#asspull-adjacent

[asspull3x]

— @mlembug

For those too lazy to find the A3X GitHub repo and from there the archived forum thread that spawned it, here's some of my personal favorite moments.

Oh my god, I'm considered a noob in these parts and even I know you're an idiot.

Why do you keep referring to the Virtual Console? AFAIK, they work exactly like any other emulator internally.

I don't think you understand how intensive a "megahertz" is.

And now I sit down with a glass of fine wine in front of a fire to read this thread.

Congratulations, you just defined "program" Well, for programs without conditional branching.

Sora reminds me of physics lectures I went to that started off "Assume a horse running on a racetrack is a block of uniform density sliding along a frictionless surface…"

Presumably it's a Hebrew idiom that just doesn't translate into English very well.

What math operation does PUSH represent?

Guys, guys….I think we're getting off track here. Don't you all realise that it's all about TEH MATHZ?

I think his interesting idea is that bsnes should be implemented as a system of linear equations, rather than as an imperative sequence of instructions, and that will make it as fast as ZSNES. I'll give him credit, I've never heard that particular proposal before.

Excuse me, sir, I find this image HIGHLY OFFENSIVE! I think I speak for everybody present when I say that we use SQUARE pixels around these parts - maybe 8:7 at the very most - but none of this 1:2 rubbish!

This thread shall now be about pixel aspect ratio. Anyone else in the 16:10 camp? 😉

PEOPLE HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR DECADES PEOPLE HAVE BEATEN IT TO DEATH OVER THEIR ENTIRE CAREER

pages = (rage function(miscommunication) * (concepts covered + (number of trolls * peanut gallery + 1)^0.65))^trolling potential * scale constant

Ah, now we're getting on to artificial intelligence. Because that's what it would take to perfectly identify what is code and what is data with zero interaction whatsoever.

Very OT, but, I suddenly want to make a game for the asspull.

Mednafen needs a motherboard file. This discussion is moot.

Hard to believe that all happened almost ten years ago.

[novaursa]

In your opinion, would it be possible for someone from House Celtigar to claim and ride a dragon?

House Celtigar might have Valyrian ancestry, but that doesn't automatically make them dragonriders. Just like having purple eyes and a fondness for fire doesn't mean you're kin to Balerion. The Celtigars were never dragonlords in Valyria. They didn’t ride dragons. They didn’t breed them. They didn’t carve towers from black stone or rule a Freehold. They were rich. That’s it. They were the equivalent of a Valyrian merchant prince who bought influence and later clung to the coattails of the Targaryens when they came west.

Their ancestral seat, Claw Isle, is a speck of nothing compared to Dragonstone. Their power came from silver and ships, not fire and blood. Even their position in Westeros was always a courtesy—they were Targaryen loyalists, but not equals. No Celtigar has ever claimed a dragon. Not during the Conquest. Not during the Dance. If there was ever a time to step up and prove their Valyrian “blood,” it was during the Dance—and they didn’t. They backed Rhaenyra, sure, but they didn’t ride with her.

Also, their bloodline is diluted. The Celtigars intermarried with local nobility for generations. Whatever faint ember of Valyrian blood they might’ve had is likely long snuffed out. Even if they tried to claim a dragon, it wouldn’t recognize them. There’s more dragonfire in a bastard Blackfyre than in a Celtigar.

So no—unless GRRM pulls some asspull in a future book, it’s safe to say the Celtigars were never dragonriders. They were dragon-adjacent at best. Wealthy, loyal, ambitious? Sure. But not dragonlords.

They were the valet, not the conqueror.

[definitelynotplanetfall]

i used to never like mysteries because my parents would only introduce, like, old british mysteries. and understanding the clues at all involved knowledge of the cultural subtleties of the upper-crust of a different time and place that i didn't have and they never provided, so the solution always seemed random and arbitrary. then i got this book of "mind puzzles" most of which were pretty solid (if simple) logic or math puzzles, trivia, and optical illusions for some reason.

it also had these bizarre "riddles" that were literally impossible to solve using the information given, which convinced me that either i was a moron or mysteries are bullshit. there is one that i remember above all others even after all these years. i need to show you photographic evidence.

To reiterate, this is being presented as a riddle with one correct answer. Let's also look at the clue and put the answer under the readmore.

so we're off to a terrible start, because they've just listed some things they could have plausibly done to get rid of the teenagers but weren't the one solution they made up in their head. this is just a story with details missing, presented next to concrete logic puzzles, to make you feel stupid for not guessing the one correct answer when there are many possible answers based on the information available.

okay, are you ready? (you aren't.)

fucking incredible! 10/10 no notes. i hate this book and i will treasure it until i die. this is what i mean by a Dumb Artifact.

(as you can tell from the two adjacent answers, not all of these are unguessable asspulls, but a significant portion and maybe a majority are, depending on your tolerance of such things.)

there were actual whodunits in the book but i assumed they were also bullshit, because the bullshit riddles were bullshit in the same way the mysteries i had been presented with were bullshit, so i assumed the bullshit was a Type Of Logic I Could Never Understand that happened to be endemic to mysteries and i never actually bothered with them.

[thelreads]

I don't remember anyone stating that Slide-n-Glide required to be from the hands or feet, just that initially it was '3 points of contact,' so he could theoretically slide on his feet and butt, but his image was already bad enough. Also he later revealed that the whole 3 points thing was just for him to keep balanced while sliding, hence him learning air steps and shooty shooty stuff. Honestly he should have figured this out a while ago.

Yes but even before that he showed how his quirk was activated through his hands and feet, his mother's quirk is hand-based, and yes kids have stronger version's of their parents' quirks, and mutations can happen, but... what

But I think what's more egregious is that this is just an asspull. No, there's no debating it this time, this was an asspull. There was zero foreshadowing, implications, or even the idea that this could be possible, because again, his quirk activator is on his extremities. Even after his awakening and upgrade Shigaraki still needs to touch things with his fingers to activate his quirk. After that he can chain it through other adjacent things, but the quirk itself did not change, it only got more powerful, it grew.

You could argument that Toga's quirk broke it's rules and changed completely when she found out she could copy others' quirks, but that's not true. Her quirk is turning into others, and their quirks are part of them. Her quirk reached it's logical conclusion.

If we followed this train of logic, Koichi managing to touch a surface and make a barrier or repulsion field around it, almost like what Captain Celebrity could do, would make some sense. I can accept an argument that "well his hands and feet are touching his body, so technically he can activate it like you said alongside his skin"but honestly, is this really a hill worth dying on?

I'm just... so disappointed. The chapter was actually going so fine, and that part with McBee going fucking feral was cool as hell, he was finally embracing the fact he's not human, but alas, I can't compliment Furuhashi without a finger of the monkey paw curling.

[fluffyartbl0g]

NOOO I REMAIN ADAMANT THAT THE SUN WAS NOT AN ASSPULL!!! THEYVE BEEN FORESHADOWING THE CREATION OF A SUN ADJACENT ENERGY SOURCE SINCE THE EGGHEAD ARC!!! But regardless, ur recap of the ending was absolutely heartwrenching... I cried so hard when Luffy finally realised T ^ T

Redraw of the panels that SHATTERED MY HEART o(；△；)o!!! OG panels + Opinions on the Luffy separation arc under read more

Keep reading

[galacov6]

1/2/6/13/16 🧡🧡

Favorite platonic ship

sasuke/team taka i have been really enjoying as of late. altho i am not opposed to romo stuff with him with suigetsu or jugo but overall i really do like the platonic connection with him and the crew lol

2. Favorite familial ship

kabuto and urushi! as much as i'm glad kabuto has avoided massive character massacring (well, anymore so than his post itachi-asspull-no-jutsu-ing) i really wish i could have seen SOMETHING of him and urushi.

i think about this all the time.

6. Favorite crack ship

hm... i have a handful of crack/crack-adjacent ships i really really like but having to pick one... sai/shikamaru?

13. A ship you liked but stopped liking or even started to hate

a lot of the akatsuki ships. not naming names but i think it'd be pretty easy to suss out which ones lol.

16. A ship you love but everyone hates.

i can't think of any ship that i have that would really fit into that category... like sure there are the obnoxious homophobic twitter ss stannies who hate sns with a passion but i think the fact that sns is practically synonymous with yaoi and was in the trenches with fucking kawoshin in the end of the yaoi poll wars kinda cancels that out bc it is so widely loved by a lot of people.

but otherwise like most of my other ships are fairly obscure enough to avoid a massive swarm of hate imo.

like. maybe my kabuto ships but i think it's not a specific hate of any ship rather just people hating on kabuto (somewhat understandable but at the same time a personal affront)?? idk.

maybe kakayama? but even then i haven't seen any real hate for it just people who prefer kakashi paired with other people.

[lancrewizzard]

I’ve got a few thoughts all kind of jumbled up together, so this could become a bit of a ramble. Fair warning, this does involve me talking about Harry Potter in 2020, but only because it’s a good example of what I’m talking about and so well known. I could say more or less the same thing about any number of fantasy series, especially the more YA adjacent ones.

Basically, I have a beef with protagonist centric worldbuilding in something that’s asking you to use even a small bit of your brain. HP is a good example of this with something that’s fine for a kid’s book but becomes an issue as the series evolves. Abused kid finds himself in this magical world where he’s rich and famous and the only people who don’t like him are objectively wrong and generally evil? He’s the best, most important person at this sport in his whole school? It’s an attractive fantasy, easy to see why kids went ham for it. Heck I know I did as a young’un.

The problem comes when the kids and readers grow up and the world has to become more cohesive as it grows beyond this one school, and Rowling failed at that. (And this is without getting into another pet peeve of mine - the 11th hour asspull, where a writer realises they’ve backed themselves into a corner and says some random shite like “magic can’t make food because the plot says so” when they realise the only way to plug a plot hole is to draw more attention than leaving it open.) I’m sorry, but a subversion of the Chosen One trope falls flat on its face when you spent the first 3-4 books making your chosen one the focal point of not just your books but the universe they exist in.

As I said, it’s an issue I have with a lot of the series I read in my teens. In the Skulduggery Pleasant series, Valkyrie goes from the character readers can relate to, to a mage of world breaking power who is vitally important to everything. Eragon started off that way and carried on through all the books, and honestly I’m glad I read that as a tween when my standards were so much lower.

And then at the other end of the scale you’ve got Adam from Good Omens who can literally change the laws of the universe, is the lynchpin of the entire plot, and yet the world he exists in doesn’t revolve around him. Other characters have their own arcs that only barely intersect with him, minor characters don’t even know he exists, and nor should they. He’s one part of a whole functioning world, and I hope I can become half that good at writing powerful characters who aren’t the centre of their own universe.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Meanwhile, In Castle Bat-Wank

God, it feels like i was just talking about my disdain for the direction all of this Bat-wank is going in DC Comics. Look, i love me some Bat but this is too much. I don't like The Batman Who Laughs. This f*cker, dope design aside, is a straight up Gary Stu. I mean, Batman is the biggest Gary Stu in comics, but he ain't some inter-dimensional warlord with power enough to punch out Superman. I hated the fact that this asshole just shows up and is an immediate threat because he's a Jokererized Batman. Why does that make him the worst thing, ever? Every one of his arcs, has been stupid an chock full of contrived plotting. I’ve never seen so much narrative contortion to make a character relevant, in my entire life.

Look, i like Batman. I just want to be as clear about that as possible. I am a fan. I think he's the best hero in DC. Making him the cornerstone of every massive event has mixed results but i get why it happens. He's the goddamn Batman. Dude is one of the most intelligent motherf*ckers in the entire DC universe. Batman is Tony Stark but with none of the charm and levity, just morose self-loathing and cartoonishly ridiculous anger issues. Dope. I also get that, according to Babel and SEVERAL other sources, Bats can tank every other hero in the DC universe with planning and prep time. It’s not far fetched for me to believe that The Batman Who Laughs can kill everyone in his world. It is hard for me to believe he'd have anything but a stalemate going up against Prime Bats. That's the problem. TBWL gets these ridiculous asspulls because he NEEDS them. There is no legitimate for him to beat Prime Batman and that makes for lame writing. It makes for lame characterization. If your edgelord, bad-ass, Judge Death rip-off of an OC, can’t beat an established character without a deus ex machina, maybe your OC is contrived nonsense? Maybe write them better. What does DC do? More asspulls! This latest one is the asspulls of all asspulls.

After being murdered by Wonder Woman, who needed a magical invisible chainsaw of truth to pull that sh*t off to begin with, The motherf*cker transfers his brain into a Bruce Wayne that became a Doctor Manhattan. So now The Batman Who Laughs, who not only had literal superpowers to begin with, he now has the reality altering abilities of a Captain f*cking Atom. That sh*t is mad bogus, man. It reads as cheap fan fiction and i hate it. TBWL was already established as a multi-dimensional threat. He literally lead an incursion from a dark matter universe, into the light matter universe, and brought everyone to their knees. He then f*cked with Batman enough to bring him to the brink of becoming just like him. He then completely usurped Apex Lex, someone with abilities tantamount to actual f*cking Monitors, to become the right hand of Perpetua: Mother of all reality. Now, he has been gifted the ability to directly manipulate said reality. This motherf*cker has been around for three years, man. The f*ck?

I love Batman. I do. Not as much as Spidey but more than any other character in the DC pantheon. The majority of my favorite characters from that universe are Bat-adjacent; be they hero, anti-hero, or villain. Seeing my dude being so poorly handled is a real frustration, especially coming off such classic stories like The Court of Owls, Death in the Family, and The War of Jokes and Riddles. I mean, the whole Curse of the White Knight narrative is some of the best Bat-stories I've read in decades. You’re telling me something of that pedigree is being punched out by the same company that’s sh*tting out this Death Metal drivel? Now, i have to not only deal with how poorly Punchline is being written, I gotta really let a brain-swapped, Manhattan powered, TBWL assault my good taste, too? Never mind that this sh*t is the exact story arc for Marvel's poorly received Axis event from a few years ago. Just swap TBWL with Red Skull and Dr. Manhattan with Onslaught, and it's the same f*cking story. Such pedestrian writing. Such uninspired creation.

[felassan]

Was playing DAI again, is it possible that Felassan could be like Mythal? his death was only physical and he could technically "crawl his way back" to another body?

oooh. thanku for the ask! I’ll preface this by saying that I am 16847% on-board with and here for any theory or idea that would provide for Felassan to come back, even ridiculous ones, shaky grounds, asspulls or handwave/retcons like if Leliana or Anders died prior to DA:I and DA2 - such is my love for best elf. (guess this makes me biased)

that said, I think Mythal’s ability to crawl her way through time to another physical body and possess/merge with it and that person, and her Horcruxing abilities, are due to the quality[ies] that make the Evanuris .. well, Evanuris (“the first of my people do not die so easily” and all), and would not be available to a regular ancient elf. Felassan’s situation is more Abelas-adjacent, minus any geas deal or personal compulsion to legit servitude. 8′(

were I one of the writers I’d instead go with: Felassan was killed in the Fade -> ‘killed’ -> like how killing Feynriel, also a Dreamer, in the Fade renders him Tranquil in DA2, Felassan was instead just made Tranquil -> the PC in DA4 hears rumors of a strange Tranquil elf whose knowledge might be useful in the fight against the Dread Wolf -> you can go and recruit Felassan and cure him from Tranquility. (an aside: a Tranquil or formerly-Tranquil companion is so interesting to me, a heightened emotional state side effect of the cure like Pharamond’s provides a lot of interesting interaction opportunities. to add, Cassandra knows about the cure and is shown allied with the remnants of the people who are opposing Solas in the table-stabbing scene in Trespasser).

there are problems with this idea as well like 1) Solas wouldn’t make someone Tranquil imo, he’d rather straight up kill them, such is his aversion to it, and he’s not stupid enough to think he’s killing someone but accidentally just make them Tranquil 2) the passage where Felassan dies does not rly have reasonable wiggle-room, it’s written from his POV and explicitly says “the blow that killed him”, and Cole is explicit also with “his friend had to die” 3) does the Tranquil cure even work on people who weren’t made Tranquil via the usual rite of tranquility that the Circles use? 4) isn’t it the case that if it’s a Dreamer who kills someone in the Fade, the someone dies? I think about the stories of ancient Tevinter magisters that were able to deal with their rivals by offing them in their dreams [tho you could say that offing them in their dreams and so, making them tranquil, would still constitute dealing with your rivals because a tranquil isn’t going to have political designs or ambitions..]

anyway, dear bioware, I am ready and willing to handwave all of the above points tho btw lmao.. pls. maybe the explicit text/words is twisted to be metaphorical death.. idk but like I said I’m willing to accept/handwave literally any convoluted or weird writing explanation lol :D

Update: (I usually prefer dead characters to stay dead but 1. when I say this I’m usually referring to characters who were killed by the player as a result of player choice 2. imo Felassan’s death or ‘death’ is kinda weird in that it could go either way because of the Fade and Tranquil stuff. and it seems from this interview that that was kind of intentional or at least the writers are aware how they could write around it.)

[agoddamn]

You know, I'm surprised that people act like gay Shiro MUST have been a last-second asspull. Voltron is an exceptionally sexless show but when you're watching from the beginning it's noticeable that this famous, popular, handsome young super star of a space explorer never has a tearful girlfriend left behind, or a young cadet girl crushing on him, or a female alien lavishing him with attention (as a Straight Man [comedy wise, ahem] he practically begs for a Lwaxana plot), or gets mentioned favorably in comparison to Lance when the horndog jokes are flowing. Voltron fucking loves easy jokes! Voltron never met a bar too low to limbo under! It absolutely is unusual that they pass up easy punchlines with Shiro.

The closest Shiro gets to being even adjacent to sexual desire is Coran's "you're the most popular character, now put on this super tight shirt and get out there" joke in the coked-up pageant mom Coran episode, which is notably devoid of any gender marker even though it could have made the joke funnier (compare: cracks about Kotetsu Kaburagi's most popular demographic being middle-aged women).

Showrunners will always give you a Certain Value of truth in interviews, but with the amount of comments from VAs that gay Shiro was settled early (if not explicitly portrayed) and the surprisingly careful effort paid to never associate him with even unreciprocated female attraction, I fully believe it.

[flaresanimedump]

Ok ok I have thoughts about Monstrum Nox again.

1) Desperately wanting Jules got me through the earlier chapters. I love that boy. Also like that they didn't make him die, but it totally made sense given that Zola had been working on a cure as a side project for 500 years. It didn't seem like an asspull with that context. Very few diseases last 500 years. Jules's dad came along at just the right time.

2) Credo's laugh tic was the only annoying thing about him. He was the perfect brute character. Sadly I forgot about him the moment I got Jules.

3) Everything about white cat was bad. Everything. Her gift was the worst to use. Her plot was atrocious. "Stealing from the rich to give to the poor is bad, despite the fact that the poor are being taxed more because of the circumstances of their birth and my family's company is poisoning them." Even if she saw problems with her methods, the easiest thing to do would be to set up a partnership with the doctors that let the slum residents get free medicine for the poison her dad was filling them with. Pay their medical bills at the source, you walnut. Setting up a flower shop for them to spend their non-existent medicine money on as a way of making amends? Are you kidding me?

3.1) AND ANOTHER THING. The sidequest where her dad tells off that paper maker for having a shitty product shows that the writers have no clue how business deals work. If Pendleton said nothing about the quality as it declined (and the guy didn't know it was bad so we know he didn't), that shit's on him. Throwing away business partners of 100+ years the moment something better comes along without a goddamn word to why is in fact how you get backstabbed in the business industry (which is exactly what happened, and one day he's just going to get his ass assassinated).

4) Yufa fanclub, president: me.

5) I didn't love the switches between Adol and Adol. It was especially bad when I had to remember I couldn't double jump. But also the prison scenes were really boring.

6) Chatelard's point thing was infuriatingly pretentious. I wanted to kill him so bad. AND THEN THEY MADE ME SAD HE DIED WTF.

7) Chatelard and Lucien's brother were married.

8) Emo Adol. In 2019. Astounding. Amazing.

9) Aprilis and Zola were. The best. Aprilis really comes off as a total himbo when you take into account the fact that she climbs the bell tower to pose and grandstand like an emo before every battle and any time someone mentions Zola she's like "...yeah he's unique." meanwhile Zola's off killing god and everyone on the team is like "why did you even ally with this crazy mother fucker in the first place???" and she's like "well." and then Zola comes back and is like "so I successfully killed god for you Aprilis because he fucked up real bad, so I cleaned up his mess while I was at it and also gave my notes to this one doctor so we can cure your other friend and I can bring people back from the dead but I only care about you and like 4 other people so I'm gonna retire." And everyone is like "I;m, sorry what." and Aprilis is like "see."

10) there was nothing, nothing more satisfying than getting to kill the general who abandoned Chatelard to die, the bishop who was "just following orders" when he sentenced Aprilis to death, and the king who ordered Aprilis's death. Thank you Zola for giving me such intense catharsis this Christmas. Thank you Zola for tormenting them but not really being all that crazy about any of it. Zola I love you so much-

11) Zola picking up Grimnir's goddamn job and eventually being the reason the region even survived Grimnir's shitty plan. Zola being the only one who was looking to the future with respect to the Nox. Zola becoming god-adjacent just to save Aprilis and their friends. Zola retaining that power after the nox was gone, but having achieved his goal, putting himself back in his own ancient body. Despite having the ability to create new bodies which he actively did for Doll. Just because he didn't do any of it for himself. He didn't even need to live with the friends he worked tirelessly, for centuries, to give normal lives to. He only wanted them to live and be happy all along. He never lost sight of that goal and he retired and gave up all his power the moment he reached it. He could still do it again but he won't. Because he's THE BEST FUCKING BOY OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.

12) me sitting there in love with Zola cheering him on like "do you want help Zola sir you seem like you've taken on a lot and I can do legwork like a champ" until he says "I pulled the gods out of your memory, Adol!" and my reaction was literally "oh no honey there's a reason Adol killed them..." was quite possibly the greatest gameplay experience I've had in a decade.

[smokeybrand]

Meanwhile, In Castle Bat-Wank

God, it feels like i was just talking about my disdain for the direction all of this Bat-wank is going in DC Comics. Look, i love me some Bat but this is too much. I don't like The Batman Who Laughs. This f*cker, dope design aside, is a straight up Gary Stu. I mean, Batman is the biggest Gary Stu in comics, but he ain't some inter-dimensional warlord with power enough to punch out Superman. I hated the fact that this asshole just shows up and is an immediate threat because he's a Jokererized Batman. Why does that make him the worst thing, ever? Every one of his arcs, has been stupid an chock full of contrived plotting. I’ve never seen so much narrative contortion to make a character relevant, in my entire life.

Look, i like Batman. I just want to be as clear about that as possible. I am a fan. I think he's the best hero in DC. Making him the cornerstone of every massive event has mixed results but i get why it happens. He's the goddamn Batman. Dude is one of the most intelligent motherf*ckers in the entire DC universe. Batman is Tony Stark but with none of the charm and levity, just morose self-loathing and cartoonishly ridiculous anger issues. Dope. I also get that, according to Babel and SEVERAL other sources, Bats can tank every other hero in the DC universe with planning and prep time. It’s not far fetched for me to believe that The Batman Who Laughs can kill everyone in his world. It is hard for me to believe he'd have anything but a stalemate going up against Prime Bats. That's the problem. TBWL gets these ridiculous asspulls because he NEEDS them. There is no legitimate for him to beat Prime Batman and that makes for lame writing. It makes for lame characterization. If your edgelord, bad-ass, Judge Death rip-off of an OC, can’t beat an established character without a deus ex machina, maybe your OC is contrived nonsense? Maybe write them better. What does DC do? More asspulls! This latest one is the asspulls of all asspulls.

After being murdered by Wonder Woman, who needed a magical invisible chainsaw of truth to pull that sh*t off to begin with, The motherf*cker transfers his brain into a Bruce Wayne that became a Doctor Manhattan. So now The Batman Who Laughs, who not only had literal superpowers to begin with, he now has the reality altering abilities of a Captain f*cking Atom. That sh*t is mad bogus, man. It reads as cheap fan fiction and i hate it. TBWL was already established as a multi-dimensional threat. He literally lead an incursion from a dark matter universe, into the light matter universe, and brought everyone to their knees. He then f*cked with Batman enough to bring him to the brink of becoming just like him. He then completely usurped Apex Lex, someone with abilities tantamount to actual f*cking Monitors, to become the right hand of Perpetua: Mother of all reality. Now, he has been gifted the ability to directly manipulate said reality. This motherf*cker has been around for three years, man. The f*ck?

I love Batman. I do. Not as much as Spidey but more than any other character in the DC pantheon. The majority of my favorite characters from that universe are Bat-adjacent; be they hero, anti-hero, or villain. Seeing my dude being so poorly handled is a real frustration, especially coming off such classic stories like The Court of Owls, Death in the Family, and The War of Jokes and Riddles. I mean, the whole Curse of the White Knight narrative is some of the best Bat-stories I've read in decades. You’re telling me something of that pedigree is being punched out by the same company that’s sh*tting out this Death Metal drivel? Now, i have to not only deal with how poorly Punchline is being written, I gotta really let a brain-swapped, Manhattan powered, TBWL assault my good taste, too? Never mind that this sh*t is the exact story arc for Marvel's poorly received Axis event from a few years ago. Just swap TBWL with Red Skull and Dr. Manhattan with Onslaught, and it's the same f*cking story. Such pedestrian writing. Such uninspired creation.