#an alien sideplot

[cocajimmycola]

(Dreamy sigh.) thinking about youtubers life 2. worst game i;ve ever played /silly

[cyberlights]

Amulet Rant Time

Okie dokie Waverider is out and thus has concluded the series…so it’s time for a little…bonfire, we’ll call it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I still love this series and always will. I’ve been in the fandom since about Prince of the Elves. I literally have grown up with this series in my backpack from the moment I checked it out of my school’s library. I spent my first summer job paycheck buying all the books out at the time. This series holds a very special place for me.

I also understand that after Book 5(? I’m typing this out on mobile so I can’t verify), Kazu got very sick and lost a lot of his memories, which affected how he wrote Amulet and thus the rest of the story, so I’m not going to say he was a trash author.

There are just certain things that just…have not worked out post Escape from Lucien. And honestly, this is going to be more of a venting ramble than anything, so for the new readers coming in, take it with a grain of salt. You can still enjoy the series, fall in love with the characters, etc. That’s why we enjoy it.

Now I’m gonna do everything else under read-more so spoilers ahead.

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We good? Okay, good.

I already stated that I give Waverider a 1/10. It actually is not my least favorite book, to be honest. (That “honor” goes to Supernova)

Trellis leaving the throne?

As others have pointed out, after Escape from Lucien it made no sense for him to just up and skedaddle. That boy was adamant he was going to lead his people. That’s what his whole plot was in the book, and him accepting more of that role in Firebird/the beginning of Supernova. Heck, they even pointed out that Gabilan, even though… voted in(?) as the new king was not doing a good job of it. Gabilan himself fully expected Trellis to take back the throne (albeit by force which is not really Trellis’ style). It felt very much like unnecessary step back from three books worth of development.

I can’t say much about Gabilan because while he did establish in The Cloud Searchers he wanted to be king, it didn’t feel right. Like there was nothing driven past that, that would say he wanted to be king. Honestly besides a tiny bit in Firebird he didn’t get as much character development as he should have, if at all. Which is why, if he was planned to take over from a while ago, probably should have had happened sooner.

Ronin and her Students

Speaking of introducing sooner, this is where I feel having a whole ‘nother two books would have helped the story, because this was just…so terribly executed.

I can’t tell you a single thing about her students except one turned into a turtle and another Cthulhu. I can’t even tell you anything about Ronin beyond her “I was right” mentality (and the mask, not sure why she was wearing a mask).

They all felt very shoe-horned in. I have no attachment to these characters, no real interest in seeing them succeed. They were brought in to fill a plot hole, while simultaneously making another plot hole in their wake.

Overall Problems with the Series

Genre Confusion

I think we’ve already established that Amulet would have been better off as a fantasy series than sci-fi. That is honestly my biggest problem with Supernova, was that was a giant Sci fi wedge in what was predominantly a fantasy series (I know we started more in Escape from Lucien and Firebird, but this is where I feel we veered too off course)

We honestly could have completely cut the sci-fi bit, changed a few things around between Escape from Lucien and Firebird, cut out most of Supernova -which yes, would have wrecked Navin’s sideplot, but there was different options that could have happened.

We don’t need the additional aliens/planets. Those characters could have easily just been Alledian on different parts of Alledia and we would have never known. We don’t even know what most of Alledia looks like because we’ve only been to a handful of places that predominantly look the same.

Which brings me to

Ikol and his Masters

I was so confused by the end of their story. They’re aliens but not. They were created by Silas but they have been around for eons. Everything was Made by Silas to Protect his Family. I just…*sigh*

It felt like they were beating the already dead piñata (pun partially intended).

Silas died in the first book. The consequences of his actions were established to be that he got a bunch of students killed and he ended up passing a huge burden onto Emily that should have gone to her mother. I don’t know why he had to be brought out as this.

Ikol could have very much remained a Chaotic Entity that thrived on the turmoil, his “masters” being a lie to convince Emily that he too was not in total control of the situation so he could slip her more into his control. We already know he likes collecting powerful stonekeepers who are vulnerable enough to fall sway to his side.

Heck, he comes back every 500 years to wage war with the elves and probably (should he have remained the entity) thought of it as one big game.

Having him turn into a somewhat malevolent AI that was just following orders to a T just…does not make sense to me. Especially if he was causing havoc with the elves for so long as implied.

Time-Travel

Okay honestly this is my biggest gripe with the later books.

We established, Books 4 and 5, time-travel was not possible.

All it does is send them back to interact with their memories. They don’t actually change anything about their lives outside the Void.

So having Future Emily and her son come back and save Present Emily throws all of the continuity out the window. And Future Emily’s little interaction with Ikol where it’s implied that they’ve done this over and over? Felt so weird after they actually dealt with Ikol. It felt like a useless little tag on that we ended up not actually needing. (Again, Supernova is my least favorite book for a lot of reasons)

Stonekeepers Good but Bad

*sighs again* Yes. This part would feed into the Problem of Too Many Characters Amulet has going on. But. We were not shown examples beyond our current group (Meaning Emily Trellis and somewhat Vigo) of good stonekeepers.

The Guardian Council that ruled over most of Alledia for centuries? Corrupt.

Silas? Self serving. (Despite being called hero numerous times, we were not actually shown anything he did besides stopping the rampaging stonekeepers back in The Stonekeepers Curse, and even then we weren’t actually shown, just told he did it.)

The Elfking(s)? Corrupted by their stones.

Most of Alledia in the early books respect Stonekeepers enough to kinda hold them in reverence. But we’re not shown anyone (beyond a couple panels of someone building stuff) notable enough to say Yes. Stonekeepers good. Anyone else who is mentioned is “Yeah, they were good, but they listened to their stone and turned into a rampaging monster” (Honestly Gabilan has more of a point here)

I get that’s why Ronin and hers were introduced, but they were introduced way too late into the series for it to feel that there could be some sort of balance.

Emily is one big outlier too here. She’s good but because she feels she has to be and has been told she has to be. Firebird honestly put a nice spin in this because we do see her fall. But Supernova kinda nixed that development sooooo.

*cough*ThisiswhatOCsarefor*cough*

Conclusion

Now those are the biggest ones that have bugged me for a while in addition to the new stuff from the new book. @motherstone has already touched upon multiple times some of the other issues that I tend agree with (go check them out, their art is amazing and I love their ideas. Also looking forward to their rewrite!)

Is there some technical issues with the books as well that bug me? Yes. (The later books are very over saturated in comparison to the older ones and it kinda shows, and I believe that Motherstone already touched upon the “smoothification” that started taking place about book 4/5, and there were quiet a few panels that felt very unfinished in the later two books)

Am I sad to see the series end? Yes. But Kazu at least finished as best he could to the end instead of half assing it or completely dropping the series altogether, and I can respect that.

Do I already have my own post-book 6 AU that I’m willing to ramble about at the drop of a hat? Also Yes. (May also heavily be influenced by some OCs)

Overall, I enjoyed Amulet enough to see it through the end. Books 3-5 will remain my favorites. I still will cherish the characters that we got. Amulet is probably the first thing that actually got me into interacting with Fanart and Fandom, so I’d say it’s a pretty big part of what developed me. And for the newbies. Hi! I see you! I look forward to seeing what you do with the series!

See y’all around!

(And btw, if you drop something in my ask box, I’ll apologize in advance if I don’t get to it. I tend to forget I have one)

[transformers-bold-bright-brisk]

AHH JUST FUCK IT—ART/LORE-ISH DUMP!!

Literally my last three recently finished(enough) pieces of 2023

Just for a recap—aka officially telling y’all what’s been up with me—

You see, along side my RBA-esque storyline will be other separate stories that kind of take place at the same time. Sort of, maybe, has a Trollhunters kinda timeline, or something? Let me just break it down into the main drafting titles(pending) I decided to give each sideplot:

- Roll Call Rescue Recruits: Some young transforming individuals attend Rescue Bots Academy, stationed on Griffin Rock and get up to some waaakcy hijinks with their new classmates while training to become Rescue Bots.

- Radiance In Disguise: A spoiled brat has to live with a rustic antique collector and his son, ever since her mother was arrested, and now her mother’s old enemies would have to go through giant alien robots if they even want to lay a finger on her.

- Reach Out To Reassemble: There’s a new Delinquent Rehabilitation Program in succession, and now it’s up to two bots to coach two young Decepticon criminals out of their violent habits; or else it’s prison for them.

None of these are in particular order by the way.

At least I think they aren’t.

[iosagol]

haha I can't fully process the way that the first half of season three of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012 works

It's basically six kids on a farm in the middle of the woods dropped smack into the center of the horror genre, dealing with creepy dark shadows outside the window and mysterious nightmares and actual bigfoot and inoperative flashlights and a creature that picks them off one by one

except 2/3rds of these kids are mutated turtles that know nunjitsu

and also there are aliens

HAHA AND ALSO there's this casual sideplot for at least five episodes about how the most stable member of the team is struggling with handling a serious injury and starts defining himself by his injury to the point where he'd rather sit in one place complaining than take action

But finally there's a point when his friends are stolen by a worm/fish/bird monster and he has to climb a mountain to rescue them, and he starts to sit down and complain but then something threatens his life and he reacts without thinking and suddenly he realizes that he's not as weak as he thought he was

He was letting the injury become much more than it really was, he was letting it get in his head and become his identity, but he can absolutely recover if he changes his mindset

And so he climbs that fricking mountain and starts saying things like "I won't let a little pain stop me" and he starts actually recovering

The pain isn't erased, we see him jump out of a tree in the next episode and show discomfort because he landed on the injured knee, but he gets right back up

and it's sensational

it's incredible

Back to the wacky horror stuff tho, there's literally an episode involving like

a frog rebellion? like this group of mutated frogs who feel oppressed by the humans and try to stage an uprising except the humans they're aiming at are two (2) teenagers who are just minding their business on one (1) battered farmhouse

Napoleon Bonafrog leads this charge

[faintingheroine]

But really the critics who called A True Novel “like The Great Gatsby” need to reread Wuthering Heights. Just because the words “Long Island” and “caddy” appear in it, it is not more Fitzgerald than Brontë. It has a LOT of preamble and side characters and sideplots but once the Taro/Yoko plot starts, it really is just a more subdued Wuthering Heights set in mid-20th century Japan (obviously, the book itself says that it is a retelling of Wuthering Heights in the text).

Taro is an orphan of ethnically mixed ancestry with darker skin who is bullied for that mixed ancestry. Yoko’s older family member takes him under her wing and Taro and Yoko become very close friends and for some years live in bliss, kind of unaware of just how wide the class gap between them is. One day when they are at the age of around 11-12, Taro gets a rude awakening regarding just how much he is of a different class from Yoko at the house of Yoko’s family’s rich neighbors which include a little boy he immediately codes as a rival in his mind (and that Yoko will end up marrying). Their friendship will nevertheless continue until Taro’s old protector’s death and Yoko telling him that she won’t marry him when she is 15 and he is 16. We know from the frame narrative Taro will get rich and will buy the houses all these rich families owned and will see Yoko’s ghost.

It is Wuthering Heights, things are a bit shifted around and there is no clear-cut Hindley equivalent (though multiple bullying boys in Taro’s life serve his role at this point in the story), side characters are a bit different in general, but Taro is very much a more humorless Heathcliff and Yoko is very much a less tomboyish Cathy. Things kind of lost their mystique and have clearer explanations. And richer characters’ classism and racism towards Taro is slightly more polite than Earnshaws’ and Lintons’ towards Heathcliff. But the essence of the story is completely the same as in Wuthering Heights.

And I love it, you might set Wuthering Heights among space aliens and I will like it despite not being a space alien person at all. Because I love Wuthering Heights not just as a novel but as a story too.

Right now, A True Novel is retelling the early paragraphs of Chapter 8 of Wuthering Heights:

“She had a wondrous constancy to old attachments: even Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably; and young Linton, with all his superiority, found it difficult to make an equally deep impression. (…)

Catherine had kept up her acquaintance with the Lintons since her five-weeks’ residence among them; and as she had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman by her ingenious cordiality; gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother: acquisitions that flattered her from the first—for she was full of ambition—and led her to adopt a double character without exactly intending to deceive any one. In the place where she heard Heathcliff termed a ‘vulgar young ruffian,’ and ‘worse than a brute,’ she took care not to act like him; but at home she had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit nor praise.

Mr. Edgar seldom mustered courage to visit Wuthering Heights openly. He had a terror of Earnshaw’s reputation, and shrunk from encountering him; and yet he was always received with our best attempts at civility: the master himself avoided offending him, knowing why he came; and if he could not be gracious, kept out of the way. I rather think his appearance there was distasteful to Catherine; she was not artful, never played the coquette, and had evidently an objection to her two friends meeting at all; for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to Heathcliff, she dared not treat his sentiments with indifference, as if depreciation of her playmate were of scarcely any consequence to her. I’ve had many a laugh at her perplexities and untold troubles, which she vainly strove to hide from my mockery. That sounds ill-natured: but she was so proud it became really impossible to pity her distresses, till she should be chastened into more humility. She did bring herself, finally, to confess, and to confide in me: there was not a soul else that she might fashion into an adviser.(…)

Catherine and he (Heathcliff) were constant companions still at his seasons of respite from labour; but he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him.”

(Chapter 8, Wuthering Heights)

[the-holo]

Before I start this, I'm pretty new to comics, but from what little (and I mean LITTLE I got into the game late 😔) I HAVE read, I do like IDWs Transformers run. All the cool cybertronian lore, cultural things, social hangups things like that? THAT is what's interesting to me about stories based around aliens. Whats their culture? What is typical for them that would be so wild here? What is considered tradition? What is taboo? (Fighting is also REALLY cool but without some sort of emotional backdrop it kinda just turns into taking ur action figures and smashing then together randomly for me.) So since I missed the IDW arc, I thought I'd try the reboot. (Rest below the read more)

ALRIGHT, SO THE MEAT AND POTATOES OF THE POST: I've been debating on getting the skybound TF comics. I don't want to miss out if later on they reach more...interesting, to me, plot beats but I really really don't care about the "oooh back on Eaaaaarth" plot...AGAIN. I care even LESS about the forced G.I. Joe on the horizon. Hasbro. Let it GO. No one cares about the random American military propaganda franchise that literally never does well in ur crossovers.

I'm reading Transformers FOR Transformers, not "you too can help fight evil IRL, join the military!"

Furthermore the art style is uuuuh...not bad just definitely not for me. The random WWE moves are just kinda awkward, especially when paired with the art style (I understand its trying to emulate the G1 style but no). I get some people like em and that's fine but...yeah.

And so far, emotionally I don't really feel anything? From what people have tried to tell me is "good" about it, Its just "starscream is a menace". Which would be perfect as a sideplot, if anything else interesting was going on, but after getting an overview of the first 3 issues, it just seems like its: "fight fight fight", starscream does a war crime, "fight fight fight", the humans get in the way, "fight fight", Starscream is being very naughty, also the humans don't understand anything as usual and have decided the best course of action us to get in the way AGAIN (please ur are the size of this guy's EYE. MOVE)

I dunno, again my interest in the reboot has more to do with POSSIBLE on Cybertron plots that may or may not even happen, so is it even worth it?

If anyone has anything more to say on the Skybound reboot (in favor or against) please feel free to comment or anything, I wanna be more informed before investing in a series I'm just not gonna like or something.

I want something that has...feeling I guess it boils down to. Im not getting that from it so far from what people are trying to use to sell it to me.

[craftyjellyfishcat]

Since y'all like the idea of the Mikey's going on a mission in a underground fighting thing I figured I'd add more to it:

The alien cat will be discovered and will be named by Rise!Mikey (their name will be Clea, kinda like saying their clear)

When the Mikey squad discovers the ring, they will be mistaken for humans since they have human clothing on and it's dark, so it helps them blend in more.

A Sideplot or next chapter, would follow the other turtle's (Donnies, Ralphs, and Leo's) perspectives while they look for their brother Mikey.

The combatants are Humans, Aliens, and Mutants forced to fight each other in a pit with strange collars on their necks.

Villain and owner of the pit is a scientist trying to weed the weak from the strong, so they can create super beings to rule all. They believe only with them ruling, true peace can be achieved.

Some of the villains (that's not shredder) like Hypnopotomus, Dog Face, Bepop and Rocksteady are there (maybe they got captured).

and that's all I'll share for now, maybe I'll do a part 2!

[princess-of-the-corner]

Question. Do games that are based on the charecters exist in the Cornerverse? If they do are they like cheezy ripoffs like are all Ben Ten Games now Super Alien Hero Buddy Adventure games?

dsjaflidsagbhfjdho

That's hilarious actually.

I mean.

SO!

Technically, some of our Heroes do have a merch department/copyright over their image/gain royalties/etc. I've mentioned that Team Miraculous does this. Sailor Venus does this in Canon (and I assume gets the other Sailor Scouts in on it). I actually had a minor sideplot of Ben getting help slamming the SAHBA show with copyright law and gaining royalties on any legitimate merch made of his Hero forms.

So games and media in general based off these characters do exist in-universe! And we can use the 'canon' show or the video games or whatever as a basis.

Ofc some would have to be changed slightly for, you know. Secret identity reasons. So say we include the Miraculous 'Rise of Sphinx' game as an in-universe game. While their Hero forms look on model, there's made up OCs to be their civilian counterparts. Each looking close enough to pass for the Hero, but wouldn't be mistaken for the actual Civilian.

[smokestarrules]

American Horror Story is fucking insane for more reasons than I could name right now but one of the reasons I’m stuck on at the moment is that it had multiple characters (including one of the two main characters) get abducted by honest-to-god aliens and experimented on and that was a sideplot. 

[lord-radish]

The Chibnall run of Doctor Who really bums me out because I really liked what it was trying to do, but something always seemed to bring the show down.

The new monsters - fine at worst. I remember speculating with a mutual about whether other Stenza take other body parts of their victims as battle trophies. I liked the P'Ting, and I LOVED the dudes from Demons of the Punjab. The giant spider was mid and the time-travelling racist was a cardboard cutout, but I felt like the earnest attempt at trying something new in series 11 was good and they could have done more than just a P'Ting cameo later in the run.

I like that they tried to have a larger crew of companions, even if the writers seemingly couldn't write four main characters and decided to sideline one of them every episode. I feel like Mandip Gill put a lot of character into her performance in series 11, even though Yaz was the most sidelined character in favor of Ryan and Graham's "granddad" arc. I was disappointed that Ryan got sidelined for most of series 12 while Graham seemed to mourn Ryan's nan more than he did. Then Dan came and went.

I can appreciate that they tried to up the ante with the Flux season, but it was such a precarious watch where one episode would be one of my favourites since like 2008, and the next one would be underbaked in that Chibnall sort of way and frustrate things. Boring invincible villains, a whole sideplot starring new characters that barely ties into the season's arc, and mangling the Timeless Child plotline - but also the one Weeping Angel episode that I was genuinely entertained and gripped by, and a fantastic Sontaran episode too. If it stuck the landing, I would have forgiven the bad stuff - but it didn't! The season just ends with a thud!!

And at the centre of it all, like glue holding the entire thing together, was Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. She's my favourite Doctor since Tennant, and she elevated the material that she worked with. But the material just... wasn't there. Demons of the Punjab is a GOATed episode, but Orphan 55 might be my least favourite episode of the revival series. I didn't like most of Moffat's run, period - at best, Orphan 55 ties with Sleep No More as my least favourite episode - it depends on whether you prefer dull, uninspired storytelling in the former or a cynical attempt to cash in on trendy, creepypasta-esque horror storytelling in the latter.

But none of this is in a vacuum. Chibnall tried - I genuinely liked the Timeless Child stuff at the end of series 12. The script writers and episode directors tried - Demons of the Punjab and Village of the Angels are fantastic episodes of the show, period. The VFX crew tried - the first episode of the run looked great, the title sequence was fantastic and the effects in that final season were outstanding. The actors tried - Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh were high points of this series, while I felt like Tosin Cole got totally shafted. And fuckin Sasha Dhawan? Seriously? Dude owned.

And I liked the approach that the show was taking after the overly self-serious and self-aggrandizing vibe of Moffat's run. I thought searching for the TARDIS was a fun little arc to start the run. I liked the whole "ancient pre-Time Lord alien races" thing that Chibnall does, even in The Power of Three (despite that villain sucking). The security drone Daleks were lightyears better than the New Paradigm Daleks. The Doctor felt like she was sharing the experience with her companions, instead of portraying herself in this loud, egomaniacal way where she has to assert how awesome she is. But the run STILL fell below expectations.

And the worst part is that because the run was so heavily politicised and so much of the hate came in the form of review-bombing and ideological "culture war" horseshit, it was next to impossible to have a productive conversation about Chibnall's run for ages. It's like the right-wing shitheads who poisoned the well with The Last of Us Part II; I couldn't have a productive conversation about that game for years because the haters were doing shit like analysing in-game cafeteria menus and using them to disprove the possibility of a buff woman in a zombie apocalypse, despite thinking the game was like a low-range 7/10 at worst.

So much of the backlash was ideological and political that people would rather blame a shitty episode on the fact that the Doctor transformed into a woman than the fact that it felt like a rejected SyFy Original Movie script with a single rubber costume.

It's just so disappointing in hindsight. At least they broached the topic of Thasmin with some tact, even if they didn't go through with it. Honestly, I stan Yaz forever.

[bunny-lou]

What was it about the movie that you enjoyed? And do you usually enjoy horror(ish) movies?

I'm going to see it again tomorrow with a co-worker so I will elaborate more thoughts in a different answer this weekend :)

I really liked the bond between Finney and Gwen. We get to see a little of Finney's character before being taken - he's a victim of abuse and bullying, he shies away from fights, he's quiet - but so much of who he is comes from his relationship with Gwen. Without his sister, Finney is kind of a shell of a character. We see a little bit of who he is with Robin and even less with Donna (his crush), but with Gwen, we see him smile and make jokes and be strong. He's a pillar for her after their father whips her. He's not just this scared and lonely kid, he has a personality and motives and a huge part of himself is being a brother.

I also liked Gwen much more than I thought. In the trailers, I didn't care for her. I thought she came off as whiny and flat as a character, but she really stole the damn show. She's hilarious and a spitfire. While we get to see Gwen's strength right away - she stands up to bullies and talks back to their father - it's a nice contrast to Finney's strength. Gwen's strength comes from being herself and outspoken and being fearless, but Finney's strength comes from being quiet and kept together.

(Though I don't understand the purpose of Gwen having her dreams. Like, they don't change the movie. Remove the sideplot of her having supernatural dreams and the film does not change. Yeah, it pads the run time and it allows for a cool flash back with Vance. But it doesn't change anything. Even the ending, when she leads the police to wrong house, but the right area, it's not needed. It doesn't help Finney escape in the end. The police and Gwen just happen to be there after he's done saving himself.

Again, I'm going to see the movie tomorrow. Maybe I will pick up on something I missed.)

I don't think the film was perfect. My biggest complaint is probably not getting to explore the stories of the other boys more. Billy and Griffin really have no personality in the film. We see a lot of Robin and a good scene with Vance, Bruce likes baseball and that's all we know. Honestly, I would have traded Gwen's dreams for more info on the boys.

I also wanted to see more of Max!!! He gets two freaking scenes and that's it!! We could have had more Max and more of the Grabber because Ethan Hawke's performance was fucking incredible.

As for myself, I love horror films! I didn't get into them until a few years ago, but I really enjoy them. Killer horror films (like the Black Phone, Halloween, Child's Play) tend to be my favorite of the subgenre, but psychological horror (Annihilation, Black Swan, Hereditary) are also some of my favorites. I think horror films give us a safe medium to explore dangerous things that fascinate us. Everyone has gone down the rabbit hole of at least one serial killer, right? Or aliens or vampires or the afterlife, shit that scares us, horror films are a space to think about these things.

I heard rumors of a sequel and here's what I would like to see:

The Grabber is running around the afterlife trying to get revenge on Finney. We know the dead can affect the living a little bit (Vance's rage causes glass to shatter, Billy (I think) causes a bottle to spin) and restless spirits don't stay quiet. He's enraged that his special boy got away from him.

(In the short story, it is implied Finney also has some special abilities like Gwen and I see theories that he inherited his mother's ability and that's why he could talk to the dead with the phone. Not just anyone could do that, Finney really is special.)

The dead boys are still navigating their own afterlife and show up randomly to help. Even without the phone, Gwen and Finney can still halfway communicate with them, though it's not perfect. And as Robin said, if Finney dies by the Grabber's doing, their deaths will have meant nothing.

Cue Finney trying to deal with the actual trauma he endured, Gwen practicing her powers more, the Grabber is back and scarier than before and our dead boys get the screen time and back stories they deserve!

But I'm sure they'll go with something totally different, if a sequel even happens.

[elfdragon12]

I think one of the biggest sins of the Michael Bay Transformers movies is that it ruined the perception of human characters in the franchise.

The Bay movies force the audience to slog though an absurdly long time of badly written humans before getting to what the audience is actually there for--the giant transforming alien robots.

However, there are actually a number of Actually Good human characters in the franchise. Besides the obvious difference of effort/writing quality, the shows/movies with a human cast that's pretty good take some time to establish the Transformers plot first.

The G1 show waited until over half of the first episode's runtime had passed before introducing humans. The human cast is varied and almost all of them are quite capable and actively contribute to the plot's episode. Sparkplug, Carly, Chip Chase, Raoul, Marissa Faireborn, and (imo) Astoria are all stand-outs. Only a few of the humans are recurring characters, so, even if you don't like a human, it's easy to move on.

The Bumblebee movie starts off on Cybertron, giving the audience what they're there for right away, before eventually bringing in humans. Charlie and Memo are great and the sideplot with Charlie and her family are actually good.

TFA, TFP, and Rescue Bots also have some pretty good human characters and all waited to introduce them until after establishing the Transformers plot. (Do I include RiD15? There are only 2 human characters that really count.)

Conversely, Armada introduces human right away and... Alexis is the only that's really any good.

Hopefully, Earthspark takes time to establish what's going on with the Transformers first before getting into the human characters.

[neon-moon-beam]

I haven’t touched PLA in almost 6 months. 

As always, please don’t send me your headcanons, theories, etc. I don’t like to discuss these things with strangers. I’m also not interested in arguing over my opinions, or calling anyone out specifically, nor am I saying all headcanons, au’s, are bad, etc. And please don’t ask for my approval of yours’! Make what you want, just please be considerate of how you portray characters and whether or not making an OC might be a better choice!

bl*nkshippers dni--I will block you.

Sometimes I think about shiny hunting, since the shiny spawn rate in that game is ridiculous, but the game itself made me feel bad because the plot is that you do everything literally everyone asks, but NONE of it helps the player character (or Ingo) go home. I can understand sometimes devs run out of time and sideplots resolve quickly and/or anticlimactically, but not only were some sideplots just dropped, but the main plot as well! Story is one of the most important parts of a game for me, and PLA seemed to not even know what it wanted the story to be. “Complete a PokeDex. Wait, stop Dialga and Palkia. Oh wait, the real issue here is Volo with Giratina! Oh, finish the PokeDex. Show Arceus around...perpetually?” The “ending” is unsatisfying. There’s no payoff. We don’t even find out why two characters have been misplaced in the first place, or if they return home! Yeah, Arceus wanted the PokeDex done, but why was this urgent, and why did this require sending almost definitely Dawn/Lucas back in time? Why wasn’t the player character an ancestor? When a game poses more questions than it answers, it’s often a sign that the storytelling is not good. Some mystery is OK, and not being able to know every last thing is realistic, but dropping everything seems like all the developer effort went elsewhere, they ran out of time, or in some cases, are DLC or sequel-baiting (and doing so via dropping the plot is poor).

It also feels like PLA didn’t bring much to the table in the end; we had some new mechanics that might not even return for Scarlet and Violet, a few regional variants, and one (hideous) new Force of Nature. Being able to choose when Pokemon evolve was great--no more having to press B after every level up or perpetually have an Everstone. Sneaking up and throwing a ball at Pokemon was fun. Being able to send out Pokemon almost anywhere and interact with them was fun. But on the other hand, the trade-off seemed to be the plot, as well as so much of what made battling fun. Abilities are gone and Pokemon can’t hold items. I didn’t enjoy Strong and Agile style, nor did I enjoy that I could only use one Pokemon while someone else sent out three, or getting attacked by multiple wild Pokemon at once. It felt unfair, especially because at times level seemed meaningless when 3-4 Pokemon could attack twice before mine could get a hit in.

PLA itself wasn’t advertised as open-world--fans made that assumption based on the trailers. Scarlet and Violet are supposed to be open world and if some of the mechanics are reused (it’s rumored many won’t be), that makes PLA sound like a test room that was released to the public with a price tag.

And then as a fan of Submas prior to PLA, PLA has now left me wondering if they’re just going to ruin two of my favorite characters, And fan spaces have become unbearable in response to PLA, when they could have been a refuge from a game that left Dawn/Lucas and Ingo’s fates up in the air. First it was overwhelming angst, often without resolution. When you’re not a fan of that, it gets tiring and alienating. Then other trends picked up, such as specifically making Emmet and Volo ooc in order to make them “unhinged”, ships that more often than not center on the characters being unhinged and possibly abusive to each other, bl*nkshipping rearing its head again (though thankfully much more people are opposed to it than during Gen 5′s initial run), Submas and Volo being ooc to the point of asking, “Why didn’t this person just make an OC?”, and of course, the ableism. 

As someone who played PLA and combed through every inch of it in order to make reassurance posts for anyone worried they might just leave Ingo, it was disheartening to see how much content that made fan spaces unbearable for me came from fans who hadn’t even played PLA, and/or their takeaway from the game was “Submas = angst” and “Volo and Emmet are unhinged and will hurt anyone given the chance!” I’m aware that some people may be unable to play PLA for whatever reason, and this isn’t about them. This is about people who haven’t played and won’t play, or played and didn’t bother to think critically about what they just played, who just came for the angst and/or s*xymen, and rendered complex, canon characters into two-dimensional OCs without giving any regard to the source material and what the game devs showed regarding these characters, to the extent that fans not into this kind of content, or not wanting to constantly engage with this kind of content became alienated from their own space.

Volo is a complex character dealing with some deep-seeded trauma that, unfortunately due to the story being dropped, we don’t really get any details about what happened. We do however, get hints in-game that he’s not a completely bad person, but more morally grey, likely a more good-aligned character having a bad moment. And Emmet isn’t even in PLA! As of right now, we don’t even know that Ingo is “missing” in the present day. For all we know, Ingo will be returned to the exact moment he was pulled from and nobody will even know, or the devs may go on to say PLA isn’t canon in some way. But for people to take these characters and run wild with angst and then get ableist on two autistic-coded characters (for the second time in 10 or so years), has been a huge turnoff in engaging in any fan spaces, and I wonder if the devs had more time to develop and finish the story, or whatever the issue was that led to this game being released unfinished with little hope of a DLC, if we could have gotten more answers and maybe the fandom wouldn’t have taken this kind of content too far. Many people have tried to address the ableism (here is a link to Submas Autistic Joy’s resources, a by no means exhaustive collection of such posts), but people are going to make what they’re going to make, whether it’s appropriate or not, and sometimes this means people have to leave the fan space, or create their own, which has become sadly necessary here.

PLA looked like it was going to be a great game, but it needed more time and care than apparently the devs were able to give it, and unfortunately in fan spaces, it seems characters in or associated with PLA are all too often not being given time, care, and tact in how they’re being portrayed. All of these issues have made me come to not care for PLA at all.

[capybara-fanatic]

zombies 3 wouldve gone a lot better if maybe the aliens had just??? not lied???? like i love yall but it would've hurt NOTHING to just tell them what you came there for. you're lucky seabrook was stupid as hell and believed you traveled through space just for a cheer competition.

also addison just got on my nerves in this movie. she got so upset when the aliens didnt "accept her" (a direct quote: "the aliens wont accept me? i may be part alien, but I'm still totally alone.") and??? you literally don't need the aliens??? you do not. you have a whole town that loves you.

also also????? wyatt and eliza???? nonononono. that is definitely not right because i got ~vibes~ from BOTH of them?? mentally deleted that whole sideplot and wrote my own with wyatt and a-lan now don't mind me while i marinate in my own genius.

also also also!!! I LOVE A-LI, A-SPEN, AND A-LAN SO FUCKING MUCH?????? (we adore the nb trios) theyre hot, theyre nice, theyre geniuses, theyre hot!!!!! (might be writing headcanons for them soon watch out)

[the-gordianknot117]

“Fubuki Delenda Est”: Part 2.

I was waiting for the Monster Association arc to end before finally examing a couple of topics related to Fubuki that I didn’t cover in my previous post (like how a connection between Fubuki and another character was handled in the remake and more), so I think now it’s the perfect time to delve into them. Additionally, I will include my conclusive thoughts about Fubuki’s involvement in the remake MA arc and the treatment the manga reserved in general to the character. For anyone interested, the previous post (Part 1) covers the rest. Webcomic spoilers, I guess.

Before starting, I want to clarify once again that with my posts, I don’t want to prevent anyone from enjoying the character or the series in general, nor change their opinion.

Obviously, future updates can always disprove what is written in this post.

EDIT (01/08/2023): added a title and an image.

First, let’s start with the elephant in the room, Psykos and her connection to Fubuki. The following are all the instances where their connection is brought up in the remake: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 - in reality, I’m counting basically any off-hand mention of Fubuki from Psykos (plus a Tatsumaki panel). The first four are inherited from the webcomic while the others are new: 5 and 6 are from the same Chapter (132) while the last resembles the similar Evil Eye scene from the beginning of the arc, when the psychic monster threatened Fubuki in front of Tatsumaki*. After that there is none and the ones above (unless I missed something) are the only allusions to it in more than 100 chapters of the manga [EDIT: 04/12/2023] Thinking about it, the only foreshadowing of Fubuki vs Psykos comes exclusively from scenes original to the webcomic: no new content was added in anticipation of that in the manga [End EDIT]. Obviously, not everything needs to be wrapped up/resolved within the same arc (the webcomic didn’t do it either) nor restarting every time from a blank slate with no ongoing, background sideplots would make for an engaging story. Still, the entire side plot between Fubuki and Psykos seems like a vestigial tail that doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the remake Monster Association story. Instead of a hanging sideplot meant to be picked up later it feels more like a plot-thread chopped out entirely from where it originally belonged. Reinforcing this feel it’s the fact that most of the hints mentioned above are concentrated around chapters 110/130, apparently building up to something only for the whole thing to never take off and disappear abruptly for the remaining time. This reveal exists almost in a vacuum and doesn’t affect in any shape or form anyone: Fubuki’s backstory with Psykos could be removed entirely from the latter characterization and nothing of value would change at the moment; Tatsumaki, outside of a single webcomic shared panel (linked above) placed at the very start of the fight (before the scuffle with “normal” Psykos), is utterly unfazed by it and her mind is firmly set on the kid and the other heroes without being distracted by what she just discovered; Fubuki, the connective tissue between these characters and the character that should be affected the most by this development, is the furthest removed from the whole thing, completely alien to this subplot for the entire arc. To make things worse, after the last mention of this subplot in Chapter 133, Psykos completely disregards Fubuki while the latter is helping (?) TankTop Master against the MA leader during the Jet sequence (Chapter 138): actually, both espers are “crossing paths” without that being acknowledged by anyone, not even by some kind of storytelling device, as if ONE/Murata didn’t think this might appear bizarre or as if it didn’t deserve to be highlighted at all. Maybe a redraw will fix it [EDIT 04/12/2023: they didn’t fix it in the volume], but it wouldn’t be the first time Fubuki’s storyline ended up being an afterthought (the “rematch” with Do-s is another example of this). Moreover, but this could be a translation-related issue (it probably is), Fubuki refers to JetPsykorochi as “she”, making the whole thing even more confusing. In the wc, after reaching the surface, Fubuki noticed right away Psykos’s presence (I always found hilarious how surprised Fubuki sounded when she recognized the weirdo kid from high school with the obsession with world domination amid that chaos in Chapter 72) and manga Fubuki herself has proven to be capable of sensing other espers (like Tatsumaki and Gear Spear), so this is a strange oversight. Like, let’s even pretend Fubuki was somehow unable to sense Psykos reenacting Top Gun, at the very least she should have caught a glimpse of Psykos (or her esper aura) leaving Orochi - but apparently nobody noticed (or sensed) the woman fleeing from the blob targetted by everyone. Neither the last appearance of Psykos resumed this side plot, being used instead for fanservice, Saitama vs Garou “hype” and as a reminder of the release of Volume 26, featuring Psykos on the cover. Schrödinger’s storyline is how I would describe this sideplot and how it relates to the overall story right now. For obvious reasons this wasn’t a problem in the wc, where the relation between the leader of the Monster Association to the B-Class Rank 1 had massive consequences for the setting, the story and the characters: after learning about it Tatsumaki went apeshit and lifted the MA’s headquarter (with catastrophic results, leading also to her defeat), sensing Psykos pushed Fubuki to step in and fight her old acquaintance (right when the MA leader and the Cadres were about to attack King), allowing the rest of the arc to happen and laying the foundations for the next one etc. Here? It’s a backdrop detail that has no relevance and importance at all on the ongoing events, as absurd as it may sound.

As a result of this and Psykorochi vs. Tatsumaki replacing their fight in the MA arc, Psykos and Fubuki were reduced to be, respectively, Tatsumaki’s personal punching bag and Tatsumaki’s number one cheerleader/nurse. In the manga, Psykos is, for all intents and purposes, a Tatsumaki-related character but, since there is barely any actual personal connection between the two outside of Fubuki (the irony!), most of Psykos dialogues are bog standard “evil speeches”,  the always present threat to Fubuki and exposition dumps. And while Psykos receives a crazy amount of power-ups during her boss battle, that serves only as a way to hype up Tatsumaki and raise the scope of their battle even further: outside of that, Psykos keeps failing every single time before finally getting defeated by Tatsumaki and spending the rest of the arc off-screen (she doesn’t even lead the Cadres anymore!). This might be only me, but employing Psykos, the actual main villain of the first part of the arc, solely as a device for Tatsumaki to show off how powerful and heroic she is while at the same time the “characterization” of Psykos herself amounts to being a puppet for God (à la Cosmic Garou or worse) and tasteless fanservice is a little disappointing and a waste of what Psykos was supposed to be: a different kind of threat, as stated in the webcomic (1, 2); funnily enough, the manga also features this narrator box (1, 2, 3), before contradicting it by turning Psykos into the exact opposite of that, which is to say a giant naked fusion-kaiju spamming beams for shit and giggles, straight out seeking an open battle and wasting multiple opportunities to end her opponent. What originally made Psykos a serious thorn in the side for the heroes was less a matter of impressive feats and power levels (although Psykos was a powerful and formidable Dragon Level Esper and a dangerous adversary for the majority of the S-Class) and more her ability to organize and lead a group of Demons and Dragons Level Threats. Even the more remarkable is the fact the MA was not fully ready to fight the HA by the time its headquarters were raided by the heroes (contrary to the manga) and nonetheless wc Psykos was capable of turning the tides and almost winning the battle if wasn’t for the intervention of the Saitama Group. For this reason we can also justify in the webcomic her lack of an immediate counter strategy against the HA and the decisions she made during the Demon/Dragon match-ups - for example, the “sacrifice” of the Demon Level Threats in the initial stage of the hero raid makes sense here since she was caught almost off-guard, instead of being a waste of potentially useful assets she is sending to their death just because. I think these elements alone without mentioning her backstory, made Psykos stand out among the OPM villains, especially considering her accomplishments and her role as a leader of a group of powerful mysterious beings (Homeless Emperor aside) while being a human esper herself. Moreover, if it’s true that we spent more time with her in the remake (though this additional time is hardly character focused at all), Psykos’s past is still undisclosed. The manga has completely avoided bringing up the reason Psykos turned against humanity and trying to fill this saturday morning cartoon villain silhouette with the basic and fundamental beats of her character long after her moment of major spotlight is something I’m not particularly fond of, to be honest. About Fubuki, the aforementioned post expresses my opinions about her manga version in general, so here I won’t indulge myself on this topic beyond stating that turning her into Tatsumaki’s Tareo is a baffling and ludicrous choice that takes cues from the Garou-Tareo dynamic solely for the benefit of the older sister with no regard for Fubuki’s character itself, who now needs to be babysitted and rescued every time she leaves the healing corner.

Speaking of that: Fubuki went from being one of the majors contributors to the MA’s downfall and the one defeating the Dragon Level Esper Leader of the Monster Association to losing to someone like Do-s in a lighthearted and fanservice fight (more than once, actually). I know I already said this plenty of times in the past, but Fubuki distinguishing herself during this crisis was truly crucial for her journey leading to the Esper Sisters arc, and for the Monster Association arc itself, serving as a contrast to the powerful and mighty S-Class, sent by the HA who failed at dealing with the Cadres and required outside help in order to survive and win the battle - and that without portraying Fubuki herself (or any member of the Saitama’s Group or Amai Mask) as some sort of perfect or flawless being, quite the opposite actually (and thankfully). This isn’t a mere matter of win-to-defeat ratio but a massive shift to the narrative surrounding this character and her purpose within the story. To underline what critical importance Fubuki vs. Psykos held for the B-Class Rank 1 story, I want to remind one thing I never see mentioned anywhere: in the webcomic, Fubuki starts fighting Psykos (Chapter 74) 27 chapters after her first appearance (Chapter 47). The battle (and the subsequent encounter with Garou), far from being a mere clash of powers and a power-level contest, is a turning point for Fubuki and paves the way for the Esper Sisters arc. In the “Murata” version, Fubuki and Psykos have not exchanged a single word in the entirety of the manga (up until now, that is): to put it in perspective, Fubuki appeared for the first time in a numbered chapter back in Chapter 42, Psykos as Gyoro Gyoro in Chapter 68 and as herself (cameo not withstanding) in Chapter 123, and we are currently at Chapter 170 (which doesn’t take in account the multiple extra-long chapters). As we have seen, in this unholy amount of pages, the snippets to their connection have been nothing but throwaway lines and a tiny panel: this confined Fubuki into a limbo of stagnation, where her character couldn’t move forward simply because the manga kept delaying one pivotal plot point that happens rather early in the source material - and, as I already mentioned elsewhere, another important development that comes from that fight, the realization of what Saitama predicted to her, has been fulfilled by Do-s instead of Garou and the very serious “fear” moment has been reduced to the recurring gag of Fubuki looking like a pathetical shaking mess doing “funny” exaggerated expressions (abysmal comedy and downright awful writing). Tatsumaki’s flashback, Blast’s appearance, a fourth Centipede, Garou vs. Saitama, all occurred before Fubuki got to one of her storyline’s most important and defining moments. It’s as if, in 100+ chapters, Garou never met Tareo and his character was stalled at the time of the TankTop Master's brawl. Now, Psykos and Tareo aren’t strictly comparable characters, obviously, but they represent an important turning point for Fubuki and Garou’s characters, on top of being one of the main motivational factors for their development.

At least, does the new content offer anything comparable to what Fubuki vs. Psykos represented in the source material? What is Fubuki’s big moment in the remake Monster Association arc?

Well, if Chapter 142 (Fubuki stabilizing Genos's core) was supposed to be the replacement for Fubuki against Psykos, it’s a really poor substitute that doesn’t hold a candle to what it replaced**: the chapter doesn’t break any new grounds for Fubuki’s character but its the usual good leader + healing stuff (which apparently go hand to hand), fulfilling an almost identical purpose of the Rover battle of a few chapters before. Fubuki here doesn’t experience any growth nor showcases anything truly new, she is not confronted by some kind of circumstances shaking her status quo or representing a real turning point for her story, but it’s a “more of the same” kind of situation - in my previous post I wrote how contradictory the whole thing is, how the manga pays lip-service to this leader “predisposition” in a couple of scenes only to portray Fubuki as a pathetic, deluded and arrogant clown who falls on the ground every other panel, hindering her colleagues and being a deadweight the rest of the time (if she has the stuff of a leader than basically anyone else does)***. On the other hand, the confrontantion with Psykos truly opened new directions and expanded the horizons of Fubuki’s characterization by revealing substantial new information about her, showing us glimpses of her life back in high school, her connection to a new important and mysterious character, her views on human relationships as power structures, and presented an interesting application of psychic powers that displayed her abilities and skills as an esper as well as her wits and intelligence in battle, plus setupping the next arc and the conflict at the center of it. Furthermore, the concrete and tangible threat represented by Psykos made for an arc-changing confrontation with significant consequences for the following events. In contrast, Chapter 142 lacks any of that and Fubuki simply puts a stop to the Genos overheating core subplot that stayed on hold during the JetPsykorochi chapters up until Murata and ONE decided to throw a bone to Fubuki as a way to finally wrap it up and move on - she was the closest and most convenient plot device nearby for the authors to use in this circumstance after all. The whole thing is resolved in less than 15 pages, a misery considering the standard amount of pages devoted to battles/character-focused sequences, but that’s the number of pages reserved to Fubuki, and for this reason there is no time to breath or to underline the importance of this accomplishment because the chapter suddenly ends and the story moves forward - the same story that lingers obsessively even on the most trivial matter, like the Support Team, the Jet sequences or anything involving Tatsumaki (but there are so many other examples that could be listed here). There is also the fact Pri Pri Prisoner completely forgets to mention the whole thing to Child Emperor, despite that being the reason he was searching for the kid hero in the first place (Chapter 149)! [Edit 23/08/2023] This is such a pivotal moment that the characters themselves don’t pay any thought to its “urgency” or “consequences”, but forget about it as soon as the chapter ends, as if it never happened! Another sad example of the manga copy-pasting webcomic scenes onto manga original events without thinking about how the new, different context would affect them; the main takeaway from this change is that Pri-pri Prisoner is either forgetful or wants Genos dead, which are 100% unintended consequences of a poorly planned scene. The series is full issues and incosistencies like this. Oversight like the one above inevitably end up affecting the story and the characters for the worse - and Fubuki is, once again, one of the main victims of this, and that when the authors aren’t trying to shit on her on purpose [End of the Edit]. Lastly, Fubuki’s actions here are unrelated to the monsters themselves (she is dealing with Genos’s overheated core after all) and, thinking more carefully about it, Fubuki in the remake has barely done anything directly against them (the closest being letting Do-s fall into a pit), while wc Fubuki actually struck a heavy blow to the MA - she was one of the few to have defeated a Dragon Level Threat up to that point in the series and one of the fewer to have beaten a Cadre (none of the S-Class sent by the HA accomplished this). Moving on: one thing is Fubuki mastering Psychic Whirlwind, a telekinesis technique meant to counter other espers and reflective of Fubuki’s goals, story, personality and fighting style, another is a deus ex machina power outside of her “field” like being able to regenerate Genos’s organic parts and cool down his synthetic components (or the healing esper thing in general, introduced out of nowhere in the middle of this arc and becoming more bullshit as the chapters go). One is well within the area of expertise of the character and represents a demonstration of her achievements as an esper, providing the layout the actual content of the confrontation between Fubuki and Psykos, the drama and the clash of personalities, lies upon, the other is a solution thrown in for the sake of progressing the plot/put a patch over a narrative problem. The fact Fubuki’s usefulness is limited to healing and treating some injuries (and only with other characters’ support, at times) instead of taking part in the fights and being useful in them without turning into a background clown is straight out insulting to this character and an example of OPM falling into the battle shounen cliches pit. Additionally, this chapter mainly serves to resolve Genos’ issue after his uber-epic upgrade finally showed some kind of drawback for the abuse of its “full power” mode and bring back the cyborg into the action without that pesky problem affecting him anymore. And so, Genos gains a few other chapters to go while Fubuki soon expires her “relevancy” (aka, being a plot-device and Tatsumaki’s shiller number one), relegated once again to the sidelines. But having said that, I won’t pretend the whole thing was a pointless waste of time and I recognize that Fubuki, Genos and Fang (and Bomb, I guess?) being “closer” has narrative potential (though the execution could have been a lot better and the lead-up way more organic and natural). I would rather get more chapters involving the members of the main cast interacting and bouncing off each other instead of endless and drawn-out fights, but only as long these interactions don’t come at the expense of their specific storylines, replacing moments with overall greater purpose and significance. Like, a chapter devoted to progress the dynamics between the members of the Saitama’s Group would be more than welcomed by me if Fubuki had screentime to spare, but she barely does and the few time she shows up she has to share (be it with Fang, Genos or whoever else) the crumbles of it. [EDIT: 30/07/2023] I don’t think I have to spend more than a few words about the last page of this chapter and in particular the last panel, since its issues are self-explanatory: it reveals how the authors themselves don’t believe in what they are putting in the chapter and also how blatantly aware they are that no one will pay attention to Fubuki’s leadership skill or care about this predisposition the story has never highlighted (actually, only undermined); Murata and ONE clearly do not expect the readers to care at all about Fubuki or the scenes featuring her, but only to stare at the character’s sexualized body. It’s pathetic and sad, a textbook example of fanservice completely detracting from the scene and character, undermining her accomplishments with a misplaced gratuitous panel (quite tasteless, too) drawn solely for male gaze. This framing says nothing about what just happened nor highlights her supposed leadership skill, let alone Fubuki’s actual character; it doesn’t enhance the scene in any way, but its sole accomplishment is to reduce Fubuki to a sexual object. This is what I would have expected from a lesser series, not from One-Punch Man, but I have learned my lesson at this point. Also, this surely isn’t the only time the authors resorted to cheap tricks as a way to distract the audience from how bad and lazy Fubuki’s treatment has been in the manga, unfortunately. [End of the EDIT] So in the end, if this was meant to be the main dish of Fubuki’s participations in the Monster Association arc, it was an insipid and minuscule appetizer served to a starving customer.

(By the way, in the webcomic Fubuki saved Genos as well, Chapter 69)

If instead the convo with Tatsumaki was intended to be Fubuki’s big moment of spotlight, the same applies to it as well, plus being not only insipid and shared, but an undercooked dessert served ahead of its time (my thoughts about it here and here, among other things). Fubuki’s supposed “development”, coming to terms with Tatsumaki’s protective behavior and understanding her sister’s problems, never happened on screen. It’s the result of a (rushed) journey of personal maturation never shown to us, unlike, I don’t know, basically every moment of progression of webcomic Fubuki thus far. How Saitama influenced Fubuki and allowed her to change her perspective on Tatsumaki is also not supported by anything shown prior (zero, nada, nothing) and if Fubuki didn’t state it outright no one could have ever guessed this or could haved noticed at any point any change in her opinion of her sister, in fact no one (or at least, I didn’t find anything on this subject) in the fandom picked up this massive character progression occurring at all before it was stated in this chapter (to be fair, this is the same adaptation where the two sisters go shopping together, something that completely lessens the magnitude of the development in question, let alone how it butchers the source material and future scenes, but that is another can of worms); and in general, after encountering Saitama, Fubuki only got progressively more flanderized, incompetent and childish, which as much as I dislike, could provide an “interesting” character arc if it was within the intention of the authors, but it clearly isn’t the case considering how the handful of relevant scenes involving her (like this dialogue here) pretend the opposite (again, paying lip-service to the character); it is an unintended byproduct resulting from the real priorities the authors have, which involve other characters with Fubuki being an afterthought or an obstacle, hence why she gets the short hand of the stick (if she gets it at all). For this, "You have become stronger, Fubuki” is one of the most unearned, undeserved and unsatisfying exchanges I have ever read in fiction, lacking the tragic irony of the same line in the wc (I wrote a post about this). The conversation glosses over Fubuki’s childhood and how her sister affected and impacted her life but, to be fair, the whole point of the sequence is to portray Tatsumaki as a tragic hero suffering from a poorly worded advice given to her when she was still a child, before anything else. Fubuki’s fundamental wc flashback, whose point and actual significance is one of the pillars of the entire esper sisters arc, was reduced to less than an halfassed and offhand mention because the angle we are observing the scene is so outwardly sympathetic toward Tatsumaki that there is no time nor desire to “waste” panels on Fubuki’s character and story, especially if this doesn’t serve to highlight her sister and her suffering (poor Wobbie). Fubuki here is only the mouthpiece of the author who celebrates Tatsumaki’s tragedy and heroism while twisting and destroying the character he is employing for this purpose. What a horrendous moment this conversation was: another instance of Tatsumaki being put on a pedestal at the expense of her sister.

[EDIT: 01/08/2023] Prior to the sudden change in Fubuki’s attitude toward Tatsumaki and the sisters conversation, we only got two instances of Fubuki thinking about Tatsumaki, 1 and 2; in these two pages, Fubuki shows only frustration and resentment instead of a change of heart or whatever the manga later tries to suggest - by the way, Tatsumaki needlessly beating up the Fubuki group is conveniently forgotten and never brought up ever again, as is her decision to exclude Fubuki from the operation (“this is totally buildup for the Esper Sisters arc and the sisters’ conflict!” Yeah, sure, absolutely ahah). Admittedly, there is another scene where Fubuki senses Tatsumaki fighting Psykos, but that is slightly unrelated to the current topic and even if I included it, the page would still show Fubuki being afraid and wary of her sister like she was in the source material - after all, the scene is a 1:1 adaptation of the webcomic for the most part - so that doesn’t help much the manga’s cause either. Honestly, all these pages seem to setup a completely different storyline from the one we got in the end, as if someone changed their mind during the arc and clumsily tried to course-correct at the last minute. It’s like they wanted to reach the rooftop of a skyscraper but were blocked at the level of the sewers and realized that there was no way to get up there in time considering the path they previously chose, so they decided to skip all the steps in the way and instantly teleport to their destination. Who would notice, right? Well, the readers who actually pay attention to the story will, of course. Murata and ONE wanted so badly to reach the point where the sisters mend their relationship (which would avoid the “horrid scenario” of Tatsumaki being herself a very flawed human being), but they thought it was pointless and boring to actually make it fit in Fubuki and Tatsumaki’s character arcs at that point of the story. What makes this worse if possible is how Murata and ONE still had the occasion to insert a new “chapter” in manga Fubuki’s nonexistent character arc and legitimize this moment between the sisters with a missing “link” filling the gaps, but they decided to waste it on that radioactive dumpster fire that is the “rematch” between Fubuki and Do-s - how something like that made into the manga while Fubuki’s webcomic scenes, fundamental character beats, story and her original characterization didn’t will never cease to haunt my mind. Beside, at no point prior to the sisters conversation did Fubuki ever think of saving her sister by gathering strong people nor was meeting Saitama ever shown to have affected Fubuki’s opinion of Tatsumaki in the slightest (and surely not to the degree the manga is trying to paint!). Nothing in the story has ever suggested this, not Fubuki’s words, not her actions, not even the slightest subtext implied that “saving her sister” was Fubuki’s grand goal, something the manga suggests she has pondered (off-screen) and then fully embraced as her true desire at some point (when exactly, ONE?). In reality she was always shown being resentful of Tatsumaki: the few times Fubuki mentions Tatsumaki (the ones I linked above) reveal how this change of heart is entirely made up, basically a clumsy retcon. Also, I personally hate how Fubuki’s monologue boils down to a Tatsumaki-did-nothing-wrong by having Fubuki condone Tatsumaki’s misdeeds and role in her life, to the point of outright shilling Tatsumaki and even crying for her auto-desctructive heroism without Fubuki herself ever having the chance to reveal her past and what she suffered. Imagine wasting all the narrative potential that comes with this relationship (and Fubuki as a character) by resolving its conflict in a biased and rushed-out out of nowhere dialogue that takes place in an arc not even centered on their relationship (or, originally, Tatsumaki herself, since it was Fubuki who actually got quite the narrative focus in the wc MA arc out of the two) and without having addressed Fubuki’s side at all. Fubuki and Tatsumaki’s conversation is like a roof for a nonexistent building and for this reason, it miserably falls flat on the ground: because it has no support holding it in place and nothing the story has done before has built up to this. And yeah, I’m calling it wasting because now that I’ve got the full, godawful picture, there is no other way to put it; to be fair, it didn’t take a genius or a prophet to figure out where this manga original direction was leading to and how this conversation would have fundamentally compromised the next arc. With that being said, only someone gifted with prescience could have guessed what a colossal pile of fecal matter the next arc was going to be in the remake.

[EDIT: 03/12/2023] Sorry for the multiple edits, but the more I think about this conversation, the more I realize I only grazed the surface of its problems. In addition to all the nefarious consequences this chapter had on the younger esper, the conversation also implies another, fundamental detail that is in contrast with what has been established in the webcomic (at least so far): that Fubuki was aware of Blast and his role in her sister’s life all along. And nonetheless, Fubuki still resented Tatsumaki, despite knowing what she went through and Blast’s role in her life. Keep in mind that while the manga initially (clumsily) portrayed her relationship with Tatsumaki as being similar to the webcomic, from a certain point on - a few chapters before this conversation, around Psykorochi’s fight - it ceased to be treated as such, and Tatsumaki’s mistreatments and oppressive role in Fubuki’s life, things that legitimized Fubuki’s attitude toward her sibling, never ended up getting addressed at all, to the point that we have to question if in the manga they actually happened. As a result, Fubuki retroactively comes off as a ungrateful and petty sister who holds a grudge against someone she has no reason to dislike at all (or surely not to the extent the manga previously showed). This could be an angle to rewrite their story, I guess, with a petty and one-sided rivalry posoning the sisters’ relationship, but the story never framed this sideplot as such, and there is no canon evidence that could support this headcanon claim. Actually, I would argue that there was a halfassed attempt at making the conflict balanced on a surface level: for example, the Do-s fight and in particular its conclusion, but then again, only on the surface because, despite the author pretending to be on Fubuki’s side and acknowledging her “suffering”, in the same chapter Tatsumaki just rescued Fubuki and was proven 100% right about her sister and the group (for the second time too, see the Demonic Fan scene; and, again later, with that abomination of an arc); or in the chapter we are discussing here, where Fubuki reveals how she “feared Tatsumaki”, despite the manga having gone out of its way to contradict this statement, and said fear having only been hinted and implied in the manga but never to the point of gaining actual substance like the webcomic, because we never saw why Fubuki would fear Tatsumaki and what threat she represented to her (there is no further addo or elaboration on Fubuki’s statement, because while the manga can pretend this was a thing for the character in a throwaway line, it can’t ouright make Tatsumaki dislikable and frightening for us; it’s another case of wanting a cake and eating it too); etc.; so, overall, the whole thing is a mess, and us readers shouldn’t come up with interpretations that make up for the authors’ absolute lack of care and direction. But let’s go back to the notion Fubuki knew that all along about Tatsumaki’s past: the series never provided a single hint of that before this scene. Now, I’m not saying that Fubuki should be randomly talking about Tatsumaki’s personal history, but that the authors could have indirectly alluded to that in multiple ways. For example, if this was always the plan (it wasn’t), then the ending Chapter 66 (the Do-s’ fight) could have provided the perfect occasion for this: Fubuki could have muttered some cryptic line that would have acquired sense only in the light of the chapter we are currently discussing. In general, any storytelling device of the sort would have definitely benefited the sisters conversation, providing the groundwork necessary for the resolution of what is allegedly an important sideplot; it would also have properly introduced, or, at least, underlined, the mystery of Tatsumaki’s past and her personal conflict, instead of dropping these on us at the last minute. In regard to Fubuki, the manga could have at least outlined a character arc that, starting with her introduction, received in this chapter its pay-off. Her story could have been all centered on learning to understand and comprehend her sister - obviously, I’m not speaking out of my preferences here, but how the manga should have played its cards given its real priorities (=shilling Tatsumaki). Let’s say that Fubuki was aware of Tatsumaki’s past but still resented her. This could have been presented back then, when she first appeared, as a defining character trait, with Fubuki refusing to accept Tatsumaki’s attitude and not understanding why Tatsumaki behaves the way she does. Over the course of the following chapters, Fubuki could have been put in Tatsumaki’s shoes and started to understand her sister’s concerns, allowing her to comprehend Tatsumaki’s reasons; this would have led Fubuki to realize how Tasumaki’s past is affecting her in the present and in what ways Blast’s advice left a scar on her soul. And then this chapter would have been the culmination of that journey, as Fubuki finally steps in the direction of her sister and crosses the gaps separating them, telling her sister she understands her and, at the same time, expressing the desire to save her. A similar rewrite would have had a semblance of what a character arc should be, instead of the bunch of nothing and meandering mess Fubuki got in the manga. Obviously, I’m not a fan of this direction either since it would be a flatout terrible use of Fubuki’s character (especially compared to her webcomic counterpart), but at least I could see the “vision” and recognize the effort, despite not agreeing with it one bit. The manga doesn’t even have that: Fubuki’s process of growth in regard to her sister and how she processed this information is nonexistent (once again, I discussed this previously), left entirely to the readers’ imagination. Consequently, the conversation holds no weight because it comes out of nowhere, and Fubuki has never been hinted at knowing anything about her sister’s past, and so Fubuki coming into terms with something that was not even a thing up to that point is the very definition of lazy writing. What the manga is suggesting here is beyond far-fetched and rushed, as I already covered in the previous paragraph. You can’t resolve a character arc or an interpersonal relationship if you haven’t bothered addressing it in the first place or without a proper narrative structure to back it up. It’s similar to how the manga handled Tatsumaki’s unwillingness to receive help from others as a result of Blast’s life advice: all this heavy and personal stuff for the character is resolved basically over the course of a single fight (actually, even before the end of it, basically the moment Genos showed up). The “development” she is experienced is comparable to pressing a switch from on to off. Putting her trust in someone else and relying on them is not even an underlining theme of the fight, nor the sequence focus ones Tatsumaki’s inability/unwillingness to overcome these flaws - after all she accepts Geno’s help right away (aside from an obligatory single, tsundere line), and then they become best friends forever. This is the first time the character has accepted outside help since Blast, which should make for a massive turning point for the character, and yet it’s barely treated as something unusual, because there is nothing in the writing remarking this (if anything, I would argue that the reader’s outside knowledge of the character, coming from the wc and fandom discourse, is what sells this scene, more than the actual scene itself, an absolute desert of character writing). The Blast flashback (now inserted in this arc), where the roots of Tatsumaki’s distrust for others and her self-reliancy are revealed, is shown only after the fact, when the character has already cooperated with Genos. Over the course of the battle, there is no attention paid to the psychological and personal consequences this lifechanging event should have resulted on the mindframe of the character, even though it should be the centerpiece of this section of the arc since it was repurposed specifically for her. As a result, Tatsumaki’s “development” comes off as completely underooked and impersonal, because we never get an idea of the degree to which her major flaws were affecting her; and said flaws weren’t properly defined at all. This highlights another problem: how pampered Tatsumaki is in the remake. Tatsumaki never suffers as a result of her flaws. Instead of confronting her misdoings, the story always bends back ward to her and avoids the worst outcome for the character, who gets away with everything - if she suffers, it is to show off her rentless heroism, not as a punishment or a reality check. Case in point, the sisters conversation: instead of taking steps toward Fubuki, admitting her mistakes and earning her forgiveness for all her abuses, the manga goes the other way around, making Fubuki the one who has to bridge the void separating them because, obviously, Tatsumaki can’t be the one who should make the first move or try to make amends for her errors (after all, she never made one), but the poor victim who should be understood and apologized toward. The content of the conversation basically boils down to Fubuki essentially launching into a sentimental monologue about what a heroic and self-sacrificing hero Tatsumaki was all along, someone she didn’t understand and (undeservingly) loathed in the past. Fubuki’s 180-degree turn goes to the extent that now her life goal is to save Tatsumaki, her hero. Leaving aside how unearned, shoddy, and lame this is (the psychic sisters arc was shelved for this crap), Fubuki is implicitly blamed for their “conflict” (the manga can’t settle on whether or not this is a thing, for reasons I already stated previously). It’s Fubuki who has to revitalize their relationship, because she is the one who damaged it in the first place with a misplaced resentiment, not recognizing what treasure of a sister she had and how lucky she was to be Tatsumaki’s little sister. It’s almost as if the issues in the relationship didn’t come from Tatsumaki’s absolutely toxic and oppressive personality but from Fubuki never praising her sister and refusing to show empathy towards her; if Fubuki did, she would have gotten acknowledged by Tatsumaki and the relationship would have been restored long before the start of the series. After the insult to mankind represented by that manga arc, I’m now convinced that was what they aimed to, without having the courage to flatout express it while still portraying the whole thing a ambiguously “fair”: among the worst writing one could ever experience as a divine punishment for choosing to read that dogshit hentai shlock, there is a mind-breaking flashback where it’s shown that a toddler Fubuki attacked her poor Woobie sister, after the latter protected her. It’s frankly horrid. It reeks of amateur work, where the author has a bias he can’t hide no matter what and this ends up reducing his character pet into a shallow and unbearable snowflake. In the webcomic, Tatsumaki was constantly put in front of her less favorable traits, and she paid the consequences for all her mistakes, without the narrative making special rules specifically for her: Tatsumaki’s reckless and irresponsible actions in the MA arc gained her a humiliating defeat, resulting in an underwhelming performance during the MA arc; in the Esper Sisters arc, she endured a moral and factual defeat that forced her to leave her sister in peace, preventing Tatsumaki from further interfering in Fubuki’s life and molding her sister as she intended; Tatsumaki also saw her bias and mistrust for others crumble thanks to Saitama and the Fubuki’s group, which pushed her into meditating on those events; etc. Stuff like this is unthinkable for her manga character, basically the moral compass of the story, who never does anything wrong, and if she does, it’s hand-waved and never treated as such. But besides the author playing favorite with what effectively feels like his OC and blatantly pushing her at the expense of Fubuki and the rest, the way the relationship between the sisters was handled in the remake makes no sense, especially in hindsight. I frankly can’t comprehend why there was a conflict to begin with and why the manga pretended the two sisters were estranged when any single addition to their story/characters completely undermined this idea. Why even put emphasis on this resolution and depict it as a big deal (though with no narrative support, as I already evidenced earlier), when you have effectively muddled this development with all stupid additions that lessen what this (horrible) moment should represent? In the manga we have seen: Fubuki and Tatsumaki shopping together just fine (meaning that Fubuki was okay spending time with her sister long before this supposed turning point), Tatsumaki rescuing Fubuki multiple times because the latter is apparently a failure and an incompetent (remember how wc Tatsumaki decided to entirely focus on re-taking total control over Fubuki’s life and kill/brutally beat up anyone close to her for way less?), Tatsumaki being correct about Fubuki and being proven right at protecting her (for the aforementioned reasons), Tatsumaki doing nothing against Fubuki’s freedom nor representing a threat to her sister (she is her savior, after all), Fubuki failing at every turn (because in the manga she is a joke and a weakling, “so funny”!) and needing to be constantly monitored like a baby, Fubuki assuring us her sister would never harm her, etc.. So, exactly, why was there any tension between the two? The only answer is that the manga started out following the webcomic, but by introducing elements that directly contradicted it, be it the relationship in general or the characterization of the two, the whole reason they were still depicted as distant and cold to one another ended up ceasing to make any sort of sense. In hindsight, there was no reason for the sister feud to be a thing at all in the remake. No wonder Fubuki is now considered by the vast majority of the readers nothing but a worthless fanservice/comic relief with no redeeming qualities: after all, the manga obliterated her character, treating her as a punching box while erasing basically everything that defined the original character, replacing it with whatever the hell she is in the manga. Is this how the remake did justice to webcomic Fubuki? By degrading and humiliating her into what effectively is a disgusting representation of everything wrong with female characters in manga? What an improvement, then! Frankly, it’s baffling how this hansn’t been teared apart as much as it deserves. Godawful doesn’t even start to cover this biased, dumpster fire of an adaptation.

[EDIT: 01/07/2023/Updated: 13/07/2023] The rest of Fubuki’s “active” role in the plot (a few panels, basically) has been covered in my previous post (like in the case of the Rover fight and the Tank Top Master stuff) and the remaining moments, not examined there, are so minor that I’m ashamed to have to take these into account: they aren’t even character-related beats or plot-changing achievements, but, at best, background duties where Fubuki is employed as a glorified plot device (and most of the time even that isn’t the case). It’s incredible hard to even discuss these scenes panels, especially because most of this stuff happen off-screen and aren’t even properly shown. But let’s try this. First, many readers claim that Fubuki’s main contribution is to have healed the S-Class heroes: it’s not true. Fubuki only healed TankTop Master (with the help of Bomb and Pig God, by the way). Before that, TankTop Master somehow got better all by himself, going from being reduced to a minced meat corpse to looking slightly wounded (Zombieman who?). So Fubuki “saved” (and with others help too) someone who actually saved himself due to plot armor: incredible achievement. Than there is the case of Nichirin (the fact I have to mention this ink-waster says plenty about the quality and quantity of Fubuki’s content): we only see Fubuki actually assisting him on a single page (a couple of panels at most that are even difficult to notice at all, such a good job Murata and ONE did at highlighting Fubuki’s actions!), the rest of the time he is basically by himself. Before Fubuki’s arrival, in fact, the samurai survived without assistence for an unholy amount of time, after being hit by a spray of corrosive acid that liquified his internal organs and half of his body, having the strength to talk to Atomic Samurai and give him his asspull sword. Later, when Fubuki is seen taking care (/doing nothing in reality, but I will get to it) of Tatsumaki, Nichirin is nowhere to be seen (Chapter 163): if Fubuki keeping Nichirin in life support was essential to his survival, he should have been there, otherwise he would have died the instant Fubuki stopped taking care of him; and yet he was nowhere to be seen and still survived. So, while the manga wants to imply that Fubuki kept him in life support and was the reason he managed to live despite his injuries, this is not true, considering how both before and after he kept going by himself. Nichirin lived out of sheer willpower and plot armor, not because Fubuki’s aid was decisive in any noticeable way. Lastly, for what regards Tatsumaki, the injuries she sustained in the battles didn’t pose any danger to her life (seriously, not only because of the examples mentioned above, where way more gruesome and apparently fatal wounds were brushed off as easily as mere scratches, but also given how at no point the narrative treats Tatsumaki’s conditions as an urgent matter that her life depended on immediate assistence), and Fubuki’s whatever amounted to absolutely nothing in the end, not affecting either the overall plot, the two sisters or their relationship in any way. It all goes to show how meaningless and inconsequential Fubuki’s actions actually are: these characters all survived regardless of her and would have been fine if she wasn’t present - by the way, the page linked above in reference to Nichirin is set before the timeline split, so there is no mental gymnastics we can resort to. Fubuki didn’t accomplish anything narrative-wise here, zero at all. For any other character trivialities like these wouldn’t even be mentioned out of embarrassment of having to scratch the bottom of the barrel in order to come up with something to bring to the table, even if it turns out to be so pathetic and shallow. Their real moments of spotlight were so highlighted by the story and impactful for the overall plot that no one would dare bring up similar trifles in their cases (and in the case of these “epic Fubuki’s exploits”, it requires an unhealthy dose wishful thinking to even consider them something). The fact that one has to mention these reveals how unremarkable and insignificant Fubuki’s role in the manga turned out to be, despite the fantastic precedent set by the webcomic. It truly takes a really terrible writer to fumble this hard with something that was already perfectly laid out for them and as good as wc Fubuki - apparently by the same person who is writing both versions! Furthermore, the presence of a support hero in the cast gets completely undermined when we have witnessed a bunch of heroes being beaten to death only for them to bounce back to life due to pure, unbashed plot armor. After the umpteenth example of this, the reader has stopped paying attention to the conditions of the heroes and the fake-out deaths because all of them will survive/return to the action soon, so there is no need to be worried about them; consequently, what value is left to a healer if the healing is unneeded and the rest of the cast recovers basically by themselves? How can we look forward to seeing Fubuki and find her story engaging if her moments occur mostly offscreen and consist solely of healing/support instead of fighting (which, in an action series, it is 95% of the content, especially in a fighting-heavy arc like the Moster Association), and the healing-support is rendered useless by the fact every other character survives solely thanks to plot armor and without help? And this without getting into the matter that Fubuki never needed these bullshit sterotypical powers in the first place - but this was addressed in the previous post. Moreover, and this is the coup de grace to her relevancy and portrayal in the manga, Fubuki’s support is only and always brought up (save for one instance, the Genos chapter) as the punchline to a terrible gag - see the TankTop Master examples or the wc Garou reference - if it’s brought up at all. “Fubuki has been treated better in the manga than in the source material”, yeah, sure, totally.

As for the chance of Fubuki vs. Psykos still happening: if somehow Psykos escapes and plays the role of the villain (again), Fubuki will have to deal with what actually is Tatsumaki’s defeated leftover and not the Dragon Level Esper at the top of her game, leader of an organization of powerful monsters capable of posing a threat to the HA and its heroes - if not then it will be the Monster Association arc all over again sans Garou. And considering how much Psykos has contributed to drag the MA arc with a multitude of new forms and power-ups in her interminable battle against Tatsumaki, re-using Psykos in the future for another esper duel could be quite exhausting and repetitive at this point. Moreover, with Fubuki and Psykos disregarding each other for the entirety of the arc, any chance at a good build-up has been squandered since this side-plot is so far in the “blink and do you miss it” territory that when is eventually reasumed it will be quite past its hour, especially because the few allusions to it were suffocated and overshadowed by the myriad of other storylines the authors clearly gave priority to. How Murata and ONE intend to progress this side-plot and write Fubuki in the future, given the treatment she had received so far, only time will tell. I’m also quite perplexed at the choice of “moving” (?) the battle into the aftermath of the Monster Association arc, considering what follows it. Hopefully, this time they planned something better for Fubuki, though that will still have to stand over the extremely wonky and frail foundations of 100 + chapters of a poorly handled character (and that’s being generous).

Miscellanea.

The Fubuki Group appeared in Chapter 131 among the heroes leaving the hospital and joining the fights/rescue operations, only for them to completely disappear from the manga. The B-Class only reappeared in Chapter 164  when they reunited with Fubuki, proceeded to get spooked by the world-shattering battle/sudden entrance of Garou (1, 2) and were last seen among the heroes who were kicking his ass after the Zero-Punch. They are the only heroes that never showed up during the surface battles out of all the ones leaving the hospital: the members of Tank Top Army, for example, who departed from the hospital at the same time, were helping civilians in more than one occasion, just like Sneck and Lightning Max where seen multiple times. Maybe the following chapters (or redraws) will pretend they had some sort of utility (from a storytelling perspective, I mean), but as of now, their scene in Chapter 131 was a waste of ink and the reunion with Fubuki happened in one panel as minusucle background scribbles. Sidenote, if there was any doubt left about the manga not allowing (most of) the S-Class to commit anything slightly questionable, take a look at Chapter 169 and how it portrays the S-Class: instead of them advocating for Garou’s execution, it’s a bunch of non-S-Class heroes led by Amai Mask who are willing to kill on the spot the Hero Hunter while the heroic and noble S-Class bring them back to their senses - in the original they agreed with Mask, Child Emperor included; I’m rather curious to see whether or not Murata and ONE will backtrack on this for the Esper Sisters arc.

[EDIT 26/03/2024] And since I mentioned the group, I want to talk about how the manga mishandled them as well - after all, they are an extension of Fubuki’s character, so how could the manga not butcher them too? Save for the bonus “the Struggles of the Blizzard Group”, which is an innocuous and silly chapter, and the Special “Numbers”, where they had a limited role, pretty much every single addition that featured the group only contributed to undermine the organization, tarnish their portrayal, botch any preparation for future developments and completely contradict Fubuki’s supposed talent as a leader. Even though they are presented as a gathering of the elite B-Class heroes, this notion is never made manifest by what the series presented to us, since they spend the vast majority of their screen time losing, trembling and fleeing away. If in the webcomic it is mentioned that taking down a Demon Level Threat represents the upper limit of their strength as a group, in the manga the same claim would be nothing more than a hilarious and delusional boast (even for manga Fubuki herself), and the fact that in the wc they actually did, albeit offscreen, defeat multiple high Tiger Level Threats (perhaps even Demons, Chapter 134) while in the manga they only met failures and defeats showcases how much of a downgrade they were subjected to in this adaptation. Keep in mind that this is the same manga that wastes pages on pages on very minor characters just because the authors think it would be cool for them to have an action scene, even though none of this will have much of an impact on the overall narrative or actually benefit anything at all. So, while trivial matters get an unproportional amount of time dedicated to them, important side characters like the Fubuki group who, for a multitude of reasons, require and warrant focus on them, get neglected, if not totally undermined. In regard to their performances, the group, which should have excellent teamwork and discipline, shows on the battlefield worse coordination and group cooperation than characters who have never fought together before and have no talent in this regard. Every single time they fight, the members of the Fubuki’s group charge head-on at an enemy without any strategy, intel or plan at all, which always leads to their defeat. Meanwhile, the Tank Top Group, which in the webcomic is shown in a way worse light than the Fubuki Group and has underperformed pretty much every single time they were shown in a chapter, in the manga have been portrayed more sympathetically and even had a role during the events of the MA arc for some reason (as discussed in the paragraph above), despite being related to a character way less important than Fubuki and having no relevant role in future events, unlike the Fubuki’s group. Even the Support Team, a manga original addition, demonstrated better coordination in taking down the monsters, as well as more sophisticated tactics and impressive feats than the Fubuki group, despite having no prior joint training or preparation compared to them. Adding salt to the wound, manga original characters like Glasses and Needle Star have only gotten better since they left the group, proving how the group in the manga is actually detrimental and harmful to its members and demonstrating what a bad leader Fubuki is. Isn’t it comical to what degree the manga goes in order to shat on Fubuki’s character? It’s so blatant that writing about it seems almost superfluous. Funny how they even pretend to pay lip service to Fubuki’s leader talent when under her command people underperform and do worse than on their own, on top of the fact that she only leads her subordinates to pathetic defeats and immense failures. With such nonexistent groundwork, how were the satements of the Fubuki’s group at the end of the Esper Sisters arc supposed to make sense when they voiced their gratitude and demonstrated their strength and loyalty to their leader, sticking together with her and even fighting Tatsumaki? It would have come off as inconsistent with what was previously shown and unintentionally hilarious, considering how none of that is true in the manga. Why do the members even follow Fubuki and respect their lead, considering how many mistakes and failures Fubuki collects in the manga, contrary to the webcomic, where we can see why they chose to stay by her side and how much of an actual self-sacrificial, great leader she is? It’s a question left unanswered. How Fubuki managed to get to that position and maintain a group considering how many fiascos the manga attributes to them is honestly a mystery; pretty much any other B-Class has better showings than them, Fubuki included, which is beyond absurd. The downgrade suffered by the Fubuki’s group is one of the numerous instances of the webcomic doing less with a character but actually building up them and giving them prominence when it’s needed, while the manga adds a bunch of stuff that takes away from them entirely and actually detracts from the story; for example, the whole narrative of them being actually a hindrance to Fubuki, a manga original departure whose problems I already discussed in Part 1. Now, Fubuki being a bad leader and the group being a bunch of failures could be a story direction to take these characters, but, in reality, it’s not something the manga is actually exploring or elaborating on (see the “makings of a great leader” and how most of the failures have no actual consequence for the characters themselves, but solely to their portrayal and the reader’s perception of them); even if that were the case, it still would be incomprehensible how the manga chose to adapt Fubuki like this and go against anything written in the source material: for anyone else, save a few, flaws and negative sides aregleefully ignored or glossed over completely, even portrayed positively in regard to some (Tatsumaki), in the remake, but for Fubuki it is always the opposite, as if the authors are actively sabotaging her character at any chance they get. I could also easily bring here the absolute trash of that arc as a further demonstration of what I wrote, since it’s a pure, undistilled concentration of the abysmal level of writing, but this post doesn’t cover that arc (thankfully) and I believe that that massive concentration of writing crimes is so self-evidently revolting that there is no need to explain how it annihilates the character.

Always in Chapter 169 Saitama states he is grateful to Garou for having saved both Genos and King: in the webcomic, it was Fubuki the one showing up there and basically saving anyone (Chapter 74).

Nitpick: In her last appearance in the webcomic MA arc, Fubuki rescued Fang from the boulders trapping him; manga Fubuki’s last appearance has her collapsing over her sister while King, who in the wc asked Fubuki to lend him a hand at helping Fang (because he couldn’t do it), heroically protects them both from the radioactive rain. 

*I’m adding this page purely because Psykos is mentioning Fubuki, but to tell the truth, it’s generic threat to Fubuki #184 prompting a Tatsumaki cool sister moment down the line.

**I maintain that if the manga committed to the leadership thing for real and wanted to convince us of the believability of it, then Fubuki should have come up with a plan and organized the S-Class in order to protect her sister/defeat JetPsykorochi. That was the perfect “testing ground” for her “vocation”, I think.

***At the time, I liked that chapter for what it was, albeit with reserves, but if I knew that was basically it for Fubuki in the arc, then my opinion would have been entirely different.

[azurecanary]

"The Gordy side plot was really interesting, I'm just confused why it didn't tie into the story."

No no, you don't understand.

Nope spoilers below:

The Gordy "sideplot" isn't a sideplot. It plays right into the main plot, especially the stuff with Jupe.

It very much weirded me out where Jupe is showing the Haywoods through this attraction of Gordy's massacre. But then I realized.

His childhood trauma was made into a spectacle (as if this isn't the whole point of the movie) and he had to be okay with it.

Not just that, but he thought he was okay with it.

He thought that's what you do. The bad things that happen to you are made to entertain others.

So what does he do when he finds out that there's an alien "ship" eating up horses? He makes it a spectacle.

Not just that, but he thinks he can control JJ (Jean Jacket) the same way he "controlled" Gordy, and potentially have JJ put down just like Gordy.

The Gordy plot ties so well into the story and, unless you are well acquainted with the long lasting effects of untreated trauma, you probably won't notice.