeah this dude did end up just trying to step on her

man Tornado is freakishly powerful and that's amazing

HI OLD MAN DUDE OMG SAITAMA AND GENOS ARE HERE

Genos oh come on you really should learn some self-defense actually

this sounds like an anime reference I'm not getting

I love that Silverfang at least appreciates Saitama's actual power

and Genos is just inviting Saitama to tag along this is adorable

I love how completely fucking extra all the heroes are and how ridiculous Saitama's low key normalcy looks by contrast

poor Tornado she's amazing but since she's only summoned for appropriate level threats it's not even interesting to be amazing

Watchdog Man is amazing

man you are so dramatic maybe start with explanations jfc there is no logic to this order of operations SAITAMA GOT HIS TEA IT'S FROM STARBUCKS IT'S HILARIOUS awww I love this cute lil bad boy who skipped his lil sis's piano recital )=

madame Shibabawa CHOKED ON A COUGHING PILL

poor Saitama not knowing anything I love how casual he is about asking what he doesn't know I wouldn't have managed >_>

you call it right Child Emperor this is very ridiculous granted the meeting holder dude is probably right but he's being very ineffectual about it

Saitama jfc why

IM REALLY GLAD HE GOT INTERRUPTED

oh yeah this is a completely irrelevant bunch of baddies isnt it

OH YEAH THESE ARE THE ACTUAL BAD GUYS GEE 'IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS' SURE DID TURN OUT TO BE SOON so yeah thats why the meeting holder dude was right

I love how much attention this anime cares to pay to civilians in trouble

man guys you should have hidden in that rut together instead of getting out

the knight guy is awesome

man thats... not all of city A that was destroyed

ahaha Saitama didn't wait for everyone my socially awkward egg acts on his own out of sync with anything <3 i can relate so much

man my favorite thing about this final fight is that it's going to involve collaboration it's not just 'Saitama saves the day' because he's just one person like with the fish king, Saitama was only able to save anyone because other heroes were there first and here there are multiple battles to be fought these dudes are important too

wow his stump sure isn't bleeding out

hey the swords at least slow the monster down that's not nothing

man this samurai dude is hella cool this entire squad is hella cool footsoldiers are important and I love this anime

I love that the kids are in front here it's a terrible idea and yet in context who's going to say no

jfc King you are way too fast to give up

sorry Genos this is a child

I love the peacemaker dude tho

ahaha Saitama is already inside I love him

oh dude you sure are confident in yourself

SAITAMA IS SPREADING DESTRUCTION a thing he's good at

man this guy's design is SO TOTALLY A REFERENCE

...so the flashback stuff is probably side material that I haven't downloaded isn't it

whatever, I'll just continue the liveblog

man this ending is nice it's just pure aesthetic, and it's such a nice grounding one the Earth that Saitama lives on, which is the same one we all do

hi humanization of the enemy to them, Saitama is the kaiju and yeah he kinda is reality warping powers do that

aww Saitama is not very good at finding vital parts of the ship to destroy eh

Saitama makes for an awesome creepypasta really an unstoppable juggernaut

...I really want OPM to become an endless shounen series it's worth it and it has political setup enough for SO MUCH to happen it features a cast FULL of people very ready for exploration and convoluted plots the first season feels like BARELY A PROLOGUE in what could be the grand scheme of thing

GUYS THE FUCK YOU DOING THERE PLEASE EVACUATE

hi Hammerhead!!! I love you!!! omfg is that your actual first name oooomg

omfg THIS GUY I LOVE YOU TOO I REMEMBER AND LOVE YOU

this show's unwillingness to kill anyone off IS AWESOME

hi Sonic <3 I still love your oni face

I love that the knight guy looks middle aged with wrinkles and all

YOO NICE OJI-SAN

GOOD JOB DISRUPTING COMMUNICATIONS BOI

GO SAITAMA WRECK SHIT

I LOVE THE BAD BOY HERO SO MUCH REALLY I LOVE THIS ENTIRE SQUAD AND THE MUSIC IS EPIC AND THE KNIGHT KEEPS WORRYING I LOVE HIM

sorry coordinator dude that's S class heroes for you

welp bye bye dude that's the batter figuring shit out <3

man poor coordinator dude he's trying his best

I love Saitama and his low key shit I love how the navigator TRIES HIS BEST Saitama is ONE SMART COOKIE oh man this dude can actually look hella intimidating

yeah the downside of telekinesis as a combat power is that you still need to have something to telekinesis unless you can just straight up telekinesis your foes i guess

oh hey gravity manipulation nice

sorry due Saitama's power is basically no sell of any other powers its kinda sad

ahaha hes breaking his own ship now

man this supreme telekinetic power sure isn't used to actual direct combat ....yeah he's ridiculously weak kidna

awww cute lil aliens

awww Child Emperor! <3

ah yes! this is what Tornado is for!

and Mumen Rider on the ground you is good job!!! i love that they give him spotlight so fucking much you have no idea this really is an anime exploring the idea of heroes

AW YIS MY GIRL FUCKING WRECK EM THIS IS EFFICIENT COOPERATION

AND TORNADO TRASH TALKS THEM YOU TELL EM GIRL YOU DESERVE THIS GLOAT

guys with indirect powers wait for guys with direct powers to give them a chance

AW YIS SMALL FRY HEROES COMING TO SEARCH&RESCUE THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE

I'm still amazed the Knight is still alive guess his power is some sort of invulnerability/healing

dude if you forget the defense and focus on attack they still outnumber you this would have worked better when you still had many heads

AW YEAH BOSS ENCOUNTER (SUCH A REFERENCE)

SAITAMA LOOKING DANGEROUS AS FUCK GOD JOB YOU IS

Saitama is like a white hole infinite energy he just makes his own

I love how Saitama is still not used to the change of his status from hobbyist to professional it's the small details that make it <3

ahh and this is the kind of fight Saitama wanted isn't it?

haha twenty years yeah strength training had fuckall to do with it Saitama had this potential since babyhood

I LOVE SAITAMA'S COMMON SENSE YOU CAN'T JUST GO AROUND ATTACKING SHIT TO ALLEVIATE BOREDOM HE'S FAMILIAR WITH THIS PROBLEM VERY MUCH

I LOVE THE EGG SHOT JFC <33333333

man Saitama's low key-ness looks really badass here best egg

I love that Saitama's movement isn't even running particularly well, it's just walking really really fast

awww Saitama's come to not expect much by now <3

haha sorry dude you're now match for Tornado's firepower hope she's got some way to watch out for civilians would be invaluable for search&rescue if she were free for it rn

oh hey Drive Knight there sure are lots of knights here huh

oh and it was Metal Knight who destroyed the town huh was he the dude who came in to test his weaponry against the meteor?

yup dude sorry outnumbered

so guys you might want to get the fuck out from under the ship now

I love the badass opening music this is Saitama's true potential too bad the plot isn't about it

lol I love how they both have pretty low expectations for each other

this dude is about to bring down his own ship heh

OMG SAITAMA DIDN'T NO SELL THAT THAT'S PRETTY AMAZING sorry dude Saitama has power beyond his own conception too

yeah you can heal yourself but Saitama wasn't hurt

man his pants are baggy and look hilarious

wow holy fuck and Saitama's method of surviving is ragdoll roll with it as much as possible I do that in the car to avoid motion sickness on bumpy roads

AND YEP HERE IT IS SAITAMA IS ON THE MOON HAHAHAHA HE IS NOT BREATHING AND THERE IS NO SOUND SAITAMA ARE YOU GOING TO PUSH MOON OUT OF ITS ORBIT NOPE JUST DESTROY A CHUNK OF SURFACE

aww hey dude vulnerable after all where Saitama just isn't

sorry Tornado you're awesome but that wasn't you

this dude is strong but he isn't Saitama fast he's not even Sonic fast just very strong

CONSECUTIVE NORMAL PUNCHES NICE NOT ENOUGH STILL SAITAMA MUST BE SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW (and yet vaguely dissatisfied still because something in his brain chemistry still isn't making this as awesome as it should have been)

I love Saitama's creative names Serious Punch

I love that Saitama never taunts, never doesn't talk to his foes he doesn't dehumanize them, ever

well yeah okay that was pretty curb stomp sorry dude but you still entertained Saitama more than anyone else ever managed to

I hope poor little alien crew members survive alright ^^;

aww and the master picks up his knight

TORNADO CAN'T YOU HOLD THE SHIP A LITTLE well whatever

oh hey Amai Mask who the fuck even are you dude what the fuck shut up? I love the bad boy he's saying it like it is dude they literally saved the Earth and everything that wasn't wiped out in a single strike???

Amai is an actual supervillain here isn't he

mm he could be S rank I see

oh hey Metal Knight there sure are a lot of supervillains holed up at the top of the Hero Organization huh well I mean it makes as much sense as anything to recruit anyone sane enough to come in

ALIEN SURVIVORS <3

WHAT THE FUCK AMAI WHY LOCAL LIGHT YAGAMI OR WHAT

awww Genos really has found balance with Saitama

so is Saitama already home or what ah nope there he is <3

Tornado you naive muffin

OMFG SAITAMA IS ABSOLUTELY HELPLESS IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS AND CALLS GENOS IN FOR HELP THEY ARE SUCH GREAT PARTNERS

'history-making events, the top stories for days' yeah i guess in this kind of world there's nothing to do but keep reconstructing and ignore the losses )=

OPTION TO LIVE AT HEADQUARTERS YEAH THAT REALLY NEEDED TO BE A THING ALREADY

anyway I love this anime