#also the characters who are given the most time developing are both assholes please | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

iamanartichoke · 3 years

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I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

#loki spoilers #loki series negativity #loki tv series spoilers #loki series spoilers #long post

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taki118 · 4 years

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Go Watch the Venture Brothers

So just heard the complete and utter Bullshit news that Adult Swim has cancelled one of (if not the best shows) they have the Venture Bros. This series is one of those shows that for WHATEVER reason never got to the level of fandom Rick and Morty has even though they’ve been at the genre parody game longer and in my opinion better.

The series is about Rusty Venture former boy adventurer and failing super scientist who in an attempt to keep his head above water in debt goes around with his two boys Hank and Dean, and bodyguard Brock on misadventues while various legal archnemisis go after him, such as the Monarch.

So if you never watched or never heard of this 7 season series let me give you a break down on why you should,

1) Art Style & Animation

Venture bros is one of those rare Adult aimed animated series that that really truly tries to utilize their medium to the best of their abilities. Season 1 had like such a small budget and corners had to be cut so it can be a little hard to watch at times.

But with each passing season they get a little better, a little more fluid, go just a little harder and it truly feels rewarding to watch. Like seeing an artist you follow online improve over the years. Like they COULD have stayed with the choppy and stiff animation from season 1 it fit right in with its fellow adult animated shows but it didn’t. They strove for quality to have something that matched the story they were telling.

2) The Writing

Venture Bros has some of the tightest and consistently great writing of ANY serialized show I’ve seen, adult, animated or other wise. Wanna know why? Cause it’s all done by TWO people (save for like one ep each season where one other person is allowed to touch their baby). Yeah TWO people and they work their asses off every season to interject, humor, refrences, parody, plot and character development in equal measure.

3) Character Development

Um yes in case you were wondering that’s right an adult animated show has CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT that holds as the series goes on. Not to give spoilers but characters will go through changes in alignment, relationships will develop and change, some characters will go through negative arcs where they are straight up unbareable for a season before coming out the other side even better than they were before. There is no end of epsiode or even end of season reset. Characters, settings, and dynamics all change over the course of the show and it feels just so god damn good.

4) Story Development

Just like the characters the story of the Venture Bros grows and changes each season. Things that are set up even as early as season one are paid off as the series goes on. Like not to be that bitch but you know how RIck and Morty teases an overarching plot ALL THE TIME but like will often just spit in the face of fans hoping for more than like one episode a season addressing it? Yeahhhhhhh that doesnt happen here, fans are consistently rewarded for putting the time in to rewatch and really think about what happened in the series. Characters that are seen in the background or are just referenced by other characters will be brought in to be recurring characters, things that start off as a small detail or gag will be given larger relevance and each time they do this you get that “OH I remember that from last season! So thats what it was!” The writers WANT you to rewatch, they WANT you to analyze and they WANT you to theorize, and they give you a show that gives back the time you put in.

5) Parody & Reference

This series does a great thing with parody. They make real characters who are just as enjoyable as the characters they parody, they make story lines that both poke fun at the absurdity of the media but shows the writers love for it. So often parody and references are just used to mock the thing but with Venture Bros you feel the love and care so when you know the thing being parodied you can laugh but feel good about laughing cause they are never laughing at a thing maybe you cared for in your youth but rather laughing with it.

And it’s never just one thing. When they parody a thing its often layered with other things to make it even more unique. Scooby-Doo is overlayed with famous criminals, Laura Croft is mixed Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, GI Joe is given the look of the Village People and so on. They never go for the easy joke or reference. Hell theres an episode that starts with them reciting the lyrics to David Bowies Space Oddity for really no reason other than they could. They weave these things in naturally with their setting and characters so nothing feels out of place. Like if you dont catch a reference or parody you dont feel like “I think this isa reference to something?” like a LOT of things do not just adult animated shows. You arent taken out of the moment cause it all feels so natural.

6) The Characters

God damn these characters, I could go on for hours about these characters. From main to one off these are some of the most likeable characters you can find. I mean it when I say I can’t think of a single character I wish they had cut cause they are all so well created. Even the ones I hate i have fun hating cause they were made to be that way. I’ll be good though I’ll only talk about my absolute top faves.

- The Monarchs

You ever sit and wish villain couples could have functional healthy relationships? Well look no further than Malcom Fitzcarraldo aka The Monarch and Dr. Shelia Girlfriend (yes that is her last name). The Monarch is a high strung impulsive saturday morning cartoon villain whos tendency to over react is only matched by his unspecified hatred of Dr. Venture. And Dr. G is his nonsense partner in crime who will cut a bitch if they don’t play by their admittedly weird rules. Both characters are great on their own but are better together. Though that doesnt mean they always get along. Like a real couple they have their ups and downs they fight, break up, make-up and grow stronger in their relationship with each season.

- Shore Leave

Ok ok so I want you to imagine James Bond, mixed with GI Joe simmering in a cocktail of the most flamboyant gay men you have ever seen and you have one of my favorite gay characters/characters in general. Shore Leave is a member of OSI (the shows SHEILD/GI Joe parody organization) he’s loud, brash, flippant, sassy and highly competent at his job loving every second of getting to beat bad guys down within an inch of their life. I love seeing him play off the stoic Brock and the two have this great brotherly dynamic that’s never called into question. He also gets to have a very cute romance with Al the Alchemist (who is also great). I could talk about this man all day.

- Dr. Rusty Venture

They did such a good job with this man. He’s a self serving, sexist, perverted, whinny, self important asshole and yet you feel pity and genuine sympathy for him and want him to succeed. You can see how Dr. V was given a raw deal by his father who seemed to care more about his adventures than his sons well being and how this molded him into the bitter man he is today, but on the flip side you can see where he chose to use that as a crutch for his worst behaviors and impulses. Seeing him slowly grow and change and be an actual good father to his boys while all the while still be a giant dick is actually really great.

- Dr. Byron Orpheus

Ahhhhh Dr. Orpheus part Dr. Strange Parody part busybody stay at home dad, he’s just such a delight. Dr. Orpheus is a divorcee, with an unfulfilling job of maintaining order to the cosmos (which isnt as hard as one might think), and uses his magical ablities in ways most of us would (ie menial tasks and home chores). Overly dramatic and affectionate Dr. O is a delight whenever he appears, but he’s at his best around his daughter and old friends The Order of the Triad.

Again I can go on but all these characters ranging from main to recurring are crafted with the utmost care for you to want to see them succeed or fail, to see them again even if you know it’ll never happen, and want them to cross paths with other characters.

The Venture Bros is one of those series that I will ALWAYS recommend even to the pickiest of humor tastes. But if you don’t believe its as good as I said or don’t think the concept is to your tastes I’ll recommend a few eps that I think best show off the base idea of the series without giving much away. In terms of plot and spoilers, though somethings wont make a lot of sense.

- S1 ep10 "Tag Sale – You're It!" - Dr. V is having a yard sale so of course all manner of costumed weirdos show up. - S2 ep5 "Twenty Years to Midnight" - basically a fetch quest around the world to save the planet with daddy issues - S3 ep2 "The Doctor Is Sin" - Again daddy issues but with one of the best recurring characters and a great showcase of the series deeper emotional plots - S4 ep6 "Self-Medication" - Really embraces the parody as Rusty goes to a former boy adventurer support group. Anyway the show is 7 seasons with 80 episodes, please go watch it. I will never forgive @adultswim for cancelling what was to be their final season. And in closing GO TEAM VENTURE!

#venture bros #the venture bros #venture brothers #adultswim #adult animated shows #animated shows #animation #go watch this show #go watch #adult animation

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makeste · 4 years

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BnHA Chapter 297: We’re Bustin’ Outta This Joint

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi did his best to undo all of the good vibes from the Girl Power arc by killing off Midnight. It sucks and I still don’t like it, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, Not Killing Off Your One Female Teacher Character With Any Character Development was worth 30% of his grade for the semester, so it brought his average down all the way to a C-, and so he and his report card will just have to live with that. Meanwhile Ochako did some rescuing, and the other U.A. kids lay around unconscious and/or traumatized. The chapter ended with an abrupt cut to Tartarus, where AFO is apparently just chilling and waiting for the Nearly High Ends to come bust him free. What kind of a cliffhanger is that to leave your fans hanging on for three whole weeks. Who’s suffering more here, the characters or the readers.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “okay I know you all want to know what happens to Deku and Shouto and the rest, but have you considered finding out what happens to Overhaul and Muscular and Moonfish and New Girl Character instead?” Fandom is all, “you had us at New Girl Character.” Seiji’s dad is all, “I’m just going to say a bunch of stuff to help make sure none of the readers feel conflicted about cheering on a bunch of mass murderers escaping from prison.” Tomura is all, “dammit AFO why are you still here.” AFO is all, “shhh, Tomura, go back to sleep.” Tomura is all, “wtf but you’re literally hijacking my body and continuing to shred it to bits while we break into BnHA Alcatraz to recruit your own personal Suicide Squad.” AFO is all, “:).” Real!AFO is all, “HERE I AM, EVERYONE, SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING.” And then the chapter ends. Geez.

oh shit lol it’s a whole big fucking page all about Tartarus

my very first thought was “that’s a long-ass fucking bridge”, and then I went to go google “longest bridges”, and Wikipedia was all “son there are literally a hundred and fifty bridges in the real world longer than 5km, and the longest one is actually 165km”, and I was all “oh shit I really don’t know jack shit about bridges.” then I looked at the list for a few more minutes and realized that the super-long bridges were all built over land, and that the longest bridge over water is only 38km. which is way more reasonable, but also still really fucking long though?? ngl I would freak the fuck out on that bridge. what does any of this have to do with Tartarus you ask?? absolutely nothing, I literally forgot I was reading a chapter for a sec lol uh

anyway, my parting thought on the bridge is that it kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a giant island fortress prison, but whatever. moving on

and the six levels thing is straight out of One Piece lol. something tells me BnHA’s prison break arc isn’t going to be quite as fun. hmm

so now we’re cutting to “the Bronze Gate”, which is the main entrance off of the bridge, and some goat-looking motherfucker is out here trying to become my new favorite character. bro

SON OF A BITCH WHAT’S WITH THE BULLETS FLYING IN THE BACKGROUND. DON’T TELL ME THEY’RE SHOOTING AT GYGES. THEY CAN’T KILL OFF MY FRESHEST HOMIE GYGES. SURELY THEY WOULDN’T

ooh and now, giant robots!

giant robots with machine guns. “I’m very sorry I killed off Midnight, makeste” you know what, fuck you Horikoshi. thinking you can buy my affections back so easily

does Gyges have six arms??? look how fucking calm he is announcing the code red security lockdown, holy shit. GYGES

NOOOO

NO NOT BRIAREUS. THIS DAY EXACTS A HEAVY TOLL

YO, WHAT

he came there himself?? so much for making the Noumus do his dirty work. and based on the speech bubble shape and font, this is still AFO talking

uh oh what’s happening

is he using Decay or is his arm just sort of crumbling to pieces because he hasn’t had time to heal up yet? if it’s the former this prison break is going to set a record for shortest arc yet isn’t it

now we’re cutting to B10 which is apparently the lowest level. but do they mean lowest as in the least security, or lowest as in the deepest underground, a.k.a. the most security? idk it’s confusing and I think they should be more specific. is it B like in basement?? are there six levels or ten?? stupid Tartarus

anyway so the guards are talking about how Gigantomachia is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. heh. will there even be a Tartarus tomorrow morning

(ETA: WELL, UH.)

wow they’re talking about just killing him outright. damn

I kinda feel like “prison guard” is one of those jobs that just sort of naturally attracts shitty people. anyways yeah, Seiji your dad is a real piece of work

and he’s even doubling down on it after the other guy repeatedly keeps trying to hush him up. dude we get it, you’re an asshole

ooh and now we’re getting an interesting look at the various prisoners, some of whom look suspiciously familiar!

for starters, that’s definitely Moonfish in the upper left corner, I’m like 99% sure. not quite clear who that is across from him in the upper right, but it’s been a hot minute since we saw Muscular, so maybe?

and could that be Overhaul in the panel beneath him?? they’re not showing his face so I assume it’s someone we’d recognize, and he’s the only currently-incarcerated villain with that haircut as far as I can recall. though it seems weird that he’s not restrained more given his quirk. I thought Horikoshi mentioned in Ultra Analysis that he’d gotten it back somehow. eh well we will wait for answers

I don’t recognize the person to his left either (though she has an oddly familiar look to her?). but the person on the bottom right, next to Kurogiri... is it Stain?? the hair and body language are sure giving off Stain vibes. if someone had told the me from two years ago that I’d actually be excited to see Stain again I would have said you were full of shit. and yet here we are. these sure are interesting times

anyway so now the Code Red intruder alarm is blaring. and I gotta say, that one scene sure was effective at killing any sympathy I might have been inclined to feel for these guards lol. bring on the imminent massacre

“what horrible timing” lol yes. it’s almost as if they planned it that way

uh oh

is he omae wa shindeiruing. watch your six, Mr. Prison Guard

oh shit

WHAT DID I SAY. WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY. but nooo, you all were all, “but a bridge is more convenient!” VERY WELL THEN, LIE IN THE BED THAT YOU HAVE MADE

anyway so it’s the High Ends lol. I mean we already knew it was them. let’s just get on with it

omfg Tomura ARE YOU RIDING ONE

WHAT ARE YOU, A NAZGUL. WHY IS THIS MY FAVORITE THING

and it looks like it actually is Tomura again, too (as opposed to AFOmura)

-- is he using Decay on himself?? is that what it is?? or no wait, is this just more of the weird side effect shit that’s been happening since he Awakened. actually yeah never mind that’s clearly what it is

y’all this man is out here having a full blown argument with himself

so this is equal parts compelling and hilarious to me right now lol. like I feel so bad for Tomura, but I also lowkey want to see how far this escalates. like do you think he’d go as far as to punch himself in the face. where will this journey lead us

fucking look at this shit

other people have already mentioned this, but with this scene especially it makes me really curious how they’re going to show this in the anime. will it be AFO’s voice coming out of Tomura’s mouth? or Tomura’s voice using AFO’s speech patterns? more importantly, will it be cool and dramatic, or will it actually wind up being hilarious? or both?? never count out both

also he’s looking pretty good there in that bottom panel with his one eye just barely visible. that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but here I am, pointing it out

also also, lol at Tomura being all, “the fuck do you mean, ‘rest’, you’re the one that dragged my body out here to raid a fucking prison,” and AFO being all, “oh yeah, lol, true true, but I meant rest after that.” yes, this man clearly has nothing but the purest intentions, Tomura. trustworthy af

this fucking guy. Tomura is your bullshit radar finally operational yet?? can you see yet that it was always his intention to use you right from the very start?? oh man I am starting to get fidgety now listening to this

so Tomura’s saying he doesn’t just want to be used as a chess piece. and AFO is all, “well okay but what if it’s a VERY NICE AND IMPORTANT chess piece.” bro DID HE STUTTER

-- AHH BUT NEVER MIND THAT, HERE IT IS, THIS IS WHERE THE FUN STARTS OMG

GO ON AND ACQUIRE THEM THEN! omg. why am I so fucking excited. it seriously makes no sense. like seriously, ‘hooray, our old buddies, Overhaul and Stain!!’ -- come again now?? who is this person that I have become

meanwhile AFO is making all this fuss and I really don’t understand it though

why would you need to plow directly through the building. why can’t you just use doors like a normal person. it’s not like they can lock you out, like hello, you can literally turn anything you touch into dust, what’s with all the melodrama

anyway so he’s apparently hitting the prison with some sort of EMP attack now and shutting down all their systems

omg the suspense is killing me. this is going to be so badass once it’s animated, but right now all I keep thinking is “YES, GREAT, CAN WE PLEASE JUST MOVE IT ALONG”

the doors are opening ahhhhhhh come on come on come on let’s go let’s get to the excitement already

now the guards are running over to try and regain control. but, like

yeah that’s pretty much how I’m expecting the rest of this to go basically

so now they’re shooting at the dust cloud lol. well if there’s one thing movies have taught me, it’s that bad guys who wait inside clouds of dust while panicked cops blindly rain bullets at them until they run out of ammo are basically invincible lol. soooooo

OHHHHH SHIT

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. THEY ARE SO FUCKED LOL, SHIT

YEP, AND HERE’S ANOTHER ONE

is this the first time we’ve seen Moonfish’s face? I feel like we might have caught a glimpse of it before on an omake page or something. either way, it wasn’t anything I actually needed to see again. thanks...?? I guess??

okay but seriously, are we supposed to actually know who this badass lady is?? like I don’t know her but I feel like I know her, you feel?

(ETA: lol there are already like 60 different theories about how she’s related to every single character in the series. will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. although we did just get three “this villain was secretly related to [insert character(s) here] all along” reveals just in the last arc, so idk, it might be better if we pass on it this time lol.)

girl who are you. please stick around. for the love of god don’t let this man kill you off too

????

wait so is this Overhaul? boy sure has seen better days huh. but the floppy sleeves... yeah, it’s gotta be him

anyway so then the only ones missing are Stain and Kurogiri, yes?? omg. and one page left to go

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO CONVINCE ME HE COULDN’T HAVE DONE THIS SHIT RIGHT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. FUCKING TIME-BIDING DRAMA QUEEN

AND HE’S JUST FLOATING HIS LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM ALONG BEHIND HIM SOB. THIS FUCKING GUY

AND IS HE JUST ABSENTMINDEDLY DRAGGING SOME POOR SCHLUB’S CORPSE ALONG BESIDE HIM LIKE A SLEEPY TODDLER CARRYING THEIR TEDDY BEAR. I FUCKING CAN’T. REST IN PEACE, FRIEND. GIVE MY REGARDS TO GOOD OLD BRIAREUS

so that’s it! and we still don’t have any idea what AFO is actually planning to do now, after all of that. are they going to merge bodies?? or is he going to try to switch with him?? either way Tomura’s body has to be part of the plan somehow since he keeps making so much of a fuss over it. flkhglkhlk. dammit I need answers lol

#bnha 297 #shigaraki tomura #all for one #overhaul #muscular #moonfish #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #horikoshi where is gyges!!#your silence is defeaning #first midnight and now this #I am beside myself #r.i.p.

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thechangeling · 3 years

Text

Ok first of all this is based on my own personal feelings and preferences. Not every autistic person is going to agree with this list. If you are autistic and you have things you wanna add on then feel free just don't try and start fights with me I will block you.

Things to avoid:

-No more super smart genius type autistics. We already have enough. No more.

- Hot take maybe, but no more white boys. We already have enough.

- Don't make them a horrible asshole with no feelings or no respect for other people's feelings.

- Don't make them overly self absorbed or extremely selfish or narcissistic.

- That being said, don't make them a perfect saint either who is always kind to everyone. We can be occassionally cruel or selfish. We do make mistakes and hurt people. The trick is making sure that it's a balence.

- If this sounds complicated and contradictory... well yeah. The human condition is complicated and we are people. (Shocking I know/s)

- Don't characterize them like a child if they're an adult or a teenager. Don't infantalize them.

- If you make them have low empathy, don't equate low empathy to no feelings and no compassion.

- No more science or math special interests. Too many!!! Or trains!!

- Don't have their personal character development or big moments happen in someone else's pov. Or if they do, you HAVE to write about how they feel about it at some point.

- Don't make them have a perfect memory I'm sick of that shit.

- Don't make them absolutely perfect at their special interest or know absolutely everything about it. We make mistakes sometimes.

- Don't describe them as special or gifted or blessed.

- If other characters say ableist shit about them, make sure the narrative clearly shows that it's wrong.

- Do not make the autistic character forgive someone for being ableist and immediately become friends with them.

- Do not use person first language, functioning labels, or the term aspergers.

- Do not give them a bad fashion sense. My flawlessly dressed autistic self is sick of this.

- Don't have them not understand any figures of speech or metaphors. This is overdone. Some autistic people are fine with most figures of speech once we know what it means and will even use them.

- DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT CONSULT AUTISM SPEAKS!

- Do not take advice from parents with autistic children.

- Don't have them using super fancy language. Sure some autistic people talk like that but not many in my experience.

Things to do:

- This one is crucial. In all my 21 years on this earth I have NEVER encountered a canon autistic character that was allowed to hold a grudge for a significant amount of time. LET US HOLD GRUDGES 2021!!!!

- Let us be angry! Especially if you are writing a female character!! And do not demonize her for her anger.

- Let us do adult things if you are writing an adult character. Or teenage things if you are writing a teenage character. This involves swearing, drinking, dressing proactively, driving or engaging in sexual relationships and having sexual feelings. Not every adult needs to do these things to be an adult of course, but we are usually gate kept from doing these things because we are infantalized.

- Ace and Aro autistics absolutely do exist! However autistic people are usually stereotyped as not having "those kinds of feelings" so if you really want to make them aro or ace or both, really examine why.

- If you do make them ace please don't make them a "sweet innocent baby who doesn't even know what sex is"

-Just please don't fall into bad stereotypes for ace and aro characters.

- Give them diverse special interests like random movies or tv shows. We tend to like scifi and fantasy a lot. But that's not a given.

- Make them artsy or give them an interest in music. Maybe make them a singer or have them play in a band?

- Do make them a fan of rock or alternative or indie music!!! I never see that! Or even heavy metal!

- Preferably make them queer/LGBTQ we tend to not be straight especially if you're afab.

- Most of us are nonbinary, I would suggest making your autistic character nonbinary but you don't have to.

- Have them be more sensory seeking then sensory avoidant

- Have them be a motion stimmer or an auditory stimmer (have them stim by blasting music or dancing or jumping up and down, spinning around in circles, spinning on a rolling chair etc.)

- Give them an interest in fashion or makeup (not neccesarily a special interest.)

- Let them have other interests besides a special interest. We have other things we like, they just aren't as importent to us.

- Have them be stubborn but understand why and make sure the readers/audience understands.

- WRITE THEIR POV!!!!

- Write them having shutdowns instead of meltdowns.

- Don't have them constantly compromising on shit or compromising easily.

- Write them having a completed relationship with morality and "goodness."

- If they aren't aro, write them feeling very intense romantic love that consumes and overwhelmed them.

- Have them feeling very intense emotions in general.

- Have them showing love in autistic ways, ie bringing people gifts and quoting shit, parallel play etc.)

-If they are not ace or ace but not sex repulsed, if they are an adult, and you are comfortable writing it have them be hypersexual and also preferably kinky. This is actually really common in my experience.

- Have them show frustration at having to live in a neurotypical, ableist world that wasn't made for them.

- Have them struggle with communicating their feelings and finding the right words to describe their feelings.

- Have them use quotes to describe their feelings or song lyrics.

- Let them be entitled to their space and their freedom.

- Give them trust issues. Look I don't want to be defined by trauma any more then the next autistic person, but it's kind of where we're at you know?

- Have them be a little paranoid about whether or not people actually like them.

- Let them have stuffies and stim toys and chewies. They don't have to be store bought they can be home made.

- Have them be hyper-empathetic. I've never seen an autistic hyper-empathetic character before.

- Have them be good with cats.

- Have them be a good dancer/enjoy dancing.

- Have them do facial stims like scrunching up their face or twitching their nose.

- Have them lose speech during a meltdown or a shutdown and have to write things down or use a communication device for awhile.

- Have them be a bad student or struggle with school.

- Have them hate math please I will love you forever!!!!

- Have them engage in echolalia (when you hear something that sticks out to you and you repeat it back over and over again)

- Make them sarcastic! Lots of autistic people are actually really sarcastic.

- Have them struggle with executive dysfunction.

- Show them showing signs of autistic happiness!! Like happy stimming. When I get really excited I tend to shreak and jump up and down or I flap my hands or bang them against a nearby table.

- Allow them to fuck up.

- In terms of grief, have them have very emotionally delayed reactions to grief. I reccomend research autistic peoples experiences with loss specifically if you are going to make this part of the story.

- Have them experience a lot of emotional delays where things don't hit them right away.

- Have them disassociate in traumatic situations.

- Make sure in general you understand their motivations as you're writing them. Don't just have them do things because "weird quirky autistic character!"

- Give them autistic friends and let them interact with the community!

I know I'm probably forgetting stuff, but this is all I can think if for now. If you have any questions about anything or any of the points I made let me know.

#actuallyautistic #autistic representation #autistic writing references #cw sex mention #cw kink mention

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

HASO, “Ash.”

A couple people were showing some interest in other Alien characters aboard the ship, and I thought I would give you all some insight into that. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you all have a great day.

“You have ruined this family.”

“What have you done!”

“The war is the only thing left for you now, so make yourself useful and die.”

Etium slowly lifted his head from the computer where he sat staring blankly at the accounting spreadsheet on the screen. Beside him, the other two Tesraki’s chairs were empty. He sighed, and slowly turned back to the accounting. They had likely finished their half of the books hours ago, leaving him to sit in the darkness alone with his own strange thoughts. His four fingered hands clicked at the keys of the human made keyboard,

He was good at typing, pretty fast for someone who was missing two requisite fingers, but he was nothing in comparison to the others.

He was nothing in comparison to most Tesraki.

Etium was slow when it came to doing the books, repeatedly checking every line and ever string of numbers for any possible mistake that could have been made. The process took him hours longer than it should have, but finally he stood, pushing back his chair and hopping down to the floor. The human ship whirred softly in the distance. It was a comforting sound, but he had always found some measure of comfort in humanity.

Etium had been hit the hardest by the huminization phenomenon. It didn’t surprise him all that much. He had fought side by side with humans since the Drev war, and the changes in him had taken a long time to develop. They ran deep now through his body as sure as his blood. WIth skills honed in human war, and being one of few survivors, he was quick to react to sounds, followed movement more easily, and could read body language better than almost any other alien he knew.

Dr Krill wasn’t even as good as he considered himself.

That’s what war did to a person.

He reached up to his torn ear and shivered at the smell of smoke that seemed to waft up from his fur. He could never get the smell of ash out of his head no matter how hard he tried.

Etium knew there was something wrong with him, but he kept that to himself. The others tended to avoid him, and that was alright. He was friends with the Finnari, and while they were a bit sensitive, he supposed that was ok. He didn’t need anyone asking questions about what he was doing and why he was there.

He ducked through one of the maintenance corridors, and into the hallway behind the rec room.

He could hear humans and Drev talking and laughing on the other side, but when he passed through the next door, he found the hall opened into a large-ish storage room that was lined in boxes and crates. Inside was what remained of the Omen crew. Tesraki, Finnari, Celzex and Yeb. They had a little place here for those aliens who found it difficult to constantly interact with humans.

Yeb was a bit of a special case as she seemed to hop between both without much trouble. She lounged on one of the crates, her tail swishing back and forth against the box below her, bright green fur along her back, waving slightly in the air currents.

Etium leaned against the wall making no noise, and interacting with no one.

He wouldn’t have minded hanging out with humans, and drev, but….. Every time he did he just couldn’t shake the smell of smoke.

Why was he here?

Because he had seen a human boldly risk his life for two wounded alien soldiers.

Etium remembered the red sky above and the ash covered ground beneath. He remembered the wounded Rundi soldier at his side as the creature stalked towards them from the darkness. He remembered the flash of blue, and then an animal howl as the human came charging from nowhere.

When he closed his eyes, he could still hear the blood curdling scream of pain the human had given off as his limbs were ripped from his body.

He shook himself trying to shake the smoke away.

“Clan is more important than anything else.”

Etium lifted his head, arms still crossed over his chest.

“Then mean nothing.” Yeb was saying, “My parents abandoned me in an ice cave when I was just a cub.”

“Not our fault your species is defective.” Lord Avex was saying.

The burg lifted his hands in an attempt to keep the piece, technicolor wings flickering behind him, “Not now, all of you we must remember that as different species we all have different beliefs and needs. He pressed his hands together. The Burg do find clan very important, but it was for our survival for the longest time. There are plenty of other species that don’t need such things, like the Vrul or the Gibb for example, who are solitary creatures.”

The group of three finnari huddled close together and nodded.

They wouldn’t be likely to argue, they hated conflict and tried to keep the peace as much as it was possible.

He glanced over to the side surprised to find Waffles, the dog, lying with her head on her paws, around her neck, the snake creature Jeffery hung like a boa scarf.

He supposed she had any right to be here like the rest of them, she wasn’t human and neither was the snake. Though neither of them were classified as sentient and didn’t have the intelligence to speak. Waffles licked at her paws and Jeffery lifted his head turning to look at the speakers as if he was listening intently.

“This is not about biology, this is about the facts. There is strength in numbers, and numbers can win out over force anyday. Humans are the best example of this and you all know it. They managed to survive on a death world by making packs.”

Lord Avex did have a point, but lord Avex was also known for being an egotistical asshole.

That was sort of the defining feature of Celzex.

The furry little creatures were very proud, and very loyal, so they were both a blessing and an absolute pain to have on your side.

Most of the time they just liked causing problems for the sake of causing problems.

“There is nothing wrong with a solitary existence. My species has been living as single occupants inside a distanced society for a very long time.”

Lord Avex snorted, “Might I also point out that you society is a fascist Authoritarian dictatorship recovering from a pandemic crisis and refuses to join the GA to control their own citizens?”

The hair on the back of her body stood up, “Oh like your planet is any better. Roving warring clans who eat their own children.”

“Please, Peace.” THe burg was saying.

“You have no place in this. The burg have lived under a corrupted monarchy for ages.”

Etium sighed and closed his eyes.

Apparently, he had sighed much louder than he intended, and when he opened his eyes the entire room was looking at him,

“You got something to say.” Avex growled, “Anything to offer from a corporate capitalist hellscape.”

Etium pushed himself off from the wall, “No, I have nothing to say.”

Avex bristled, and when he did he got even fluffier, “I don’t think we are done here. I want to hear what you have to say.”

Etium sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to get out of this one, “I think that all of our societies suck, they just all do it equally.”

The room bristled, but he kept going. He had stuck his foot in it and now he was going to have to deal. He looked at yeb and Avex, “Both of you are true about the other, same with the burg sorry to say.” He nodded over at the winged creature, “But think about it, all of us suck in some way or another,. My species destroyed our own natural habitats in the name of progress, He looked at the Finnari, No cohesive leadership, and a societal wide inability to make decisions. The Vrul live under a corrupted communist system and the Rundi are all politicians, so guess where that leads us. The Drev are a fractured group of clans bent on killing each other for no other reason than the fact that it is honorable. And don’t even get me started on humans, they are the worst of us all, since they can do everything we can and more.”

He sort of expected the uproar that followed, but kept his head low to avoid having to deal with it. He brushed a hand through his fur, attempting, mostly to brush the ash from it, and despite being able to feel it with his fingertips, he saw none break loose.

The room grew louder and louder until a sharp bark broke the silence.

The room went very quiet very suddenly.

He turned to see waffles had risen up into a sitting position, her hackles raised.

She growled low in her throat , and the entire room calmed down very quickly after that, Jeffery opened his mouth and turned his head like a periscope around the room.

Waffles slid back onto the floor and rested her chin on her paws ears sticking straight up as she sighed.

The room was only slowly able to return to its former discussion, though everyone remained mostly quiet.

Etium slumped back against the wall. He could see the other Tesraki across the room staring at him. He tried to ignore them for the most part, he didn’t really fit in with them to any sort of degree. He didn’t blame them.

He wasn’t particularly good with finances.

He didn’t have to be though, most humans were pretty poort at it too, so any ability whatsoever was considered good. That was another reason why he was here. If he was slow and ok at handling money, then he was going to be fine. If he tried to work anywhere else as a Tesraki….

He'd be fired

Or disowned…

Etium quietly slipped from the room, out and down the hallway. He knew where he was going, and followed his own memory down through the hallways until he came to a door. He knocked once.

“Come in.”

The door slid open and he stepped into a room lit by soft yellow light. Dr Adric was sitting at his desk, skin glowing a pale yellow in the dim lighting. He looked up, and when he smiled his teeth flashed white.

“Etium, it is good to see you. I didn’t expect you till our session tomorrow.”

Etium wandered into the room glancing down at the diagrams on the wall, and the large books on the shelves beside the desk. “Do you want me to leave.”

“No, of course not, take a seat.”

He did and stared up at the ceiling with a sigh.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Etium was quiet for a while, but finally opened his mouth to speak, “I can still smell the ash sometimes, Feel it in my fur when I go to bed. It…. doesn't really bother me most of the time, and I know it’s not real, but it certainly feels that way.”

Dr Adtric leaned on his desk and nodded, “Did you know somatic hallucinations are extremely common In Tesraki.”

He rubbed his fur, “Really?”

“Yes, at least one in twenty report small things. Feelings of items brushing over their fur even when nothing is there. If it starts to bother you, come to me and we will look into helping it. Otherwise just remember the exercises I taught you.”

He shifted in his seat and absently looked at the wall, “So if Somatic hallucinations are common in Tesraki….. Than what about everyone else?”

Dr Adric smiled at him. His expression, both charming and calming at the same time. He had an eir about him that just seemed to make things slow down and relax. It was a nice feeling to have.

“Well both Vrul and Gibb are prone to psychosis with obsessive and grandiosity characteristics. Most Vrul I know could be classified as having some sort of anxiety. Rundi are commonly seen with OCD. Celzex presents with characteristics of Antisocial personality disorder. Finnari can commonly be seen with dependent personality disorders. Both the Drevb and the Starborn, have a high rate of narcissism. In the case of the starborn, they have a 100% rate at this time…. Though to be fair we only have one starborn”

Etium couldn’t help but smile just a little. “Humans have all of those things I guess, since you have a name for all of them.”

“Yes. Though, I would say that I work most closely with Post Traumatic Stress.”

“Like what I have?”

“Similarly yes, though yours presents differently.”

“That’s what the Admiral’s dog is for? He said she was a PTSD dog.”

“That would be correct.”

Etium leaned back in his seat and stared out the window behind Adric. The man said he presented with listlessness, difficulty concentrating, and emotional detachment. He didn’t have flashbacks or stress associated, which is why he couldn't be entirely diagnosed, bu7t the two of them were pretty sure whatever he had was similar. They had thought about depression on one or two occasions, but he didn’t have trouble getting out of bed, or doing things that he enjoyed. He just got listless and distracted a lot.

Adric thought it might be an entirely different issue from what humans could get, but as of yet, there wasn’t enough research to determine that. They were working on it in their own right now, and he had been feeling a little more present, but he still wasn’t really there yet.

He hoped that soon he would be out of the rut he was stuck in.,

“Have you managed to tell the Admiral, like we had been talking about.”

Etium picked at the fur on his arm, “He seems…. Too busy to talk to me and I…. well I don’t know what it would accomplish.”

“I think it would be good for you to talk to someone who experienced the war.”

Etium sighed, “I didn’t really do much in the war. I sat there and just… was scared. The humans did everything.”

“I think you might find there are humans that feel the same way you do. I encourage you to talk to him. Knowing the man myself, I have no doubt that he will be accepting of your story.” He held up his hands, “I don’t want to push you, but I do encourage you to let him know.”

I think it would be good for both of you

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nexyra · 3 years

Note

James Ironwood, for character ask? 👀

Aaaa thank you so much for the ask ♡ More rambling incoming !! Sorry for the wait btw, I've been both pretty busy and tired ;;

If you hate James Ironwood and don't wanna hear one good thing about him tap out now please ღ

My fav ship(s) for the character

I am not a super big shipper when it comes to James, but there are still some I like more than others soo here goes :

I think Ironwitch is a pretty good one. It's not necessarily a ship I'd search content for but I think these two would work well together ! Glynda is stern and honest and a no-nonsense kind of woman. She has the strenght to stand up to James when he slips or gets too stubborn when faced with the high stakes. At the same time, we've been shown that she cares for him and she knows he's only trying to do what's best for people. She has faith in him but also the ability to stand at his side as an equal. She seems to be the more steadfast of Ozpin's circle : loyal, you know you can trust her, and she will not crumble. This is the kind of personnality that I think James both admire and feel safe with. And the other way around, I think James is a good match for Glynda too. On a day to day basis, he's serious enough to not annoy here, but he's also a softie in some aspects and that's a nice combination to smooth out Glynda's edges.

Ironqrow is a completely different dynamic. The "we're annoying each other" dynamic is not one I'm particularly interested in usually xD But these two certainly had strong & interesting moments so it's a pretty valid ship !! Despite how they might butt heads because of the difference in their upbringing they (prior to V8) clearly trusted each other with their life. Even if Qrow jokes about shooting himself if he had to be one of James' man, when everything goes to shit there is no doubt in his mind that James wasn't responsible. Similarly, while James talks of shooting Qrow for his misbehaviour, when push comes to shove and we meet a tired Ironwood, run ragged by the pressure he's under... the only thing he does is hug him and reiterates how glad he is to see him. So again, they clearly have a lot of faith and trust in the other, and that's solid ground for a relationship.

My least favorite ship(s) for the character

Same spiel as always, shipping kids and adults is a big no from me; so any ships between Ironwood and RWBYJNOR can qualify here. That said, among the less uncomfortable ones, here are those I don't really like

This one is again because I love their relationship but platonically only, I'm talking of Winter Soldier. The reading I like best is not that Ironwood is Winter's Jacques 2.0, nor that he groomed her; but that he was an important father figure in her life. Protective and caring, who tried to help her escape with what he knew. I don't see James recruiting Winter as a way to gain a strong ally. But rather that Winter wanted to detach herself from her family name, and make something worthwhile of herself all on her own. And that the military is what Ironwood knows and understand, so naturally it's a career he'd see as a good path. Just like Winter then proposed it to Weiss. I like to think they care about each other a LOT and they're their own tight family in between the lines, even if professionalism might throw a wrench into it. For short I love them together but not romantically please =)

I don't know if there's a ship name for this, but Salem x James Ironwood would be a big nope from me too... In general, let's just assume I ship Salem with nobody because abuse.

My fav & least fav platonic relationship(s) for the character

Fav platonic relationship would be (have been because we dont talk about V8?) with Winter. Fooor the reasons I've explained above I suppose x) I (again) love the trust they had in one another and the quiet support.

There was also his relationship with Oscar that I really liked during V7, although it has been soured a bit by the (valid) reading from some people that Ironwood sought out Ozpin a lot through Oscar, and given his identity issues it is not ground for a greatly healthy relationship. Their interactions were still very intersting though ♡ I consider Oscar to be the kid who went at trying to appease James' fear or make him reconsider his decisions the best way. There was true understanding and hope for a working relationship here. I do feel that Oscar put in more work than James however (emotionally) and I wish there had been pay-back instead of a gunshot.

For my least fav relationship ? Probably Robyn or Watts ? Robyn was always very antagonistic toward Ironwood since their priorities are so different. And I overall just don't really like her after V7 so there are very few relationships with her I'm interested in (the exception is her ship with Fiona I think it's cute). Meanwhile, Watts is just a petty asshole hell bent on ruining Ironwood because he didn't pick his project. I'm not very interested in hate relationships, and since theirs wasn't deeply explored anyway, it's even more the case here. Their fight was great though, one of my favorite RWBY fights !

My favorite thing about the character

Well this was completely proven wrong by V8 buuut as of V7 I liked that he was a deconstruction of the military general (dictator) trope. Sooo you can guess how i feel about V8 X) In general among RWBY, several of my fav are fav BECAUSE they look like one trope but also have key differences that from the get go make the character stray away from said trope. For example I'm not a fan of the princess tsundere archetype at all, but I loooved Weiss in V1 BECAUSE she was extra-willing to listen and change her mind, and you could very easily tell that it was her upbringing speaking more than herself in most occasions.

Similarly, I wasn't a big fan of Ironwood before V7. I didn't hate him you know and he wasn't lower than most characters in my Tier list but I also didn't particularly care. But you know what ? I've aaaalways had a really soft spot for the "angsty angry traumatized teen". And RWBY made the mistake of extending that soft spot to "tired adults trying their best" (only to repeatedly beat them up/make them villains after making me care about them but what can you do uh)

Soo in general, I loved that Ironwood was trying so hard. I loved that he was tired and in over his head but learning and listening and trying to do good and be better despite his fears. I liked that he told his entourage about Salem and was loyal. I liked that he cared about helping the people above his own image and the way people perceived him. I liked that you could tell this was a terrible situation all around, and his decisions WERE questionnable but we could SEE that he meant WELL and was genuinely trying so hard despite how scared and tired he was.

My biggest criticism for the character

Well this won't be a surprise but in general I just wished he had stayed a morally grey character we were allowed to feel for instead of a cartoon black villain. I didn't need James to be THE Hero or anything like this despite some accusations levelled at those who like him. Him becoming one of RWBY's antagonist is honestly fine by me ! It is interesting. But I'd have preferred they kept him ambiguous and trying in his own way. (And smart because V8 Ironwood was dumb af)

I can be a tad overprotective of his character since he's just... so despised, so I think that I have inadvertently distanced myself from any of his flaws... somehow like "people are already yelling all of them so I don't need to add to this shit show" you know ? skjfkd But I KNOW he has them and it would still have been good to develop his flaws, just... not like that

But yea I'd have liked it if V8 Ironwood DID diverge from RWBYJNORQ and became an antagonist but not an iredeemable villain. LIKE,, we redeemed Hazel and Emerald and IRONWOOD is where the writers draw the line by saying "nope this one is rotten" ?? What ?

When was their writing at the peak according to me (ex : best season)

V7 definitely ! Ironwood carried V7 so hard haha. His character was fleshed out and given nuance and made to struggle and evolve and I loved him in that volume.

A song I think fits them & why

Hunger • Monsters & Men Human • Rag'n'Bone Man Way down we go • Kaleo Beekeeper • Keaton Henson Thistle and weeds • Mumford and Sons Castle of Glass • Linkin Park It's all so incredibly loud • Glass Animals

A headcanon to make up about them

His metal parts impact his metabolism so Ironwood is terrible at holding his alcohool and very little manages to knock him out. He's a workaholic. His low tolerence for alcohool is a great tool whn friends need to put him to sleep.

His joints crack and hurt in the cold, his metal parts as well and they are an hassle in the sand. James like to keep his room temperature warmer than the average atlasian because of this, otherwise he has to spend 30 min every morning simply unwiding muscles to move around efficiently.

He's not a good singer but has a nice low voice for telling stories. If he had kids, he'd probably avoid lullabies but compensate with bedtimes stories.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

As always, I'm kind of reflecting along the way as I write this, and one thing I'm thinking right now is... Doesn't it take away from the atlas arc message ITSELF to just pile up so many "standard bad guy" stuff on Ironwood ? Like, I wanna ask... why do we hate him ? Is he an antagonist because he lets fear get the best of him ? Because he's a classist who doesn't care about Mantle like some fans argue ? Because he's too stubborn and wants to be THE hero ? Because he doesn't listen to others ? Because he abandonned Mantle ? Because he kills peopke left and right ? Because he wanted to bomb a city ? I think you might see where I'm going with this : his status as villain is kind of messy. V8 just kept piling-up flaws and villainous actions onto Ironwood with no concern for whether this was a lenght he would go to (using the certainty that he would go to any lenghts to enact his plans), ,or whether these were one of the initial flaws/failings that led to his "fall" as an antagonist. What lesson is Ironwood supposed to learn ? Personally the very first time I yelled at my screen "No ! Why would the writers choose that ?" is when Ironwood shot Oscar. When answering criticism against medias, many people tend to look at it only through the lense of "well it makes sense in universe" or as if there were no other ways for the story to devolve. But at the end of the way, everything in a story is a choice from the writer even if it is influenced by the characters' personnalities. If I took the scene where Ironwood shoots Oscar, someone might tell me "he's crippled by his PTSD, he COULD do this." Maybe, that's a reading I can somewhat understand at least. But the writers have the power to NOT put his character in such a position. When I saw the wreck that was V7 finale, I ranted to my bestfriend about it and at no point did i say "why did Ironwood do that", I said "why did the writers make him shoot Oscar, the only point narratively would be to make irredeemable" Aaaand that's what they went for and I obviously didn't care for it. So if I had to rewrite it; I would have kept Ironwood's "mistakes" more focused. If he's wrong because he wants to abandon Mantle, because he's (understandably) scared and doesn't want to take risks; then stay focused on that. It's what makes RWBY leave, and out of all his V8 actions that's really the only thing RWBY needed to tell the whole world he wasn't an ally anymore apparently. - Don't make him shoot Oscar point blank, instead Oscar can simply fall because he flinches away from Ironwood's outburst; and a distraught/guilty Ironwood can decide that he doesn't have the time or capacity to help because of the tense situation. (Killing and not saving someone don't hold the same moral weight at all). - Don't make him kill people left and right or bomb cities, maintain the flaw of Ironwood struggling with his PTSD and his fear and not being able to take risks. - Don't paint him as a black villain, and eventually write V8 in such a way that RWBYJNORQ show taking risks might lead to a bigger victory, which was the volume's theme anyway. For example, following Oscar's destruction of the whale, a growth can occur that would bring back together the two anti-Salem factions : Oscar's risk put Atlas out of harm's way, which leads to Ironwood seeing that maybe there WAS a way to save Mantle as well as Atlas despite Salem's presence and he might have jumped the gun too quickly because of his fears. I'm not sure, I haven't thought about this extensively honestly but I hope you see what I mean. I think it would have been more focused & more in-character to focus Ironwood's failings on his fear; and the fact that he cares for the people and the greater good sometimes at the cost of the individuals. The idea that by sacrificing individuals too much you forget the people you're fighting for in the first place, could have been interesting to dig deeper into. Keep to the idea that Ironwood is somewhat disensitized to the individuals suffering for the sake of the greater good, instead of making him just

callous & uncaring.

My guess for their MBTI/Enneagram

I think pre-V8 Ironwood was an unconventionnal ENFJ. Aka, the type of character no one would type ENFJ because they go by stereotypes and Fe stereotypes are just enneagram 2 everywhere (aka nice, kind, helpful) whereas Ironwood has an enneagram tritype very common among xxTJs so that's what he looks/behaves like, but the way he thinks (what's best for the people, ethical values derived from an Atlasian upbringing) align more with Fe cognitively I think I'm going with ENFJ 6w5 1w2 3w4

Starting from V8 though, Ironwood veered clearly into ENTJ territory (types aren't supposed to change but I wouldn't say RWBY is the most consistent media when it comes to characters' personnalities)

One aspect that I think would be nice to delve deeper into ?

I understand why they didn't care to, but it'd have been interesting to get a few backstory hints for Ironwood. How did he lose half his body ? How did Oz recruit him ? Or some pieces about his upbringing ?

#rwby #james ironwood #james ironwood canoncrit #rwby thoughts #rwby rewrite #rwde #ask me stuff #enneagram #mbti #v7 spoilers #v8 spoilers #pro james ironwood

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nonartisticbooknerd · 4 years

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i notice you ship Kacchako- and there's nothing wrong with that but why? (note I haven't seen mha) from what I know, bakugou is a huge asshole who bullied deku a lot, while uraraka seems to be a nice person- i just wanna know why you ship them lol

oh BOY here comes the essay.

Please note that this why I ship kacchako. This is not meant to convince anyone to ship kacchako, but simply my reasons as to why I like these two characters together.

To start off I will openly admit that yes, Bakugou is an asshole. He bullied Deku a lot (probably due to that wonderful inferiority/superiority complex he’s got going on) and in general, is pretty loud and rude to everyone. He makes it a point to let everyone know that they are beneath him and goes out of his way to prove that he’s the best and no one could even hope to compare.

Meanwhile, Uraraka is the exact opposite: sweet, bubbly, and very kind to everyone. She actually wants to be a hero for the money to help her parents out bc she comes from a poor family (which I LOVE but that’s a topic for another meta). She never tries to prove herself to anyone as a result, and just focuses on trying to learn to be the best hero possible (because the better you are, the more money you make).

The most notable difference is their relationship with Deku (and actually this is one of my reasons for shipping them but we’ll get to that). Bakugou was Deku’s former friend and he has a strong dislike toward Deku, stemming from an unhealthy need to prove his superiority in every respect over Deku. Uraraka, on the other hand, is one of Deku’s new and close friends, and they get along really well.

So why do I ship kacchako? Mutual respect, understanding, and potential character growth. Explanation of that below, with manga screencaps.

1. Mutual Respect

This is the major point of their ship for me and it stems from their fight in the Sports Festival.

It’s quite obvious that Uraraka acknowledges Bakugou’s strength, after all, he’s seen as a powerhouse by everyone, and she repeatedly comments on his strength. But it takes a lot to get Bakugou to acknowledge someone. And with Uraraka, he does.

Aizawa just outright says it. Bakugou goes into the fight knowing that Uraraka is an opponent he needs to be wary of because she made it to the final round. Bakugou doesn’t see the small and sweet bubbly girl everyone else in the crowd is seeing, what he sees is an opponent, and Uraraka notices that. And just before launching her final attack, she thanks him.

Actually his reaction to her thanking him is one I love because we’ve never seen that kind of caught-off-guard expression on him before until this moment. To me, it seems that he couldn’t even imagine not taking her seriously because as mentioned before, she made it to the final round so in his mind she has to be strong to do that, and her thanking him for it is making him go “huh? what are you even thanking me for?”.

For her final attack, she drops a meteor shower on his head, he blows it away, and then we get this panel.

This is the first time in the manga that Bakugou acknowledges that someone nearly took him out. His hand is pounding from Quirk overuse and it’s the first time we see an adverse effect of his Quirk, the blowback from using too strong of an explosion. But more important is the fact that he says “that was close”, explicitly acknowledging that she nearly took him out. Respect.

So then after that Uraraka gets up and rushes at him again to attack, even though she’s clearly shown to be at her limit, and we get this from Bakugou:

He calls her by name. That’s incredibly important.

Throughout the manga, Bakugou uses nicknames (Deku, Shitty Hair, Flat Face etc.) to keep people at a distance and let them know he doesn’t give a shit about them. Keep in mind that before, he’d used a nickname for Uraraka, calling her Round Face right at the beginning of the fight. But now that she’s driven him to the limit he knows this girl is strong. And here, when he calls her by her name, he’s acknowledging her and her strength. This is the first person in class 1-A that he calls by name (Kirishima also eventually graduates from Shitty Hair to Kirishima, but that’s way later). After this, he doesn’t go back to using Round Face for her either. He keeps using her name when he refers to her, even in his head.

So Uraraka, at her limit, collapses before she even reaches Bakugou and he’s clearly shaken up by that. He was expecting the fight he’d been dreaming of, where he could give his all and fight an opponent that he genuinely respected and saw as strong, and then she collapsed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a look of concern, I think it was more of mixed disappointment and shock.

When he re-enters the stands, all his classmates comment on the fight as he goes to sit down. A classmate (Kaminari) says something along the lines of “I can’t believe you could bring yourself to go so hard against such a fragile/small girl”. And in response comes the single line that was catalyst for me shipping kacchako. “Where do you see fragile?”

This is the first time he’s defended someone other than himself or All Might in this series. It just goes to show that he really does acknowledge Uraraka and her strength, to the point that he’s willing to speak up and say that to others, albeit in a indirect way.

Wayyy later he continues to respect her!

This is part of a page spread of characters introductions as given by Bakugou and Uraraka’s is the only vaguely positive character introduction Bakugou gives. Everyone else gets something kind of aggressive and along the lines of ‘I’ll beat you’ or ‘you’re weak’ and then Uraraka gets ‘her guts and roundness are acceptable’. Other translations say “her guts and roundness are respectable’ and I’m not sure which is correct, but either way, respect!!

The fact that one of the times he was smiling during a fight was against Uraraka. If he only smiles when fighting people he consider to be “towering walls” aka challenges, he must have seen Uraraka as one. Further proof of respect!

Over and over in that Sports Festival fight and then after, Horikoshi makes it a point to establish that Bakugou respects Uraraka’s strength. And that’s a major reason that I ship them. I like that dynamic of two people knowing that the other can kick major ass and respecting the hell out of them for it, especially if one character doesn’t look like they can kick ass.

2. Understanding

This goes a little bit more from Uraraka to Bakugou than the other way around, to be honest, but it’s a reason I ship them all the same. This is shown most clearly in the post- midterm exams omake (which is only in the manga and not the anime).

I love this omake so much because first of all, it reveals that Uraraka watches Bakugou from across the classroom closely enough to pick up on changes in his mood (as evidenced when she says “I sensed your Bakurage Aura” to him) and second, it reveals that she can pick up on changes in his emotional state easily.

But the most important part of that omake is this panel.

This is huge.

The way she outright says that Bakugou is terrified of Izuku’s potential development shows a deep understanding of Bakugou’s emotions and mental state that’s very unique. We never see anything like this level of understanding from any of their other classmates in direct relation to Bakugou. When she says “you act all menacing”, it shows that she knows that Bakugou’s yelling and bluster is an act put on the distance Izuku because he’s scared of him.

This revelation wasn’t revealed to Deku and All Might until Deku v. Kacchan 2 when Bakugou told the two of them what he was feeling in terms that they could understand. And this was way before this, right after the midterm exams.

She follows this up by asking him to repair his relationship with Deku and be nicer to him. They hadn’t even interacted much, so the fact that she noticed this in the first place and then felt comfortable enough to tell him that to his face says a lot about how she understands him and is comfortable around him.

Bakugou is completely taken aback by this and sit and listens to her and lets her finish before yelling at her, which is big because if he didn’t respect what she had to say, he would have just cut her off and left, but he didn’t. That respect comes back into play.

So Uraraka genuinely gets Bakugou, both emotionally and mentally, and isn’t afraid to tell him about her observations, and that’s another big plus for me. I love how Uraraka can see right through him and catch him off guard every time they interact meaningfully. That deep understanding is an important part of any relationship, and the fact that she can analyze him like this, despite not being a close friend to him was interesting to me because of the potential for character development.

3. Character Development (both canon and potential)

Character development is a big thing for me when it comes to ships. I tend to really like ships that change a character for the better in some way or the other.

The Sports Festival fight changed the both of them. When Bakugou fought Todoroki and told him to give it his all, the speech bubble placement implies he was thinking of his fight with Uraraka when he said that. She’s his standard for a good fight now.

On the other end, Bakugou helped Uraraka realize that she didn’t need to exclusively focus on rescue with her Quirk and she takes an internship under Gunhead as a result, growing her character in a major way. Those Gunhead martial arts get used a lot later on by her, and none of that would have happened if her fight with Bakugou hadn’t happened. Overall, the Sports Festival fight was important to both their character arcs and I love that.

From the understanding part comes more possibility for character development. This is where their differing relationships with Deku come into play. One admires him and the other is scared of his growth. With her understanding of Bakugou and his relationship with Deku, Uraraka could genuinely help repair their relationship.

Also them as training partners! Not only do their Quirks have the potential for incredible compatibility (zero-gravity and explosions = human rockets/missiles??) but they could help the other with new skills. Uraraka could teach Bakugou Gunhead martial arts and help him improve his hand-to-hand Quirkless combat, Bakugou could help Uraraka with comabt awareness and increasing her power. He’s probably also got some ideas for creative applications of her Quirk. Make them training buddies, Horikoshi, I beg of you.

4. Other Things

Uraraka is completely chill with his foul-mouthed nature! She actually finds it even a little funny.

THE WAY SHE’S JUST NOT AT ALL SCARED TO THROW DOWN WITH HIM!! In the post midterms omake she even matches the Bakurage face at the end! She doesn’t take his shit at all and is 100% ready to fight again.

The chocolate manju scene from the war arc is hilarious to me because she’s comfortable enough around him to lightly reprimand him and the way he knows that she’s a foodie and wants to try the chocolate manju is really cute to me.

---

Of course, everything I said can also be platonically interpreted. I would just love for them to be friends in canon, and really, that’s what all of this logically leads to. I just like to dream about it slowly growing into romance during their pro hero years.

#you noticed more like your dash got flooded bc of me rip #kacchako #bakugou katsuki #uraraka ochako #I literally love this ship so much and think about them every day can you tell

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tornrose24 · 3 years

Text

My Lordsona’s letters, diary entries, and journal entry in Mother Miranda’s Lab.

I remembered that in each of the lords’ areas, there tends to be letters/journal entries/notes that are either about them or that they wrote themselves in addition to what Mother Miranda wrote about each one in her lab. I thought it would be fun to make some for my lordsona as a way to add additional information (including what could have lead to getting a cadou in the first place, because I don’t think those are given out so freely).

There is mentions of @artistcaptainbendy‘s lordsona Bendypants and their OC Benjamin.

TW: Mentions of gore

(All journal entries located in personal studio in the gallery. Some would hold clues to solving certain puzzles.)

Journal 1

May 3rd, 1968

(page 1)

I would rather swim in Moreau’s lake and be subjected to whatever goes on in Donna’s estate than give another art lesson to Alcina’s girls. She hoped I could cultivate some talent in the three of them, and there was some promise in both Cassandra and Daniela. Bela seemed disinterested and wanted to go to the piano instead. There was some frustration over the past few weeks and it made me thankful I’m their ‘aunt’ or else it wouldn’t have ended well for me.

Weeks later, they presented me with some abominable displays. That one ‘statue’ looked like one of the maids... or what was left of the poor woman. And I doubt that was red paint used on that canvas.

I don’t mind speaking with Alcina herself once in awhile when I want a bit of class and elegance. There’s certainly no denying her sense of taste in decor and her collection of artwork is incredible. But her daughters are too much for me and I don’t agree on her views of all men. She certainly never met my father or my...

(page 2)

Father....

Sorry, I got lost in my memories there for a bit. Tomorrow I am meeting with some of the village children and will give them an art lesson. They are more of a delight compared to those poor excuses for children in that castle.

They admire the other lords, but its possibly for the best that they aren’t allowed to get too close to them.

Reminder to self: Check to see if the Duke has any works of art to add to the gallery when he comes back.

Journal 2

September 2nd 1975

(Page 1)

It appears I finally have a new security guard. The bastard and a friend of his thought he could sneak into MY gallery and steal a painting that I said would cost a fortune. They fell victim to the Escher trap (clearly they didn’t pay attention to his surroundings) and the painting was destroyed.

All that trouble for a Van Gough replica that’d be worth not even a fraction of the true painting.

But then again, what should I have expected from the son of the drunkard who nearly paralyzed me for life with a bullet to the spine and sent me into Mother Miranda?

The man was completely brain dead. The friend was a bloodied mess, but I stitched his arms to the thief, added some details of my own, did a bit of fixing up, and used a Cadou. He’s dull as a rock and doesn’t recall his past life, but he’ll be good at protecting my gallery from other idiots.

I call him David after the famous statue.

September 5th, 1975

(Page 2)

Unsurprisingly, Heisenberg thought my creation was, and I quote ‘a hunk of shit and dumbassery mixed together’ and said he could have done so much better. Unlike him, MY creations ARE true works of art. Of course I’m not interested in getting into an argument with him as he enjoys doing so with Alcina.

I brought David to someone else who’d be fascinated with him. Bendypants seemed intrigued and wondered if I could lend David to them to help build a set.

I’m deeply disturbed that I’ve sunk as low as the others. I didn’t think I’d actually use a cadou but I try to tell myself that what I’ve done was a fitting punishment. Besides, it keeps Mother Miranda off my back for a bit.

Note to self: Need to do something about the additional arms on David. They don’t look like they are as secure as I would like them to be.

October 10th, 1975

(Page 3)

It turns out David developed a soft spot for Benjamin. As in Bendypants’ favorite lycan. He’s been looking at him like a girl harboring a secret crush.

That was.... rather unexpected. I guess David isn’t as dull as I thought. I need to keep an eye on him in case he remembers anything about his former life.

Journal 3

January 20th, 2004

(Page 1)

Karl is crude and a bit much at times. But there’s no denying that he’s rather handsome and I finally was able to convince him to pose for some sketches for a painting after all these years. It took the finest bottle of whiskey the Duke had on hand to convince him.

Bendypants will be so envious of me. They too have a certain soft spot for our fellow lord. Perhaps I can gift them with a replica painting as a present in the future.

I admire that Heisenberg doesn’t bother putting on airs like Alcina and his.... extraverted nature is a breath of fresh air. However the whiskey caused him to spill something rather concerning. He seemed unusually interested in my family’s plot of land in the graveyard.

I’m very concerned about what his intentions are.

(Page 2)

I just paid the gravekeeper to unearth the remains of my family so I can burn them and bury them under the oak tree.

I am NOT letting any of the lords use my family’s remains for whatever they are planning.

March 15th, 2010

(Page 3)

Bendypants invited me to one of their plays. It was ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream.’ It was a delight and helped me take my mind off things. The idea of making some of the characters not quite fit into certain norms that are expected in the village would have made Mother Miranda squirm.

I showed them that painting of Ophelia drowning when we discussed Shakespeare the next day. Sometimes I wonder why the cadou didn’t make me lose my mind like Ophelia–would I have been happier without my sanity in the village, amongst the others? At least I wouldn’t have been aware of what sins I would be committing across the years.

I have deeply cherished my friendship with them. They were there at the funerals for each family member of mine who died. Their condolences were honest compared to the other lords and those who were trying to kiss up to me. Like me, they too have somehow defied time’s cruelty to the body, and have known the loss of a loved one.

(Page 4)

The children are the only others in the village that I am fond of and would protect. Such innocence to the violence hidden in the corners. Sometimes I wish to give into the desire of motherhood, but that would have been the greatest pain I could experience....

(letter hidden in Lord Bendypants’ theater)

Dearest B,

Regardless of what Miranda tells us lords, you are the only true family I have left in this forsaken village. I would have never imagined that wild, mud covered child of the woods would be the one person I could trust.

That woman never was and will NEVER be my mother. Regardless of what she gave to me, I had to watch my family succumb to old age and sickness while I still remain as I am–a Venus forever frozen in youth and beauty. I hope she burns in hell for her sins and for what she has turned me into across the years.

I suspect that whatever she wants with the infant she kept mentioning is not going to end well for us or the village. She is charismatic, but her lack of true warmth makes me uneasy. I get the feeling that death is certain, but as to who for is not clear yet. I have two requests for you if my suspicions are correct.

First, I am going to see if I can hide any children I can find. They were one of the few things that made me happy here and do not deserve whatever Miranda has planned, so I shall sneak them in a room within my gallery. Please do not let any of your lycans harm the children or attack me tomorrow night. Should things go according to plan, they will be able to have the true freedom that was denied to all of us.

Secondly, should I perish from whatever Miranda has in store, retrieve my body, burn it, and bury it under THAT oak tree where I placed the ashes of my family. I think I finally know for sure who was getting into the graves lately, but I will be damned if I let that asshole take my body too.

I will never forget our times together, or the visits to your wonderful theater. Thank you for being there when I needed it the most.

Your friend,

-R

(Journal in Miranda’s lab)

Subject Name: _______ Rose

Cadou Affinity: Somewhat Favorable

Brain Function: Normal

Subject’s spinal chord was damaged by a gunshot wound three days before procedure. Subject has regained full mobility after cadou implantation. Six horn like protrusions have grown out of subject’s skull, yet subject hasn’t suffered any damage to the brain.

Subject’s arms mutate into an armor and bone fragments extend out of limbs like thorns that are strong enough to tear through flesh when provoked. These abilities are somewhat similar to Alcina’s but pales in comparison to what she is capable of.

Insect-like wings extend right out of subject’s backside when the subject wills them to, yet immense pain makes this a rarity. The placement of the wings is exactly where a small piece of cadou was implanted to repair the damaged spine. Additional procedures were required to ensure that the subject could not be able to fly beyond the village borders.

Further mutation turns the subject into something resembling a fae, yet behaves and moves like an insect. However it takes the subject four hours to change back. Subject also becomes predatory in this state.

An unfit vessel for Eva.

#resident evil #resident evil village #lordsona #tornrose24 #tw gore #something to do for fun and add to lore of lordsona

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hollowisthyname · 3 years

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Hello, Icarus! Please infodump to me about Danganronpa?

okay so! I had written out a whole thing but then tumblr deleted it! so that was fun! /s but now that I know what I'm going to write it's much easier, so that's good 😌

n e ways, I'm gonna do like a basic timeline w explanations and some other stuff that hopefully I'll remember once I start writing!! so let's go :D

a list of everything danganronpa in chronological order (not the order that you should play/watch the stuff in, I'll put that in the explanations)

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Future and Hope arcs after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). backstory for the cast of the second game.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (THH) - first main game, play first. also has an anime that's basically the same as the game, but since there's not enough time to put everything from the game into the anime I definitely recommend playing the game. high school students from a prestigious school trapped in said school are forced to play a killing game, hijinks ensue.

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (UDG) - third game, not main. play after playing the first two games. very different game mechanics from the main three, and widely considered not cannon by the fandom. I like it though, and it introduces a lot of really interesting characters along with giving a v underdeveloped character from the first game a lot more character development. it's not necessary to play it (though one of the characters plays a pretty big part in the third anime, so that would make more sense if you already knew her), but I think it's interesting and fun. there are also robot fights.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (DR2 or SDR2) - second main game, play after playing the first game. same basic premise as the first game, except it's a different class (same school though) and this time they're on an island. even more hijinks and plot twists than the first game.

Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaimono - (I could only find the Japanese title for this one, sorry 😔) kinda also part of the second anime? watch after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want) and watching DR3. character is woken up from a coma via overdramatic and overpowered other character.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future and Hope Arcs (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Despair arc after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). aftermath of the first two games.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (DRV3) - third main game, fourth game in total. I don't actually know when it happens bc they're v secretive about everything, so I'm just putting it last. play last. same premise as the first two, the class is trapped in a school with a courtyard and a huge sort of dome around everything. peak hijinks, too many plot twists to count.

woo!! that's the timeline as I know it, hopefully I didn't miss anything. and I have managed to remember what else I was going to say, so let's move on to section two:

the mechanics of the games

danganronpa is, at its core, a glorified visual novel. every character has a certain amount of sprites for when they talk, as well as voice lines that aren't usually the exact text on the screen but fit the vibe of whatever they're saying. and as I've said before, there's quite a lot of talking. these games have more plot than should really be possible and most or all of it is done through dialogue. cutscenes and class trials are the only parts that are reliably fully voice acted, but there are a lot of those.

as for the parts that are less visual novel-y: you can walk around, and the settings are pretty much as 3d as the 2d-ish style of the game allows. you can also click on things, and sometimes clicking on stuff will get you monocoins, the currency of the game, which means you'll be able to buy presents for the characters!!

"now why do I need presents for the characters?" you ask. well, that's because you're given a certain amount of free time each game to hang out with characters you want to get to know better! the game's ending is fixed, so you won't change the course of the game by who you do or don't hang out with, but you can learn more about characters and become closer to them! giving them presents they like makes them like you more :D

and the most exciting part of danganronpa, what a lot of people play the games for, the true lure of the game.... the class trials!!

so these characters are in a killing game, right? basically, they're faced with a sort of lose-lose predicament: stay trapped in the school forever, or kill one of your classmates to "graduate". but it's not as simple as that, because in order to graduate, you can't be caught. and how do you determine whether or not a criminal has been found out? well, a trial of course!

enter the class trials. every student (barring dead or severely wounded ones) is required to participate in a kind of mock trial- except someone's really dead, and they need to find the murderer or they'll all die too.

(right, did I forget to mention that? only one person can graduate. getting out alive insures that none of your classmates get the luxury of doing the same.)

so, yeah. the class trials are a true fight for life on both sides, because who ever loses will be executed.

and they're really, really fun.

entirely voice acted! enough minigames that the list of them is probably longer than this entire post! the joy of solving the mystery! the... execution, right in front of everyone.

hey, it's a dark game. not like they're trying to hide that. and the executions aren't actually all that gory most of the time, but they're still very much there and onscreen. also as close to fully animated as the games ever get, which is pretty cool.

so how the class trials work is this:

there's a murder. dun dun duuuun. you investigate everywhere related to the murder to get "truth bullets", which are the reason you don't immediately fail at the trials. you don't have to remember all of them, they're all written down in your e-handbook. plus, the protagonists all seem to have really good memories.

time for the actual class trial!! Monokuma (asshole bear running the killing game) introduces everything, explains the rules. and everyone starts talking.

there are a lot of different parts to the class trial, but most of it is "nonstop debates". everyone talks one after the other, and you have to find inconsistencies and shoot the right "weak spot" with the right truth bullet. you refute the lie or mistake and everyone goes back to arguing normally.

there's also hangman's gambit (weird hangman to find a key word), multiple choice things (self-explanatory), and plenty of others.

near the end of the trial (or sometimes only a little over halfway in, it varies), the killer will.... kind of become obvious. there's a specific kind of change in behavior that's the mark of the murderer in these games, but I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. a lot of times there's an accent change, and in general they start acting much more erratic. since it's a trial, though, even after this presents itself you still have to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt.

and once it's become clear to the killer that they're backed into a corner, you have to do the "bullet time battle". it goes by different names in different games, but the basic mechanics are the same: you battle against a student (usually the killer, but not always) in a rhythm-based battle where you have to click to the rhythm to refute your opponent's statements. once you've dealt enough damage, you shoot the final piece of evidence, and that's the end of it.

the murderers react differently different times. sometimes they break down and confess. sometimes they keep denying it. sometimes, they're just calm. however they act, though, the end is the same. they are caught and punished accordingly.

but before that, there's one more thing to do. the closing argument.

your final task is to explain how the murder was committed, from idea to execution (look, a pun! see I can be funny too 😌). and you have to do it... as a manga.

you don't have to draw the whole thing yourself ofc- you just have to fill in the missing panels and then watch as the protagonist narrates it to the rest of the class.

and that's all for the class trial, not counting the long talks after every execution while still in the courtroom.

wow, this is getting...... really, really long. there's only one more thing I'm gonna add, and I promise it will be much shorter than the other two bc it is late and I am officially Incredibly Fucking Tired.

with no further ado, a very short part three:

my general impression of the game. its vibes or smth, I dunno this is just what i think about it

when I first heard of danganronpa, I thought it was a horror game. I can now assure you that it is not. thriller? maybe. debatable. but definitely not horror.

and despite its extremely dark premise, this game is not all doom and gloom. there's so much stuff about hope, and overcoming despair even when it seems impossible... it's not exactly a happy game, but there's a lot more of that in there than you'd probably expect.

all in all, I love this game. so much. it means a lot to me, and I think it's a really good game. thanks for letting me talk about it so much asdhfd :D

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years

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tg anime vs manga *sighs*

i have the power of hyperfixation and anime on my side! AAAAAAAA

Ok now that we’ve gotten the sins of re post out of the way we need to discuss this. And I just feel that this needs to be covered because I can’t ever get away from constant discourse on this, mostly fueled by manga readers who feel entitled to always think they’re superior for reading the manga, that the manga is the only real canon, that it’s more complex or better, I’m so fucking tired of it. I am also a manga reader, and I tend to get like that sometimes too with many series (for example no. 6 and the promised neverland.) I get it. It can be really annoying to see something butchered on screen to what the original is, changed or represented differently or given a different message or simplified. But just. Some people like the anime and it’s not a goddamn holy war for y’all to fight. It only makes anime fans not want to read the thing even more yknow cause manga readers are pretentious assholes, and I am aware of this as one of them.

(again ok i’d like to mention i know this fandom is basically dead but a certain p*nterest is always like 4 years behind on fandoms so i keep fucking running into Discourse that’s like, still current, whenever i want old random ass content) (and youtube, why do i look at youtube comments, because I personally enjoy being offended? yeah probably)

And that brings me to the point of this anime vs manga.

This is a lot harder to compare than a lot of other series, because there are just... so many more differences not just in the style and vibe but the story itself.

Disclaimer, I’ve never watched the anime for :re and i don’t intend to, because I honestly have no earthly clue how tf you can get from the highly diverged tokyo ghoul root A to re and make it make sense, and I don’t really want A ruined for me. So you can call me biased towards the manga in the case of re, i guess (which makes my eventual conclusion even more strong I’d say) Honestly I just see them as two completely different stories, the manga’s version connecting with re and A just like... ending there. So how we’re drawing the lines is basically tokyo ghoul A versus the manga and :re. God, I know this isn’t a fair fight because I already hate re so much, but I feel like the manga’s story is much more intertwined with :re than the anime’s is, so that’s what we’re going with.

oh god also another disclaimer this opinion is coming from the biggest fucking kanehide whore, you can disregard anything i say if you ship The Straights and/or do not care for my boi hide

To be honest, if I can take my own conclusions and liberties to the story, I like both versions, each have their pros and cons and kind of a conflicting message. They can’t really coexist. Usually I’d consume all versions and then create one consistent canon in my head for what I accept as the true events (for example my main owari no seraph, first season of the anime is canon but after that we only follow the manga since those can come together and make sense.) but it’s very hard to do that in tokyo ghoul, since I must confess... I really like root A. Like of course, it’s a lot different from the manga, but tbh I think it’s super valid. (unlike most Fans TM like this Fan TM who i’m sending this post to just to spite their singular Youtube Comment Section Discourse, yes I did write this post for you and many others like you) But the ideas that make up root A conflict a lot with the ones of the manga, so I just have to accept that they’re separate things and treat them as such.

Now to break it down so people can understand where I’m coming from I guess? God this is already so long here’s a read more

The Case for The Manga (including :re manga)

More Lore + Plot Shit: One of the main reasons that manga readers are pretentious little bitches is a valid reason, namely that, as is the case with most manga, there’s simply more to it than people can fit into an anime. (Although people need to understand that’s because,,, it’s simply a different medium, so it will have different pluses and minuses, such as for example a soundtrack, color, moving pictures,,, you know, all that. Anime onlys don’t say that the anime is better by stating these things that a manga won’t have... because they’re fucking obvious. So manga readers should stop acting like an anime is inherently sub-par for being less in depth, but we digress.) I can understand that reading the manga is kind of important for wanting to understand the lore (though there are like so many other reasons ppl might want to watch it other than to get the lore) and without the explanation of how all this came to be and how it works, everything tends to be really mysterious, confusing, and seemingly random. It’s really nice to know what’s all going on, of course, and stuff like the washuus, rize’s backstory, the explanation for like, kaneki in general, all that- if you’re looking for like, plot shit, manga is definitely your go to. But like, sometimes, you like, don’t actually care about those things.

Haise: Of course one of the most important things about well, including re is that I fucking love Haise. Like he is my favorite Kaneki. He’s just so wonderful, look at him in he glasses and he floofy hair and he striped pants and he energy boxers and he s p i c e and he MOM. And I really like how they took Kaneki’s character and developed it more with Haise, you can see his turnaround from innocent--> Emo--> Trying To Be Innocent Again But Failing and I think that’s really sweet tbh. I rejected that at first because I didn’t understand it but once I actually read re I thought it made a lot of sense and was a logical thing to do with his character. (though, uh, moving forward, after his hair changes again i disagree with it, haise 1.0 is a good take and i love him and i want the best for him) I could go on I’ve already written a post of what I think is wrong with :re so if you want to hear my take on kaneki’s 37 pokemon evolutions that’s in there

Good New Characters: And of course there are my favorite bitches such as quinx squad, oh my god, there was a terminal lack of dumbass squad vibes in the original and ishida fucking gave it to us, I love them, I love them with all my heart and I think that if I wasn’t attached to them I’d probably just cancel all of :re but like this is just my personal problem. God I love them. Ishida always pulls through with characters I’m now too attached to.

Vore Lmao:Ok like hear me out. I just get a laugh out of it every time the manga has to remind me of this little fucking fact. Like ok I just. Cannot get over it. It’s so serious about it too and like I realize it’s a serious deal but o h m y g o d

Ok and now that we’ve got that little rant over I do want to say that it is like actually really important past the “lmao that’s pretty gay” bit, like??? In some ways it’s more fitting than the anime because well, ishida’s point always seems to be “what would mentally and physically hurt kaneki the most right now” and does it because that’s who this bitch is. But it just?? Kind of makes a bit more sense for the storyline if we’re being picky here, it’s so,,, painfully on point? Like the entire reason he gave in to Being A Ghoul and all was so he could save his friends and shit (i actually do not remember if this was a thing in the manga but like? when he was being tortured and he like imagined hide being really mad at him and getting killed by jason and shit?) LIKE AND THEN HE GOES AND HAS TO BASICALLY BE THE PERPETRATOR OF THAT HIMSELF, FUCK, it’s a lose/lose situation of “don’t do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer” or “do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer but like, later” ishida please

The meaning of Hide being alive: Ok this is just me crying over chapter 75 still but like. Instead of in the anime, where hide’s point seems to be that instead of letting kaneki sacrifice anything more he’d be the one to give his life up and such, and save kaneki, in the anime tbh he just really wanted to be with kaneki right then?? and like ouch but understanding that in the manga he wasn’t just planning on dying and leaving kaneki to deal with it afterward he wanted to go on and continue to try to help the guy no matter the shit he had to go through, no matter if the dude just like forgot that he existed for two years and all- LIKE UH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HIDE DOESN’T EVEN EXPECT ANY APOLOGY? like kaneki’s like “OH MY GOD I’M SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON” and hide’s like lmao nah it’s cool i’m thriving- that his big motto was “live” rather than “peace out motherfuckers it’s been fun”. Cause. Fucking. Ishida. Can’t kill off characters well but like at least he made keeping this one alive justified.

The D e t a i l s: Ok well I feel like this is something everyone knows but the anime is missing a lot of really,,, crunchy details that the manga throws in there, like, well, kaneki’s fucking,,, bones thing, and other assorted details, g o d like those are missable if you want to never understand half the memes but also like,,, sometimes you just gotta read that shit. It also like, makes more sense when you do but sometimes it’s just stupid things that aren’t important but are fucking hilarious.

The Flavor: In general I’d say the greatest difference between the anime and the manga is the general flavor of the thing, the vibe in the manga is a lot, to be frank, darker and grosser and bloodier than the anime, which is a lot more focused on being pretty and Tragic than “HOLY SHIT WTF” but like. That’s valid. With that comes it being a lot more, real, and although the art may not be as polished as the anime’s, sometimes that’s exactly what you need, and the really gritty sketchy shit that’s in the manga sometimes is exactly what it’s supposed to be for the manga. (in the anime, i’d say that the colored and polished style fits it better, so we’re good there.) It’s a lot more real, in the manga, when the anime hesitates to “go there” a lot (and well, sometimes that’s welcome, but sometimes it’s like y o u g u y s c o m e o n r e a l l y maybe i DID want to see that did you ever think of that)

So like, to sum it up i’d just like to say it’s more detailed, sharper and darker and is simply So Much. There is just More Content

The Case for Root A

ON THE OTHER HAND, (buckle up fuckers)

Depth of Emotion (that Ishida was too much of a pissbaby for): God like you know what I mean if you read the last post, we spent a whole episode on these gay fucks in root A, with backstory and dreams and drawn out suspense and emotion and GUYS LOOK AT THEM NO REALLY OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS whereas hide’s limelight in the manga is a whole... two pages, oh whoopee, and that’s mostly due to the fact of ishida putting himself in a spot of “oh fuck goddamn if i drew that in i’d get flagged for gay porn” but that’s his own fault, so he downplays the whole scene and really keeps it in the dark, whereas in this anime it’s understandably a lot less,,, like that, but how it plays out here is simply... really nice and makes you cry and shit, whereas in the manga I’d go “oh god oh damn oh fuck” *laughs my ass off because i really can’t take this seriously*. You get just... more here.

To elaborate on this, in the anime, as a gay fucking bastard, I can get practically an endless amount of content from episode twelve, and endlessly stew over all Those Things about it, every hard hitting line, the expressions, the music making it even sadder, the ways the VAs say the words, the cinematic beauty of the blood dripping on the floor and like how it’s supposed to make you think it’s kaneki’s, GOD I COULD FUCKING GO ON, but if we want to get that in the manga...

we get three incredibly basic lines, a blackout, and then a “QUICK LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT HAHA”

So if we want to have more, we need to write it. (sadly) None of it is ever played out canonically so like,,, all we can do is infer and make shit up. It’s like, I am a writer so like that’s my whole job but I really would rather have more content, and have the content that’s there get to be emotional instead of *blank face* “this is plot that is happening, sadly” but like maybe it’s just bc i’m gay

Really Fucking Beautiful (aesthetically as well as story-wise): This kind of just goes hand in hand with the depth of emotion bit, and I think it can’t really compared to the manga here because I’m gay so I see pretty colors and cry so the anime is understandably appealing for me, but I’m also talking emotionally, yeah. There’s a lot of plotlines and implications of the story that are really well played out, I always love to watch the original because it does a very good job handling a lot of the harder topics and stuff that makes the whole thing worthwhile- like the whole point you’re supposed to see that the ghouls and humans are both just as monstrous when you break it down, that there are good and bad people on both sides, everyone just wants to live and feel good in their own life and perspective, everyone has reasons that justify their behaviour in their mind, sometimes you just can’t win no matter what, all that... they’re all really important messages and make the whole story, and they were handled much more delicately and with more expertise in the anime.

It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like the manga was just based more on Fight Scenes Characters OoH Fake Science and kind of just gave kaneki infinite power ups after Trying Harder no offense, obviously those things were there and they were still very good in the manga it’s just sometimes they were cheapened a lot by ishida really not keeping track of what he’s trying to say with his story and sacrificing it a lot for “BUT WHAT IF KANEKI’S HAIR AND IDEALS CHANGED AGAIN” instead of making it a whole cohesive work. (and yes, I am VERY aware of your “well aCtuAlLy the hair represents his sanity” thing i know i know and i’m about to rip it to fucking shreds so)

Understandable Character Development And Staying True To It: Which brings me to this point, character development. This was another thing that was just... handled with more expertise in the anime, whoever was in charge of it. Mostly this has to do with Kaneki, since like, no offense but he’s the only one who ever gets much character development other than like, juuzou (asmr you only get character development if your hair color changes) oh and i guess there’s tsukiyama but he’s someone who shouldn’t have gotten character development. Touka gets character development only before re for some reason, and like tbh that’s kind of it. I do think Juuzou’s character development was valid, because well... it made sense? I complained about it before because I was like “well he just turns into spicy L” but i’ve since changed my opinion, he’s best boy. But Kaneki? They went way overboard with him in the manga, and generally? Calm tf down ishida.

Breaking it down, one of the main things that most of the tried and true manga stans seem to hate about the anime the most is Kaneki going over to Aogiri in root A. Since they’re much more acclimated to the manga, they don’t understand why he would do that (quoting a particular ‘probably made sense in the manga!’ yes i know that whole thing was poking fun at the show and i felt it lmao) and they just pin it to “ahaha he has now become Edgy for the fans ehehe time to make fun of him” and TO BE FAIR YOU’D BE COMPLETELY RIGHT. I love to make fun of Kaneki when he does his edgy bitch thing because that’s what he is. A basic edgy bitch who is just,,, such a main character. But like. He does actually have his reasons despite popular opinion and to be honest I think they’re a bit more valid than in the manga, where he’s just like “well I’ve been tortured, that was not pleasant and i kinda did a bad thing, let’s go back to anteiku but i’m just gonna Try Harder To Fight this time”. I can understand that, but like, it seems like in the manga every Character Development of kaneki is some form of “i will now be stronger” except for the singular “I will now be a different person” which, well, we’ll get to that.

In the anime though, even if it seems like more of a basic edgy bitch move, it’s like?? It makes perfect sense to me, and to be honest more than the manga does? Obviously he doesn’t wanna be best bros with Aogiri, he realizes they’re all bad people who have done really terrible things, but the fact is he now sees himself as the same thing, he now understands their motives because in his mind he is also now Bad TM. His whole character development of being tortured was that peace wasn’t an option no matter how much he wanted it, he couldn’t live being a pacifist and the world was forcing him to give the “i am the only one that understands! we need to stop fighting!” bullshit up because there was no way to achieve it. He realized if he kept himself the way he was more people he loved would be hurt like they already had because he couldn’t, so he doesn’t just Decide To Become Stronger, he gives up his humanity. And that includes basically letting himself defend his own actions and try to do “the right thing”.

Him then joining aogiri makes sense because well. They’re the people who are the strongest, who have the power, who are the same as he sees himself. He still wants to protect the people he loves, he just also realizes he can’t do it by working with them since he now understands that their more peaceful ways will by definition get them fucking killed. His understanding is flawed, of course. He’s not really right. But this is his understanding and from that it makes perfect sense for him to join up with aogiri and try to still do as much as possible from that standpoint, realizing that most likely the people he’s trying to protect will hate him for it. I think that makes sense to me, what do you not understand about it? (I also understand that may make some people mad because he’d Doing Bad Things but I point to you he’s so soft, remember when he was really nice to naki when he was literally the one who killed the guy naki was crying about? remember when he was doing a raid and he saw that guy hiding and he never mentioned it? remember like the seventy times he Cried TM, yeah he’s problematic obviously but if you want problematic I’ll point you to a certain fucking black reaper. Shironeki has nothing on that asshole.)

I think what Kaneki did in the manga was fine, but in general the anime (again) had more depth of understanding and emotion versus a steady Try Harder Get Stronger shonen deal, which, well, fair, but like, nah. Continuing why I think the anime dealt it better is the ending of A, which was a lot more well rounded then *kaneki gets stabbed and then there’s a lot of random plot shit going on in the background*. Here Kaneki then got to round out the end of his character development by realizing slowly through the second half of this season, him becoming a kakuja and then basically deciding like, not to

((kakuja kaneki was dealt with again different in the anime and manga because he basically stopped trying to use it in the anime bc he realized it was a bad fucking idea but this goes along with the ‘his character development of “i’m gonna do bad things for good reasons” --> “actually no wait that was a bad idea” was actually done in root A instead of being dragged out into :re and it’s appropriate for its own medium and the messages it’s trying to get across so manga loyalists hate it’ but we digress))

So in root A we got to see him actually develop and realize himself through the second half of the season starting with cochlea, his interactions with Amon, and ultimately through Hide, that he’d been doing the wrong thing by becoming more monstrous/fighting harder because what he did was ended up forgetting the most important thing, *smiles in gay* HIDE.(well, his humanity. yeah. i cite the terrible opening for root A with the fun ‘the hands taking off kaneki’s mask are hide’s’ bit.) He then remembered again why he wanted so bad to stop the war between humans and ghouls, he wanted to be able to live in peace and not have to be a monster- something that was not dealt with in the manga (though for understandable reasons of We Need To Fuck With Him In Re More, they then didn’t deliver on creating something like that later so I take this.)

That’s most of the difference between the original manga and anime, but I’d also like to discuss (briefly, I’ve already yelled about them) the ridiculous amount of hurdles ishida went through to fuck with kaneki in the manga, Of course there is the fact that well, the slower transition of his character does make some more sense for the manga because if you take :re into consideration, his eight billion character changes are more tolerable when they haven’t like, already happened before in the manga (just the anime). It makes more sense there for Haise to be tormented by past kaneki telling him He’s Too Weak because in the manga he hasn’t already had that development prior to “dying”, and he lost his memories still believing he had to be strong even if he did bad things, whereas in the anime it doesn’t track because at the end like i just said he kind of gives up his ghoulhood on purpose because he realizes that joining aogiri and fighting and shit was really wrong because, hide. So I can see why those character decisions were not made in the original when planning for :re, but... the fact remains that those previous decisions do not make up for how absolutely weak :re’s game ended up being with kaneki.

So tldr this entire section, All the manga’s defense of how they handled Kaneki’s development is basically void because all those choices were buildup for development in :re which ishida then COMPLETELY fell down on. So the alternative is better.

And now comes my yelling about how exactly Ishida fucked it up: hair colors and kaneki’s 80 kanekis. If black is supposed to represent sane and white is supposed to represent insane or, whatever, i dunno, who tf thought black reaper kaneki was sane? Who tf would think kaneki in the end isn’t? I haven’t looked into this really, and I’d really love it if someone explained it to me the way ishida was going for bc I do not understand it. Like that tracks with Juuzou, and with Kaneki up to Haise Original, but they don’t really make a cohesive sense seeing as after Haise’s hair color changed again that whole deal kind of goes to shit. Not to mention... I just... they completely failed to make those character changes actually part of the story, I’m mostly complaining about black reaper haise, none of him makes any sense. What’s his deal? He wants to protect who he loves? Tracks with the ghouls but fun fact he abandoned his kids? He actually cared for them? What then, he wants to be the strongest as possible? Sure but then?? Why?? I don’t understand his motives at all.

We also didn’t get to see him get his memories back either, which I was actually very much looking forward to, it just,,, like all of a sudden he’s talking with eto about yoshimura and i’m like bruh when tf did that happen? It’s bad, and although chapter 74-76 is super valid, and his change back into white hair kaneki makes sense, I also have the complaint about how haise basically disappeared just like he was worried he would. I think that was bad and I’ve said that already, it doesn’t make sense, he just literally throws those entire two years away to go back to the way he was before he was with the CCG and just forgets everything he’s wanted for the last few years? Fiction logic test fucking failed, and you’ve also broken my heart. Love Haise. You got rid of him. I love kaneki too but like. Why don’t they just. Like. Merge. He is one whole complex person, not one and an imposter, god.

This is a big negative for re and the manga, so automatically a positive for root A where I simply Do Not Have To Deal With That Bullshit and the character development actually makes sense. I can understand the decisions in the original manga could have set up for good development in :re, but they completely failed to deliver.

root a didn’t fast forward to re at the end god damn let us process this shit first before you try to connect it to something else: The thing with this point is that it’s really difficult to separate the original manga from the continuing story in :re because the thing intertwines so much and immediately moves us forward with a ton of plot points for the next part of the story before we’re done with this climax and the end of this story. Sometimes that’s ok and I can see doing that from an author’s perspective because you want people to continue reading your story instead of taking that as the end but it’s really annoying on a reader’s end, because I’m picky and I want to be able to just be able to enjoy my original canon without it like, metaphorically touching :re on a plate. It’s something that I don’t even do with my own longer stories, like for example I have like a trilogy of >100k fics that like, well i’m technically not done with them but like.

People really like the first one because it’s more focused on a more popular ship and basic elements people like about the thing, and then by the second book it moves on to talk more about the plot and lore and brings in more secondary characters. And so I knew that a lot of the readers of the first one wouldn’t want to have to deal with a lot of the “oh well stuff is happening elsewhere that will effect stuff later!!!” random plot shit that none of my readers actually cared about. So I kept it to wrapping up the points of the first book and then leaving the introduction of new characters and plot for the people who actually wanted to read it. Ishida didn’t do that, and of course it’s within his right to like?? Want to promote the next series but I’d have enjoyed it more if we ended it at kaneki’s “death” and wrapping up the deals with the rest of the characters instead of quickly shoving in the beginning of seventy more plotlines before the book ends. Like honey I simply do not have the reading comprehension for that. In the anime we get something that... makes sense.

In the anime, however, it’s quite the opposite, for example the reveals like Eto=owl=takatsuki sen were pushed before that and they saved episode twelve for, well, the end bit. Like what was actually the ending. There were detriments to this I had to say (LIKE GUYS I GET IT HE’S CARRYING HIDE HE’S CARRYING HIM I GET IT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR HALF THE EPISODE NOW OK I UNDERSTAND CAN WE MOVE ON) But like, I prefer the concept of a simple idea with as much emotion squeezed out of it as possible to a ton of confusing and contradicting ideas that are touched on for a second before moving on. So the *cries for half an hour* ending was much more appealing to me, and I can keep that separate in my head from any of the ideas that :re creates, letting me pretend it doesnt exist and imagine that’s the end and there’s nothing else to worry about. If we want to move forward and hear more, then we can, but it isn’t necessary like it is with the manga.

No Bad Takes that are hard to pry apart from good plot and characters:This is basically the downsides of the new characters, which is well, if I had to make a whole ~keep reading~ post about how problematic everything in re was that does have to count as a downside. I love the new characters, but they also come intertwined with a thousand really bad takes on like, everything, and of course I can ignore it and just act as though they were written in like, to be perfectly honest, a non transphobic way, it’s a real downside when the original anime was pretty pain-free in the way of their takes on their characters. They fucked everyone up in re and I will not elaborate, we’ve talked about this, it’s just the anime, and which i mean season 1 and root A, don’t really have any bad takes I need to try to get rid of, it’s surprisingly something I have little complaint about at all and I ALWAYS have complaints.

Hide!!!!: Obviously, you can tell that a lot of my opinions are going to be hide based because he’s the only thing I ever think about. But we have to take into account just how... hide???? This goes a lot into the depth of emotion bit but it also offers the other side of the argument for Hide’s part in the :re manga, which well. Was mostly chapter 75 if we’re going to be perfectly honest here. He doesn’t get any other limelight. Even in the chapter where Kaneki meets him again he gets a whole what, three pages? In the manga, he has an extremely valid deal about basically, living, keeping going no matter what, and that is a fitting part for the manga, considering the rest of the points there ride more on Keep Fighting instead of Think About Your Emotions And Morals, but honestly chapter 75 was really valid. So why do I still think the anime’s version where he like (ok I don’t know about the re anime we’ve discussed this, i don’t even know how they choose to explain that) he like, dies in kaneki’s arms is better overall? Again, I would have totally accepted that deal if it was made a part of the story because it made me cry, it was super valid, and if they’d continued in that way I would have agreed with it completely over that. But the fact is again that they failed to deliver, and Hide got largely ignored, suffered so much with so little outcome. There was so much buildup and it was incredibly valid, but when the time came for them to meet again and basically show... why it was important that Hide lived in the end?

They didn’t. They straight up didn’t. Kaneki’s like “oh sorry bro... glad you’re alive and all...” *goes off and fights* and like? Honestly? @everlastingspiral is right, if that’s all they’re gonna do with him what’s the point of keeping him alive? I love every single panel of him and I wouldn’t have read re if he didn’t, but hide gets absolutely NO payoff. For letting kaneki literally vore his entire mouth off, leaving him disfigured and unable to talk, then kind of disappearing for two years and doing seemingly nothing but trying to help kaneki even though he’d forgotten the guy existed, risks his life like a thousand fucking times, eventually gets back to him and the dude’s running a fucking anti-human organization, helps him like Not Be A Volitile Pile Of Flesh Anymore and then what should have been a very important moment of them meeting again gets completely overshadowed by touka and random plot shit and more fights and they barely interact, they don’t even hug or anything, they barely talk, and at the end hide is still there but to be honest he’s gotten absolutely no thanks for all he did and ishida acts at the end as though he’s done very well with hide and gives him a tiny bit at the end throwing in a tragic backstory for fun (which hot take he really didn’t fucking need on top of it all) and... there’s no real hint that Kaneki is better off with Hide there, even though there should be. In 75, in his dream, kaneki is sobbing and crying and all like i’m so lonely without you but when they actually meet each other again? “yo” “hey” “uh sorry about,,, the thing,,, you know” “nah man it’s ok” “let me talk about myself for a bit” “yes you always do do you want to hear what I’ve been up to” “not really” “that’s fine i’m only here to support you”

...So you can understand why I’ve gone a bit sour on that. If that’s all you’re going to give him? Hot take? Let him die. Hide deserves better. (and i will deliver that in writing, but for the purposes of canon.)

In the anime, however (not counting re again... although he still gets the short end of the stick just in the original manga too compared to the anime) he’s properly dealt with! he gets his proper limelight and he gets acknowledged for what he’s done thusfar in the story, which is already so much. Kaneki then realizes that, but it’s already too late (or it isn’t, and they like negotiate with the ccg and then they get to live happily ever after) either way he gets appreciated and he gets hurt, but it’s properly acknowledged. And after all that, after saving kaneki and getting him to the cafe and doing it all while bleeding the fuck out, he gets to spend that time with kaneki and die in kaneki’s arms. And frankly? That’s all I think he’s ever needed. It’s really poetic and pretty and brings kaneki’s character around full circle, and even if it’s overly sappy, cliche, drawn out... he gets the attention he’s due and he gets a fucking break. He wanted to show Kaneki he wanted to do something for him and save him instead of the other way around, but then HE GOT ACKNOWLEDGED FOR THAT, instead of just well, tirelessly working towards it forever and having to be content to be a background character with practically no value to Kaneki anymore.

Keeps The Same Vibe: The big thing about this is that with the manga and with re, shit just goes all over the place, and I feel like I’ve amply showed that already through this essay or whatever this is. Again about the consistency and the professionalism, It’s a concise story that makes more sense than the manga while also being simply neater and more deep, making sure all the points, themes and messages work together and make sense to create a cohesive deal even if it’s not as long. (the manga is like ishida had a TON of good ideas for an essay but then fleshed out the thing ten minutes before deadline and managed to completely lose what his original thesis was even if the thing was 10 pages long.) Basically. yeah. That kind of sums it up, my last point concerns the ending.

Not Cheap Ending: If you want to hear my take about how absolutely terrible re’s ending was, check out my The Many Sins Of Tokyo Ghoul :Re post, and we’ve discussed how the original’s manga ending was bad and well not really an ending, it just leaves you unfulfilled and takes you into “well I guess I have to start a whole nother sequel series ig...” but root A like? Actually ends it? If a reader didn’t know that there was any content after that, they could pretty much infer that hide’s death or almost death whatever you inferred out of that ending (again we’re ignoring re) allowed Kaneki to finish his character development and realize they needed to stop the war, which basically tracks with what’s going on in everyone else’s perspective- eto’s problem with the world because of what happened with everything, is basically like, all of aogiri, juuzou and shinohara, amon and akira and kaneki and they can realize all they have to do is just sit down and fucking stop it because none of them want to be fighting, hide is the catalyst for that because the CCG can see how Kaneki cares for him? And it’s so open ended that you could just like literally believe that and there’d be no way for that canon to tell you otherwise, or you could go onto re and whatever if you wanted to. I think that’s the best thing.

In conclusion, both have valid points, and in general I’d say that the manga goes better with :re and the anime is better as a stand alone but if I had to choose overall, this particular anime is better (taking into account only seasons 1 and 2), for mostly the reasons of favoring a simpler story taken with much more care and depth versus a more complex story with many, MANY imperfect elements, and I am aware I will get shot on sight for this opinion. So sue me.

#tokyo ghoul #hideyoshi nagachika #kaneki ken #tokyo ghoul :re #essay post #god i've been writing this for so fucking long #but i'm right #y'all fuckers asked for a fight? you're getting a fight #rowan's hyperfixation essays

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houseofsannae · 3 years

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A Fistful of Munny - Extended End Notes

Notes for A Fistful of Munny that don’t fit within the character limit under the cut!

Please, read the fic before reading this post

All right! Welcome to the extended notes, in which I go into excruciating detail over a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, because I like the sound of my own voice!

Let’s start with some more broad stuff that didn’t make the exclusive end notes space. To do the Fistful of Dollars homage, I needed a place where I could have two villainous factions intersecting for Strelitzia to play against one another. After some brainstorming and asking for help from other people working on the Entwined in Trine Sorikai zine (and ultimately ignoring all their very good suggestions (Sorry, guys!)), I eventually realized that the Wasteland from Epic Mickey was a perfect place for this story, both in the sense of having mooks to destroy without Strels committing actual murder, and in the thematic sense of forgotten characters. There was just one issue.

I hadn’t played Epic Mickey.

And that is how I spent my summer, playing both Epic Mickey games. Both, because I was looking for a good location to set the story in in-world. Since the Wasteland is based on the Disney theme parks, I was hoping to find one based on Frontierland, their Western section. Such a location did exist – Disney Gulch – but only in the second game. Which meant I had to play Epic Mickey 2, as well. (The first one is a better game, but that’s not really the fault of the developers; they were not given the time they needed to make it as good as the first one. Here’s a video with trivia about the series that goes a little into the development.) I also needed to learn the Mad Doctor’s ultimate fate, since I wanted his Beetleworx/Blotworx to be one of the two villainous factions. In the game, depending on whether you chose the Paint (Paragon) or Thinner (Renegade) path, the Doc is either redeemed… or dead. Neither of which was helpful, so I had to invent.

But let’s talk about characters and why I picked them in order. The short version for why these choices, at least on the Final Fantasy side, is set-up for later. Obviously I can’t go into detail why. Before that, let’s talk about the Beanie Baby.

Chi is, as I hope you were able to guess, Strelitzia’s Chirithy. I’ve brought it up several times, but I personally do not like mascot characters. There are a few exceptions, but Chirithies are not one of them. Like I said, KHUx isn’t what happened in this AU, so you’ll have to wait for in-universe answers on why it’s a cat now. Out-of-universe reason is this was the only way I could make it palatable for myself. I arbitrarily decided on a gender for it because as a real cat, it would have a sex. Canonically Chirithies appear to be genderless, and in Japanese refer to themselves with the gender-neutral (but masculine-leaning) boku. I would’ve left Chi that way, save for the fact that he’s a completely normal cat now. (And before you ask, no, not every real cat that appears in KHΨ from this point on is a Chirithy.)

As for Strelitzia herself, it’s hard for me to pick up a character’s voice when they’re… not voiced. Intonation and cadence do a lot for me mimicking the way a character talks, so it’s a bit more difficult when they don’t technically speak. I tried for a mix between Sora and Kairi, while still keeping her defining character traits of being shy, but also impulsive.

You may notice that while she’s started remembering faces, if not names, the Player’s name and face still eludes her, despite her (canonical. Deal with it.) crush on them. There is a story reason for this, and will become clear once Luxu takes centre stage.

The name “Jane” was chosen with more consideration than just “Jane Doe” being the standard name in (at least my corner of) the English-speaking world for a woman of unknown identity. See, the Man With No Name actually has three names. In A Fistful of Dollars, he is referred to (by one character in one scene, once) as “Joe”. “Joan” might have been a more clear homage, but I figure Jane makes sense. And as you might guess, in the next fic, Strels will be going by a different name, still not her own. She’ll remember her name… eventually.

One might think I could’ve picked any old Cid, and one would be wrong for reasons I can’t explain yet. In fact, I can’t explain much of anything surrounding him yet. What I can say is no, Cidney Aurum is not dead, she’s just not related to Cid Sophiar in this fic verse. An unfortunate consequence of where I wanted to put each of them in the narrative; making them not be related was the only way it made any sense, geographically speaking.

Hyperion on the other hand, I can talk about. He’s one of the Gremlins in Epic Mickey, and… wait, first things first. Gremlins are from an abandoned Disney film based on a Roald Dahl book, itself based on the cryptids that supposedly haunted airplanes and caused them to malfunction, the earliest known written-down mention of the concept being from the 1920s. The film never got made, but the designs Disney would have used were adapted into a second printing of Dahl’s book, and they were later used in Epic Mickey. Hyperion is, like the publishing imprint that Disney owns, named after a street that Walt Disney used to live on. In-game, Hyperion is in Bog Easy (based on the Haunted Mansion), not Disney Gulch, but his name stuck out to me as being particularly fun, so I picked him instead of trying to figure out what Gremlins actually are in the Gulch (they have names in the files of Epic Mickey 2, but not in the actual game, so it would have been a hunt).

Regardless of where the setting ended up, for the second villainous faction, I was always going to plop down the good old Don. More things I can’t talk about. For everything FF7, know that I’m always going to be pulling from a mix of the original game, Remake, and Machinabridged. Hence, Corneo’s outfit is a mix of his original and Remake designs (which basically just means he’s wearing blue jeans instead of brown). I didn’t think bringing in his three lieutenants from Remake was necessary, especially since this was supposed to be a kind-of small operation.

Leslie is picked up and dropped from Remake pretty much unchanged. I needed someone to do the murders Strels couldn’t, and even if he’s not a complete asshole, he’s still mostly an asshole. Have we ever seen small, Materia-like balls used to cast magic before…?

Onto the fun bits, which is the Disney characters. We’ll start with Percy, who is from a Goofy short called “How to Ride a Horse”, from 1950. And that’s about it. The conceit in Wasteland is that all of the Toons there were basically actors, and they wound up in Wasteland if they were forgotten (that’s not exactly correct, but I’m generalizing). This is interesting, since two of the Toons in Epic Mickey are Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, both of whom… are residents of Disney Town in Kingdom Hearts, having shown up in Birth by Sleep. So that’s an interesting continuity snarl that I’m going to just ignore.

Persephone and Pluto, on the other hand, are from an earlier short called “The Goddess of Spring”, from 1934. It was one of the projects Disney tried as practice for Snow White. If you’re about to protest that his name should be Hades, not Pluto, then you’re going to need a time machine so you can tell them back in the 30s. The Goddess of Spring is a musical, in the sense that every single line is sung. Watch it for yourself. There’s a video with better quality floating around YouTube, but for some reason it’s the French dub. And that’s why both of them sing most of their lines. I tried matching the meter of their actual parts, but Persephone’s doesn’t actually follow a syllabic pattern that I could make out. I eventually gave up and just gave her the meter from the start of the short. Pluto’s was easier to manage (and more consistent).

The skeletons are Disney veterans, presumably the same ones from “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), but more specifically they’re mimicking what they did in “The Mad Doctor” (1933), the first appearance of our other villain. They’re fun.

The original Mad Doctor was supposedly named “Dr. XXX”, according to the name on his door. This was before the modern film rating system was put in place; it was a different time. In the original short, the Mad Doctor kidnaps Pluto (the dog) with the intent of cutting him in half and putting his front half on a chicken For Science!, and Mickey follows him to his castle to rescue the purloined pooch. The short wasn’t a musical in the same vein as “The Goddess of Spring”, but… the Mad Doctor’s only spoken lines were a song (aside from evil cackling). While I had already decided to do the “Toons that sang in their short can only communicate through song” with Persephone and Pluto before starting on Epic Mickey 2, I hilariously discovered that the game developers had done the exact same gag with the Mad Doctor, most of his lines in the game being sung. (In Epic Mickey there were no fully voiced lines, so he speaks as normally as anyone else does). Which made it easier to write his songs here, since I could just rewrite his songs from the game. I used to write alternate lyrics for songs back in high school, so this was an interesting trip back in time for me. They were stuck in my head for weeks afterwards, but it was worth it.

I believe that’s everything for the characters. Let’s talk about Keyblades.

It irks me that three people in KHUx have the same Keyblade. Ephemer, Skuld, and Strelitzia all have variations of Starlight. Now, in KHΨ, there is only one Starlight, and it belongs to Luxu, so I’m going to have to decide on different Keyblades for each of them. (Ephemer’s has already been decided, and I haven’t started brainstorming for Skuld yet. No I do not need suggestions, thank you). Pixie Petal bears a noted (by KHWiki) resemblance to one of Marluxia’s alternate scythes, so that tangential connection was enough for me. Both siblings have flower-themed Keyblades – it makes sense to me.

You might notice a few disparities in the magic. These are on purpose, and will eventually make sense. And that’s all I can say on that at the moment. ;)

Oh, yes, one important thing I probably should have said on the main notes: I’m not going for a realistic depiction of amnesia here. Anything I got right was entirely accidental, and I’m fairly certain there’s not much. There might be a story reason for why it works the way it does… and it might be the same reason why other people from KHUx have or had amnesia in the present day…

You know what’s funny? Although Orcuses look more impressive than Invisibles, their stats in Days are actually worse. I’m fairly sure that this is because the only time we see an Orcus, it’s actually an illusion cast over Xion so that Roxas will fight her to the death. There are no other stats for them (according to KHWiki), since they’ve never been used elsewhere.

A friendly reminder that Apprentice Xehanort invented the term “Heartless”, which was why Aqua didn’t know what to call them until Mickey told her. Thus, nobody from the era of the Keyblade War should know the term “Heartless” without being told by someone in present day. “Darkling” was the term they used instead. I’m fairly certain KHUx ignores the continuity on this (so why should we trust its continuity for anything else, hmm?)

I think that covers everything! Or at least everything I’m willing to share at this point. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your dedication! ^_^

#kingdom hearts Ψ #fanfic #kingdom hearts #strelitzia #fic notes #a fistful of munny

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randomoranges · 3 years

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good god almighty. here is part 4. somehow longer than the other parts. somehow with more Emotions. i decided to not be vague and call the spades spades. this one is more nsfw because of things étienne mentions.

again, minor character death and lots of introspection ha ha .

ive been working on the beast for like almost a month now. part 5 aint even done. im so glad i hacked it up in the end.

PART IV

“The 60s were good with that – for forgetting and moving on. There was – or seemed to be this renewed sense of freedom, as if the people were finding their true purpose in the city. A great big curtain was being pulled back and we were given the opportunity to redefine ourselves. It felt like hope, in a way and with the distance put with the church, I felt I could breathe a little more and I was able to find myself. By the time Expo rolled around, it gave me purpose – something to do. The energy in the city was astounding. The projects people were coming up with – the possibilities they were unveiling – I had never felt something like that. I thought for sure this energy would see us through the next one hundred years; we’d be feeding off of it and returning to it for years to come. It would be our source of creation. Everyone seemed to be excited; the world was literally in our backyard and it felt good to bask in the attention.”

It made sense for Étienne to have Expo, considering how good he was at catering to others – at giving them the good time they wanted. He thrived in giant crowds and lived for the attention. Plus, at the time, Montreal really did feel as though it was the center of Canada. It still felt like an other-worldly experience and there were still times when Edward wasn’t convinced Expo hadn’t been one massive hallucination. And he’d only been a small part of it, unlike Étienne who had lived every stage of it.

“With the change of decade, going into the 70s, I expected much of the same – moving forward, the endless possibilities of the future and such. For the first time in a long time, I was actually looking forward to having more time – to being immortal and being able to experience every change. To make new connections. Expand and broaden the horizons and such.”

“And then it all went to shit, starting with the October crisis. There was a lot that happened in the 70’s and not everything was bad, but for me, personally, it was a series of euphoric highs and devastating lows. In the same breath of the Crisis there would be a Cup win, then there was the Exodus, the language debacles and it never seemed to end. Up and down and up and down. One giant roller coaster that never gave me a chance to catch my breath. It was hard to feel anything let alone make it constant. It took a toll – added up and left me reeling in ways I had never thought possible. I couldn’t finish celebrating the Cup that I would get notified that something terrible had just happened. I would be relishing in disco and there’d be a murder. It was too fucking much. I couldn’t take it anymore. Everything I had worked so hard to build was slowly being torn from my hands and what was left didn’t seem to matter enough. The proverbial carpet had been yanked from under my feet and no matter how many times I tried to get up, I just kept falling and falling and falling... there was no end in sight.”

Their correspondence at that time had petered off, somewhat. They’d both ended up in unpleasant situations and the last thing Edward had wanted to do was to take a pen and write to his friend to let him know how miserable he was. There’d been times when he’d wondered if his friend hadn’t found out about his fate and had left him for dead as well and it had only been later – much later – that he’d found out through Étienne exactly why he hadn’t written as often, if at all, for a few years.

“I’m not exactly proud of what I ended up doing, but it seemed like the right solution at the time. I was a mess. I needed help but I didn’t realise it and I wasn’t sure there even was such help for such a lost cause. Working the streets and the clubs were as much self-punishment as they were the only place I felt I could succeed. It was easy to spread my legs to let some random guy fuck me in an alley. It was easy to pretend to be someone else. It was easy to get down on my knees and suck them off. It was easy to let others use me as they wanted and write it off as being unworthy of anything else. This was where I belonged – with the outcasts and the has beens.”

There’s a shuddering breath that’s released and Edward has no idea if it’s his or Étienne’s. He’s astounded his boyfriend is willingly talking of this chapter of his life. It had taken years for Étienne to even speak of it to him and the confession had been a quiet halting thing that had taken him a while to piece together.

Yet, despite finding out, it hadn’t changed Edward’s opinion of him. If anything, he had found Étienne brave and courageous for telling him about it and his heart had ached for him even more. Étienne was worthy. Étienne wasn’t a failure and he succeeded at so many other wonderful things. In his opinion, he was still as relevant as before and had never been an outcast or a has been. He was still a leader and trail blazer in his own right, even if Étienne himself didn’t always realise it.

“When they gave me the Olympics,” Étienne goes on, once more showing that he is brave and more than the terrible things that he had gone through, “I hoped this would be the shot I needed – that it would be as wonderful as Expo had. If anything, it would be on a smaller scale than Expo. It would be a piece of cake, I figured. At least, they’d given me the Olympics in a timely way and not last minute. Therefore, there would be no excuses to fail. but for as much as Expo felt like a fever dream doused with magic, the Olympics were harder to get going. There were so many things that went wrong. So many strikes. So much corruption. The magic was gone. It was the opposite of what I needed and it just drove me further down my own spiral.

“So I went for the drugs and the sex. One made me feel when I was numb, one numbed everything when I felt too much. And the sex was as much a means to an end as what seemed to be the only thing I could properly deliver. So I stuck to it. Went in and out of these phases. Went on the biggest of benders, woke up in places I had no recollection of going to and such. Drove Élyse nuts. But it didn’t matter to me; I’d still be alive, so who cared what I put myself through?”

Edward wants to say that there were many who cared, but he knows that it would fall on deaf ears. He gets what Étienne means by it, but it still hurts him that his boyfriend had had to go through all of this. He gives his hand another squeeze and if anything, Étienne offers him a small smile, acknowledging the gesture.

“I was all over the place and when I finally met Koffey, shortly after the Olympics, it was quite by accident and he took me by surprise.”

“Everything about our relationship was different than the others I’d been in up until then. For starters, it didn’t happen the way the others had. It wasn’t the usual meet, sex and eventually develop feelings. He’d been living in the city for a few years when we met. He’d immigrated here, in search for a new adventure – ahead of the wave that would come later on. He’d decided to open up a restaurant, bringing us the local flavors of his own country. I stumbled there, quite by accident and I was most likely high and not even fully coherent. To be honest, I can’t even say I remember that day; he’s the one who told me later on.”

“I ended up returning. Later. On a better day. I think I was convinced it was my first time here, but Koffey was a little wary of seeing me again. Apparently, I had been a little rowdy on my first visit... Yet, he still gave me a chance and was still very polite while he served me, if a little guarded. I felt bad, so I returned and the more I went back, the more I was drawn – by him, his cuisine, and his quiet sense of humour and intelligence.”

“He eventually realised I wasn’t a complete asshole and he’d start coming to talk to me when the restaurant was quiet. He was – a breath of fresh air, really and at the time the one good thing I had going on. It felt like being thrown a lifeboat – something to hang on to while I tried not to drown – by my thoughts, my life, the shit-show burning around me. A beacon of hope and light I clung to desperately.”

“I honestly didn’t even think Koffey was interested in men. It surprised me, when one day, I hung around until the restaurant closed. I waited for him out in the back, not wanting to go home just yet. I also didn’t think going home just yet would be wise. I was still all over the place and I knew that if I went home I’d end up using or doing something even stupider. Having a friend helped keeping my thoughts on track. Koffey, without knowing what was going on in my head, helped keep my mind quiet. I wanted to know more about him and his life, so I focused on that. Anyways, it’d been a quiet night and we’d been having a grand old time chatting. I thought maybe we could walk around and bum out in a park. Summer was starting to settle in for good and it was a perfect night out. Warm and this side of humid, with a gentle breeze to make it pleasant.”

Edward has his own thoughts and ideas about the description of the weather, but he schools his face in a neutral expression and listens on.

“He was surprised to see me out back, but pleased and we picked up our conversation from where we’d left off. We ended up taking the long way back to his. I didn’t mind having to walk back to mine after and the extra detour would do me some good. However, he invited me in for a beer and I obviously said yes. He was my friend, after all and the thought of a cold beer to end the night sounded great.”

“We must have spent a few more hours drinking beer and talking and somewhere along the line, he leaned in and kissed me. Completely unprompted. I was shocked and surprised and at first he thought I wasn’t interested, since I hadn’t kissed him back. He must have apologised at least a dozen times. It was quite funny, really. I’d keep trying to tell him that it was fine, but he wouldn’t listen. And the more he went on, the more afraid he was that I’d do something to him – which was quite sobering, let me tell you. I finally took matters in my own hands and kissed him myself. We’d been hanging around together for months, by then and had I known, I would have put a move on him sooner, maybe. The kiss finally got him to stop apologising and for a moment after that all we did was make-out on his couch like all the terrible clichés in movies.” He laughs at that, fond, as he twiddles with an unlit cigarette. “It was so different, though – soft and tender. Nicholas had been very forward with his kissing that first time. I knew we would end up in his bed the moment he kissed me, whereas with Koffey – it almost felt hesitant and cautious and I thought that was lovely.”

“He still asked afterwards if I was that way, which I thought was both endearing and silly – considering I had just kissed him and wouldn’t have minded him kissing him some more. I assured him that I was and to prove my point, I kissed him again. I recall teasing him about it later, asking him if he needed another kiss to be sure I was into men. He thought I was being ridiculous, which was saying something.”

There’s a gentle, soft smile that graces Étienne’s features, not for the first time during their talk, and Edward wonders what memories his boyfriend is reliving – what images his brain has conjured for him to revisit. He’s glad, though, that despite the heartache that Étienne still has fond memories of Koffey to go back to.

“I wasn’t in love with him – not at that point, but I was certainly drawn to him. He was – beautiful. On the outside as much as on the inside; a gentle soul, really. I would have willingly gone to bed with him that night, but he insisted we wait a little and take things slow. This had never really happened and even though I was a little annoyed, I didn’t push the issue and floated back home after one last kiss.”

“He actually – I swear, the next time I went to see him, he actually asked me out on a proper date. He was too much! And I couldn’t believe that a man like Koffey, sweet and gentle and kind, would want to date me who felt broken and used and soiled in so many ways. But he saw beyond that and insisted we go on a proper date before we went to bed together and so I said yes; because I did really want him and I loved his company.”

“Our first date was nothing extraordinary, but it was nice – to be taken out – to feel as though I was worthy of someone’s attention and affection again. It was almost as good as a high. He took me out to dinner and then insisted we go to a movie and he was so gallant about the whole thing. He paid for the meal and for the ticket and don’t ask me how the movie ended, because halfway through we started making-out in the back and before the movie ended we left to go back to his.”

“Koffey was – so very sweet to me. Our first time together felt like something out of a romance movie. There was no frenetic urgency to it. It wasn’t just sex because he wanted a fast way to get to his release. He made love to me. Me! It boggled my mind. He kissed and caressed every bit of me that felt broken and used. It was – wonderful and too much and I tried changing the pace to something that felt less consuming ‘cause I couldn’t handle so much love being given to me, but he kept on finding ways to make it less about the sex and more about us and I couldn’t take it. I eventually broke down in tears.”

“And get this – he thought he, of all people, had done something wrong to me – that he’d hurt me in some way. I came clean to him. Told him everything. As much as I could. The drugs, the streets – the fall from grace. Every last ugly truth came out as he held me in his arms and made sure I understood I was someone worthy of love again. I felt stupid for breaking down and felt even worse for needing him to comfort me. And despite that, there were still things I couldn’t tell him. He tried asking about what was bothering me – because he could tell. Even when I lied – he could always tell when there was more – when everything in my head was too loud, but it was hard to explain. I couldn’t just say oh by the way, I’m semi-immortal and I represent a city. Yeah, fucked up I know, but I swear that’s not the acid talking.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” Edward breaks. He knows Étienne is in a better place now, but he also knows his boyfriend is still prone to great bouts of self-doubt that do more harm than good to him. He’d hate to think that Étienne still feels that way.

“I know,” Étienne responds quickly. Edward wonders if he isn’t deflecting, but he figures Étienne’s heart has been scorched raw enough for the day that he can let it slide for this time.

“You’ve always been worthy of love,” He adds softly and Étienne stills for a moment.

“I know.” He says again, but it sounds different this time around; a little more vulnerable and fragile. Edward wants to gather him in his own arms and hold him tightly, but instead he keeps hold of his hand and lets Étienne carry on with his story.

“I made it up to him, later, once the storm had passed. I didn’t want him to think that I would be some emotional weight to him. He’d wanted sex so I made sure to deliver. He was still very sweet and loving with me and I tried to ignore it. I focused on making it good for him so that he wouldn’t toss me to the side and in my mind it worked. Yet, thinking back, there were still times when I felt like he was onto me. Like he knew when I was faking it for both our benefits, but he let me be.”

“Still, for as much as Koffey was good for me and to me, he wasn’t a cure to all my problems. It would’ve been too easy. He helped – more than he probably ever realised, but I was still reckless and I still fluctuated. Bad days and worse days. On those, he’d simply hold me in his arms and let me cry in them.

Sometimes there’d be an okay day. He made it tolerable. To be alive. Made the sharp edges rounder. Made me feel like I could hang on another day. And there were those times when I felt like I genuinely wanted to be around – for him. I wanted to take him somewhere or kiss him again. I wanted to tell him some funny story I had heard or simply go to bed with him one more time. So I stuck it out and tried to survive.”

“He was so kind and patient with me. He loved me, despite what I was and how I was. He loved me even when I couldn’t love myself. God, I never deserved him. He was too good for me and to me. And somehow, I repaid his kindness by making him sick and killing him!”

“You don’t know that for sure.” Edward replies quickly, without thinking.

He remembers the visit. Remembers finding out about the real significance of Koffey. Of going over to visit Étienne and finding him distraught and broken hearted. Of Étienne bringing him to the cemetery. The breakdown and the tears. The trembling murmured admissions of guilt. The dawning connection he’d made.

Edward had been in his own headspace at the time and their correspondence had petered out, hence his grasp of Koffey’s role in Étienne’s life had been lacking in some regards. But standing by that grave, with his friend opening up about him and telling him what had happened had marked Edward.

“I may as well have, Edward.” Étienne snaps. He lights up the cigarette he’d been previously playing with and takes a long drag from it. “He died and it was all my fault. I couldn’t even – I wasn’t even there when he died. I was too afraid. And ashamed. I was a coward. He’d chosen me and I may as well have tossed him out.” He flicks the ash with more force than necessary and when Edward spares him a glance, he sees the storm of hate and shame fight in Étienne’s eyes through his unshed tears. “He deserved better – after everything he did for me and I repaid his kindness by being a coward.”

Edward knows that there’s no sense in telling Étienne that it’s not his fault. His boyfriend will keep berating himself until he runs out of steam and he supposes that it’s best to let him be and wait it out. Yet, it doesn’t sit well with him to have Étienne react this way. Sure, he could have been responsible for Koffey getting sick, but at the same time, there was no actual proof. He hates that it still eats Étienne alive and part of him wants to take him by the shoulders, shake him, and tell him to convince himself otherwise. Especially if it’ll help him move on. But – he’s known Étienne for too long and knows that such actions will do him no good.

Instead, he waits and starts to itch for a cigarette of his own. He settles instead for a deep breath and then another. He thinks back to his own response to the crises. To the way he’d taken action. The misery and heartache he’d seen and lived. The friends he’d lost. The ones he’d buried. He thinks of running to Montreal to get away from it all and leaning on Étienne for a chance to forget and leave it all behind. There’s an irony here he still hasn’t fully grasped but it’s a reflection for a different day. There’s already enough that’s been looked over for one day.

“I don’t think he would have wanted you to beat yourself over it,” He offers instead. Étienne sniffs loudly and doesn’t give him an answer. Instead, he remains quiet, fighting with his own demons.

“You never did tell me why you called him Koffey,” Edward tries again, minutes later, when he feels that the mood has shifted once more and that Étienne has calmed down some. Perhaps this approach will work better, he thinks.

Étienne sniffles and rubs at his eyes, “Oh,” He starts and a small smile deigns to make an appearance on his face, which Edward is thankful for. “Apparently, his regular customers used to call him that. He thought it was hysterical and he never really liked his own name. I never questioned it beyond that and it stuck.”

Étienne grows silent after that and turns reflective. Even Mercury seems to sense the shift in mood and nuzzles her way up to his arms for cuddles. The distraction serves its purpose and Étienne focuses on her for a while, caressing her fur and scratching her behind the ears, which she seems to enjoy, if Edward is to judge by the wagging of her tail. He watches and lets them be for a while, glad the dog can help where he can’t.

“You would’ve liked him,” Étienne quietly says after a while. He’s not looking at him, hands still buried deep in Mercury’s dark coat, but Edward doesn’t mind.

“I’m sure I would have – he sounds like a great guy.”

“The greatest.”

Not for the first time, Edward wonders if Étienne’s feelings hadn’t become tainted with guilt over the years. He doesn’t question Étienne’s love for Koffey, but he wonders if the circumstances of his death haven’t left a lasting grip on him that wouldn’t have otherwise been there if the man had died of natural causes at a ripe old age. The wounds are still too raw and fresh to ask, so he lets the matter rest and figures that there will be other occasions to ask.

They fall silent after that, both lost again in their own thoughts. He hears the occasional snuffle from Mercury and sends out a silent prayer of thanks to whatever higher power there might be out there for her presence in Étienne’s life. In the few years Étienne has had her, he already sees the difference and impact she’s made in his life.

Eventually, Mercury settles back on Étienne’s side and his friend leaves a hand around her neck, absent-mindedly stroking her dark coat, while he reaches out for Edward’s own hand with his other. Edward is a little surprised, but he doesn’t mind and let’s Étienne play with his fingers. He traces the lines on his hand with the edge of a nail and draws loops with it afterwards. Edward watches the movement carefully with his eyes and finds it oddly grounding in a way. He hadn’t realised he’d felt a little unmoored by these tales and he wonders, not for the first time, just how attuned to him Étienne really is.

They settle around each other, the breeze gently ruffling their hair and Edward takes a deep breath to process some of what he’s just heard.

“And shortly after Koffey died, while I was still mourning him and hating myself for everything I had done, you came along at both the best and worst moment of my life.”

Part III Part V

#pc: montreal #pc: edmonton #edward murphy #étienne maisonneuve #fic #projocanondoko

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III. Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe.

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers.

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point.

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing. This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome.

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast.

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list.

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend.

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome.

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows.

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again.

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up.

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4.

So with our major players out of the way, let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands. Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off. Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain.

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more. The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have. This show is just great at costume design.

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback.

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious.

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working. Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant. Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time.

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up. F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly.

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly. At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in.

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do.

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense.

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room.

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda.

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian.

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go.

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it.

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior.

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances.

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included.

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her. It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag.

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you.

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him. Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t. It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to. So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight.

However at home Virgil points out it was Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow.

#static shock #static #virgil hawkins #richie foley #robert hawkins #sharon hawkins #hotstreak #milestone comics #dc comics #dc animated universe #dcau #dwayne mcduffie #robert l washington IIII #kids wb #hbo max #2000s #animation #black lives matter #black history month

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