#but i think this is the best watsonian explanation

[aromanticduck]

I used to be one of those people who said "why doesn't Mrs Bucket get a job too if they're so poor?", but now I realise... Their household has four bed-bound elderly people. She's a full-time carer.

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

So I had Right Ho, Jeeves playing in the background just now and I noticed something I’d missed before:

“Of course, I’m right. I’ve got engaged three times at Brinkley. No business resulted, but the fact remains. And I went there without the foggiest idea of indulging in the tender pash. I hadn’t the slightest intention of proposing to anybody. Yet no sooner had I entered those romantic grounds than I found myself reaching out for the nearest girl in sight and slapping my soul down in front of her. It’s something in the air.”

What are these three engagements? To the best of my memory, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the only women Bertie has actually been engaged to that we know of at this point are Florence, Honoria, and Pauline. His first engagement to Madeline doesn’t happen until later in this book. He got engaged to Florence at a house party in Easeby, Honoria at her house, and Pauline in New York. Plus Honoria couldn’t have been one of them anyway because these sound like they were willing (if unplanned) engagements.

Doylist explanation is probably that Wodehouse bunged the line in because he needed Bertie to say something convincing at that moment and just didn’t give it much thought. What do we think the Watsonian explanation is? Is Bertie lying to Gussie to give him confidence? Is he, as I’ve recently decided to headcanon, presenting himself as unluckier in love than he really is to avoid raising suspicion about his refusal to marry? If he really got engaged three times at Brinkley, was this pre-Jeeves (in which case I assume the girls themselves broke the engagements without much fanfare)? Are those three ex-fiancées still, in that case, lurking menaces who remain unaccounted for to this day? If they were Jeeves-era engagements, you’d think we’d have heard about them, because Jeeves obviously isn’t going to take that sitting down. Are there lost in-universe Jeeves manuscripts floating around somewhere? Why didn’t Bertie publish them?

Dozens of exciting possibilities

[darkmodepls]

Selfish Heterodynes

And why that's a good thing for their people

One thing that is commonly known about Sparks is that they have extremely self centered worldviews and motivations.

Sparks find it very hard to care about other people, and when they do, they often treat them more as an object or a pet than as a sapient being.

It's the main reason why non-sparks are so afraid of them. If you are just another object, what's stopping the Spark from using you for spare parts.

So. What is it about Heterodyne selfishness that makes their people so fanatically loyal

to start with, Heterodynes are selfish about their people because they are people.

Any time Agatha is introduced to a new group of people, she goes out of her way to learn their likes, dislikes, and histories. While there is a Doyalist explanation for this (the audience needs the exposition) I believe the Watsonian explanation is that this is part of being a Heterodyne.

Heterodynes that grew up in Mechanicsburg probably knew the names and life histories of more than half the town. They would drink with their men and participate in festivals. *Even if part of the festivities included being chased by an angry mob.*

Because they care about the person, they care about their personality and goals. To damage a mind is almost sacrilegious to a Heterodyne.

One of the defining traits of Heterodynes is that they are vehemently against brainwashing and mind control. While part of it is the fact that such methods undermine any genuine loyalty, It could also stem from the way such things interfere with who the victim is as a person.

Think about how Agatha's horror over Dr. Vapnoople differed from that of other Sparks. They were mainly concerned with how it kept Dimitri from expressing his Spark, while Agatha was upset by what it did to his personality.

Heterodynes make space for their people to achieve their goals.

As small as Mechanicsburg is, it's divided up into a variety of districts where all sorts of industries take place. From medicine, to constructs, to engineering, and trade, if a citizen wants to work in a certain field, the town can accommodate them.

Additionally, the people have no fear showing their work to the Masters. The moment Agatha started Heterodyning, she had a crowd of people clamoring to offer her their skills and talents. There wasn't a any hesitation to brag about this skill or that talent or offer these services to their Master.

Why would there be? it was probably a very common sight to see a crowd of townsfolk proudly share their latest creations with the Masters, and the Heterodynes probably took great delight in their people's ingenuity.

Because the People, their Personality, and their Skill belong to the Heterodyne, any Outsider trying to harm a citizen is trying to Steal from the Heterodyne.

to the Heterodynes it's never just a servant or just a gaurd, or just a farmer. They know that the servant was named Molly and had 2 nieces and preferred cake to pudding. They know that Grant had been a Jaeger for 200 years and had been best friends with their grandfather's sister's husband. They knew the Farmer Mac was a minor spark who had been secretly crossbreeding orange petunias as a gift for their wife.

Every loss is personal, so that makes it vital that they protect their people with everything they have.

The core of my idea can be summarized with this Discworld quote:

"All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!I have a duty!"

Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men (Discworld, #30; Tiffany Aching, #1)

All that a Mechanicsburger is belongs to their Heterodyne, and the Heterodynes will protect them from all threats the way a dragon guards its horde.

[disniq]

i havent read all of the comics post urban legends to gotham war with jason, but as far as i remember between them jason didn't really kill anyone? tfz is on my mind (he tried to kill 'bane' but didn't). i suppose he couldve been murdering off screen as well but i also have no idea if that's hinted at

anyway with tmwsl and the beast war stuff having him kill it means:

urban legends -> stops killing

gotham war -> is brainfuckedup by bruce. cant do shit

tmwsl -> joker unbrainfuckedups him, he proceeds to go ham and kill some goons/tries to kill the jokers

beast world -> still killing in larger amounts

so if bruce had left his ass alone would he still be in a holding pattern with the bats? way to fuck it bruce (though im happy. so.)

obviously the doyalist explanation is they probably realized jason was in a bit of a limbo atm and decided to shake it up again. but watsonian is soooo funny to me. good job b

Thank you for bearing with me anon, I'm finally free from work and mostly compos mentis at the moment, so!

My initial instinct when I got this ask was to disagree, because I didn't read Jason's behaviour in the last issue of MWSL as any more or less violent than he was in the earlier issues, I don't think he ever actually killed anybody in that run (though do correct me if I'm wrong on that), and I'm extremely reluctant to take the Beast World characterisation into account because it's a, uh... reductive view of Jason, at best.

But.

BUT!

As I was turning this over in my head, I realised why it was pinging at my brain.

It's because this exact thing *has happened*, back in RHatOs Rebirth.

Pre-rhato 25 my beloathed, Jason had been consistently using less-lethal methods in exchange for Bruce's implicit approval and regular interaction with the batfam. He specifically says this on panel in The Trial of Batwoman, this is a choice he chooses to make against his own beliefs;

Detective Comics #975

This holds until six months later, when Jason shoots Penguin. And then Bruce famously snaps and beats the everloving shit out of him in a brutal and notably one-sided fight.

After which, Jason changes up his outfit, swaps the guns for a crowbar and a katana, and becomes significantly more lethal again.

RHatO (2016) #25, RHatO (2016) #26

And when I thought about it, well. I think you could argue that each of Jason's more lethal spells are proceeded by an altercation with Bruce.

Brothers in Blood, where Jason plays a murderous, knife-wielding Nightwing to annoy Dick, is the first Jason story after the infamous Under the Hood showdown wherein Bruce chooses to cut Jason's throat instead of... doing literally anything else instead.

Batman: Under the Red Hood, Nightwing (1996) #118

And after working relatively civilly with others throughout Countdown, Jason goes full murder gunbats in Battle for the Cowl after Bruce's delightful little "you're broken and you'll never be fixed" hologram speech.

Battle for the Cowl #3 , Battle for the Cowl #1

Now, I absolutely do not want to come across like I'm saying Bruce is responsible for all Jason's more extreme actions at all, because I'm not about that lack of agency shizzle at all. Obviously Jason was already very much down to kill prior to his final confrontation with Bruce in UtRH, and I think he does genuinely believe some people deserve to die.

But I think this pattern of Jason reacting to Bruce's outright and often violent rejections by escalating the very behaviour that has Bruce repeatedly rejecting him is super interesting as a facet of their continuous cycle of abuse.

So regardless of Beast World, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jason does lilt more lethal for a hot minute before he inevitably makes consessions to get back into Batman's good books.

[trekkiedean]

the thing about cas's arc in the first half of s9 is that it's a prime example of why I cannot look at this show through a purely watsonian lens. there is no way to make it make sense except bad writing. and "idk it was bad writing" is a copout with most shows, and can very much be a copout with this show, depending on how selectively you apply it. but also, with spn, not only is the writing bad, but the show is SO hyperaware of itself as a story that I have a lot of trouble ignoring the doylist factors, the way I would at least try to in another show.

like, I have a ton of logistic/plot questions about the whole early-s9 situation, because the basic facts just don't really make sense from 9x03 to 9x06 to 9x09. but more than that, I feel like any purely watsonian explanation requires me to either throw out a lot of dean's past characterization (I can be pretty hashtag deancrit, but I do think it's ooc for him to kick cas out with absolutely nothing) or a lot of cas's future characterization (I think cas's takeaway was that dean does not care enough about him to help him unless it will serve some larger purpose of dean's to do so, and I think that informs a lot of cas's future behavior). like, the potential watsonian explanations are:

dean offered cas some supplies/cash/a fake id, and cas was just too proud/hurt/stupid to accept

dean offered cas some supplies/cash/a fake id, and cas took them, but he was too proud/hurt to keep them or too stupid to keep them safe/use them wisely

dean is a complete sociopath who doesn't give a shit about cas and kicked him out with literally nothing but the clothes on his back, and cas's self-esteem is so low that he thinks it was okay

dean is too stupid to even realize that cas might need supplies/money/resources

and I don't find any of those explanations satisfying, because there are things in other episodes that undercut or refute all of them: if dean genuinely just doesn't give a shit about cas, why did he bother trying to find him in 9x03 in the first place, or care when april killed him and get gadreel to bring him back? if dean didn't give him anything in the way of money/supplies, then how did cas get from kansas to idaho, or get a job with no papers or bank account? but if dean did give him cash/the magic credit card and fake identity papers, then why did cas need the job in the first place and/or why is he sleeping in the back room? and if he didn't, if cas is truly in such a dangerously precarious situation in 9x06 because he has nothing else, then how, in 9x09, does he have a fairly nice, well-fitting suit and presumably a fake badge and a car? if dean gave him some money to begin with, and cas is just clueless with money and blew it all, then how did he get savvy enough, between 9x03 and 9x09, to acquire all of those things himself? if dean gave him money and/or the suit, badge, and car to begin with, but cas was too proud and hurt to make use of them, what changed his mind? if he has those things in 9x09 because dean helped him after 9x06 and either gave them to him or gave him the means/money to get them, then why wouldn't dean have just done that in the first place? if dean didn't help him at all, despite knowing what a dangerous situation cas was in before they found him in 9x03, then why does dean approach cas in 9x06 like he expects any reaction but completely justified anger and hurt, and treat cas's new job like it's a silly little thing cas is doing for funsies rather than his best chance at survival? but then, why is cas treating the whole thing like it was no big deal in 9x09?

meanwhile, the doylist explanations are:

the episodes in question were written by privileged white people who have no idea what actual poverty and homelessness entail, and didn't care enough to do some basic research (or even like, ask the cast member who'd actually experienced serious poverty and homelessness for some input)

there was little to no coordination among the writers to ensure story or emotional continuity across episodes (if you told me berens and buckleming just didn't read each others' scripts or watch each others' episodes I would 100% believe you)

they didn't want to pay misha for enough episodes to show us what the fuck was going on with cas in the 9x03-9x09 span, let alone have him kicking around the bunker

and also possibly

everyone knew that if cas was kicking around the bunker, and they put him in the standard hunter uniform, dean's spirit would fully possess jackles and derail every scene by flinging him mouth-first onto misha's dick

and all of those make a lot more sense to me than any purely watsonian explanation is ever going to. and again, I do think that shrugging and saying "bad writing" can be a copout, and with other shows, I would make more of an effort to at least try and find a satisfying watsonian explanation, but spn is not only badly-written, but self-aware, even self-obsessed, in a way that other shows are not, so it's a lot harder for me to just disregard the non-diagetic factors. so I do tend to think that if you choose a watsonian explanation for the whole thing, it can be kind of a rorschach test, because you basically have to decide which character's development to prioritize, dean's or cas's.

[sneezypeasy]

Original Script Analysis, Part 2: The Southern Raiders, The Finale, and What I Think About it All

Link to Part 1

So folks, when it comes to literary analysis, there are two categories that textual interpretations typically fall under: the Doylist explanation, and the Watsonian explanation. 

Watsonian explanations will contextualise an issue solely within the bounds of the story it is told in, so the answer to any question will be, essentially, “in-universe”. Imagine interviewing a character in the story, and asking them, “why did x happen” or, “why did y character decide to do z”. The answer you get will be a Watsonian answer.

Doylist explanations, on the other hand, are explanations that take into account things the characters themselves wouldn’t “have access to”, so to speak. These explanations often touch on writing concepts like theme, character arcs, tropes, setup and payoff etc, sometimes even referring to “real-world” motivations, intentions, or constraints that the creators were working with (or against). If an explanation or an answer to a question doesn’t sound like anything the characters themselves could have come up with, it’s probably a Doylist explanation.

I’m going to give an example from Titanic that I hope isn’t a spoiler to anybody at this point given how much this film has been memed to shit:

Jack dies at the end of Titanic. Now, why did he die?

The Watsonian says: He died because there was no room on the door.

The more intelligent Watsonian says: No there WAS room on the bloody door you smooth-brained koala did you even watch the fucking movie? They tried to get them both on there, the door just couldn’t hold the two of them because of something called BUOYANCY you fucking idiot-

The Doylist says: Jack died because it was the culmination of his character arc, and because he and Rose symbolise the class disparity of the victims of that tragedy; Jack is the poorer third class, and Rose is the rich upper class. Upper class women were the likeliest demographic to survive the sinking of the Titanic, and lower class men were the likeliest demographic to die. Jack had to die and Rose had to live; it’s symbolic. 

Here’s another example: on the r/DeathNote subreddit, someone asked why L fell off his chair in such an exaggerated and dramatic fashion upon hearing that shinigami could be real. The top comment provides a detailed Watsonian answer, followed by a Doylist one:

Basically, Watsonian commentary is consistent with how the characters, in-universe, might explain/contextualise something. Doylism explains how a plot point or character decision serves a purpose beyond what the characters themselves would be able to conceptualise, whether that’s narrative payoff, authorial intent, or even marketing/executive decisions/budget constraints.

Why am I explaining all of this? Because I want to play a game with you guys.

You ready?

The name of this game is: Why, in the original script of The Southern Raiders, is Katara somehow asleep while LITERAL BOMBS ARE GOING OFF AROUND HER(!!!)

Is it:

A) Katara trained herself to sleep through Fire Nation raids and bombs from a young age

B) Katara is just generally that deep of a sleeper 

C) Elizabeth Ehasz wanted an excuse (any excuse, really) to force Zuko and Katara to interact (because this is their episode, after all-)

Yeah, maybe I’m just unimaginative but I’m pretty sure it’s C. I’d love to hear your best Watsonian take for this one though (please, go nuts, lmao)

Like all the other changes we’ve seen, nothing has been done to the dialogue, which plays out how it does in the show:

I’m sorry I just can’t get over this 🤣🤣 “Character A and Character B hate each other/are not talking to each other/are currently in the process of biting each other’s heads off, now let’s come up with some ridiculous excuse to make Character A and Character B play nice and help and warm up to each other” is a pretty solid fanfic trope but I think this is the first time I’ve seen “MAKE CHARACTER A SLEEP THROUGH A FUCKING MISSILE ATTACK” utilised for this specific purpose.

Logically I understand why this was changed for the show, but I’m ngl, I’m slightly sad we didn’t get to see this version. 🤣🤣🤣

Interestingly, Katara doesn’t catch Zuko after he gets blasted off the war blimp - the script doesn’t specify anyone catching Zuko, it just says that he “lands safely on the bison” (sorry, I thought I wrote this one down in full but I only wrote down that quote, my bad 💀).

(It does make me wonder though, whether the storyboarders/animators looked at the “Katara sleeps through bombs” bit and were like.... “ok how about no, but we’ll give you ‘Katara catches a skydiving Zuko’ instead, fair trade?” 😂😂)

Continuing on from that, I have to say that even with the voice lines unchanged, Elizabeth Ehasz’s vision for Zuko and Katara’s deepening connection and understanding continues to trickle through this episode at various moments:

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Katara sobbing as she recounts her trauma? Zuko getting teary himself hearing about Katara’s grief and love for her mother? Katara visibly relaxing as a result of unburdening some of her feelings onto him? Zuko pulling Katara back and making sure she’s okay before she ploughs on ahead?

😭😭🥰🥰

And then of course, there are times when Elizabeth’s subtlety is not so subtle at all (here you go, you guys have well and truly earned this one):

Welp. I can tell you I wasn’t expecting to see that - at all. I came to the WGF hoping, maybe, to find some small crumbs - tiny clues that might give a slight nudge to the rumours that Elizabeth Ehasz was a ZK shipper, and that shippy subtext viewers may have picked up in TSR maybe wasn’t entirely lacking in substance.

I wasn’t expecting to find a page where good ol’ Elizabeth had a zutara fangasm all over her own writing 🤣🤣🤣

On the hug itself, Elizabeth’s notes were very brief:

I was a touch disappointed not to see any more fangirling, though after that serotonin boost up above I really couldn’t be too greedy. 🤣

Zuko and Katara’s scenes together in Sozin’s Comet and the Agni Kai are generally the same as what we see in the show, though I thought you guys might like to read the lightning scene anyway:

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This might be a good time to mention that I had the pleasure of working alongside @korranguyen on one of the two days that I visited the WGF. If you found the descriptions of Azula’s downward spiral in the Agni Kai uncomfortable to read, you might appreciate her essays here and here.

Unfortunately folks, we are indeed near the end now. And we know how the story ends:

Wins, eh? Interesting choice of words there. Almost makes it seem like there was a competition? Like there were, oh I don’t know, other contenders?

Now there’s something else which I think some of you may find very interesting about the script of Sozin’s Comet Part 4, and I will get to that in due course, but for now I want to discuss the way the ships were treated by the show writers and creators. As I summarised earlier and as you probably noticed yourself from reading these scripts:

From season 1 up until Day of Black Sun, the writing was heading towards a Kataang conclusion. And development-wise, it wasn’t too shabby! There was a clear and steady progression. Maybe a little subtle, from Katara’s side, but nowhere near as ambiguous as in the show. And again maybe this is just me, but I wouldn’t have been frustrated with it either, if it was shown like that.

After Day of Black Sun, the writing takes a weird turn. Kataang takes a nosedive while Zutara gets a ton of positive development (reconciliation, forgiveness, synchronicity and cooperation* anyone? lmao), which is canon in the show too but it’s… even more pronounced in the script? Aang is more aggro, Zuko and Katara are more tender/vulnerable with one another, they don’t scoot away at the suggestion that they like, like each other – and these are the final drafts? What the heck were y’all writing in the first drafts?? (No that’s not a joke actually, I wanna know 😭)

Kataang “wins”. Wins?!? I thought y’all said there was never even a contest!!**

Okay, time for some speculation/theorising on my part. To me, it seems like, at some point after writing the “Kataang” episodes but before actually animating and producing them, and before writing the later episodes in season 3, and perhaps even right up until the writing of Sozin’s Comet Part 4, there was a collective (if not unanimous) decision to “keep things open”. The question is: why?

Did the writers disagree, or was it just shipbaiting? Or was it some combination of both?

If no-one else, Elizabeth Ehasz is quite clearly a Zutara fangirl; I don’t think anyone can deny that after reading the way she writes these kids 🤣 That paragraph does not read to me like a writer casually (or grudgingly) obeying directions to shiptease because it’s what the producers wanted, it reads like a writer unable to stay professional about how much she loves this one fucking ship. (We feel you Lizzie. We feel you.)

So was there actually some discord in the writer’s room about which direction to take the romance arcs? @zutarawasrobbed​​ pointed out that given the narrative decision to hinge Aang’s internal struggle and character arc around the need to “let go” of an “attachment” to Katara, (some?) writers may have seen a potential in deconstructing Kataang to fulfil this arc. This is especially possible if, after writing Crossroads of Destiny and/or seeing audience feedback to that episode, Zutara was increasingly beginning to appear as a viable alternative.

I mean, even by Sozin’s Comet, it doesn’t seem like they’d figured out how to resolve Aang’s whole “blocked chakra” situation –

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Aang “somehow” just happens to untangle what had previously been set up as an internal struggle, with the conveniently timed activation of some “chi bending nonsense” (and reverse-glowing arrows and “such things”).

Uh huh.

(To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty -)

Of course, the other possibility is that most of the way through writing the script, and maybe about halfway through animating it, the creators simply recognized a clear potential for shipbaiting, and this is at least somewhat to blame for the hot mess that is the romance arcs of ATLA.

My personal theory is that writer disagreement did happen, and is at least partially why we ended up getting what we got. The fact that both ships are specifically referenced and granted “approval” so to speak, by different writers, and one of them ends up explicitly “winning”, sort of cinches it for me. Either way, the show was clearly pulling in different directions at different parts and under different creators, and in my opinion the scripts support these rumours.

One thing is for certain: whether this was just shipteasing, or actual production hell in the writer’s room, it is my opinion that Zutara AND Kataang were both robbed.

Kataang had a decent romance arc written out for it, and even if there may have been issues reconciling it with Aang’s internal conflict set up in the Guru and/or with the over-arching themes of the show, it would have been all right in the end if they had just kept it the way they originally wrote it. I can’t really see any but the most die-hard anti-Kataangers being mad about it, and Kataangers themselves would have loved it. They had a fine romance written out and they ruined it. If they did so because Zutara was being seriously considered as a possible outcome, then it’s just all the more frustrating that Zutara never ended up happening in the end. They put a lot of effort into sinking a perfectly serviceable ship and ultimately it was all for nothing. (Or worse, purely for shipbaiting). Just sad.  

So, that’s my thoughts on that. And that concludes this essay- oh wait.

Right... there was that thing I kept mentioning about Sozin’s Comet Part 4. 😈

*Ahem.*

So you know how I said all these scripts were final drafts?

That’s because they are - except for two episodes: Sozin’s Comet Part 4, and Jet.

Unlike the other scripts, which have all been labelled “As Broadcast Drafts”, these two scripts are ADR drafts.

What is ADR, you ask?

According to @lady-of-bath​, who works in the screenwriting industry, ADR stands for “Automated Dialogue Replacement” and is used when a script has gone through a process of re-recording or re-dubbing, because for whatever reason, the originally scripted and recorded lines are/were unsatisfactory.

(This is also something you can verify yourself actually, even if you don’t live in the LA area: when you search up ATLA in the WGF database***, even though you can’t access the scripts you can access basic details such as, the date the draft was finalised, the name of the writer, and - whether it was submitted as an “ADR” draft or an “As Broadcast Draft”.)

I even emailed the library to ask about this distinction as well:

So if I understand this correctly, all the ATLA scripts you can find in the guild were first submitted, and then lines were recorded, and then changes were made to the script that didn’t involve dialogue replacement, and then it went through animation and post-production and ended up being what you now see on screen. This is supported by the fact that A) I definitely found some changes, but B) the changes I did find were all in the action lines/shot descriptions etc.

All the scripts submitted to the guild went through this process - all of them, except these two scripts.

These two scripts were not final drafts; I guess they might be more accurately termed “final final drafts™”, because they were submitted after some(!) lines were re-recorded, (changed? added onto? cut?!?) and the script was then updated to reflect these changes that had been made in post-production.

Which just begs the question: what lines had to be re-recorded??

What did the final draft look like before this???

(Might it possibly contextualise why Dante Basco and Mae Whitman apparently both thought Zutara was going to be canon?)

This is conspiracy fodder galore, lmfao. Pardon the dramatics here for a moment, but with enough tinfoil-hatting this could easily turn into the Zutara fandom equivalent of 18½ missing minutes of Nixon tapes. 🤣

Anyway, that about sums up my detective effort on this whole thing. I did find some more tidbits which I’ll likely post in a Part 3/Epilogue type thing - mostly small changes (most of them not really zutara-related) that I found interesting or funny enough to jot down; I’ll be making a compilation of these for your reading pleasure as soon as I can. ^^

One last bonus for you guys: the “I’ll save you from the Pirates” scene:

I must confess, I never really read this scene as romantically framed or “shippy” when I first watched it. But the way it’s written here looks like it’s taken straight out of a fanfic. “Right into the arms of Zuko”? Oh no. (Oh yes.) Oh me oh my. 🤣

*Also, someone needs to write a Mr and Mrs Smith Zutara AU titled “Synchronicity and Cooperation”, I’m saying it now, this is my official decree. Write it, folks. We need it.

**Screenshot taken from: https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Extras_(Book_One:_Water) (Under “Goofs”)

***I hope that link works, if it doesn’t, just navigate to their Library Catalogue and search up ATLA yourself. 

Edit: There was a minor typo in one of the passages - it originally read “Katara has a lot of energy and momentum, and Zuko pulls her back and STOPS her before they read the door” instead of what it was supposed to say (“before they reach the door”, lol). The typo should be fixed now 😊

[racefortheironthrone]

Speaking of Magento and his identities, wasn’t there some to do about him supposed to be Xorn originally too?

With all the best will in the world, I am not going to explain Xorneto or the post-Morrison retcon in detail, because it simply does not make sense on any kind of Watsonian level and it makes my head hurt trying to hold the whole thing in my mind at the same time.

All you need to understand is that for their own sui generis reasons having to do with their love of Silver Age comics over Bronze Age comics and their family background in the non-violent anti-nuclear movement, Morrison infamously despised Magneto. And so they set out to write the last Magneto story that could ever be told, which culminates with a drug-addled master of magnetism enacting a human genocide in Manhattan.

While Grant Morrison's New X-Men is rightfully considered to have been one of the greatest runs post-Claremont, this particular plotline and character arc (in a run that was not exactly lacking for shocking twists and unusually adult themes) proved to be the most controversial aspect of the run - to the point where Marvel editorial immediately retconned it as having been actually the work of Xorn who had pretended to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn. (And let's not even get into Zorn, and no that's not a typo.)

For a fuller explanation, I would point you towards the excellent Cerebrocast episode featuring Spencer Ackerman, which features a respectful but passionate debate between Connor Goldsmith and Spencer over the merits of Morrison's story and the ensuing retcon. For what it's worth, I side with Spencer; I think that as powerful as the story at the time was, it was ultimately a mistake by a gifted creator who never resonated with why Claremont's original retcon was so essential to making the character one that people cared about.

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

This is not prepared at all, so it's likely going to be messier than usual, but I was in the shower earlier thinking about the Golden Girls (as one does) and I drew a couple of conclusions on the topic of how many children does Blanche actually have? that I wanted to share with you all.

So, first of all, let me sum up the controversy. The issue lies with one of Blanche's statements in S3E3 Bringing Up Baby, when she's trying to convince Dorothy to keep the Mercedes she bought with the money they'll supposedly get after Baby's death:

"I want that car, Dorothy. I will give you anything. [...] I'll give you one of my sons. I have given this a lot of thought. I have had four kids, I have never had a Mercedes."

Ok, everything tracks so far. Blanche has had four kids, some of which are sons. We meet her two daughters, Janet and Rebecca, a few times during the series, so the natural conclusion is that Blanche has four kids, two sons and two daughters.

Which is great, except... her next line in S3E3 is this:

"What do you say? Which one do you want? Biff, Doug, Skippy? No, don't take Skippy, he's got asthma."

She names a Biff, a Doug, and a Skippy, so... three sons. Which, in addition to the two daughters we see in the show, makes for a grand total of five kids. Huh.

Alright, we know that Blanche wasn't the best mother ever, but I find it hard to believe that she forgot how many children she has, so: what's going on here? The obvious explanation is, as always, that this is a continuity error (although it's a really egregious one!), but you folks know I prefer to find a Watsonian explanation wherever I can, so let's see if we can figure out anything interesting.

One thing that struck me when I first realized this discrepancy is her use of the words 'I have had four kids'. Not I have, I have had. Why does she use the past tense here? The sentence flows better with it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in-universe -- unless you think that she's using 'to have a child' to mean 'to bear a child'. If that's the case, then what she's saying translates to 'I have physically given birth to four kids, I have never had a Mercedes.'

I'm sure I don't have to point out the implications of this, do I? If the number of kids Blanche has given birth to is four, but her total number of kids is five, then that means that one of her kids is not hers in the strictly physical sense, i.e. one of Blanche's kids is adopted. This would solve the discrepancy without breaking the canon elsewhere (as far as I can tell, at least).

For a while, this idea remained in the back of my head to examine at a later date, because it still has a number of issues to work through. For one, why would Blanche (and supposedly George) adopt a child? They had kids of their own apparently without any issues -- why adopt another child, instead of, well... making another child, if they wanted one more? I guess it's possible that fertility issues might have arisen at some point, but that seems unlikely for a number of reasons; that kind of problem is generally genetic in nature, and it tends to be diagnosed upon first try, not after four successful pregnancies. So, then... why?

I was stuck on this point for a long while, until I suddenly remembered this conversation between Blanche and Virginia, her younger sister, during S5E11 Ebb Tide:

"I remember when you were 16 and didn't come home for Father's Day." "I was away at school!" "Oh, yes. The Good Samaritan Academy for the Knocked-Up. Two, four, six, eight, all us girls are three months late."

It seems Virginia got into a spot of trouble when she was 16, and was away 'at school' for a while to take care of it. While this might imply that she was sent away to have an abortion, there's also space to hypothesize that she was sent away to carry her pregnancy to term and actually have a baby to then give out to adoption. If this is the case... I wonder if this baby is the one that Blanche and George adopted?

While an adoption seems a bit out of character for young!Blanche (to me, at least: she wasn't interested in her kids, why would she agree to adopt another one?), I think there's some space to consider it. For one, George might have convinced her! We don't know enough about the man to draw clear conclusions, but he did send money to the one child he had out of matrimony (see S5E18 An Illegitimate Concern), so maybe he feels more responsible towards kids near him than Blanche did -- and, well, if he'd asked, Blanche would have agreed immediately, of course. I feel like Big Daddy might have also played a part in this scenario: he could have wanted to keep the child in the family (a Hollingsworth is still a Hollingsworth!), and asked the youngest married couple among his children to take on the responsibility, to shield Virginia from the shame.

Note that this theory has a few issues anyway. For one, while Virginia is Blanche's junior, according to Wikipedia she's only one year her junior, which would put Blanche at 17 when all this happened -- and we know she met and married George much later, when she was already a university student (see S6E9 Mrs George Devereaux). However, I can't find any confirmation for this difference in age in the show itself, so I feel like the hypothesis still deserves some consideration.

As for which of Blanche's children is adopted, well... we can for sure rule out the boys, since she mentions them all by name in S3E3. This leaves her two daughters, Janet and Rebecca. All throughout the series Blanche has a rocky and painful relationship with Janet, even more than she has with the rest of her children:

I would love to have a chance to raise David. I might make up for the mess I made with Janet. [S1E6 On Golden Girls]

Well, honey, I really do want to see you. I think we have a lot to talk about, Janet. I've been thinking a lot about you, lately. [S2E16 And Then There Was One]

"I just talked to my daughter, Janet, and she and my granddaughter, Sarah, are coming to visit in a couple of days. Oh, I've never been so happy!" "Janet? Isn't she the daughter who hates you?" "[...] She doesn't really hate me, Sophia. We just don't see eye to eye." [S7E23 Home Again, Rose: Part 1]

As for Rebecca, while we know they stopped talking for a few years due to a disagreement, she seems remarkably closer to her:

We were always so much alike, and so close, just like Siamese twins. [...] I have missed her. She's always been my favourite. [S3E14 Blanche's Little Girl]

Although Rebecca herself seems to have a different perception on their relationship:

You're not happy, Mama. You're doing it again, you're telling me how to live! [...] Nothing's ever enough for you. I had to be the prettiest, I had to be the most popular, I had to be the brightest... [S3E14 Blanche's Little Girl]

I think there's two possible theories here, neither of which paints Blanche in a good light (but hey, we love these characters because of their qualities as well as their faults, don't we?). If Janet is the child she adopted, I think it's possible she might have been especially neglectful towards her (especially in her first few years); she might have taken her frustration with being convinced to adopt her out on her, as a lack of affection when compared to her other kids. This would explain why the relationship between them is so fraught (certain wounds last a lifetime, I'm afraid).

If Rebecca is the child she adopted, on the other hand, she might have wanted to overcompensate for her abandonment and sort of one-up Virginia ('see, how well I can take care of your daughter? aren't I the better mom?'). She might have showered her with affection (and with expectations, judging from what Rebecca says!) to the detriment of her other kids, which would explain the issues in her relationship with Janet as well.

I don't know. It's obviously very clear that, for all her faults, Blanche adores her children and is deeply pained by her mistakes as a mother; she often expresses regret for her actions and wishes she'd been a better mother:

I realized, too late, that I'd put myself ahead of my children. I've never made up all the time I didn't spend with them. [...] deep down, I wish you were really mine. So I could try again with what I now know. [S2E16 And Then There Was One]

For all that might have happened in the past, it's evident that Blanche loves all her children equally and considers all of them her own, so she's clearly gotten over any issues she might have had -- but that doesn't excuse her past actions, of course.

There's a whole lot that could be said about Blanche's approach to motherhood, how it connects to the way her parents treated her as a child and to her own internal issues, but as for the question of how many children she has, I feel like this is a satisfying possible answer. It's not airtight by any means, and I'm sure there's other ways to explain the discrepancy (they might have adopted a child from George's side of the family, for one, which would change a lot of dynamics); this is just the one that occurred to me. As always, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts, so do let me know your ideas about all this!

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

i'm not entirely sure i have a point here but i do find the intersection between ted's "not letting anyone get by him who might be hurting" philosophy and his "stay out of other people's business (particularly when that business is their personal relationships)" philosophy kind of interesting because they are to some extent contradictory — there are three notable instances where other characters in the show are hurting specifically as the result of their relationships with other people, and in each case, he finds a different balance between the two.

with beard and jane, we get the most straight-forward articulation of the "stay out of people's business" philosophy, but it's also the case where ted arguably has the most grounds to intervene — he and beard have been best friends for years, and he definitely knows him better than anyone in england. trying to help his friend out of a bad relationship is just kind of part of the best friend job description, or should be. with jamie and his dad, he offers (bad) advice, encouraging messages, and even brings jamie back on the team, but doesn't intervene when james is actually around (though i don't blame him for wembley since he was having a panic attack). but then you have rebecca and rupert in 1x08 (i think), and in that case ted actually does intervene, and intervene without being asked: he bets that if he wins a game of darts, rupert will stop showing up at nelson road (this is, incidentally, my favourite ted scene of the entire series. he can be manipulative when he wants to be and i am here for it).

i'm not sure i have a watsonian explanation for this — it might be that although ted and rupert are very different people, they both operate using a (performative, in rupert's case) kind of politeness/friendliness that means ted can get him to do what he wants using the skills at his disposal, whereas james and probably jane almost certainly wouldn't honour or even entertain that kind of bet in the first place. my doylist explanation is that especially in season 3, the writers only conceptualized rebecca and rupert's relationship as abusive and therefore worthy of outside intervention, but not beard and jane's or jamie's with his dad

[italwayshadtobeyou]

One of the things that I kind of miss, as the show's lore develops into the era of bunkers and international secret societies, is the fragmented nature of knowledge in the hunting... well, I was going to say community, but I think I'll go with field. People pass knowledge along family lines, by blood or choice; they don't trust strangers to fact-check it. None of the Winchesters knows that vampires are real before season 1, and they don't think to ask Bobby about the werewolf "cure" until it fails on Madison. Bobby doesn't trust Steve Wandell's friends to care that Sam was possessed when Meg used him to kill Steve. Ellen doesn't trust most of her customer base to not be hunting psychics. Isaac assumes, on minimal grounds, that Bobby, Sam, and Dean are at fault for a devil's gate opening. Walt and Roy try to kill Sam for freeing Lucifer, but they don't try-- in fact, outright refuse-- to learn how it happened. Hunters aren't a single group; they're more like dozens of small paramilitaries that don't really know one another's agendas.

And when hunters do trust outside colleagues, it's likelier than not to go sideways. Gordon Walker tries to kill Sam (although, in fairness to Gordon, Sam himself later wonders if a permanent death might be for the best). Travis (does he get a last name? I can't remember) not only tries to kill a rugaru who hasn't yet killed any humans; his own aggression catalyzes Jack Montgomery's transformation and nearly gets both brothers killed. Sam asks Martin to do recon on Benny, and Martin winds up taking an innocent hostage so that he can trap Benny himself. Helpful, or at least well-meaning, hunters like Bobby, Jo, and Garth are, until some point in the Carver era, exceptions rather than the rule.

(Of course, if you pay attention to the single worst arc episode of the series, which is "The Heroes' Journey," Garth turns out to be the biggest psycho of them all, cheerfully "Garthing" a whole club of people, without attempting to separate the innocent from the guilty. But since that's easily the worst episode Andrew Dabb ever wrote, and it drops another continuity error approximately every three seconds, I'm electing to ignore it.)

I'm not sure exactly when the change starts. It's creeping, rather than sudden. Maybe it starts as far back as season 4's "In the Beginning," when Samuel tests Dean's bona fides by asking him about vampires-- which "Dead Man's Blood" made clear you can hunt a long time without encountering. Maybe inheriting Bobby's contacts list has something to do with it. Maybe, once you call a friendly tech friend like Charlie a hunter, you forget what cold-blooded sons of bitches this show's regular hunters have usually been. You can see the difference in season 9's "Devil May Care," where Tracy makes snide comments about Sam's past but puts it aside to work their case, and season 11's "The Chitters," where Sam and Dean have a low-drama teamup with César and Jesse. Then you have season 12's "Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox," where dozens of hunters gather for a wake in a late hunter's mom's house, and one guy actually fanboys over Sam's possession by Lucifer. Some of these experiences are tense, but they aren't downright threatening, nor are the other hunters all useless against higher-tier opponents.

So, what changed? I'd say that maybe the apocalypse and Leviathan killed off the dangerously ignorant and/or belligerent hunters, but Walt and Roy show back up in season 12, so that seems doubtful. I might also say that the Winchesters have simply earned the trust and respect of their fellow hunters, but, LOL, no. Remember Dean's friend Rudy, and Mary's stooge that Ramiel kills?

I'm left with no good Watsonian explanation. I can give Doylist explanations, sure: Maybe the writers wanted Mary to have associates outside of Sam and Dean; maybe some executive thought that a show about two rejects wouldn't attract the advertisers they wanted; maybe later-seasons showrunners wanted an excuse for more characters to share a room. Unfortunately, Doylist explanations don't interest me much. They might, if I could be a fly on the wall of the writers' room, but I'm watching the final product, and that's where I want to find the sense.

(As a final note, I'm still slightly doped up from a minor surgery earlier today, so please forgive any egregious typos or jumps in topics.)

[alto-tenure]

Flora Reinhold and the Heroine Tradition

If you play enough visual novels -- or are immersed in VN communities enough -- you've probably seen the word "heroine" used in an altogether different context from the characters we traditionally think of as "heroines".

A heroine, in the context of visual novels, is typically defined as the female character of focus in a VN's routes, romanceable or otherwise.

At this point you might be asking: but what does this have to do with Professor Layton? It doesn't have routes! According to some people, it isn't even a "real" visual novel!

But while I don't think Flora truly qualifies as a heroine, I think she is written with these heroines in mind, as development for the character she would eventually become and as the basis for the archetype she typifies for the series as a whole.

I should first note that while the role of the heroine is not exclusive to love interests, it is sometimes a part of the heroine's role as well. A heroine is a female character with a lot of dedicated focus in some way, and in many VNs this is through romance. Flora isn't really a love interest, and while the romantic implications are there in her arc, Flora is never considered a legitimate romantic interest for either of the characters who could be said to be the game's protagonist. Flora is designed with romance in mind -- she's a bride candidate, made an eligible bachelorette by her father. I've spoken at length in the past about the romantic motifs and continued presence in the narrative despite the localization's best attempts, and it truly does contribute to the future of the story and Flora's character as a whole in a way that's difficult to put aside. With the reading of Flora as Curious Village's heroine, however, her presence and the lack of knowledge of what to do with her develops another explanation.

If Flora is the heroine of Curious Village, then the game is designed around her. And in ways pertaining to both internal and external factors, it is. Flora is the Macguffin at the center of the mystery in the Doylist sense, and in the Watsonian sense St. Mystere and the entire events of Curious Village were engineered around her.

And if Flora is approached as a heroine, then her neglect from a writing perspective makes more sense. It isn't her story anymore -- it isn't about her and how she serves to further the story -- but she's part of the universe. Her "route", as it stands, has concluded. She no longer occupies an integral part of the story as the heroine; she's just a side character.

Flora, then, becomes not uniquely treated, but part of a pattern alongside the female characters that would come to follow her in the series -- all "heroines" of their games in their own right, when taken in this sense. (And maybe even with the typical connotations, depending on which one you're talking about.) And not even just the series, but more generally among female characters in the medium the story is told through. Professor Layton may or may not be an actual visual novel -- but I think the major female characters were written with this concept & archetype in mind, for the heroines of the stories they were telling.

[kiragecko]

What if the reason Tim seems to like Jason is that Jason acknowledges Tim was better at Robin then Jason? Being the second best Robin matters to his pride.

Okay, I have to work through a few things before I respond directly.

-

So, everything related to canon resurrected Jason is a problem. Including how canon Tim interacts with him.

There are very few signs that preboot Tim likes or respects Jason after his resurrection. Which is WEIRD. Especially HOW Tim disrespects Jason.

Like, Tim doesn't get the rest of the Titans to watch, walk back to someone, and kick them in the crotch. That ... isn't his form of petty? He doesn't LIKE having an audience! And one of his most unique Robin traits is the respect he shows unstable villains and allies! Like, the way he shut down Jason's 'tenderize the teen gangs' plan is ... wrong. He would be MUCH more likely to seem to go along with it and then slip handcuffs on Jason once he relaxes. Or turn him into a temporary ally against Ulysses.

Tim is consistently out-of-character when dealing with resurrected Jason, and I haven't figured out a Watsonian explanation that works for me. Until I do, I'm forced to rewrite most of canon - the events happened, but MY Tim responded differently.

-

Canon Jason's reactions to Tim make a bit more sense. Jason seems to like and respect Tim. He tries to work with him. He left Titan's Tower impressed and wishing he'd had the same supports. (Though his understanding of what supports each of them had is baffling enough that I suspect some amount of amnesia.) I'm not sure he ever says he thinks Tim is a BETTER Robin, but I can see that being possible.

-

So, your supposition is possible for canon Jason. It seems very unlikely for canon Tim, but canon Tim's actions are even more unlikely, so that doesn't mean much. Our final problem comes with squaring this idea with my FANON Tim.

My fanon Tim draws as much from canon as it can, while still being consistent. And it draws MOST heavily on Tim's early arcs. In those early arcs, Tim was attempting to build Robin out of what he imagined Jason and Dick would want. He dreamed about them, hallucinated them, asked the Case for advice. Jason seemed incredibly important to him, on a similar scale to Dick.

That steadily disappears over the years, and becomes really hard to integrate with later Tim. (The authours' victim-blaming anti-Jason agendas are at fault, but that doesn't work as an in-world explanation.) But I'm keeping it anyways, even if it makes everything harder!

See, everything I've seen from Tim in other contexts suggests that Jason's behaviour wouldn't actually have any bearing on whether or not Tim likes him. Tim is perfectly comfortable idolizing someone who neglects or takes advantage of him. That's kind of central to his character - he's the Robin who sees Bruce's flaws and follows him anyways. Who saw an out-of-control 30-something and decided to parent him. Who rants about his parents' neglect without ever considering he might not owe them everything.

Jason earned Tim's loyalty when he was 13, and Tim doesn't stop being loyal, as far as I can tell.

Jason and Tim should be like Harvey Dent and Bruce. Tim doesn't TRUST him, but he desperately wants to help him.

Not necessarily like the fandom tends to write: "Oh, I'll stop being Robin and do anything possible to get you back into the family because I'm valueless!"

More like deescalation in a hostage situation. More like how Tim talks Poison Ivy down. Vulnerability only as a weapon. Always ready to knock him out and disarm him if he gets the chance.

-

There's also some issues with insecurity. My weak spots are similar but not identical to Tim's. There are areas where he's self-confident that I don't quite get. His pride about being Robin is one area of ambiguity. I think he's been written mostly consistently, but my own issues are getting in the way.

So I'm not entirely sure exactly which ways JASON validating Tim as Robin would be important. I know it would be! But there are some ways where Tim wouldn't believe other people, some where he is entirely reliant on other people ... just, his mixture of self-confident and insecurity is fractal and complex.

-

In conclusion, I think it would make Tim feel REALLY good to think that Jason thought Tim was a better Robin. I don't think it would have much affect on his opinions about Jason, though. Those got locked in the first time Tim saw Jason rescue someone, and Tim couldn't change them if he wanted.

Also, canon preboot Tim DIDN'T seem to like Jason, and I want to ignore that but it's hard.

(Also also, how I write about Tim and Jason sometimes contradicts what I think canon says AND my personal fanon. It's COMPLICATED!)

[eisenartworks]

I've already told some of these before to @gofancyninjaworld in asks I've sent them, but I'll make a post abt some stuff I noticed

Slight differences in Tatsumaki's past

We all already know on just how different and far more unreasonable and I daresay straight up abusive Tatsumaki is in the webcomic, but tbh back then, I wasn't sure what caused it.

For a Doylist explanation, ONE needs Tatsumaki to not be so fatally flawed, bc to be fair, if we put wc Tatsumaki in manga Tatsumaki's situation, SHE WOULD FUCKING DIE. Wc Tatsumaki got lucky, but if she herself were to face Psykorochi and the eventual enemies, that sort of mentality would not give Tatsumaki the help she eventually needed. And not surprisingly, most of the problems the heroes faced in the wc MA arc can be traced back to ding ding ding! Tatsumaki!

For a Watsonian explanation... It took me a reread.

Webcomic Blast is... questionable, to say it generously. He's certainly no ideal hero manga Blast is, and that I do think would surely explain its bleaker world. But it certainly also explains why Tatsumaki is so cruel. Her meeting with Blast was brief, and harsh. He saved her life, but there's not an ounce of kindness there.

but the manga -

... They all lead up to the same advise, but god, look at the difference. Not only does Blast makes sure to let Tatsumaki out, Blast guessing Tatsumaki's reasons allowed her to open up to him, reminding her that she was wanted and needed by someone, he also made sure to give her kindly advise on top of the iconic one: Protect your family.

And to Tatsumaki, I do think that makes all the difference.

The two Saitama's costumes are extremely likely to not be the same

Yeah, I admit this also took a reread, so when I came upon this panel, you must understand I was pretty boggled. That would certainly explain why it looks... Like that. It's a genuinely a cheap costume. Heck, I have a feeling Saitama actually just buys another identical looking but different colored costume whenever he damages his. Maybe that's why whenever ONE colors wc Saitama, the suit color differs. This chapter I'm pretty sure was posted AFTER the The Road to Hero OVA, so I do think the change is intentional.

Manga Saitama on the other hand, has insistently kept going wearing the same costume and continuously repairs it whenever it got damaged or dirtied. There's just not doubt Saitama greatly values his costume, and takes pride in it bc it means he's a hero. Even tried entering it in a hero costume contest once and got its leather waxed. In fact he values it so much that he does subtly bend reality around it in that despite tanking attacks that would disintegrate its normal cloth (or literally any matter tbh), it still somehow gets away with dirt at best and a few rips at worst. It's also why when he lost utter faith in his own heroism, is when the suit gets genuinely destroyed except for the glove holding the core. Why though?

Probably because to some extent, the OVAs are canon. ONE did write some of them, or at least approved of them. This panel certainly helps reinforce that, considering it didn't happen in the manga, but in the anime:

That explains why manga Saitama's suit is a bit more quality and actually has good colors - it was made by someone who cared and believed in Saitama.

Webcomic Saitama's mysterious past

I really enjoyed reading the sidechapters in the manga, esp in the earlier chapters. They're pretty charming, some of it was actually a little sad. We get to know a whole lot more abt the characters and their different sides, Saitama especially, a bit of worldbuilding and a moral lesson here and there. Even some additional buildup/insight to some friendships/relationships. It's pretty interesting to see Saitama's past and see how it parallels some characters, Garou being the? Closest? Most poignant? ONE did intend that they're the antis of each other.

What I didn't realize until rereading the webcomic a few times is that we don't know anything about Saitama. At all.

the webcomic to me seems to operate strictly on the rule: if you never read it in the webcomic, it never happened in the webcomic. Opm has no shortage of mysterious characters. Drive Knight is def the one I first would think of. Webcomic Saitama isn't one I'd expect despite being. Well, literally obvious. We don't know anything about him. He hasn't said a word about his past. it's unimportant to the overall story I guess, but still. It's weird. We actually know a bit more abt wc Drive Knight's past than we do wc Saitama's. wc Saitama and manga Saitama may not even have the same backstory except for encountering Crablante and becoming a hero. If it isn't the same... That would certainly explain why they seem to have a different characteristic despite the fundamentals being the same. manga Saitama overall seems to be kinder, and more empathetic. Heck he's even pretty soft to kids, and the manga makes sure to show that over and over. Wc Saitama has never shown if he's nice or even likes kids.

Webcomic Sweet mask never met Blast. Manga Sweet Mask did.

Webcomic SM has this to say abt Blast:

... But manga SM has this:

how this changes SM, we are yet to know. I had to point this out bc I haven't seen anyone point this out, so I had to make sure.

Thnx for reading I have no idea where I am going w this

[seventeenlovesthree]

Greetings! So I've just finished Digimon 02TB and I need to discuss it with someone with legit opinions lmao. So the thing is: how do you tackle the apparent continuity disagreement that Ukkomon claimed he created the Chosen kids when there's lore established since the 1st Adventure that there was a group of Chosen kids (Maki Himekawa's group) before Taichi's group? I'm looking for possible Watsonian explanations since simply saying "it's a plothole / retcon" doesn't satisfy me 😁 So far I got these ideas, feel free to elaborate on them or give some new ones:

First, there's a possbility that Ukkomon was lying (I love how many plot holes can be simply explained by "character X was lying) and didn't actually create the Chosen kids - he just introduced them as Lui's "friends" to make Lui happy. BUT then, if Ukkomon didn't create them, why did the digivices disappear after Lui un-did his wish and BigUkkomon was defeated? Second, maybe when Lui claimed he's the first person to ever bond with a Digimon, he meant "the first person to bond with a Digimon without some divine intervention and/or a mission they were chosen to fulfill", which technically makes him the first Tamer instead of a Chosen child. Daisuke & co. calling him a "Chosen child" was therefore just a misunderstanding Lui didn't correct since he couldn't tell the difference.

What do you think?

Ooooooh boy! I still remember how much my head was rushing when I had watched the movie in cinemas back on launch day and I simply couldn't get home fast enough to write down all my thoughts. I had compiled it all back then here and I believe it already summarizes everything you've been asking and talking about, but I'll still try to put it together again shortly.

First of all, @jamesthedigidestined are currently still trying our best to make sense of the current timeline and the order of when which Chosen Child (or generally "humans partnering with Digimon") came into existence, so I still hope he will post his own ideas himself soon!

However - my theory back then and also today is what you already outlined:

Homeostasis does not have a physical form, so it created its agents like Gennai - and PROBABLY Ukkomon too. Since we know the Digital World has “wish granting” abilities, I can accept there being a singular being that is capable of doing the same thing. So then, a Digiegg gets into the real world in 1995, and Homeostasis gets to scan Hikari, Taichi and the others, discovering the potential they have - since Hikari is the child that enables the hatched Botamon to evolve into Greymon super quickly, Homeostasis sends Parrotmon to retrieve it. Afterwards, in 1996, Ukkomon “would appear who had special connections with [a child] in the real world”. And thus, Rui’s wish was the indirect catalysator of the foundation of the “partnership system”. Basically, Ukkomon’s wish fulfillment powers enabled a system based on the limitless potential (of wishes and the bond between humans and Digimon) that was deemed useful by Homeostasis for the sake of saving the world(s). A system that wasn’t in place like this before, so Rui was basically some kind of “prototype” - as was Ukkomon, kinda testing the waters of partnerships in the first place. And through analyzing the other 8 kids in the meantime, their potential had been discovered, which is why THEY also had Crests created for themselves. Like Ukkomon said - they came into existence to “protect” him, so he wouldn’t have to save the worlds himself. And so would Daigo, Maki and the others between 1996 and 1999 (including Wallace, though we need to still figure out where exactly he fits in there).

On a different note, I like the idea of treating Ukkomon like Menoa in the way of her being an unreliable narrator that led to the whole “adulthood vs. neglect theory” in the first place. So Ukkomon may actually NOT even be aware that Rui WASN’T the first Chosen Child because, either it really didn’t know or was manipulated by Homeostasis to claim that it’s true. The reasoning behind that could be interesting to look at too… Long story short: Never take anything in Digimon at face value!!!

Plus, me and James are also a fan of the idea that Rui was just "a child with a Digimon partner" and NOT a Chosen Child. Again, he has outlined this way better than I have, coming up with different groups of Digimon to be partnered with humans!

Plus, I still think of Rui as an unreliable narrator too, because they're all just speculating about the Digivice origin, even though there has been clear lore for it in the back...

[stoat-party]

My Joshua Graham take (alternate title: stop beingng mean to him!!!!!!)

Now I’m not a Joshua-did-nothing-wrong girlie (I mean, if you can’t recognize his flaws then you get his bad ending, so there’s that), but I gotta defend my boy for a minute. I’m gonna try to tie things back to the facts of the game, but there will obviously be Themes and Context that I can’t even begin to get into, and your mileage may vary.

Mitigating factors

We’ve gotta keep in mind that this guy is in severe and continuous chronic pain. Now, that doesn’t make you a bad person — one of the most loving and giving people I know is disabled with chronic pain, and of course everyone starts dealing with some form of it as they get older. But it can definitely affect how people relate to the world, and the preoccupation of being in constant pain means it takes more effort to act the same as they used to, (assuming they were a good person even then). I’m just saying that I would be a little more prone to anger if I had to tear off and replace my skin every morning.

Also, he and Daniel are both in grief — the Wiki places the sacking of New Canaan in 2281, and while it could have been earlier than that based on the minimal evidence we have, that’s still an extremely fresh wound. Joshua implies he either has or had family in New Canaan. With their numbers reduced to about thirty, he’s undoubtedly lost multiple people, in a violent and traumatizing way, while also dealing with the guilt of having (indirectly) caused it. He’s not acting totally rationally here.

Claim: He spent thirty years acting as a warlord and committing total cultural annihilation in service of a maniac

Hey, granted. That did happen. He doesn’t offer much of an explanation for it, except that he first did it to survive and then kept making compromises until he’d completely lost his sense of morality. And explanations aren’t excuses, we know this, but they do make redemption arcs more palatable. Personally, I don’t understand being against redemption arcs in fiction. They’re my favorite thing.

It’s important to note that the narrative does punish him for his actions — the guy he committed all the atrocities for betrayed him, he has the aforementioned chronic pain and disability now, and then the war machine he created to destroy cultures destroyed his own. So if you’re the type to think redemption needs to include suffering/death, there you go.

Claim: He is racist

The most literal form of this claim can’t be accurate, because everyone in Honest Hearts is GECK-coded as Caucasian (except the caravan company). The tribals actually have races created specifically for them (to account for their tattoo styles), but they're still white. They weren’t all supposed to be white, but that’s how it turned out in the game due to extremely limited production time. The Sorrows are descended from American schoolchildren, the Dead Horses are descended from Germans and Native Americans, and the White Legs are descended from Shoshone, Latin-Americans, and Americans (they’re also the palest of the three, not that it really matters).

Claim: Stereotype of the “white man’s burden”

This is a bit more Doylist than Watsonian, but it wasn’t intentional. Daniel was supposed to be Asian, but again because of short production time he ended up white. I interpret him as biracial.

Claim: He’s culturally elitist

He does believe his religion is the best one, though IMO everyone should feel that way. But he doesn’t think of himself as above the tribals — he considers himself a tribal, and shows distaste for “civilized” places. Daniel is actually worse about this one.

Claim: He’s Mormon

Well, yeah. I take issue with this being considered a punishable offense on its own — unless it’s combined with anti-blackness or child marriage or something, it’s just a religion, and there’s no evidence of the Future Mormons practicing anything like that.

Claim: He’s a missionary

As above, judging based on this without any specific evidence of wrongdoing is a little bit ignorant. Most modern missionaries are basically aid workers with a religious motive, and they make an effort to culturally assimilate with the host community, if it wasn’t their country to begin with. (Are there horror stories, sure. Like I said, Themes and Context.) Based on Joshua’s (and Daniel’s) responses when you openly mock their faith, there’s no coercion going on.

Claim: He’s committing cultural imperialism against the Dead Horses

He did do this as Legate. He visited Dead Horse Point to prime them to join the Legion, teaching them warfare and allowing them to basically worship him. Follows-Chalk says he saved their tribe from extinction, but obviously he did that intending to wipe them out. However, Burned Guy Josh came back to prevent them from joining the Legion, and his track record since then shows a pretty high regard for their culture.

In Follows-Chalk’s quest, Joshua is concerned about influencing them more than he should. Follows-Chalk says he’s the tribe’s leader, but Joshua actually explicitly denies it, the implication being that he’s a little uncomfy with being more than a military advisor. He even says that there are better role models than him.

Claim: He wants to commit genocide

There’s one big misconception I want to correct: The White Legs don’t live in Zion, they live by the Great Salt Lake. The group we meet are a war party. At worst, they had a support staff of non-combatants.

They were trying to commit genocide against the other three factions. You can be on Daniel’s side in the big debate, but the Sorrows absolutely had a right to defend their homeland from people tasked with killing then all, whether or not it was a good idea in practice. (The Dead Horses are also visitors; they originate from Dead Horse Point.)

He does hate them, hence the racism accusations, but according to Ulysses, they really are violent raiders (he and Joshua both call them mongrels, actually). Again, they kinda burnt Joshua’s family to death. His prejudice comes from their collective actions and their affiliation with the Legion, not their race or lack of technology or anything like that. He calls Salty an animal, but he also says that he relates to him from his days in the Legion. His brutal tactics were wrong and that’s the point, but he didn’t want to commit genocide.

Claim: He’s a hypocrite/He uses religion to justify doing bad stuff

Yeh! That’s the idea, and getting him to admit he’s wrong about it is one of my favorite scenes in the game. It’s especially poignant if you’re religious, because you’ve undoubtedly seen others commit this sin and maybe struggle with it yourself. Admitting the motives you’re hiding from yourself, accepting responsibility for your actions, and forgoing revenge on someone who’s seriously hurt you are all really potent character moments, in the game and in real life.

Claim: He extorts the Courier by trapping them in the valley until they do a bunch of dangerous quests for him, then makes them pay for medical care and weapon repairs due to said dangerous quests, and oh whoopsy doo there’s no way of making money in the valley except collecting stuff and selling it to the general store, but MAMMA MIA GUESS WHO RUNS THE GENERAL STORE??

Okay, I’ve never actually heard anyone say this, but it’s true. It’s all true.

[horizon-verizon]

I haven't seen anyone commenting on this (I know you're not watching the episodes) but in a meeting. TGC talk about "that any loot coin would be welcome" or something like that, hinting that monetarily they might not be so well off and all I could think is WTF! The coffers are supposed to be full and then they hide it!!

Part of me is of course worried that they're going to use this somehow against Rhaenyra to make her look worse when she does Joff's celebration or when she tortures Tylan.But also...

They have been years of peace!! With Visenys bedridden so there shouldn't have been many parties/banquets/hunting/whatever. This isn't Robert wasting money. Tylan where is the money?! Are you stealing it? What did they spend it on? Was it the new Alicent decorations? Personally I think so. All the treasure was invested in decorating the entire place like setp 2.0 and in making a monument to the martyrdom of Sant Alicent 😇

I just want to laugh at any "they kept the kingdom in orden! 🥺Where was Rhaenyra but eating cakes!😠 She is so privileged and selfish! 🙄"

Look, I don't know. Either the treasurer is stealing or Alicent and Otto are fucking stupid at managing money but this doesn't exactly paint them in the best light.

I will refrain from making theories simply because this show doesn't not give us enough scenes to really draw on more evidence for such theories due to its bad pacing and lack of actual character/environment explorations. So, you could be right...but without other pieces of damning evidence for a Watsonian reading/explanation as to why the greens have much less money than they are supposed to, I can only be Doylist and say that it's ore likely that they wished to make the greens more hardpressed in handling the city and make Rhaenyra's image worse for later. Because it strikes me as very weird that Tyland could be stealign from the treasury--not impossible....but of all people on that council, him?--or Otto mismanaging the money seeing as he's the most competent green there. Just not with raising or treating actual people with respect. And the whole lack of attention paid to the killing of Luke for their plans and fear of Rhaenyra's retaliation is entirely the fault of the writers wishing to make a valid response from a woman who's been heir for years-mother seem an individual's evil or absolute moral failure.

You're right, there were MUCH less (read none) random parties, less parties than there were canonically with this Viserys being much sicker and immobile, but in general this show tries to show less luxurious Targs and upper-class behavior/activities where they could have explored how Alicent v Rhaenyra and their supporters navigate and interact with each other as well as how Alicent v Rhaenyra dictate to/protect their kids in these contexts.