#especially more than ending up on a planet that literally tried to enslave him and 2 members of his crew

[the-redhead-in-a-dress]

Can we have a Menagerie AU, but its Spock and La'an abducting Chris together and stealing the Enterprise to bring him to Una whose been exiled to an Illyrian colony...

[see notes for my feelings on the Menagerie ep]

[tmnt-brave-new-world]

Prologue

He was running faster than he had ever moved before, his breaths came out in heavy pants. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They had known going into this, there were damning consequences to failing. It simply wasn’t an option. Icy blue eyes gazed up at the sky as the pieces of Krang’s ship and dimensional gate loomed over the city of New York. It was forming a giant ring above them, and no one was willing to try and imagine what might come pouring forth once it did.

Humans couldn’t survive the atmospheric conditions from Donnie’s understanding, which meant it was up to them to stop this from happening. They were heading towards a building to try and determine the best way to stop the gate from fully forming, and additionally to use the high advantage point as a jumping off point to hopefully reach their intended target.

“Come on! We got this bros!” Mikey yelled excitedly before he took a running leap from the roof top, and landed on a piece of floating metal headed towards the giant conglomerate of moving parts, in the sky.

“Damn it Mikey! Don’t just rush in, you idiot!” Raph yelled after him, before following his lead and jumping on another piece of metal and machinery as it floated by. He would never admit how grateful he was for Mikey’s regular bouts of pure dumb luck.

It took longer than they had originally expected to reach the structure, and the fight with Krang himself was absolutely brutal. It didn’t help that they were down a man as Donnie attempted to override the protocols and force the override to disengage the pieces. They had thought that Shredder was a nightmare, but in retrospect he was nothing compared to this. They didn’t have the experience, or any given advantage in this fight. They were exhausted and had only recently began to repair their brotherly bond after the infighting from the past week. It was just too much at once.

“Leo! There’s something wrong, I’m out of time! I can’t stop this! Oh God, I’m so sorry; I tried. I gave it all I had!”

As the fight between Krang and his three brothers played out, Donnie poured everything he had into breaking the code, he was certain he had it and just needed to tease out the finer points before he could take total control. The others just needed to hang in there a little longer. His fingers flew over the keyboard until, with a sense of relief he managed to stop the impending doom that would follow the systems countdown. They had won, it was over, and with literal seconds to spare. He stood from where he had been seated at the controls prepared to tell his brothers the good news, however he paused. Nothing was changing; why hadn’t the ship stopped constructing the gate?

He looked back at the command system, attempting to determine what he had missed. As he scanned the system his stomach tightened itself into knots as the sudden spike of dread began to drive itself throughout his nervous system.

The system had shifted into a second control override system, and the clock continued its countdown to the end.

The had failed. They couldn’t stop what was to come next.

Leo swallowed hard against the sudden fear, and bile that tightened his throat. “We’re leaving now, we don’t have a choice, we need to retreat back, and try to formulate another plan!”

The brothers quickly regrouped and leapt off of the giant piece of alien tech, they managed to use one of Donnie’s last ditch tools, a grappling gun, to attach to a building and use the momentum to swing themselves away. The force flung them harshly towards the gravel laid roof top of another near by building. The landing was anything but gentle and resulted in several injuries that would take awhile to heal, even with their elevated healing abilities.

As they ran from the empowered machine, they couldn’t help but pause for a moment at the sudden blinding light that it admitted, beaming towards the sky. Unknown to them the beam of light was more than a terrifying display. It was alerting the rest of the galaxy to Earth’s presence and placing this relay of the Krang network online. There was no way they could hide now; The bell had been rung, and it had been heard by any all planets and peoples that had the appropriate technology to do so.

…….. 12 years later……….

 The Turtles listened intently to their communicators as each of the special handpicked teams, took their positions. It was so close, Leo had waited for over a decade for this opportunity; a chance to finally begin to atone for his failing that had allowed Krang to change the world, stripping resources, and taking people off world to be used for all sorts of terrifying reasons.

He glanced at several of the men and women that were apart of his assigned unit for this maneuver. Not all the change brought on by the gate had been for the worst. It had allowed the rest of the universe to find them, and allowed them to find new allies, technologies, and experiences they wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. A significant number of those present were not human, but from the other races across the stars, who had relocated to Earth, or had joined in the resistance against Krang and his tyrannical mechanisms.

There was one other factor that had given he, and his bothers something they had only dreamed of. With the wide variety of peoples and cultures that came from this new world, they were by no means the strangest creatures around; Mutants were no longer feared or threatened. They just simply were. Another group of other beings. The Humans in the first few years had been shocked and terrified of the new species that came to Earth, but had learned over time that shared cooperation, kept everyone alive, and their resources replenished. It was truly, the one good thing that had came from the past decade of hiding and scrapping to get by. Most people were too hungry or scared of Krang and his control of everything else to act like asses with the new neighbors who were moving in every new day.

Leo snapped back to the task at hand. It was crucial that they manage to take out Krang this time. If they failed the resistance would be exposed, and most likely traced back to their bases and obliterated, one by one. Today, was their first, and last chance to complete the assassination attempt. It had taken months and many lives to painstakingly determine Krang’s location and determine a strategy with a decent enough percentage of success to make it worth the attempt.

Leo took the opportunity to check with Raph, Mikey and Donnie to confirm they were in position and ready to act.

“Donnie, are you ready to do this?”

“I have counted the minutes to the time when I would have a chance to finish what I started so many years ago. I am more than ready Leo.”

His voice was cool and his tone seemed to lack emotion over the com link, but Leo knew Donnie was full of fire and wasn’t leaving until this day was done. Donnie had suffered from possibly the largest sense of guilt. He blamed himself for failing to crack the code to controlling Krang’s ship, and thus for the devastation that followed. He had spent almost all his waking moments applying his knowledge to any and every area that he could. In the short time since the Last day of earth, he had become a master chemist, surgeon, and triage doctor, architect, engineer, and mechanic, in addition to his previously developed skill set. His talents and abilities were endless and applied whenever needed.

“Mikey, you in position?”

“I’m watching our target and his guard as we speak. He isn’t getting away this time.”

Mikey had matured tremendously over the years. He still laughed and smiled, especially with the children of the resistance, but in the quiet moments when they were alone, his eyes showed the loss he felt at the countless lives snuff out prematurely, or taken against their wills to be enslaved among the stars. He spent his free time taking what was around him and creating things of beauty, or finding ways to make the bland camp rations into foods that even the smallest and pickiest of eaters craved. He felt a need to give those around him acts of inspiration. It was as much a balm for his soul as for those around him.

“Raph, Its you and me brother. Are you and your team prepared?”

“We’re ready on this side. We either succeed today or die trying. I’ve put everything I have into training these men and women. We will not fail today.”

When Krang had succeeded in setting up his relay that day, and Earth fell so easily in the days that followed, Raph raged, and lashed out at anything that moved, until he simply had nothing left to give. It was the loss of the world, and so many people above, that had made him feel that his rage meant nothing. He spent years taking his anger, and negative emotions and channeling them into trying to save the lives of those who called him a monster and a freak. Except, with everything else going on in the world, they no longer saw him that way. He became accepted and for once, finally accepted himself.

Taking his fathers teaching he began to show others how to defend themselves and to protect the weak, and those they cared for the most. He had become an incredible teacher over the past decade, and with his abilities, it had been noted by several commanding forces, from across the galaxy that the loss of life had diminished by notable percentages in hand to hand combat, whenever they clashed with Krang forces.

Leo after accepting the loss of the most important battle of his life, had spent his efforts coordinating mass evacuations of the people of New York, which had turned to organizing refugee camps. He fought to protect them, including the alien life forms that had come to Earth hoping to escape the devasted home worlds they fled from. As time and the need built, he soon found himself commanding a ragtag band of freedom fighters, taking back areas and stealing supplies whenever available. Under his leadership, life had been tolerable, and people had faired significantly better. The camps had swelled into the thousands over the years until he was effectively running a small, ironically, underground city.

Krang even with as many spies as he had working for him, had never been able to find the location of the city. It moved and changed its shape whenever needed, and those within it realizing how better off they were fought to keep its secrets, by whatever means necessary. His abilities to win people, and see several moves ahead, is why those who had opposed Krang on their own planets sought him out, and after a time, Leo decided it was time to try and take back what Krang had taken from them all. For the lives and peace of so many he was willing to attempt this suicide mission.

That is how they found themselves here today. There cause was noble, and their reach extended across the universe. They were here on behalf of the billions of lives that Krang had suppressed for an unknown fixture of time.

Today it would end. Today was a new day

“Everyone into position, we begin operation Star Waltz within the next 60 seconds. This is everything we have prepared and trained for. Don’t let me down my brothers and sisters.”

…… 20 years later………

 Leo finished his glass of smoky aged bourbon, with a small sigh. 32 years. That was how long ago it had been from the Fall of Earth, marked in the calendars as E.F. and the current year of 21 New Earth, or N.E. The world at the Death of Krang had been overjoyed, but soon after they found themselves in a new struggle. As with every change in power, a vacuum had formed and it had taken a significant amount of time and effort to help elect a governing body, for the planet, as well as root out those who had benefited the most from Krang’s control. Banning slavery and freeing those who had found themselves under its control had taken Leo to places around the world, and to other galaxies he never thought he would see. He had also gone to meet the elected official of each new territory, determine if this was by the will of the people or simply another power crazed asshole who needed to have an “unfortunate” accident. After the time he and his brothers had spent fighting Krang, they had all agreed, that no one would ever suffer a monster so long as they drew breath. Whom ever found themselves in charge, was well indoctrinated that they were a civil servant, and if at any point they became a tyrant, they would be dealt with, in one way or another.

Some fell in line without incident, having survived the new world, they understood the need for cooperation. Others depending upon their policies and whatever else the brothers managed to dig up, were given one of two sentences, they were either executed on the spot, and their cabinet might also suffer the same fate. Ff they were deemed to be just as corrupt, or on rare occasions when they weren’t truly bad, just bad enough, they awoke on Donnie’s exam table, with a bomb inserted into their necks, and a very strongly worded warning. The control to which was held by the world elected federation, who acted as a voice for Earth.

What they did was decidedly not ethical, however they had all survived hell for far to long and had to do too many terrible things, to dance around a megalomaniac. Those who were in charge, were there for the sake of the people, not to line their own pockets, or benefit from the suffering of others. That was the primary reason that Krang had a chance to come to Earth in the first place. They would do whatever it took to keep those same circumstances from ever happening again.

Which reminded Leo, as he stared out across the skyline of his high rise to the glow of the gateway. They hadn’t been able to remove the gate. There wasn’t a way to “turn it off” once it was activated. Destroying it also wasn’t an option, tampering with the gate would have released the equivalent of so many thousands of nuclear warheads directly upon New York and several other states in which the radiated particles would have been carried upon the winds to. Additionally, the Nanites which managed its upkeep would have been released in the trillions and would have cannibalized the planet and all its inhabitants along with it, to rebuild the infrastructure.

Definitely not an option to alter the Gateway, whatsoever. Not to mention, if something big and bad did ever arrive to the planet to try and conquer or destroy it, the Gateway was ultimately an escape route. Per Donnie’s calculations they could evacuate everyone on the planet in under a week, and for those that didn’t want to go, well good luck and best wishes.

The new residents, and all the worlds that until Krang, had been unknown, were now very much aware of Earth, and Earth was just as aware of them. They had simply decided it was a cultural trade, and good for commerce. Not to mention, the mutants got to stay above ground and live as federation recognized citizens.

Life was definitely good, and their new lives, were significantly improved. Each of the brothers had found a niche that worked exceptionally well for them, and from the new world, came many new opportunities. Which Lead to the creation of Tartaruga Bros incorporated. It was a stretch for a name, but they did need a last name, and O’Neil they all agreed, carried too much of a painful memory of happier times.

Somethings had definitely stayed the same. A small smile came to his lips, as he listened to Raph and Mikey argue over toppings to the artesian Pizza that they were creating for a late-night snack. The brothers had decided that they did better together, especially as they worked best as a team. They stood together as a united front as defenders of Earth and all of her peoples.

  They had upgraded though, from a lair in the sewer to a state-of-the-art penthouse in the sky. Life was better, but everyday held something new in this Brave new world.

[mrallnight57-blog]

The Crystal of Mordokia

Chapter 17

    

      Jenny and Litias stood there silently. At this point, Jenny wasn't sure what to say, or what to do. Suddenly Litias broke her silence. "Meaah! Damn it! I shouldn't have told you that pretty one. Now you will just use that against me."

      Jenny took offense to Litias's comment. "I don't want you to die!"

      Litias was becoming more angry. "Oh you will. You will betray me just like the people of Mordokia!"

     Jenny was trying to think of something to calm Litias down. The last thing she wanted was to be on the receiving end of Litias's wrath. She also wasn't fully convinced that Litias was as evil as she said she was. Something about the way Litias acted made Jenny think there might be some good in her. After a moment of thinking, she remembered something Litias had said about The Hero. A hero that Jenny was pretty sure Litias secretly admired. "Didn't you say The Hero believed in giving people second chances?"

     Litias frowned. "I've had way more than two chances."

     At the moment, Jenny wasn't concerned about what Litias had done on another world. It wasn't like she could arrest the creature for it anyways. In fact besides conspiring to break into a government facility, the only real crime Jenny could arrest Litias for was literally being a illegal alien.

       Jenny was about to tell Litias that at the moment it's past didn't matter, but before Jenny could say that. Litias got right in her face, and started talking. "You think I can be redeemed pretty one? You know nothing about the terror I can bring."

     Jenny tried to say something, but Litias put it's hand on her head, and said. "I will show you." Suddenly Jenny lost consciousness, and began seeing visions of another world.

*************

       The Story of Litias.

      I was discovered by the Drow Elves. They came from a matriarch society. Their society leaders were elven priestess, who obeyed their gods. Their weak pathetic gods. I changed all of that.

     I started my reign of terror by destroying the drow churches. Of course by doing this, I had angered their gods. As each one came for me, I put them down, by the end I made The Drow worship me. That's when I turned my focus to the rest of Mordokia.

      Years ago before The Legendary Hero, The Drows were at war with the High Elves. The Legendary Hero had brought an end to the war. It was time for me to start it again.

      I took attacked every major kingdom of the High Elves. Me and my dark forces, tore down their castles, took their leaders out of power, and enslaved their people. With in a few years. I had taken over their entire world.

     For centuries I ruled. Leaving Drow in charge of The Kingdoms. Eventually the High Elves rebelled. They sent their heroes, and every time I took them down, and forced them into servitude. Their was one hero though who ended up earning my respect.

       His name was Cage, he turned out to be one of the High Elves greatest warriors. Some even compared him to The Legendary Hero. He was rather intelligent too. Instead of coming at me directly, he and his group of warriors hunted down several magical artifacts. One of them was a sword, that could apparently cut through anything.

      When his group finally did come attack me, they were successful in defeating my armies, but when the final showdown  came between me and Cage. All hell broke loose.

      He discovered that the sword he had could not harm me, but it did block my magic, so it made him a worthy foe. Then the unexpected happened. During our battle. Something crashed in the side of the mountain where we were battling, which caused a cave in. Me and Cage were trapped in side the cave. Which meant we had to work together, if we wanted to make it out of the mountain.

       Once the two of escaped the mountain, we both saw something we had never seen before. I know of it now as a star ship, but at the time, I had no idea what it was. When me and Cage opened the vessel. We found a girl, unlike any girl we have ever seen before.

     The Girl was elven like, but smaller. She had a tail, and a face of a yellow fox. I could tell right away, that Cage had become smitten with her. So I made a deal with him.

     I allowed him to take the girl, but I kept the craft. Once he agreed to this, I made him the ultimate bargain. I told him if he wanted the lands of the High Elves, he needed to give me all of the magical artifacts he had collected, and in exchange he could take the land of the High Elves on the condition that his people stayed out of the Drow Lands. Cage agreed to this, but before I could celebrate my victory. The girl from the sky, who had been unconscious this entire time. Awoke and gave me a dire warning.

      The girl from the craft was named Sarabella, and she said that she came from a another world, and above Mordokia was a space station being ruled by a Powerful Woman, and eventually she will come looking for her, and that there was no way to stop her. Once she arrives she will take over Mordokia.

     At first I didn't take this warning seriously. Why would I. I had never been defeated in battle, and Mordokia still belonged to me. Even though I gave some power back to the High Elves, I still ruled Mordokia. There was no one more powerful than me, but I was wrong.

       Several days later I met Ravenerress. At first she tried to cut a deal with me. Saying if I returned her ship, and the girl who was inside it, she would leave my world alone, but I was arrogant, and challenged her to battle. This was a mistake. She annihilated me. It was the first time ever felt pain. Once she was done beating me. She said I had five days to bring her the girl, or she would destroy Mordokia.

       Beaten, and broken, with a army that had been decimated, I found myself turning to the High Elves for help. I told them about Ravenerress, and discovered that she had been on our planet before, and she was the one who defeated the Legendary Hero. At first the High Elves weren't sure what to do, but Sarabella had a plan. She said her people were on the the skybase, and if we could get up there, we could save her people, and destroy the Sky Base. It would weaken Ravenerress, and with the help of her people, we could defeat the Red Tyrant.

     At first I wasn't sure how her people would do in battle, but discovered that after only being on Mordokia for five days, Sarabella had already mastered several advanced sword techniques, and several different fighting skills. She claimed she had never battled in a day of her life. These skills just came naturally for her.

    After seeing Sarabella's skills, I decided to go along with her plan. We would wait for Ravenerress to attack, then as Cage and his warriors held them off with the magical artifacts I returned to them. Me and Sarabella would take her craft and go to the stars.

     On the Fifth day, Ravenerress attacked, she brought her army, and brought her army. She left the skybase defenseless. Me and Sarabella went to the base, and it was nothing like I expected. I saw things that I have never been exposed to before. Technology that would make your world seem like it was still in the stone age.

      Finally me and Sarabella found her people, but when we found them, I was once again left speechless. They weren't captured, in fact they had been left free to roam the ship. It appeared that they had no hardship thrust upon them. When Sarabella asked them to join us. They refused, they acted as if they were brainwashed, but they were under no spell.

      It was at that point, Sarabella begged me not to destroy the sky base, and I finally agreed. Only because if I did defeat Ravenerress, her skybase would be mine. So we returned to Mordokia, and found that the Armies of Mordokia had surrendered, with very few casualties, and Ravenerress had made a deal with Cage. Ravenerress decided to spare Mordokia, and even let them keep Sarabella, but in exchange Ravenerress would take me in her place. I would now and forever have to serve Ravenerress.

       Litias ended the vision. Jenny stared at Litias for a bit trying to think what she should say. As she was thinking, Litias began speaking. "Now you see what you are dealing with. I am a conqueror, and with me I bring darkness. So now that you see what I am. You probably want to destroy me."

        Jenny sat silent for a moment, then shook her head. "No. Everybody has darkness inside them. When I was a young, I was bullied alot, especially when I came out of the closet. When the other kids at school, discovered I was gay. They made my life a living hell. If I had your powers when I was younger, I would have destroyed everyone, and everything in my path. My sister helped me through, the tough times though. She was a loving and compassionate person, and when she died, I dedicated myself to law enforcement. I didn't do that just to find her killer, but I did it because, I wanted to help people just like she did."

       Litias stared at Jenny for a moment, then the creature stood up and placed her hand on Jenny's shoulder. Jenny smiled and looked up at her, that's when Litias said. "You know everything you just told me about yourself?" Jenny nodded, she thought her words had gotten through to Litias, and she would reconsider giving the contract to Gothic Mirror, and find another way to break it's bound with the Demon. Then Litias said. "I knew that already, but thank you for sharing."  Jenny's jaw dropped, and Litias went back to her desk.

[risingsouls]

Recruited: Chapter 20

[I hope ya’ll are ready for the feels. To no one’s surprise considering how canon plays out, this chapter has no happiness. Changed a few canon things to fit better or just make better sense of canon, but nothing major, and it gets a little graphic but this is DBZ. SO! Have fun!  😈

As usual, you can find the rest of this fic and other things I’ve written over here!]

Nabooru

Each of Frieza's transformations proved more terrifying than the last. Vegeta drove him to the first by proving his mettle and informing him he knew of his big secret and he should get it over with. While likely inevitable, for if Vegeta continued to push him toward defeat, Frieza would have transformed anyway, the mistake was felt immediately: Frieza impaled Krillin with his horn and easily recovered from an all out assault from Gohan. She and Vegeta attempted a counter of their own after he dealt with the hybrid, but frustratingly failed to make a dent even with a combined attack. The prince tried to flee once (much to her annoyance and disappointment), only to be thwarted by the bloodthirsty tyrant. Piccolo, the mentor Gohan mentioned and who they revived before the dragonballs went inert, arrived and pushed the newly transformed Frieza to take on yet another horrific transformation with a chilling boost to his enormous power. Piccolo and Gohan both failed to take on the monstrosity and, fearing the rising power of the two Saiyans, threatened a third transformation with a promise that it was his most fearsome yet.

The pounding of her heart deafened her, the squabble between Krillin and Vegeta muffled as if she listened in from beneath the emerald waves below them. She could sense the beginnings of Frieza's rise in power, and though stopping it somehow crossed her mind, fear and the fact that she reasonably couldn’t paralyzed her. They couldn't scratch him in his last form, so what hope did they have with yet another transformation?

He meant to end them. He was finished toying with them.

Gold eyes closed for one, two seconds, then reopened to focus on the pair floating next to her. Discussing a plan. Vegeta wanted Krillin to mortally wound him and have the Namekian child heal him. Krillin refused and refused again.

Despite her own exhaustion and wounds from her bouts with Frieza, no matter how short, orange energy flared in her hand. It extended outward and shaped itself into a long sword, her fingers wrapped around its hilt of light. Desperate. Risky. Stupid. But another boost in Vegeta's power was their last chance at survival. Each boost he had gotten since Earth had been significant. But would this one be enough?

"Vegeta." 

The Saiyan whipped around to face her. The annoyance in his features contorted to surprise and pain as she drove the ki blade into his middle, armor, flesh, and muscle pierced through to the other side. He coughed up blood, but wore a pained grin. She squeezed her hand and the blade dissipated and the prince fell to the planet's surface.

She only spared Krillin a glance in the midst of his protest, her attention better served monitoring Vegeta. He limped toward Dende who trembled in fear. The Saiyan collapsed and reached a blood-stained out toward the Namekian, but the child remained rooted to the spot.

"Something's wrong." Heart in her throat and stomach in her chest, she descended, landing next to Vegeta.

"This is...our only chance...damn it," Vegeta wheezed. Fingers dug into the dirt and he yanked himself another few inches forward, as far as his remaining strength would allow. "Don't you...get it?"

Dende quivered and tears shone in his eyes. His lip trembled, but his gaze and stance was resolute. And then it hit her: Dende refused to heal Vegeta. Not because he was scared of him, not fully at least. But because of how he murdered his people. How she had done the same. 

Their last hope denied. Vegeta would bleed out because of her attack. And she couldn't blame the kid one bit.

"I...I can't do it. I won't do it!"

Nabooru barely noticed him fly off in the other direction as she sank to her knees next to Vegeta. She pressed her hand over the hole in his back and carefully flipped him over onto his back, ignoring his curses and protests. She held her hand over the other hole in his abdomen, applying pressure to both sides, resting his head in her lap.

"Don't you dare die on me," she hissed, crimson staining her ivory gloves. Unshorn tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away. She wasn't sure if they were for him or their overall defeat after a hard fought battle. "Not like this…"

He snorted. "Funny coming from the woman who just stabbed me and has been waiting to since I told you about Nappa…" He chuckled and immediately winced. "At least you had the courtesy to not literally stab me in the back this time…"

"That did make it easier. And the fact that you're still delusional enough to believe I wanted to work with Frieza over you is pathetic." Krillin floating downward flicked her gaze upward for a second, but no more. She stared into his face, his heavy lidded eyes, brow furrowed and frown deep from his pain and annoyance. "The ship's not far. If I hurry, I can get you into the tank before Frieza finishes."

She started to lift him, but he growled, "Stop. It's hopeless, woman. We're done for." He clicked his tongue and tried to push himself up on his elbows only for his arms to give out beneath his weight and his head to collapse back into her lap.

"It's not! You can heal and--"

"And what? What do you plan to do in the meantime? You were far less a match for him than me."

She swallowed a sob and brushed away a fresh wave of frustrated tears. Blood smeared her cheek. "Shut up. You're wasting your energy. I'm taking you to the ship and that's final!"

"Tch...so...damn stupid…" 

If he had anything else to say, his loss of consciousness stopped him. Nabooru moved to lift him once more only to pause when Krillin, Dende, Gohan, and a newly-healed Piccolo landed near them. She stared them down, a wounded animal cornered and desperate. Unsure if they came to further harm them or aid.

"Please…" She bit her lip and her head drooped,  feeling her pride rage against the idea of remotely begging, especially on behalf of the proud Saiyan prince, but she had to try to appeal to them. For now they had a common enemy that needed to be stopped, and the enslaved Saiyan prince not only deserved his vengeance, but was their final hope of defeating him.

Nabooru lifted her head again. "I know I'm in no position to ask you anything. Neither of us are nor do we deserve your help. We murdered your people and you are well within your rights to deny us." She glanced to Krillin and then locked her gaze with Dende's. "If you heal him, he'll be stronger when he wakes up. Possibly strong enough to finish Frieza off for good. This is our last chance. Not only for us but for the universe…"

Dende squeezed his eyes shut and looked up to Krillin. "I know I've asked a lot of you today, but she's right, Dende." He glanced to the pair of them with a slight grimace. "I know these two are rotten, but Frieza makes them look like a couple of bunny rabbits. You...you saw what he did to me. What he and his men did to your village."

"It's alright, kid," Piccolo rumbled, voice different than she remembered. "They may be scum, but we need Vegeta if we hope to win this."

Seconds passed and Dende finally left Krillin's side to trudge over to him. Nabooru removed her shaking hands and Dende rested both of his on Vegeta's chest. A warm, orange glow emanated from them and encompassed Vegeta's body. The hole in his abdomen mended itself, and any other scrapes and bruises disappeared. His eyes fluttered open, and he stared first up at the amazed Gerudo and then glanced to the child.

He pushed himself up to a seated position, observing his hands. Tightening them into fists and flexing his fingers again. The corner of his lip tilted upward as he rose to his feet. "It's about damn time, brat." He kicked Dende away from him and walked away, frame shaking with his laughter. "You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. Now that I’ve finally ascended to the legendary status of Super Saiyan."

"Super jerk is more like it," Nabooru heard Krillin mutter as she, too, rose to her feet again and strode over to Dende. Gentle as she could manage, gentler than perhaps she had been in the greater portion of her life, she lifted the child by his waist and set him back on his feet. He wiped tears from his face with his sleeve and refused to look at her.

"Thank you, Dende."

He refused to meet her gaze but captured one of her hands in his. "I should heal you, too. Just in case."

Nabooru nodded and kept still. His hand warmed and she felt the aches and pains subside, the wounds she sustained beginning to mend. Only for it all to halt with a suddenness she couldn't fathom. Dende's already light grip went limp and his tiny hand slipped from hers. His body slumped to the ground, motionless. 

Then she felt it. That steadily rising energy had leveled off at a gargantuan height, the pressure of it enough to make her nauseous. She turned slowly, catching the same confusion written on the Earthlings' visages as her own, until she spotted the tyrant newly transformed, a finger raised and aimed where the fallen child once stood. Though the most unassuming of each of his forms--shorter in stature, sleeker, unadorned with the thick plating or horns of the others--this form struck her deeper than even the one that she became accustomed to throughout her service, that plagued her nightmares.

Enraged, Gohan wasted no time springing to action. Piccolo and Krillin followed suit. Unable to sit back and watch herself, she powered up and dashed forward. Despite the four of them fighting in tandem with every ounce of power and skill they had, none of their blows landed, each one dodged by immeasurable speed. Even when they pulled back and each fired a ki-based attack, the smoke cleared to reveal an unfazed Frieza, smirking in the face of their ill-fated attempt to bring him down and avenge Dende. Nabooru had to fight the slump of her shoulders as she fought to regain her breath, the sting of tears as her heart began to break for their failure.

"Look out!"

She saw nothing but the explosion of rock and debris of an island across the way, and Vegeta shoving Gohan from what she could only assume was a second attack akin to the one that killed Dende. Sure enough, Freiza's fingers aimed where Gohan once stood. Vegeta picked the boy back up by his armor and shoved him back toward the others. "Pay attention, idiots!"

"I...I didn't even see…"

Piccolo growled. "None of us saw it except Vegeta somehow." He spat. "Maybe he really does have a chance. I can't believe I had to say that…"

Gohan stood again and dusted himself off. “Thank you, Vegeta. You saved us.”

Nabooru only dared glance away from the tyrant when Vegeta responded, answer as cocky as expected. “I didn’t save you. None of you are even worth the effort.” His smirk returned. “I merely need witnesses to my new power.”

A crimson brow twitched, and the Gerudo fought the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. The only fact that stopped her was that there was truth to it all: he didn’t care for any of them and would likely kill them all once he finished with Frieza, and he proved he was indeed stronger after taking her ki blade to the gut as the only one to take note of Frieza’s attempt on Gohan’s life. Though he still repressed his energy, she could feel the pulse of it beating against its cage’s walls as he struggled to maintain that control in the wake of his own excitement.

“Just make him pay, Vegeta,” she said with dark conviction, slowing his forward momentum a step or two and earning her a sidelong glance. “You deserve it more than anyone I know, and he deserves to die. For all that he’s done.”

So you can be free. So I can go home or die with some semblance of peace.

“Hmpt...you’re right about the first part.” He chuckled. “But I don’t care about the rest. It’s time to exact the revenge I promised myself since I was a child.”

"Such big talk, but I wonder if you can back it up, Vegeta.” Frieza interrupted. All eyes snapped to him. “I had no intentions of killing you first and hoped to save the best for last, but since you have the strongest desire for the embrace of death, I’ll grant it to you as a final gift from me.”

"We'll see who dies here, Frieza." Unlike her and the others, Vegeta wore a triumphant smirk as he approached his adversary, and his eyes gleamed with glee and malice. "You're about to face the legend you've feared for so long. Introducing for the first time, Super Saiyan Vegeta!”

There was no denying the shock that crossed the emperor’s features, but it quickly shifted to a coy and taunting chuckle. “Oh? Well forgive me for not trembling where I stand, Super Saiyan, but I fail to be impressed thus far.”

“Then witness what true power looks like!”

Power finally unleashed in the wake of raging lightning and the blinding flare of his blue-white aura, flickering with gold. Nabooru ascended with the others for his opening attack, flaring that energy out toward Frieza in an explosion. It left him unmarred but the Saiyan remained undeterred. He shot forward with an onslaught of ruthless attacks, forcing Frieza on the defensive and raising the spirits of Krillin and Gohan for a swift victory. The Gerudo, however, chewed her lip as each blow failed to find a mark, and Frieza showed little concern no matter how close a fist or kick came to slamming into his person. As they took to the air for the continuation of the fight, she could only silently and begrudgingly agree with Piccolo: Vegeta did not have the upper hand. Frieza’s speed proved far superior, exemplified by how evaded their perception so easily, leaving Vegeta searching helplessly for him until the tyrant made himself known.

Switching tactics and declaring that the battle was far from over, Vegeta fired a barrage of ki blasts in pursuit of Frieza, each exploding in fiery chaos. Though, no matter how deadly accurate his aim, Frieza evaded each blast by a slim but enough of a margin to escape. In a blink, he appeared before the four of them. Nabooru shook off her stunned paralysis and realized his strategy of placing them in the line of fire. Piccolo noted the same and, grabbing the other two Earthlings, they darted out of the blasts’ range. A glance over her shoulder and she saw Frieza dodge and a series of explosions where the four of them once hovered.

Another island served as their temporary sanctuary. She could feel the Saiyan’s aggravation and shock from the distance as another attack failed to leave even a scratch on his enemy. Heart pounding and sweat beading on her forehead around her headpiece, she willed him to keep fighting, that this couldn’t be all he had in him. She only wished she could do more than plant herself on the sidelines. She wanted nothing more than to fight and help topple Frieza once and for all. Though it killed her to admit, she simply wasn’t strong enough. She had no choice but to leave it to the Saiyan prince.

The sky darkened as Vegeta once more powered up, gold aura shifting to a purple hue and his energy soaring to new heights that shook the planet. The others worried over him destroying it and all of them with it, but the Gerudo continued her silent urging to take whatever steps he needed to ensure Frieza’s demise. He fired the blast toward Frieza who, to Nabooru’s unease, stood still as stone. Only when the full-powered attack inched ever closer did he finally move. He swung his leg back and punted the blast back, narrowly missing the originator. It exploded high in the atmosphere. Power nearly fully drained from the planet-busting attack, Vegeta hung in the air, limbs limp and posture bowed. The picture of absolute defeat.

“No…it can’t be over...” Nabooru breathed, disbelief and frustration with everything--Vegeta’s useless assault no matter his increases in strength, all their effort to secure the dragonballs and immortality, her own helplessness--vocalized. She shook with rage and anguish knowing what came next before Frieza shot into the air again. She growled and shouted to the heavens, “Vegeta, please! Move!”

Whether he heard her pointless plea or not hardly mattered in his state, and Frieza’s cranium connected with his jaw to send him flying upward. The tyrant made chase and sent the prince soaring into the sparkling sea with a devastating whip of his tail. Water cascaded upward where he fell, and Nabooru heard Piccolo reprimand Gohan for attempting a rescue, citing the futility of it. Unable to accept such herself, the Gerudo sprang forward, ready to leap into the depths and yank him from a watery grave only for a flare of light fired in her direction to divert her, forcing her to dive out of its path to avoid her own demise.

“Now, now...” Nabooru pushed herself up onto her elbows from her graceless sprawl to stare over at Frieza, her lip curled upward in a snarl. He perched on a small outcropping jutting from the sea, just over where Vegeta drifted downward toward the seabed. “You’ll get your turn. Have some patience, Nabooru.”

She slammed her fist in the grass with a growl and pushed up to her feet again, watching the emperor pushed the sea outward with a flourish of his arms. He descended downward to where Vegeta lay near unconscious. He lifted him by the hair, and she fought between tearing her eyes from the brutal display and his pained cries with each punch dealt to his low back and springing into action again to put a stop to it. Instead, she did neither, even when he released Vegeta and kicked him back into the air, dropped his elbow into his abdomen multiple time, and dropped him back to the ground in front of her with another punishing kick. She stood frozen to her patch of grass and watched in helpless torment.

Frieza landed next to Vegeta, tail coiling around his neck and squeezing with bone-crunching force that made her stomach lurch. He continued his wanton torture with another round blows to the Saiyan’s back, each one more punishing than the last. Each scream more agonizing and gut-wrenching. It was torture, plain and simple. The tyrant turned Vegeta into his personal punching bag, hoisted by his tail, and the louder Vegeta’s cries, the more he renewed his vigorous punches. Fire flared inside her, orange energy flaring high around her and burning the tears from her eyes and off her cheeks. She roared in fury and shot toward Frieza, arm raised and aimed to strike Frieza in the jaw to end his gleeful torture. No matter his flaws, his crimes, the Saiyan didn’t deserve this and she wouldn’t stand by and watch Frieza take joy in his, of all people’s, torment. If Vegeta deserved punishment for all he did, for the orchestrator of many of those crimes and a tyrant of worse repute to do it was merely a cosmic joke in bad taste. She had witnessed enough of Frieza's ruthless cruelty as his general, and now, with her tyranny revealed, she didn’t feel so keen on letting it continue this time.

He caught her wrist with ease, as if she had attacked in slow motion. His grip tightened, her bones creaking under the pressure, and she bit back a cry, refusing to give him the satisfaction of her pain. Scarlet eyes rested on her as he yanked her forward and gripped her neck in a suffocating chokehold. Onyx nails bit into her flesh, and she felt blood trickle down to her collar.

“You interrupt me again, Nabooru? Don’t tell me you still care for him after all the miserable things he said about you?” Nabooru swung her leg outward, only for Frieza to bat it away with his free hand. He glanced back to Vegeta and clicked his tongue. “Fine, then. Vegeta, if you’re still conscious, know we’ll finish up our little fun once I deal with my pretty little general.”

With his tail, he flung the Saiyan into a nearby plateau, and he crumpled to the ground at its base. A single relief, at least. Whatever torture awaited her, at least Vegeta would get a reprieve. A chance to survive if they were lucky enough and she could keep Frieza's attention long enough. A stupid, optimistic thought in her slowly blacking mind. Luck was not their friend. It never had been.

Her mouth instinctively opened to gulp in lungfuls of fresh air when the grip on her throat loosed and left it. She found her footing for half a second before Frieza's knee buried itself in her abdomen, shattering the armor covering it. Sharp pain to her back--his elbow--drove her face down at his feet, face and body slamming the hard ground. She tasted the copper tang of blood on her tongue.

Nabooru shifted up onto her elbow and lifted her head, only for the force of the emperor's foot on top of it to force her face back into the dirt. "Was it Vegeta who poisoned you against me, or was that your own brand of pride and stupidity?" His toes curled on her scalp, and she heard his tail slither next to her. It slammed down on her outstretched forearm. Nabooru screamed into the dirt as the bone shattered, the eruption of pain adding to the accumulation of it dealt since Dende healed her. "Either way, look where it got you."

She tried to spit out the cocktail of blood and dirt from her mouth but found little room to do so. She idly considered how shameful it was to choke on her own blood and spit and some mud. 

Finally, the pressure on her head subsided. She coughed and shakily pushed herself up on her good arm, the other dangling at her side. She didn't dare look at it, already feeling its unnatural angle. Her weight felt too heavy, but she refused to wallow in the dirt before him if she could help it. She would stand again if she could manage and die on her feet.

"I did not intend to divulge this tidbit of information I've been sitting on for a while now; I wanted to save it for the most opportune moment. But since you're going to die...well, there's no sense not to." The tip of his tail glided along her cheek, and a chill of disgust coursed through her body. She wanted to tear the damn thing off of him.

He clicked his tongue. "Oh, but how best to say this? I've never been great at delivering such wretched news. I lack that gentle touch." Nabooru pushed herself up to one knee then to her feet. Hunched over and cradling her broken arm but upright. "No use sugar-coating, I suppose. Your planet was destroyed, Nabooru, and your entire race went with it."

The universe screeched to a halt around her. It felt as though Frieza had driven both hands into her chest and wrenched it open. Her knees threatened to give out on her in the quivering, and she had to cover her mouth to stifle a sob.

"No...no you're lying...you're just…" She swallowed hard and wished she hadn't looked into his face, the self-satisfied smirk on his face all too proud. "They can't be…"

"Why would I lie about such a tragic occurrence?" Frieza nodded to Vegeta, who managed to push himself up and support his weight on a shaky elbow. "He witnessed the whole thing. Did the job himself, in fact."

Blood-stained lips parted with her dropped jaw, and her eyes widened and shifted to the prince. He stared at the pair of them, eyes half closed in his exhaustion but conscious enough to show his own shock. Nabooru couldn't tell if it was for being outed or it was somehow news to him, too. She stuttered through another half coherent interrogation as she struggled to catch up, to make sense of it all, the tempest of rage, despair, and both physical and emotional pain making it difficult to process much of anything. But all she could fathom with certainty was that her home and people had all been destroyed. How long had she been playing Frieza's game, following his orders and committing heinous acts to protect them in vain? How much blood had she spilled with the intent of holding up her end of the deal he made with Ganondorf and her race as a whole only for it to be broken anyway? What happened? Where had she failed? How did Vegeta play into this? Why couldn't she do the one thing she devoted her whole life to?

Frieza scoffed and rolled his eyes. "As expected. This wasn't nearly as exciting when you're both half dead. I was hoping to use that someday to set you both at each other's throats for a little entertainment when things grew too dull." He waved a hand as Nabooru finally managed to straighten up to some degree, panting with the effort. "Since you'll both die, I suppose I can allow you to perish hating each other a little less: he did it on my orders and without knowledge of what planet he destroyed. I suppose the ill will and distrust I planted within the two of you when I made you a general will have to suffice when I look back with disgust on these last few years."

The nonchalance with which he spoke, as if he detailed the plot of a book he read, prodded the rage building inside her. Her fingers curled into her palm, the nails on her exposed index and middle fingers puncturing leather and biting into her flesh. Frieza played them. Used them for his own entertainment. Tore her from the team she found her only minimal solace in as her soul was slowly ripped to shreds and she found difficulty in continuing on more often than not. Unsurprising, but on top of promoting her for her appearance rather than her merit as a warrior, that burning slight to her pride, her hatred for him soared to new heights. 

"In your babbling I believe I heard you ask why I killed your people." Burning gold met smug crimson when he spoke again. "I thought when I told Vegeta, it would serve as a cautionary tale for him moving forward to not cross me. But monkeys truly cannot be taught. If you wish to divert blame from yourself, place it solely on the shoulders of your former king. A fool who thought he could attain the power of some mystical relic to overthrow me. I applaud his ambitions but I owned that planet, I owned him and the rest of your pathetic excuse of a race. If anyone was to be granted such power through a relic on one of my planet's, it should be me. And, as you are witnessing here, I do not take kindly to willfully keeping extravagant secrets of power from me, especially when one plans to use it to unseat me from my undisputed throne."

She wanted to be angry with the Gerudo king. Beyond irritated that Ganondorf did not abandon his search for the Triforce despite their victory over Hyrule. But her rage found purchase on another foothold in Frieza and how he murdered her people and spoke ill of them after the fact. Rage burned hotter in the near hollowed out shell the news of their fate left her as. Power and rage rising and rising, bursting forth from her body. Concentrated to her hand and shot with a roar toward Frieza. Every ounce of ki in her fired in a devastating swath, tearing into the earth and bursting through the sea. Her body shook with the effort once the orange flare subsided. Her vision doubled as she searched for the corpse in the deep divot her attack created. Waited for the waves to wash him up on shore. Nothing. All that. And she missed.

She sensed him behind her a moment too late. His hand tangled into her ponytail and he yanked her backward, straight into the fist aimed for the small of her back. Her cry was cut short by a swift roundhouse to her side, sending her flying into the plateau. She sank to the ground a few meters away from where Vegeta lay, catching herself on her shaking good arm.

Frieza's feet appeared in front of her. "With that business out of the way, I suppose we should finish up here. I've kept poor Vegeta waiting long enough."

Nabooru began another grueling attempt to stand, her energy all but tapped and pain rippling through her with even the most minute movements. She pushed up to one knee and nearly toppled onto her side. She grit her teeth and tried again. "I see your potential, Nabooru, and, considering I have awarded Vegeta with chance after chance to prove his usefulness and loyalty to me, it is only fair I do the same for you." He grasped her ponytail again and gave it another harsh tug and she bit her lip to stifle her whimper. Her head fell limp when he released it, her body doubling over her knee. "Pledge your allegiance to me and beg for forgiveness before these witnesses. Look upon your one true ruler to whom you pledge your undying loyalty and I will spare your miserable life and allow you to continue serving me."

Even if she trusted Frieza's word, even if she could return to her duties on the force without issue once Namek was behind them, everything in her screamed its refusal. She had no reason to comply. He obliterated the one tie keeping her loyal and obedient to his wishes no matter how his orders grated against the fragile morality she tried to maintain. He likely knew that, and potentially expected her to refuse. Hoped she would. And maybe in the grand scheme of it all, she never had to. She could have succumbed to an "accident" as she fantasized about with each mission she was sent on. If it would always amount to her beloved home being destroyed no matter her efforts, no matter how well she followed orders, how efficiently she killed and conquered, what use was agreeing to that stupid deal, anyway? At least she would have died alongside her people, surrounded by the beautiful, golden sands she adored and the heat of the sun beating down and warming her skin. Instead, she would die amongst mostly strangers and in a land she did not know. Broken and beaten, but maintaining the only shred of pride and dignity she managed to nurture and keep alive over the last several years of her life.

She always had a bit of rebellious streak, one that she quashed more often than not during her service in the force and only allowed to shine through in a sassy comment or prodding an argument with her former captain. Once promoted, she had to dim it further, constantly curb her sharp tongue, laugh at racist or degrading jokes she didn't think were funny, and agree to every one of the tyrants whims without question no matter how horrific or frivolous. A final act of defiance. One she hoped would sting, if only for a moment. A final, if not small comfort in all this, in facing a less than glamorous death. She would go down fighting. Perhaps not in the physical way she always assumed, always wanted as a proud Gerudo warrior, but fighting nonetheless.

A fresh wave of tears streamed down her face and a half sob, half laugh tore at her raw throat. Her lips curved upward. She let her other knee join its mate and turned her head away from Freiza. Toward Vegeta to her side. He stared at her, unblinking and so motionless she thought he had succumbed to his injuries after all. It hurt to see the proud prince of all Saiyans in such a state, wounded to the point of near paralysis. Beaten down by the very abuser he sought to exact revenge on his whole life. A tenacious and steadfast warrior, patient in waiting for his time to strike no matter the crimes against him, the slurs and humiliation heaped on him and his cohorts. She had never seen anyone or anything deter Vegeta so completely and drive him to such a deep hopelessness that he refused to continue fighting. But considering his history with Frieza, his firsthand knowledge of what horrors Frieza was capable of enacting both on him and others, ran deep, all the way down to the roots of his childhood. Despite how everything went, how his best laid plans were foiled time and again since arriving on this planet and how it would end in death for him, she admired him for trying. For wanting to take back his life and agency from an unstoppable force like Frieza when so many others lacked the fortitude and drive to even try.

Maybe it had always been a fever dream to believe they could achieve victory and topple Frieza on their own. There was no happy ending here. Not for her. Not for him. There was no tidy vengeance for the fates of their respective races. And maybe that's because neither of them really deserved one. If the universe hadn’t made that glaringly obvious before Namek, before Freiza even, these last few minutes proved it. Her last hope was simply that her final message to the emperor and the prince rang loud and clear. Frieza asked her to look to the one she would swear loyalty to, so that's exactly what she did.

--------------

Vegeta

Vegeta was no stranger to violence. To the sight of it or inflicting it himself. But even he flinched at the strike of Frieza's tail on the back of her neck. The snap of her spine. That eerily calm smile on her lips faded, bloodied mouth parting in a shocked O. The light, that fire, faded from her eyes. Her body slumped to the side only to halt halfway to the ground, a pale hand tipped with pitch talons wrapped around the strap of her armor and keeping her from falling over. Her head lolled back with an unnatural lack of support.

"Perhaps this can be a lesson to all of you." Frieza tossed Nabooru's body next to him. Her head fell to the side, her sightless gaze resting on him. "Never choose a weak and foolish monkey to place your loyalty and trust in."

He wanted to belittle her, call her an idiot for interfering, for not just taking the damn offer from Frieza, to shake her back to life just so he could tell her all these things and more. But all he felt was the burn of those shameful tears again. Her dying here like this reflected his own failure to stop Frieza himself. Whether or not he would let her live himself he could never decide with certainty. He convinced himself she wanted the promotion, painted it as treachery and a betrayal of the ounce of trust he had in her, to make it easier on himself. A lie he forced himself to believe to the point he didn't question it. He knew deep down it wasn't true, seeing her in the flesh after over a year an unforgiving reminder. But rage was easier to stomach and understand than the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him when Frieza shared the news of her new position. Rage didn't hurt. Rage reminded him he planned to dole out the same fate to her once he tore Frieza from his lofty throne, but the strange clarity that came with facing one's demise whispered that it wasn't true. Another lie he told himself, perhaps, because it felt like the right thing to do. The just thing in a mind so warped and confused no matter the evidence that pushed back on such a permanent punishment for the Gerudo.

All or it to drive a wedge between them and make their already miserable lives even more unbearable. All for his amusement. How deep did that plot run? All the way back when he placed her on his team? With what happened on Trimbon? When he asked Vegeta to destroy a planet he never named because its people had grown too troublesome, and one he never thought to ask the name of? Perhaps even when he recruited her in the first place. He said from the beginning her people reminded him of the Saiyans, so did he assume Vegeta would begin to respect her as a warrior for it? That he would learn to trust her as even a slight bit more than his subordinate? The rookie placed on his team with an obnoxious righteousness when it came to the slaughter they carried out on every job and homesickness she could never quite shake? How she fought all of it to fruitlessly protect her home and people from the wrath of a liar, not unlike how he fought his own nature and pride to bide his time before striking out for revenge?

Power flickered inside him, latched on to his fury and frothing at the mouth. Begging to be unleashed. But it faded as quick as it surged, snuffed by a broken and tapped out body and the hopelessness of his situation. The yawning mouth of death inching ever closer, salivating all the more with each thought of his shameful doom. 

Pain in his abdomen forced his attention back on the task at hand. Whatever Frieza said was drowned out by his miserable groans choked by sobs, the cracking of the stone he squashed into his abdomen. His hand rose. Vegeta could just feel the surge of energy meant to do him in. But then another power arrived on the battlefield, the rush of wind resulting from his swift arrival diverting Frieza's attention. 

Vegeta snorted and fell back on the ground. "Kakarot...it's about damn time," he wheezed, listening as his son and friends cheered over his recovery. Amidst the torture, the fleeting high from his power skyrocketing and his belief that he had ascended to that legendary status, in surviving one transformation after another, the prince had forgotten about the low-class warrior healing in the ship. For a moment, resentment frothed back to the surface at the memory of his humiliation on Earth at his hands. But then he remembered how easily he dealt with Recoome and Burter, how Ginyu would have followed the same formula had he not employed his cheap body snatching trick. His gut rolled at the thought, the same he had on that battlefield: had Kakarot done it? Had he become the legendary Super Saiyan?

He pushed himself back up onto his elbows with a pained grunt. After healing and his own power surging again, he ripped up such insecure thoughts with his usual bravado. No, obviously it was he who had become a Super Saiyan. His birthright as an elite Saiyan warrior, as royalty destined to conquer the universe. Frieza would fall to his might, and immortality would serve as the icing on the cake.

Kakarot challenged Frieza. Stupid in his opinion. Until the emperor raised his finger and fired a deadly shot of ki at Kakarot's chest. Vegeta inwardly groaned, the fight already concluded. Until the lightning quick swat of Kakarot's hand batted the attack away with the ease of someone fending off a flying pest rather than a deadly attack. Vegeta's jaw went slack. Another rapid-fire barrage of pink laser shots zipped toward the Saiyan, each dodged without issue. Frieza's surprise mirrored his own in that moment.

On top of his sound beating after claiming the have reached legendary status, after once more witnessing Kakarot display power and speed beyond his own reach, Vegeta was forced to contend with the reality that Kakarot might have done it. He should have felt humbled, enraged even. Instead, his frame quivered with mirthful giggles that exploded into full bodied and crazed laughter. 

"This is too rich. Frieza, do you have any idea what you're up against?" Through doubling vision, he noted the twitch of Freiza's eye, the corners of his lips as his calm facade began to crack. "Kakarot...he's done it! Truly done it! He's become a Super Saiyan! You...you really are going to be killed by the legend you feared! You...you're going to pay!"

A fresh wave of painful laughter ripped from his throat, shortened by a shot of ki blasted straight through his chest. His eyes widened and he coughed up blood. His arms gave beneath his weight and he crashed to the ground. Consciousness drifted in and out in spurts, the voice of Kakarot reprimanding Frieza for his callousness in attacking a man unable to defend himself. Vegeta could have laughed again at such honor, such softness unfitting of a Saiyan warrior. But just breathing had become a task, the air filling his lungs escaping just as fast. Heart slowing. Blood soaking into the grass. No, he had to save his breath for something else. A damn reality check for Kakarot and his naivety.

"Kakarot, listen to me…"

Vegeta coughed again and Kakarot winced. "Vegeta, please. Save your strength."

"Shut up. Shut up and...listen to me." He stared straight up into the third-class warrior's face, his eyes, even as his own filled with tears. Of shame. Of regret. For the race he refused to mourn for so long. His mother. His father. Nappa and Raditz. All written off as weak for their deaths. So what did that make him?

"You have to let go of your foolish emotions, Kakarot. They're going to get you killed. Can't be...so soft..."

"Vegeta…."

"No! You can't bother with your idiotic ideals here! Mercy, compassion...Frieza won't show you either no matter how much you show him! You need...need to forget all of that and fight him with everything you have! Kill him before he kills you!"

Vegeta paused for another futile attempt at catching his breath. The world darkened along the edges of his vision. His eyes, his body felt heavy. He caught a glimpse of Nabooru's dead, gold eyes. Remembered her smile in her last moments. Her silent rebellion against Frieza and a final attempt to reassure him she had been on his side to her death. No, he had more to say. More that Kakarot needed to hear.

"Kakarot…Frieza. Frieza killed our people. My parents and yours. Every last Saiyan he obliterated because he was afraid we would rise up against him. And after we served him and his family loyally for years, did everything they asked and more! Only to be put down like...like a pack of dogs!" Vegeta coughed up more blood and choked on a sob. "He took me from my father as a child. Said he would kill him if I didn't do everything he said...and then he did it anyway. He murdered my father. He...Frieza made me who I am, Kakarot!"

Admitting it aloud stung more than the hole in his chest. A fact he knew all along but refused to contend with or truly fight. More compliance he could not opt out of if he valued his life. He hadn't understood Nabooru's ravings on the ship before, about figuring out who he really was after all this, but now...now he thought he might. Not that it mattered; death had come to claim him.

He dug his fingers into the dirt, clinging to the planet as adamantly as he clung to the last dregs of his life. "Nabooru…she's just like us. He did the same to her, took her...threatened her planet and people…killed them anyway." Another wheeze. "Avenge us, Kakarot. Avenge our race. Make...make him pay for everything he's done to us."

Gloved fingers unfurled, leaving behind ruts in the soil. Obsidian eyes slipped closed, forcing out the last of the years of tears he had been too proud to shed. His heart shuddered to a halt, and Prince Vegeta breathed his last breath.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

Ben Solo’s Story Arc - An Autopsy

This will be the second post before I publish the full TROS review, mainly because it’s yet another thing I want to get out of the way first. After which, I’ll be posting an announcement about the future of this blog, but no worries – I’ll be sticking around.

After Rey and her parentage, I’ll be talking about Ben here specifically – mainly because I have a pretty big inkling that his plotline for TROS was mutilated, and that he initially actually had an arc.

Except, somewhere in the executive meddling, for reasons I myself am not sure of (okay, I got some theories but it’s pointless to share them here), it got cut.

The Rise of Kylo Ren might be an inkling that there was something more in the works, also that when it comes to its take on Snoke, it directly contradicts things TROS sets up. The simplest explanation is that the Lucasfilm Story Group had a hand in TRoKR, and not for TROS. But even then… the comic reveals things that make me BAFFLED they didn’t put that in the films. I don’t want to be that person who thinks 30 minutes of TLJ should have been dedicated to Snoke’s origins, but stuff like how Ben didn’t even destroy Luke’s Jedi Camp? THAT’S the kind of thing you need to include in your film.

Also, I 110% believe the rumors that JJ Abrams just ignored the Story Group’s existence entirely. Wanna know why? Just the fact that Exogol is established as the Sith world… when we know thanks to The Clone Wars that it’s Moraband – which would have been super easy to use. But fuck continuity I guess.

I will say though, I am NOT surprised it’s leaking out that the movie was severely tempered with and was constantly changing during production, simply because from my first (and only) viewing… I could tell something was wrong. Namely, I could tell that Ben’s arc had been mutilated – and the more I think about it, the more glaring it gets. It’s not even that I’m mad that Adam Driver (aka Golden Globe/Academy Award nominee Adam Driver) gets relegated to playing Darth Exposition for 75% of the film (and godawful exposition at that), it’s literally that so much of what remains of his arc makes no sense, and it affects Palpatine and Rey by extension.

I explained why Rey’s character arc was butchered here, and I’ve also talked about how Palpatine’s implication in her arc didn’t work either, so I won’t talk about it too much here, nor do you need to have read it prior in order to understand this post. I will also point out that a lot of what will be my speculation – so for all I know, I could be wrong, but I’m trying to fill in the holes here.

So, for starters… somehow, Ben knows that Palpatine is still alive. Somehow, he knows how to get to him. AND SOMEHOW, THE WRITERS DECIDED NOT EXPLAINING SHIT WAS THE WAY TO GO. This is not even on the level of not explaining who the fuck Snoke is in the two previous films – while I do think there could have been a throwaway line in TLJ, it didn’t “hinder” the story.

HOWEVER, not explaining how Palpatine is still around and kicking (well, he’s on life support so kicking might be a little too flattering), why he decided to reveal himself right there, right then, and how the hell Ben knows he’s around, how he figured out how to get to Exogol using the holocrons… THAT IS A BIG PROBLEM. This is the triggering element of the rising action in your story. But before you do that, YOU. NEED. EXPOSITION. TO. SET. UP. THE. CONTEXT. OF. YOUR. STORY.

What TROS did would be like skipping Finn’s intro when he’s with his Stormtrooper squad on Jakku, removing the interrogation with Poe and Kylo entirely, and just start TFA with him escaping with Poe without any explanation given. Oh, and also cut out Rey’s introduction as well, and we first meet her when she kicks Finn’s ass in Niima Outpost. You’d just have a bunch of characters coming out of nowhere, and you’d have no frigging clue what they’re doing, and what they want. And that’s what TROS does with Ben and Palpatine.

Take the handling of Snoke, for instance. I’d be a lot more mad about the Snoke retconning if it wasn’t for… what I’m going to call the “Snoke Stew” (and I’d crack a joke about how it was probably made with the DNA of a guy called Stu, which is not funny but still funnier than most of the jokes in TROS). That’s pretty much the one thing that stops me from being mad, because of how STUPID it is.

But the explanation for Snoke’s origins just… retcons so much that has been established before, INCLUDING INFO FROM A COMIC THAT CAME OUT AFTER TROS. We knew Snoke had a past, even if we weren’t privy to it yet. We did kind of know that he was a rich guy, like all the shitty rich people we saw in Canto Bight, who happened to be a Dark Sider and was seemingly smart enough to kill his way to the top. Considering how exploitative the First Order is when it comes to resources and that a rich patron would be welcomed with open arms, it makes sense.

With the explanation given by TROS, it just provides a fuck ton of plotholes to the fact he took over the First Order while killing off old Imperial higher-ups to establish himself as Supreme Leader. Do you really think a guy in a golden bathrobe would just be able to take over out of fucking nowhere because he killed all the higher-ups? No. And even if some of the higher-ups knew that Snoke was a Palps plant (like Pryde seems to), I doubt Ben would have stayed Supreme Leader for as long as a year.

But that’s not even the biggest problem! Seriously, I don’t know if Palps is senile in this film, because we got an ENTIRE trilogy explaining how the guy is one of the worst evil masterminds to have ever lived, in the Galaxy Far Far Away and even in today’s culture. Here, you don’t even understand what the fuck he even wants! I’m “guessing” he fucked with Ben to get his revenge on Anakin, because he uses Ben as his lackey while being seemingly totally oblivious that Ben is working against him (what happened to “every voice in your head”???). He wants Ben to kill Rey… while knowing Rey is his granddaughter, and while telling her when she shows up that he wants to use her as a new host or some shit. Seriously, MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY.

This said… I honestly wonder if Ben was initially meant to be the new host, and not Rey. Because not only that was an actual theory I had pre-TROS, but it would make a shit ton more sense than having Rey be the host – not to mention it’d be the ultimate revenge against Anakin (and if you want to get REAL yucky, he may have planned to have Rey be his new consort, but I’ll spare you more speculation about that aspect). But nah, I guess.

The most damning thing in all this is that there’s no difference in Ben’s overall behavior and actions AFTER Snoke has been killed, when it’s clear Snoke was the biggest influence on him. Saying that Palpatine just kept messing with him makes no sense because with Snoke dead, any voice Ben would still hear would make him go “NOPE” and do exactly the opposite of what said voice tells him to do.

Like, for real, with Snoke dead, unless he’s REALLY stupid (I mean… Ben is reckless, but not stupid), why would Ben do anything a now Random Voice would tell him to do?

The thing is, there have been hints in previous material that Ben isn’t exactly 110% on board with what the First Order does. He’s clearly against blowing up planets, he snarks about how Stormtroopers should be clones instead – which could just be a throwaway snarky line, but considering Ben’s past… I can see him not being too fuzzy about the Stormtrooper program. Like, I’m not saying he’d start a Galactic Free Donut Day, but there would be a change. It wouldn’t be Business as Usual – especially that Ben wasn’t that young (23) when he joined Snoke, and it’s a little hard to go from “My uncle tried to kill me in my sleep and I’m going towards the one figure I think can protect me” to “Blowing up planets and enslaving people is the way to go”. It would have worked if Ben had been brainwashed from his teens, but not so much as an adult – hence you need a little more nuance with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

Oh yeah, and the Knights of Ren? They’re just there to look cool. “But they kidnapped Chewie!” Yeah, what was the fucking point of them kidnapping Chewie apart from giving a reason for the Beautiful Friendship Gang to get on the Star Destroyer and give us fake suspense because we all know how it’s gonna end, just end my suffering already. Also, NO INTERRACTION WITH BEN? DID YA FORGET CHEWIE IS LIKE, HIS UNCLE? DID YALL FORGET BEN WAS PART OF YOUR FAMILY OR…

Seriously, that sequence on Pasaana where they’re just standing there on top of a fucking mountain? I called that part the Backdesert Boys. That tells ya how much I hated it.

Oh yeah, and they’re fighting fodder for Benny Boy in the end, because of course they were Palps’ lackeys all along, can’t think of anything else that’s more imaginative.

So what could they possibly add to Ben’s arc, that would explain so much, like how Ben finds Palpatine, or how he’s always one step ahead from the Beautiful Friendship Gang in their Wild Goose Chase no one fucking cares about?

This is where I got into speculation/conspiracy theory territory. Brace yourselves. 

*

So, the film has Lando reveal that he and Luke “knew” about Palps being around thanks to snooping around… except that makes no bloody sense. Lando was never involved in a Force plot of any kind, and he was never that close to Luke anyway. I mean, Lando’s a nice guy and all, but he’s not really besties with Luke – he’s Han’s friend.

So that research should have taken place either before Ben joined Luke at Jedi Camp, either after. Then again, before would make no sense, because why would Luke leave that critical of a search on the ice for 10 to 15 years? The only place where I can place it in time, where it would make logical sense… would be when Ben was around, and it’d make WAY more sense to have him be Luke’s sidekick in that search.

It would have totally explained why Luke freaked the fuck out reading Ben’s mind, because only Palpatine can give her that severe of a PTSD-like reaction. It would have totally explained why Ben would run to Snoke, grooming and desperation set aside, under the promise that they’d associate to defeat Palps, because if you ignore the plot hole extravaganza of TROS, you’d bet Snoke wouldn’t want Palps anywhere near his throne – mainly because Snoke is a wannabe Palpatine who targeted Ben to get his own Vader. It would have totally explained why Ben thought becoming Supreme Leader is a good idea – even if it’s morally wrong, it makes logical sense. It would have totally explained why Kylo was collecting Sith artefacts in the year gap while keeping in mind he made his distaste for the Sith clear in TLJ. It would have totally provided the audience (and Rey) a good reason to forgive Ben, because even if he had godawful methods, he wanted to do the right thing and save the galaxy from the person who came this close to destroying them, as well as his family. That would have provided for him the means to realize that he cannot defeat Palpatine using Palpatine’s means – as Rose said, he’ll win by saving what he loves, and not destroying what he hates. That would have made Rey the glitch in the matrix, who must join forces with Ben because without her, he would have been doomed despite his best efforts.

And before you tell me that would have been unnecessary… let me put it to you this way. Ben keeps saying it's too late, and if it was just that, it could be interpreted as him thinking he went too far to come back. But he also adds that he has "something to do", and I'm here waving my arms like "WHAT? WHY? FUCK, YOU DIDN'T EVEN KILL YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS!!! THEY'RE NOT EVEN BOTHERED TO SAY THAT IN THE ACTUAL FILM!!!"

Hence why my theory is the simplest way to just tie it all neatly together, without retconning anything. There.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SUPER SIMPLE TO DO. Except that, as I mentioned earlier, they mutilated Ben’s arc, and left him to play the part of Darth Exposition, until the very end, when they have Ben save what he loves… but even then, I can’t even appreciate that either, because it happens in a way that makes EVERYONE look horrible, while Ben is, from a storytelling perspective, a saint… a saint everyone ultimately forgot about.

[thecandywrites]

Of Heaven and Fire Part 14

So, I have been so writer’s blocked for this part. I restarted it several times trying to get it right because the part after this flowed like water and you can blame Lover’s Death and Without You by Ursine Vulpine and Annaca, Surrender by Natalie Taylor, Sober by Bad Wolves and especially Pictures by Judah and the Lion featuring Kacey Musgraves for the next few chapters. 

Tagging the crew- @probablyclever​ @imherefortheforthefanart​ and @funmadnessandbadassvikings​

Of Heaven and Fire

Part 14

Like Matae predicted, within two weeks, all your suitors bowed out. It was almost comical to see how they would literally wake up one morning and realize- that you were not the woman for them. They were all gracious with their withdrawals and gave many gifts of goodwill. 

You were relieved when Suriel was the first to do so, promptly going after your sister Yaviane who was a little weary at first but once the two got to know each other, realized they were fated and were soon inseparable. And Suriel assured you that if the council were to go after Brock, how he would help you expose them. 

Your elder sister Misia seemed to catch Oriles eyes, while Railtor realized your other elder sister Shakaia was a better fit for him before Cordene was drawn to your other older sister Audrilora who was closer in age to him than you were. 

However at the end of the two weeks, you were still just a little bit anxious to see if the same phenomenon would happen to Brock all while the nightmares intensified, as you were able to see more and more, like a crumbled cloth being smoothed out. However, much to your relief, he did not. Instead he acted towards you the same as before, if not more reassuring that his love for you would never fade. Cordene and Suriel made the cloud cities for the orcs permanent structures and Onvam happily took Vraum to the sister colony who were happy to have him and the fish from his own boats up his own river to them. 

Two months passed and the nightmares grew infrequent and things fell into their new ways easily. Cugas and Kaive were themselves inseparable and Kaive was all too happy to take to the sea with Cugas and fell into the life of a fisherman easily and it was a prosperous time for everyone as you grew to accept that the council never was going to give back Brock’s cloak and with Brock’s insistence, you let it go. 

All your former suitors built a home for you in a cloud, each adding their own touches as a blessing for you. Which you happily accepted and it was soon filled with all kinds of treasures from all the realms and you even made a spot for it to settle in Stormbreaker after the solstice celebration but for now, it was attached to Drauch. 

Usually a week or two before the solstice every woman in the colony seemed to have their period, except for you and your sisters who had started to court their own suitors. Because they themselves didn’t have their moon blood, you thought nothing of it that you did not get yours because you were so focused on making sure your life in Stormbreaker would be as smooth and comfortable as possible besides you were busy teaching Brock the dances since you would be spending your solstice dancing with him and only him. The only problem was that Brock- didn’t have a lick of rhythm. No matter how hard you tried working with him, he would always do it just half a beat off because he was always trying to watch you and mimic you but was just a touch slow about it. But honestly, it didn’t bother you too much because you loved him anyway. 

The day of the solstice, you were so happy, you were with Brock, dancing in the engaged circle where you didn’t switch partners and you still had fun dancing until your feet were sore and when the solstice was done, you spent a whole day resting in your new home wrapped up in his embrace before spending another day just having all the sex you wanted because you were practically married by all standards. 

But the happiness was not to last. The moment you two left the house to get something to eat, Brock was arrested and thrown in prison and the moment he left you, the nightmares came back with a vengence and with an intensity that made you never want to sleep again, no matter how badly your body needed it. 

It seemed Matae had been right, that the council would not let you be with Brock. In retaliation, you demanded that they drop the charges and let you and Brock leave in peace or else you would make good on your own threat. They didn’t think you had the capabilities. But when they denied it, you very publicly made your own accusations to the entire council and with Suriel backing you up and showing the whole colony that what you were accusing them of was true. It didn’t matter what lies they tried to spin, you had them dead to rights and the whole colony revolted against the council because the colony felt just as betrayed as you had been just as this part of the nightmarish prophecy became clear in your mind. 

For another month, there was one huge trial. Every counselor was found guilty of multiple crimes, Matae even came and proved that he had been tasked with stealing all of these orc’s baby’s cloaks on order from the council and how the council had purposefully asked your brother and your brother in law to get the last one because they knew that you would not kill them on sight. It was revealed that not only was Suchi guilty of this, but others, and when the truth was exposed, the colonies themselves felt broken and the guilty councillors were all cast out of the colonies and suddenly all dropped off the face of the planet and could not be found anywhere.  

However through all of this Brock remained imprisoned and the judges judging his case was filled and refilled over a dozen times. But once an honest and upright judge was found from a colony half a world away, you felt like you had a chance at justice for Brock since you were not the one accusing him and his accusers were impossible to find and you hoped that his case would be thrown out. Even though your prophetic dreams showed otherwise. 

But sadly, in Brock’s trial, he and his shaman were still found guilty of the crime of enslaving a moura which was proven even by your own account and theirs because of the physical shackle and rope and both were sentenced to death by hanging and you were put under a special spell to keep you from changing into any form than your human one and if you intervened, you too would be arrested and tried as a criminal yourself for interfering and obstructing of justice. 

So here you were, changing into sackcloth to show your grief before Matae reappeared in the room, looking guilty. 

“What are you doing here?” You asked as you tried to tie a belt around your itchy garment but you were too numb to notice. 

“To offer my apology.” Matae said. “Your life is going to be very hard from here, raising a little one all on your own.” Matae finally said which made you look up at him. 

“What?” You asked. “What little one?” You asked. 

“The little boy in your womb, it’s Brock’s, four months strong already.” Matae answered as you looked at him in confusion. It was true in the last month or so, you seemed to have become a voracious eater and had put on a fair bit of weight because of the stress of Brock’s trial. 

“I’m not...I’m not…” You tried to argue before Matae pulled his own version of lira light and touched your chest before you looked down to see the lights over your womb that were the most beautiful mix of your moura light marks and Brock’s. One way moura’s showed pregancy is a moura baby would have their own moura light marks around them that would show around the womb and you felt your legs give out and Matae managed to catch you and help you sit down on the floor before you broke down into sobs as you clutched at your middle while Matae did his best to comfort you. 

“What if..” You tried to ask but Matae just shook his head no. “No, they won’t change it.” Matae finished for you. 

“What do I do?” You asked. 

“Tell Brock and take care of yourself.” Matae advised. 

After you managed to regain composure you gathered the food you had prepared for Brock, his last meal as Kaive and Cugas helped you carry it and walked with you to the prison to spend the night on the other side of the bars since you were not allowed in the cell with him and you came to see his family on the other side of the bars. In all of this, they never once blamed you for any of this and they were so happy to see you stand up to your entire colony to defend them and especially Brock and you fought for what was right and for justice and you had given it your all, and it still...was just not enough. And they all understood that Brock was sacrificing himself in order to ensure Stormbreaker’s success and glory, sometimes it had to be written in blood before it could be written in gold. 

And Brock- he was surprisingly accepting of all of it. As if he had known all along that this is how it was going to be and he was at peace with it. That to you was what made you furious at first, that he didn’t fight against any of it. He never once fought against those who arrested him or the jailors or the judges or the jury or anything. He was unashamedly honest about everything and freely admitted his guilt and accepted his punishment without fuss or arguing. Like he was a sacrificial lamb being led to slaughter if it meant the rest of his “flock” wouldn’t be, as if securing a greener pasture free from predators that offered all kinds of shelters was the ultimate goal. His only regret was that you would be so hurt by his death and he urged his family to comfort you and care for you in his absence. 

“There’s the love of my life.” Brock tried to coo at you as he gave you the most loving adoring smile as he reached for you through the bars as you went to him and grasped his hands as you simply returned his adoring look the best you could before you broke down and wept again as he did his best to hold and console you through the bars as the food you prepared was added to the other food the rest of his family made as he sat down as close to the bars as he could be as you sat next to him as it was the last full family meal. 

It was so surreal, that if the bars had not been there, everyone acted as if they were back at home, talking like they usually did and sharing the meal like they were used to, still telling stories and legends as each person tried to come up with ways of telling this story to the future generations and were able to put such a grand and proud spin on such sad circumstances until it came around to you. 

“When this story gets told, it should be told like this...” you began, your throat tightening as you forced a brave smile through your tears as you squeezed Brock’s hand extra tight. 

“Since the dawn of time, firebirds would come and breathe fire on the lands, the fires consuming everything it touched, pushing the clans to the seas. And even there, the firebirds dove to eat the fish right from the nets. The clans could only look and see the golden nests the firebirds built in the tall mountains, glittering like a jewel, forever out of reach. But there was a wise warchief who decided to catch the firebirds. Now to catch one he had to be quick, cunning and strong, for firebirds are never caught in traps, not of wood or of iron, but the wise warchief used silver which worked it’s charm. With his silver trap he climbed the mountains, and krept through the scorched earth. He caught a young fledgling by surprise in his silver trap and brought it home. To the firebird he revealed the devastation the fires brought and how so few fish were caught because the firebirds took even them. And in turn the firebird revealed herself and the secrets of the firebirds and how to make golden nests that fire can not burn or destroy. And with these secrets the warchief built his clan with fireproof gold so that nothing would ever destroy it. The warchief used kindness with the firebird instead of revenge and it brought the clan a blessing hundred fold. When he let the firebird go, she stayed. She chased off the others so that the ground could heal and bear its fruit and grains. She invited the sea to give up it’s treasures until there was no more want. She blessed the warchief and he blessed her.” You emphasized as you brought Kihro’s hand over to rest on your lower belly as your voice cracked with the flood of emotions and the meaning behind your words were not lost on anyone and soon everyone cheered which made you laugh through your tears as you were practically swarmed with hugs and congratulations and questions on how you knew before you turned on your lira light to show them the baby and turned Brock’s on to show how it was a boy and it was his. 

“Dad, her child is going to be my only heir and the next warchief.” Brock insisted as everyone agreed before everyone took turns to invent legends to tell the little one about their great father once they came into the world and you fell asleep, laying on a bed roll on the prison floor, with Brock laying behind you, his arms through the bars to wrap around you, his hand never leaving your belly. His words of love and encouragement filling your ears. Thankfully your last night with him was filled with blissful, restful sleep. 

Come morning, you and Brock’s family were escorted out of the prison before you went out into the courtyard of justice where the gallows were as you sat down and prepared yourself for what was to come as the colony came out to witness it. 

Your eyes were too flooded with tears to really see Brock clearly as he and his shaman were led out as you squeezed Rhosland’s hands so tight you feared they would break when all of a sudden a clear shield enveloped the crowd and dragons, being rode by Kaive and Matae flew down and breathed fire over Brock and the Shaman before the nuses could be hung around their necks, the moura’s tasked with executing them fleeing for their lives because the fires were so hot and intense that Brock and his shaman were instantly turned to ash along with the gallows and the ground was scorched. 

It all happened so fast, within the span of a heartbeat and the dragons took to the air and went back to their caves immediately and you just sat in stunned silence before a Zirvush tree grew at your feet and delivered Brock’s gold moura collar but the moment you touched it, it turned to ash and you were left holding ash in your hands. 

You were both saddened yet relived, because if Brock could be reborn in the ashes, he could return to you. This way- justice was served with mercy. 

So you waited until the shield lowered when the temperatures of everything cooled and you still sat there and you waited. You waited to see if he would rise from the ashes. 

And you waited, and waited, and waited. One by one and then family by family and group by group the colony left and returned to their normal lives. Even Brock’s clan left the site and returned to Drauch with their heaping piles of gold. Some food vendors even came and brought food for you to eat while you waited which you were thankful for, since you knew you had to take care of yourself in order to care for the little one in your womb. 

You waited until the sun went down and you lit torches over the ashes to illuminate them so that if they stirred, you would see it. You stayed up all night and by dawn you had passed out, and when you woke up, Kaive had returned to you and kept vigil for you and when you woke with a start, Kaive was there to assure you that you didn’t miss anything. That nothing stirred in the ashes. 

Then a storm came and you didn’t want the ashes to get swept away and scattered in the run off so you swept up every bit of ash and put it into huge jars before Brock’s family brought the jars of ash into your home and you left Suchi, flying your home back to Stormbreaker and settling it down in it’s spot that you and Brock had prepared for it. You then took the ashes and scattered them over the land around your home, offering every prayer to every god, even Zirvush, to return Brock to you and that hoping that the fact that his ashes were now at his home, he would rise now. 

No sooner had you scattered them before a rainstorm came, big fat raindrops drenched the earth and you had to take shelter in the house and watch and wait until it grew dark. 

Lightning struck outside your home and you went out to see the Shaman had risen from the ashes as a dragonborn orc, which to you felt appropriate since moura’s and dragons would always be allies and the clan was overjoyed that their spiritual leader had returned to them and it gave you hope that Brock would return too. 

Come morning, the ground around your house was thick with all sorts of vegetation, spices and fruits and vegetables and all kinds of grains grew around the house and even grew out, from there, even a Zirvush tree had grown and on it’s branches were the bronzed collars of all the councilers who had sinned against the orcs and you knew that Matae had killed them in vengence for you over his own guilt. You would make a crown of the collars for Brock to wear once he returned. 

The whole clan called out for Brock before they noticed a mighty golden eagle flying over the clan before it landed and transformed into Brock who was shaken and dazed and confused as to how he had been a bird before everyone swarmed him. So grateful he had come back as they all made way for you to go to him and hug him. 

But instead of returning your hug, he froze. 

“Uh, excuse you” Brock frowned in confusion as managed to pull you off of him and looked at you like he didn’t know you and didn’t like it that someone he didn’t know was hugging him. 

“Brock, do you know who I am?” Rhoslan asked, wondering if he had some kind of amnesia. 

“Of course I know who you are mom,” Brock frowned before he started naming everyone off that was around him. 

“But I don’t know you.” Brock said as he continued to frown at you.

Fuck. 

[quietlysatan]

Can Your Friends Do This? - Watermelonsmellinfellon, AO3 (Though OP said they cross posted on FF.net too)

Link: Here!!

Rating: Mature

Favorite Quote(s): Because I love The Avatar show

"First, there are more than one dimension and more than one universe. Foolish mortals are the only ones to assume they are the only forms of intelligent life in their respective universes. This Earth we are on resides in a different universe altogether and consists of nations of people who possess an affinity with the elements. Some are born as mixes of two and use chakra to create new elemental affinities or abilities. This planet Earth parallels another planet Earth in another dimension of this universe, where there are only four large nations and each represents either fire, water, earth, or air, and with beings able to bend their own element to their advantage."

And these ones because these four are important.

1. "A lot of suicidal people didn't really want to die, they simply wanted the pain to cease so that living once again seemed worthwhile."

2. Hari was very firm on her decision. She'd always been the one rescuing people and never once realized that maybe she should have been rescued.

3. “Despite his wish to be Hokage and to be a hero, I realized that someone needed to rescue him first for that to happen. And so I took the job." 

4. "I've lost many people, and while it doesn't coincide with what others will tell you in life, it actually does get better. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep thinking about what you've lost. There are jobs to do, and people to watch over, and even your own health to consider. You won't have the time to recount every mistake you've ever made. And the pain from their distance will eventually dim and become tolerable. The only way it wouldn't get better is if you keep thinking about it all the time. People who are always depressed over the loss of loved ones are usually the very same people who think about them all the time, which ends up keeping them in their depressed states, to begin with. And then there is no progression."

A Fucking mood from Hari/Harry Potta/Potter

“I don't like exercising. I'm not meant for it."

Because Sasuke is an adorable little shit, which is, as always when it comes to him, The Best

Naruto was teaching someone Taijutsu? It was laughable at best, though he didn't actually laugh. That would ruin his image as the strong and silent loner. He couldn't afford for people to think he was nice or anything.

Because this is something important and personal to ME specifically

"This is all sweets. But they are sugar-free sweets. There are foods you can eat that will give you the energy you need without having a negative effect on your body. Bananas are a good snack. Watermelon, lettuce, leafy green veggies, they all have a lot of water in them. They fill you up quickly, can keep you hydrated, and because most are made of water, you aren't consuming fats and oils. Though do not replace every meal with these things unless you take vitamins and supplements on a daily basis. While there is nothing wrong with being vegan, a lot of vegans forget to take their supplements and vitamins. They especially need those because they keep so many important foods from their eating schedule."

Another Mood

To make it worse… she'd gotten her monthly visit from TOM. She named it TOM in memory of a certain arse who caused her a lot of pain and grief. Her Time of the Month, TOM, liked to mock her for at least five days out of every month and this month was terrible.

And last, but not least, the best thing I have read since I woke up

Potta Hari's cousin was not romantically involved with anyone, or so his sources said. Perhaps marrying someone to her would offer a better chance for an alliance between their clans?

A knock startled him from his thoughts, and he had to compose himself quickly. "Yes?"

"A letter has arrived for you, Hiashi-sama," Kosuke said from the other side of the door.

"Come."

The letter was handed over within seconds, and Kosuke was gone immediately.

When he finally got to the message however, he had to smirk in amusement. He should have known that making plans about a Seer wouldn't go as expected.

Dear Hyuga-sama,

No.

Respectfully, Potta Runa.

And this

Was Danzo literally the only bad person in this world who was bad naturally and not because he had some unfortunate upbringing, was bullied or was manipulated into being bad? 

Basically tbh 

Words & Chapter(s):  287,295 words and 20 chapters, unfinished, but worth it

Summary: Tsume Yuki's, 'Ain't Never Had a Friend Like Me' prompt.

Master of Death Hari is sealed inside a genie bottle and tossed into the Veil. Only the interference of Death stops her from being enslaved. When Naruto comes into possession of the bottle and frees Hari from her prison, she gets attached and decides to help him, changing everything we know.

Score: 13, this is very amusing, and has no qualms with having humor AND seriousness whenever. Not to mention, I could honestly go back to the very beginning and read it all over again and I’d still love every moment of it in all honesty.

Pairing(s): Hatake Kakashi/Female!Harry Potter, as well as Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto, background Anko Mitarashi/Luna Lovegood

Warning(s): For all that this looks like a lot of warnings it’s just because this fic is well over 200K words, and it’s not nearly as bad as all these warnings look. There’s no major character death (Technically. A few from the HP universe passed before our MC even came into our universe. Still, only casual mentions so far)

Always a girlHarry still had to deal with all the abuse of her counterpart. The ministry betrayed her (Shocking. I know.) mentions of (CANON) past childhood abuse described three-quarters of the way through chapter three, then again in chapter four, no worries though it’s not graphic or gratuitous.

Mentions of death, and the things and ways that death may affect someone (This is a naruto universe crossover fic soooo, I don’t know what you were expecting honestly. At least it’s not as subtly/suddenly angsty as FMA fics get.), attempted murder that fails because Hari is the Mistress of Death (... Is Master not gender neutral??? I thought it was... Still, Mistress sounds cooler and more dangerous)

Mentions of porn, off-screen lemon, etc.

There IS a bit of fat-shaming from certain characters, but they eventually learn better, there are also mentions of children, and others, on diets, and also that have unhealthy eating habits and why they’re not good regardless, as well as the effects of being on a diet while also doing various exercises and rigorous training regimens, but not to worry, it slowly but surely improves.

Manipulation and grey morals, (Again shocking, I know.) which is great because my morals would go very dark very quickly if I were Hari (Because this is a crossover, and she is in Japan/The Elemental) and I’d for some dumbass reason decided to return to my original world (THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN THIS A HYPOTHETICAL WHAT-IF), but Hari doesn’t which is always amazing

World/Dimension displacement. Figured I’d add that just in case, personally I love those types of stories but you never know.

Kidnapping followed by attempted murder fails spectacularly. It is quite amusing to see for my inner sadist.

One of Hari’s family members passed away due to cancer, but it’s a small mention and there’s minimal angst because it happened years ago. The others seemed to have died in a war with the goblins which is only occasionally mentioned here and there.

Someone tries to enslave Hari as a genie. It does not work. Death seemed upset that someone thought that would work at all in the “Like, honestly, who the fuck do you even think you are???” kind of pissed

Danzo and ROOT exist. Sadly.

Also “ the lives of the many are more important than the lives of the few “ is something that seems to be a basic background of the morals of this fic. I know some find this detestable, but I would like to point out that, it’s true. It’s really fucked up, but unless that One has some very important and necessary ability, they are less important than the five-hundred and forty-two. Shitty as it seems.

There’s technically a war. If you could call the opposing sides... attempts a war. No major casualties or uber gruesome happenings though.

There are some injuries, of course, their big but not graphically described as far as I’ve seen up to the current chapter limit.

Pros: GREAT FUCKING WRITING!!! Great research and really immersive too!!!

Hari and Naruto because each others precious people, and Harry protects Naruto as best she, a civilian and witch, can.

The Japanese That Doesn’t Need To Be Written Because You’re Writing This In English And It Doesn’t Make Sense And Is Awkward isn’t present which is always a plus. 

It’s really unique and different from what is normally written in these situations (Not that there’s anything wrong with what we normally get!!!) from how a female main character reacts (Very Harry Potter-ish) and whatnot to her romance with other characters to her friendship with them, and also I love the way her relationships are with everyone! It’s just, so, refreshing for a female MC to be written like this, like getting that first bite of watermelon in the middle of summer, and jumping in the pool, or a drink of hot chocolate in the middle of a snowy night.

Not to mention! The way Hari interacts with the world around her and manages to change everything even though she wasn’t trying, and the way she still isn’t overpowered regardless for all that she can use her magic at will. UGH!!! IT’S JUST SO GOOD

Aesthetic: It’s like drinking fresh lemonade after a hard days work, like swimming in your best friends pool after you finish your homework, it’s like a warm cup of tea after a stressful day, and cuddling up to a friend or lover, like dancing to your favorite song while you’re all alone in your kitchen. It is like being alone, but not lonely, ad being with a few good friends but not ignored. It is freeing and refreshing and relaxing and exciting and new and old and so much more. It feels happy, for lack of a better word. Very, subtly, happy.

Gif Aesthetic: Oh my god yes, this is Hari

and this is what the romance in this fic reminds me of

and this somehow reminds me of several characters at once

And this one too sometimes, which is nice

and this (Except Boruto doesn’t exist obviously, I think this fic was actually started before Boruto even came into the picture actually) is what the fighting looks like

except for when it looks like this

Hari and Luna fucking everything up while everyone else watches and decides it is safest to just, not interfere with the crazy witches.

Hari, Death, and Luna/Runa planning who to fuck up protect next

Every single Rookie Nine without fail

(Scroll back up and look at how cute the slimy kitty yawns!!! She’s so cute!!!)

[sage-nebula]

for the HC meme: odd numbers for keith, evens for lotor :D

I’m going to answer for Paradigm Shift because it’s far better than and preferable to canon, and I’m also just going to do all of them for both of them since that’s easier than hopping back and forth, haha.

1.) Their physical weak spots:

Keith: He’s very ticklish behind his ears. It’s not a spot many people know about for obvious reasons, but Lotor discovers it accidentally while kissing, once, and never lets him forget it after that. On a less happy note, Keith has a scar on the back of his neck where Acxa dug out his Revender chip with a knife, and while that healed all right for the most part, it’s still indented, a bit sensitive to the touch, and aches a bit when he’s stressed.

Lotor: Whether it’s something genetic, or whether it’s what years of being dragged around by your hair in your childhood by your various diaks will do to you, the top of Lotor’s scalp is randomly painful to the touch. Often times it’s fine, but then other times the slightest brush against it will make it sting like it’s newly injured. Similarly, “tutoring” sessions with his diak often had him chained him with weights on him, which is what led to him dislocating his shoulders over and over and over again in his childhood. The last few times his shoulders didn’t heal quite right, or maybe this is just what happens when your shoulders get dislocated that many times, but either way he can dislocate his shoulders at will now, though it still hurts like nobody’s business (although he’s also used to the pain to a degree, so …). Other than that, he doesn’t really have any—at least, not any that he’d willingly divulge.

2.) Their emotional/moral weak spots:

Keith: Due to the traumatic circumstances in which he ended up at Revender, Keith can’t remember anything about his early childhood before ending up there, and isn’t even 100% sure that “Keith” is his real name (because the first name he remembered upon waking up there was “Kolgan,” and he went years without hearing his actual name, and had to really think on it when she asked him what it was). He’s a bit sensitive about this aspect of himself and his history (as seen when he snaps at Zethrid for asking if he made his name up), even though he mostly tries to focus on the present and therefore the future. He also, due to being discriminated against and abused for it for all of the life that he can remember, has a few bristly spots regarding his half-galra heritage—namely, that he makes sure everyone knows that he is part-galra instead of letting them put him in one box or the other (e.g. when he snapped at Hunk for calling him “Galra Keith”), and that he’s not going to shy away from, hide, or feel ashamed of this fact. He’s part-galra, and so is their entire team, and so are all the auxiliary teams, and they’re all going to change the universe no matter how many people hate them for that, because people hate them anyway just for being born so they might as well just lead a successful revolution while they’re at it, to hell with anyone who tries to stop them.As far as moral weaknesses go, Keith’s actually pretty ruled by what he feels internally as being Right, which means that he could well show mercy to someone who’d just sold them out so long as that person was a civilian also in bad circumstances. He’s far from afraid to do what he has to so that they survive / their mission is completed, meaning that he has killed Empire soldiers and will do so again (and if another reality-crossing happened absolutely would kick the shit out of every single canon Paladin without flinching if it came down to it, no mercy given), but there’s a reason that Acxa privately deems him “soft” the night they leave with Lotor, and that reason is because Keith is more willing to trust or offer mercy than most. He is, point blank, the second nicest person on their team. (The first nicest is Narti, and even she will fuck you up if it comes down to it, so … don’t mistake kindness for weakness. Not even once.)

Lotor: Oh boy. Well, to start with he has a myriad of trust issues. Lotor faced abuse (often under the guise of “education”) for pretty much his entire childhood up until the point he left with Keith and Acxa when he was thirteen, on top of assassination attempts (none too few of which came in the guise of food, which is why the first and only time Ezor ever tries to pull a food prank on him, it does not go well). Since he never had a trustworthy person in his life until he met Keith and Acxa when he was thirteen, and wasn’t even sure he could trust them right away (and tbf they had made a private pact to ditch him at the first sign of shadiness so he wasn’t exactly wrong), Lotor has an immense amount of difficulty trusting people, and usually doesn’t. On top of which, betrayal is something he takes immensely seriously and, perhaps understandably given who his enemies are, doesn’t forgive. On top of which, while Lotor knows that Haggar = Honerva = His Mother, he likes to pretend that Honerva died and was reincarnated as someone else—that, had his mother lived, she would have loved him. This is something that he works through, albeit with Keith’s very tough love (which in turn amounts to enough of a fight between them that the girls start wondering if they’re going to break up, which leads Zethrid to say, “I had to sit through three friggin’ decaphoebs of that will-they-won’t-they bullshit. They sure as hell better not break up after all that,” and Acxa to reply, “You’re complaining about three? Try six”), but even after he comes to accept that Haggar = his mother just as much as Zarkon = his father, the whole issue of his parents being abusive, genocidal tyrants who quite literally want him dead (or enslaved, or lobotomized and then enslaved, and really, is there much difference?) is still a sensitive topic even though he likes to say it’s not. And as a final note, he’s very sensitive to the idea of losing what he’s worked so hard to gain for himself: a home, a family, and love.

As far as moral weaknesses go, oh boy again. Lotor genuinely wants peace. He genuinely wants to create a universe where all planets rule themselves, where people can live happily, their unique cultures thriving, without the fear of losing their children overnight. But Lotor also doesn’t take betrayal well, as mentioned. If a civilian sells them out, and then that civilian is predictably going to be captured, tortured, or killed by the Empire as well, Lotor’s more than willing to let that happen because the civilian sold them out, whereas Keith’s the one who wants to go back to help the civilian no matter how much of a jackass they were. Lotor’s the one who will gladly throw Throk under the bus to take the fall for something Lotor and the team did, whereas Keith would rather let Throk screw himself over, as Keith is sure he will inevitably do (and Lotor agrees tbh), rather than setting it up. They don’t always agree (the civilian traitor issue is a big one they will never agree on, especially since Keith risks his own life trying to help that civilian out, which Lotor feels is unforgivable x2 on that civilian’s list of crimes now), but in many ways Keith is the one tugging Lotor back when Lotor starts to get too close to that line. Keith brings out the person in Lotor, and grounds him, as AJ once said.

That said, if Zarkon, Haggar, or anyone else ever succeeded in killing Keith? On their own heads be it. 

3.) Scars:

Keith: As you could expect from someone who has spent most of their life fighting (and fighting in a war, at that), Keith has a lot of scars. Notable ones are the one on the back of his neck mentioned earlier, where Acxa dug out his Revender chip with a knife, same as he did for her. As I mentioned before, that one aches a bit when he’s stressed and is a bit indented. He also has a little scar on his bottom lip from where an opponent in the Revender arena bit him when they were fighting; their fang went all the way through his lip and left a scar there. There are plenty of others, too, but those are the most notable that I can think of right now.

Lotor: Like Keith, Lotor also has a lot of scars, albeit pretty much all of his are in places easily covered. He has scars around his wrists and ankles from these bracelets / anklets his diak made him wear during “tutoring” sessions when he was young, which would deliver harsh shocks whenever he got an answer wrong, tried to argue something he was taught, et cetera. Originally the shocks would just leave weals, but after enough layering eventually the skin there just scarred. Similarly, the stunt he pulled in the Revender arena the day he met Keith was enough of a transgression to earn him a punishment in lashes from his diak, oversaw by Zarkon and Haggar to make sure it got done, and so he has scars all down his back from that, too.

4.) Best places to kiss on their body: 

Keith: Lotor likes to kiss Keith behind his ears, given how ticklish Keith is there, but Keith’s preferred spots are on the corners of his mouth or eyes, or on the palm of his hand. The palm kiss always makes him melt a little.

Lotor: Lotor likes it when Keith kisses him down along his neck and across his shoulders. He’s also very partial to Keith placing kisses between his shoulderblades when they’re lying in bed at night.

5.) Guilty pleasures:

Keith: For the most part, the idea of feeling guilty for liking something is foreign to Keith. There’s so much to be miserable about in the universe, given that the Empire rules it, so why should they make fun of the little joy they have? The closest he gets is when Kolivan gives him the yupper plush he had as a child, and the nostalgic scent (that he doesn’t even remember the reasoning behind) makes him hug it without thinking. That’s embarrassing, and even more so when Keith realizes how comforting the smell and feel of that plush really is. Other than that, though, no guilty pleasures.

Lotor: Keith is a lightweight, and he’s also very giggly when drunk, and so sometimes Lotor likes to persuade Keith into drinking just so he can see Keith get very giggly and silly because it’s endlessly amusing to Lotor. It’s a guilty pleasure because he knows he shouldn’t, but … he just wants to see Keith say “cash cache” and then fall into uncontrollable giggles because in that one, intoxicated moment, it’s the funniest thing Keith has ever heard in his life.

6.) Their vices (physical or emotional):

Keith: Whether it’s with one of the pod ships they have, or a hoverbike, or even the Black Lion, Keith loves flying as fast and as recklessly as he can. He’ll take ships out on test runs through asteroid fields, dodging and weaving around them, because the rush of adrenaline is intoxicating. Even when he crashes, provided he’s not unconscious or dead afterward, he’ll end up laughing because of the sheer rush of it all. This counts as a vice not only because of how dangerous it is, but also because pretty much everyone hates that Keith does it because of how dangerous it is to his health and safety. (One time Keith wrecked a hoverbike he’d been testing so badly that he had to fly a pod ship back with a broken leg, several splintered ribs, and a dislocated shoulder, and Lotor just about had apoplexy.) 

Lotor: This will sound silly at first, but—gossip. Not harmless, middle school gossip, but Lotor likes scoping out information on others (his enemies, namely) that he can pocket and use for later, usually in ice cold revenge dishes. He’s not only always listening no matter the situation he’s in, but he also utilizes information networks in his spare time in order to get whatever intel he can for later use. Even the most trivial thing, like how one of Zarkon’s commanders hates another, high-ranking commander, could come in handy someday, and so Lotor grabs whatever seemingly petty gossip he can. (Also, sometimes it’s just funny. He’ll admit to schadenfreude where other people’s embarrassing secrets are concerned.)

7.) Their tickle spots:

Keith: Behind his ears, as mentioned.

Lotor: None, actually! He’s not ticklish at all.

8.) Bad memories/experiences:

Sadly, given the lives they’ve led, it’d be easier to list the good memories / experiences.

9.) Humiliating memories:

Keith: Once everyone finds out from Kolivan when Keith’s actual, exact birthday is, Ezor rounded up everyone (meaning their team, plus the auxiliary teams) to sing a happy birthday song to Keith on the day of. He had to endure a roomful of people singing to him at once, all eyes on him. It was awful, and he made sure it never happened again.

Lotor: Soon after they met Ezor and she joined the team, she decided to pull a prank on Lotor by putting something super spicy in his morning cereal. Because Lotor had many experiences in years prior to that with people poisoning his food for a variety of reasons (“lessons” from his diak, people actually trying to kill him, et cetera), the taste of a flavor he was not expecting and that shouldn’t have been there triggered him pretty badly. He wasn’t at all at fault for this (and believe me, both Keith and Acxa chewed Ezor out over it) and has no real reason to be embarrassed, but to this day he still looks at that loss of control as a pretty embarrassing memory.

10.) Fears/phobias:

Keith: Keith doesn’t have any phobias, and on the day to day he doesn’t consciously fear anything, because unless something is happening right in that moment, he doesn’t see a reason to fear it. In other words, if they have some downtime and everyone’s safe, he doesn’t consciously think about how he’s afraid of his friends (his family) being captured by the Empire and tortured to death. But if they all were captured, then yeah, he’d be afraid of them being tortured to death, but even that would be kind of muted because he’d be more focused on rescuing them and getting them back. Fear isn’t something that rules Keith, or something he dwells on. He doesn’t see much value in sitting around scared; he’d rather do something to eliminate the threat.

Lotor: The idea of facing his father in one-on-one combat is something that scares him. Being anywhere that’s open and exposed without a weapon close at hand makes him feel anxious. The idea of there possibly being a leak in security in his ranks is enough to make him triple check every precaution he’s taken to make sure there isn’t. In contrast to Keith, who is a very much “we’ll deal with that problem when we come to it and otherwise not think of it” type of person, Lotor is fully aware of the things that unnerve him and takes active precautions to make damn sure it never “comes to that.” 

11.) Bad or petty habits:

Keith: Keith bites his nails, and scratches at itchy scabs, and when someone is bullshitting he never lets it go. The fight Keith and Lotor have about Lotor accepting that Haggar is his mother that I mentioned earlier? The reason that was so prolonged is because Keith brought it up at every single opportunity. Lotor would walk into a room and Keith, without looking up from the tablet he was reading, would ask, “So, accepted that that witch is your mom yet?” He finds ways to reroute conversations right back to the point he refuses to let go, pushing and pushing and pushing until the person admits the truth. Again, Keith did that to Lotor out of very tough love (because if Lotor didn’t accept it in a safe place surrounded by people he loved, odds are he’d have to accept it when in a bad situation with Haggar herself, and that would be ten times worse), but it nonetheless can seem pretty petty to everyone who’s not him.

Lotor: It’s not uncommon for him to fall asleep in full armor, which in turn becomes pretty grody from sleep sweat. He also doesn’t always remember to take his dishes back out to the kitchen and so it’s not too uncommon to walk into his room and see a collection of used mugs and glasses over at his personal desk. (Smh, that’s how you get space ants, Lotor.)

12.) Grudges and vendettas:

Keith: Keith doesn’t hold grudges. Legitimately, he just doesn’t. He’s very much a, “we’ll deal with it in the moment and then be done with it” kind of person. If he has a problem with you, you know it because he’s told you. And you either settle it and he moves on, or you refuse to change your ways and he accepts that and still moves on, just while liking you less as a person. Of course they’ve made enemies of the Empire, but that’s not really a grudge or a vendetta. That’s, “they’re killing innocent people and also want to kill me so we’ll take them out of power first” type of deal. Sort of a whole different situation.

Lotor: On the other hand, Lotor remembers everything that has ever happened to him or the people he cares about and he never lets it go. He has a mental list of people who have wronged him or his loved ones and how, and should the opportunity ever arise to pay back one of those on the list, he does so and with interest. Throk was a racist, backstabbing traitor? Well, send him to the Ulippa outpost to rot with the ice worms (at least until the opportunity arises to frame him for further treason in the Empire, at which point do that so Haggar can torture him instead). Ezor’s mother abandoned her as a child and then only took interest in her again once she realized that her daughter had grown up to be a Paladin of Voltron? Well, once Ezor has realized her mother for the opportunistic vulture that she is, arrange it so that the woman is sent off to a different corner of the universe where it highly unlikely she’ll ever be able to attempt to leech off the daughter she cast out ever again (and where although she is surviving, she is not thriving), and so on. Lotor never forgets anything and there is no statute of limitations on these grudges, so it’s really in everyone’s best interests to never cross him or those he cares about. Sooner or later, it won’t end well for those who do.

13.) What gets them flustered:

Keith: Compliments. He is awkward as all hell when being complimented, particularly if he’s complimented by Lotor given the feelings he has for him. Remarks about how he is invaluable short-circuit his brain, but even smaller compliments like how he is an ace pilot are enough to make him start blushing and deflecting. He just can’t take a simple compliment from the one he loves without getting all embarrassed. He’s a mess.  

Lotor: There’s not really a concrete way to get Lotor flustered, because catching him off-guard is no easy feat. That said, blunt, honest admissions of how much one (particularly Keith) cares for him are definitely a way to do it. Keith does not play games, nor does he beat around the bush, and this way of his of just stating exactly how he feels gets under Lotor’s guard and skin. Examples can be seen here and here. 

14.) Ingrained habits/forces of habit:

I feel like I just answered this one in 11, haha. The only thing I’d add is the routine checking of security systems and the like that they both do, but otherwise I already talked about their habits.

15.) What it takes to make them cry:

Keith: At this point, the death of someone he loves. Pain, even extreme, generally doesn’t make him cry. The thought of his own death doesn’t. Unfortunately, the Empire being what it is, he’s seen so many innocent people killed by the Empire that that doesn’t drive him to tears, either. But if he lost someone he loved? Yeah, he’d cry then. That would do it.

Lotor: Pretty much the same, although I think his tears would be more from fury than grief, and followed by a scorching wave of vengeance in their name. He wouldn’t have tears to spare for grief, though, because on some level he’d reason that he should have expected this to happen. The moment he finds any happiness for himself, Zarkon and Haggar rip it away. Isn’t that how it goes? (Doesn’t mean he won’t make them pay for it with their lives, but still.)

16.) Dark secrets/’skeletons in the closet’:

Keith: I think the closest Keith has is that promise he made with Acxa the night they agreed to leave with Lotor, that they’d take him down and bolt at the first sign of shadiness. This is especially because it was his proposal; Acxa was reluctant to trust and go with him, but Keith pointed out that if it came down to it, it was two vs. one and they could take him. That was what got her to agree. The thing is, as the years go on Keith forgets about this promise entirely, so it’s sort of like shroedinger’s skeleton, in a way. Is it really in his closet if he’s forgotten it’s there?

Lotor: Mmm, I don’t know if this really counts, but when he was younger and still under the “tutelage” of his various diaks, it was common knowledge to those in the circle (including Lotor himself) that he was expected to shape up and become “good enough” not only because he was Zarkon’s biological son and therefore the crown prince, but also because he was intended to be betrothed to Sendak when he was of-age, given that Sendak’s bloodline was exceedingly pure, he was of a high-ranking noble class, he was pretty much the apple of Zarkon’s eye, and so on. Of course, the fact that Lotor was half-altean was not something that thrilled Sendak, but again, Lotor was the crown prince. The idea that Zarkon and Haggar had was that once Lotor and Sendak wed, Sendak would act more as emperor than his true role of emperor consort, making Lotor little more than a figurehead. Naturally, once Lotor fled Revender with Keith and Acxa in tow those plans were pretty much nixed (and Lotor was never into the idea anyway), but it’s still something he remembers that he never shared with the others. (And note that no swords were exchanged, so they were never officially betrothed. The swords would have been exchanged when Lotor came of age, but since he ran away before that happened, it was never an official engagement. Just a plan he did not agree to but was set anyway because none of the others involved cared about his consent.)

17.) Regrets:

Keith: He regrets any life he took outside of those that were Empire soldiers actively trying to kill him. Accidental kills in the Revender arena, any civilians caught in the crossfire . . . Keith doesn’t dwell on it, because dwelling won’t do any good, but he regrets each and every one.

Lotor: Lotor regrets telling his diak about a servant he befriended in his childhood due to the execution that resulted, although that’s yet another thing on the long list of things he intends to make his parents (and said diak) pay for down the line.

18.) Things they’ll never admit:

Keith: Keith is pretty honest about most things, so he doesn’t have a lot of secrets. That said, after he finds out about his true heritage (that his mother was one of the agents of Marmora, that he lived there until he was kidnapped at age three), there are nights when he wonders---and in a way, kind of longs for---what his life might have been like had he grown up there all along, but then he immediately feels guilty because it means he might never have met Lotor, Acxa, or the others. So he’ll never admit to feeling that way. Also, he and Lotor have made out in the Black Lion, multiple times, but he’ll never admit that to anyone, either.

Lotor: That he’s afraid of facing his father in a one-on-one duel. That he’s afraid of discovering through multiple-reality research that perhaps his mother would have always loathed him, even if she’d never “turned into” Haggar. That when he learned of Keith’s true heritage with the Blade of Marmora, for a split second he wished something would blow up the primary base so that there’d be no risk of Keith leaving him for them.

19.) People they’ve hurt or indirectly killed, and how it affected them:

Keith: When he was nine he was transferred into the weapons’ testing division at Revender, which essentially consists of two primary components: There’s taking a weapon through obstacle courses of cannons and poison gases and whatnot to see how effective everything is, and there’s taking weapons into a combat arena to test how effective they are there. Keith always tried to avoid killing his opponents---usually he’d knock them out---but the first time he accidentally killed someone, it was because they were holding him down, choking him, and he flailed out with a dagger in his hand and put it right through their throat. Their blood ended up all over him, and he was returned to his cell like that, to sit silently through the night as Acxa told him repeatedly that he did what he had to do and it wasn’t his fault. He was ten. He didn’t sleep that night.

Lotor: When he was very little he befriended a servant. It was slow, at first; this servant knew the risks of so much as looking Lotor in the eye, much less talking to him, but Lotor hadn’t picked up on any of his father’s classism, and so he persistently tried to talk to him until he opened up. He was kind to him; she told Lotor stories about his life back home, slipped him candies and such when he could. After one particularly harsh lecture from his diak, Lotor exploded that his servant friend (he used his name, obviously, I just don’t have one for him yet) never treated him this way. The diak reported this to Zarkon and Haggar, and they had the servant executed. Lotor was not notified until after the fact. He blames himself for it to this day.

20.) What-ifs/Alternate Timelines:

I mean, the show’s reality is an alternate reality for these two here in Paradigm Shift. There could be others, too. There’s that one Keith speculates about, where he did grow up among the Blade and never went to Revender, never met Acxa or Lotor that way. There’s one where the war never happened, where Lotor was raised properly as a prince, where perhaps the Blade of Marmora never formed and maybe Keith was never born at all since Krolia would have no reason to go to Earth, then. There’s an infinite number of possibilities and realities. So many exist. But as Lotor says, the only one that matters to them is this one right here---the one they’re living, where they’re together. 

21.) Turning points in their life:

Keith: Well, being kidnapped and taken to Revender for one, albeit he doesn’t really remember that. He just woke up there one day with no memory of where he came from, how he got there, or what was going on. Meeting Acxa was another, because she reminded him that he was a person outside of the identification the Revender soldiers and scientists gave him, and she also gave him companionship in there, just as he gave to her. Then there was meeting Lotor, since he gave them a method to escape, and hope of revolution, too.

Lotor: The death of the aforementioned servant, having everyone in the Revender arena reject his ideals and facing punishment for what he did there, claiming the Castle of Lions and realizing that his revolution truly was possible for the first time, and so on.

22.) People who’ve influenced them greatly:

I’m a firm believer in the idea that everyone we meet and regularly interact with influences us in some way. Therefore, I’d say that both Keith and Lotor have influenced each other greatly, but on top of that, they’ve each been influenced greatly by Acxa, Ezor, Zethrid, and Narti as well. (And later on down the line, Kolivan, too.) They all influence, learn from, and grow with each other. It’s part of what makes them and their relationships with each other so strong.

[tumblunni]

Ehh i think i finally summed up why all of this steven universe diamonds stuff has been so underwhelming.

YES you can redeem a villain

but you have to

actually

TRY

Yes you can write a story about the world’s most fuckin horrible person being really actually sad at heart

Yes you can write a story about an abusive parent actually being able to change

Yes you can write a story about some wild genocidal alien civilization of asshole space rocks actually only doing it because something something societal pressure DESPITE BEING THE ONES IN CHARGE WHO SET THE DAMN RULES I GUESS

But fucking hell its not gonna be EASY and you shouldn’t treat it that way.

All of this shit was SO fucking quick?? And everything else WASNT!

You spent SO long hyping up these guys you spent SO long convincing us that they WERE evil and that they had entirey different motives for what they were doing and EVEN WITHIN THIS FUCKING EPISODE you spent more time showing us White Diamond being absolutely ridiculously existentially horrifyingly awful and refusing every offer everyone gave her to help and refusing every chance and fucking fucking goddamn violating people’s entire minds and just.. fuck.

After all that you cant just fuckin have steven walk up to blue and yellow and say “hey everything you did was bad” and them go “GEE WE NEVER KNEW!” for some reason this time they’re convinced in a single sentence despite it being the same sentence steven said before in every damn episode and pink said to them years before and every person they abused and enslaved and mutilated and KILLED said while they were DYING

And you can’t fucking have white diamond never redeem herself and never change and never admit she’s wrong and steven SOLVE IT WITH FUCKING FIGHTING WHILE SAYING HE DOESNT WANT TO, WHILE THE ENTIRE SHOW TRIES TO CLAIM THE REASON THEY ARE DOING IT THIS WAY IS BECAUSE OF PACIFISM

because seriously he?? just defeated her?? and this made her?? change???

redeeming a villain shouldn’t be easy. redeeming a villain has to have the villain TRY. white diamond has done nothing to prove she really has a heart, prove that she really did all this for sympathetic reasons, prove that she’s able to change, AND ESPECIALLY NOTHING TO MAKE IT UP TO ANY OF THE PEOPLE SHE’S HURT

she just got defeated and basically admitted she’s wrong cos she has no other choice. and i guess her blushing because steven issued a SICK BURN to her is meant to be enough proof that her entire motivation so far has been because of self confidence issues forcing her to put up a false front aka her entire personality we saw so far. If you wanna tell me she’s entirely different to what we saw so far then please could you please give it more screentime than twelve goddamn seconds.

This is like how yellow and blue just suddenly were accepted as part of the family and steven agreed to go with them to homeworld literally just because they realized he “is really pink diamond”. Like they never fucking repented or actually learned to empathise with humans or ever explained why they dont empathise with humans no nope the only answer we got is that they were sad about their sister/daughter/friend dying even though they were already doing all the same evil stuff before that and its what caused her to leave in the first place. no we’re gonna just completely trust them instantly and not even continue making an effort to convince them? we’re gonna trust them so much we’re gonna trust that white diamond will also change just cos we beat her up? COS SERIOUSLY STEVEN FUCKIN DEFEATED BLUE AND YELLOW IN A FIGHT AND THATS THE END OF THEIR ARC, HOW IS THIS PROVING THE POWER OF PACIFISM!! beating everyone up and then saying the same singular sentence again and somehow now it works!! or saying “my mum was pink diamond” and it doesnt convince them but hey if we say it again with magical proof its true then i guess it works now. wow that sure does argue the power of words i guess

everything EVERYTHING they did was just a fuckin misunderstanding cos they dont UNDERSTAND they were doing bad and thus they dont have to face any form of consequences beyond being mildly embarassed i suppose.

if you wanna make that the ending then you need to work to disprove all the hours you spent implying that.. yknow.. they were doing things because they were evil

and even if theyre sympathetic they still did evil things and they still need to work to prove that theyve changed

and ESPECIALLY if you’re making a show very heavy on subjects like LGBT discrimination it shouldnt be FUCKIN WOW UNEXPECTED that the audience would see this plot as a metaphor for stuff like homophobia and abusive parents and.. yknow.. societal oppression in a law system that forces you to live in the closet in constant fear of being discovered and killed. and all the other apparantly accidental undertones of racism and extermination of indigenous people in stolen land which YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED PEOPLE TO SEE WHEN THE PLOT IS LITERALLY EXTERMINATING PEOPLE TO STEAL THEIR LAND

all of that means you need to do MORE work to prove that that isnt actually what the plot is supposed to be, and more work to redeem villains who are very heavily goddamn triggering to a large part of the vunerable audience YOU SPECIFICALLY MARKETED YOURSELF TOWARDS

this was just so fucking overwhelming and somehow rushed despite being an hour long episode, and i hate it because the show spent so much effort on so much other stuff yet decided to half ass it at the really important part that NEEDED to have thought and time put into it if it was gonna nail the landing

especially after ALL THAT FUCKIN TIME AND EFFORT INTO THINGS THAT ONLY AMPED UP THE VILLAINY AND TENSION OF THESE GUYS AND MADE IT SO MUCH WORSE

like fucking hell how can you be so tone deaf??? this has been in the planning for so damn long and theyve been working on it forever and THIS is what they chose to rush over? this is the priorities they thought were important? even just within this episode if youre struggling to fit it all in then like seriously cut out some of the stuff like the montage of unseen fusion forms that did basiclaly nothing but a few jokes, and the equally as rushed bad lars and sadie romance resolution. Which is another thing that needed a lot of work to fix when the introduction we got to these two was a really unhealthy relationship and a dude who refuses to change despite being given twelve chances but suddenly changes COMPLETELY on the thirteenth one and i guess cos he died that proves he’s all good now. Except he acts all weird and creepy in the very next episode and endangers his new friends by acting all possessive over sadie again and getting angry that she has other friends????

i hate it because ive had to deal with the fandom telling all the people who were rightfully uncomfortable with how these subjects were handled that oh we’re just overreacting and oh wait and see cos they totally have a big plan for the ending or something that’ll make it all make sense. And comparing people being triggered by child abuse and racism to “huhu those dumb su criticals who hate the art style” or whatever...

god, man, its just a deflection of what the issue really is

“oh youre saying NO VILLAINS can EVER be redeemed and NOBODY can EVER talk about dark stuff in shows without being SECRETLY BAD AND SUPPORTING IT IN REAL LIFE?”

no im not saying that im just saying the subjects are fucking depressing to people who’ve suffered from the real life stuff and the villain redemption should be GOOD and should THINK ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE if it wants to make up for it

like fucking hell look at how much zuko from avatar went through before his redemption. look at how long he struggled with his morality and how long it took him to realise he was wrong. look at how much detail they showed us on all the people who negatively influenced him into making the bad choices he did. look at how much he went through to make up for what he did and apologise to everyone he hurt. look at how everyone he hurt didnt believe him at first and it took a while for everything to work out. look at how sometimes he messed up and took steps backward before getting to where he needed to be. and look at how he actually changed as a person and continued learning and growing and trying to be a good person even far into the future after the story ended.

hell, fuckin look at PERIDOT! peridot had a full goddamn zuko arc! peridot had more screentime than all of the diamonds combined, and it was way better utilized! she had a full process from being introduced as a scary villain BECAUSE OF MISUNDERSTANDING WHO SHE REALLY WAS, then being revealed as having a fully rounded personality, flaws and redeemable traits while still being a villain. and moments of her proving that she did indeed only become a villain because she didnt understand what she was doing was wrong, and a personality that matched with that reveal rather than having NO INDICATION she was like that until it suddenly happened only after she was defeated. and her redemption came slowly through friendship with steven and it had moments of the other characters not instantly trusting her and also of her making mistakes and struggling with believing steven’s philosophy when it went against everything she knew about life. and speaking of which it was established that she had a very different life which had negative influences pushing these ideas upon her, and tough stuff that made her scared and pressured. Not just being in a high position of ruling over a planet in the lap of luxury and ONLY AFTER BEING DEFEATED do we learn that they feel pressured by the societal expectation to be perfect and they actually would have agreed all along with dismantling the system but they were just too afraid to be honest. Or whatever the fuck that rushed ending was trying to go for! And man even after peridot joins the team she’s NOT redeemed yet, she’s initially only halfway doubting herself and only teaming up with steven because they’re both afraid of the cluster. And she messes up and says horrible shit to her new friends and feels the consequences of her actions and chooses to change. And her ultimate choice to switch sides is REALLY hard, she gets so close to going back to the diamonds and its a great personal sacrifice on her part when she chooses to give it all up and make an enemy of the person she was so scared of!

and GAHHH that good redemption is one in a million episodes that really set up the diamonds Being Bad and should have been a goddamn tally in the “effort required in the fuckin ending” chart!

could we not have even just had one ten minute episode of blue and yellow going around earth and experiencing human life and realizing there’s things worth protecting? or a few damn scenes foreshadowing white being actually insecure and lying to protect herself, rather than GENUINELY ABUSIVE BECAUSE SHE’S BAD?

and seriously even if you hurt people because you hate yourself YOU STILL HURT THEM

a sympathetic backstory should be a reason why they COULD be redeemed, not proof that they already are redeemed just because the backstory was stated in words and nothing else has fuckin changed.

imagine if zuko just lost one fight to aang and said “yes but my dad abused me” and aang was like “oh no now lets team up with zuko to beat up his dad” and none of the bad things zuko did were ever mentioned again and also he keeps his season 1 personality throughout the entire series

imagine if peridot fuckin.. just changed sides cos she’s funny and we like her. people wantedher to change sides as soon as she acted funny and likeable but they still made the effort to actually prove she had changed! the diamonds didnt act remotely harmless or remotely good until they just suddenly are in the very last episode.

hoo

fucking

ray

also why are we constantly just ignoring all these dark things about homeworld? like the episode with holly blue agate and the famethyst slave caste and all the creepy ways the entire place operated. i totally thought thatd.. yknow.. EVER BE REFERENCED AGAIN?? its never even mentioned that anyone even WANTS to go back and save them?? and the human zoo were outright stated to be like.. unsaveable. “oh theyve never known real human life and theyre happy in their slavery so itd be cruel to take them away from it” One off episode, forgotten about. And the creepy as fuck scenes of gems being BUILT INTO THE WALLS AND DOORS AS SECURITY SYSTEMS and the confirmation that more lapis situations are constantly going on yet somehow that singing hairbrush person doesnt get all the sympathy that she did. And steven going daww at the pebbles instead of being horrified that theyre born to work as servants and forced to live in the walls because the noblewomen dont want to look at them? and he asks them to make him a new outfit?? and theres no plot anything involving them except them puttering around in the background outfitting?? like was none of this meant to be seen as PROOF THAT THE DIAMONDS WERE EVIL and PEOPLE WHO NEEDED TO BE SAVED????

goddddd

please say they were rushed or something please say this is all the faultof being given less time than they expected please say there were other plans for other episodes we didnt see that would have given at least slightly more substance to any of this

also why wasnt this even advertised as the last episode if its the last fuckin episode

hhhh well at least obsidian was a great character design and so were the other fusions and new outfits even if they only appeared for twelve seconds. and white’s whole scary evil mind invasion stuff was really good even if it actually hurt the episode by being good, kinda

man im not even mad or anything i just feel mehh and bored and like im actually glad its over. i never wanted to feel that way about a show that used to be so good. i kinda wish the earliest episodes werent so good if the answers to all those well set up mysteries were gonna have so much less effort than the setup itself

...man i should make a whole post about all the mistaken ways i THOUGHT the show was gonna go that actually would have been way more interesting than the real answer.

i’m just super glad that my last theory was wrong cos wow that would have been the only thing worse than this ending! when white pearl first appeared before we’d actually seen white diamond, and it had all this thing that white diamond hadnt been seen in ages.. well i was worried it was setting up some sort of reverse twist where actually white pearl is bodysnatching white diamond instead of vice versa. So the whole evil empire would actually be run by a member of the slave class that its oppressing, and the diamonds/representative of the upper class would actually be poor victims all along. dear god i am so glad i got that wrong! tho im weirded out by how evil white/pink pearl looked in that first hint that she was originally pink pearl??

anyway basicallly im just so fuckin tired

[redemptiionss]

Let me go over what I learned happened in s8.... this is just what I’ve learned from other people’s posts. Let me know I’ve gotten things wrong (and any further clarification would be appreciated, if you’ve seen s8)

Lotor’s corpse was shown onscreen shortly after flashbacks proving that he was a good person who grew up abused & brainwashed by his parents. His corpse was then used as a puppet by Haggar, his mother and abuser. Allura finally says that Lotor had good intentions after two seasons of not once showing regret or second thoughts on what they’ve done to him. Haggar tells her that Lotor was truly happy when he was with her. No remorse is shown, apparently nobody cares that they’ve murdered him. The fact that they created a power vacuum within the Galra Empire and caused the deaths of thousands of people all because they didn’t think twice before attacking & abandoning Lotor (aka the one who GENUINELY wanted to help bring peace & also the one who was literally the SOLUTION) to die in the rift, is never addressed or questioned. The Colony story that was the Plot in s6 was never addressed. I’m wondering what were the writers’ intention with Lotor?! It’s like they can’t make up their minds. They had people-- including those who he once most trusted-- slander and demonize him. Then they humanized him and showed us that he was a Good person who was abused and traumatized by his parents & tried not to be like them. Then they showed us a grotesque imagery of his corpse. Then they went all like, yup he was a Good Person all along who was “misguided” & he could have had a Redemption Arc, but whoops, he’s dead. His death was meaningless. It was without reason or purpose. All I’m seeing from this is a terrible message surrounding abuse victims. They ditched a story of hope, a redemption/vindication arc for a meaningless tragedy. Congrats. I can’t forgive them for what they did. I can’t.

Line from s6, from Lotor’s confrontation with Haggar, who’s kidnapped him and tries to get him to stay with her, but is rejected by Lotor. Lotor says this to her: “The end is near, witch. I know you can sense it. If you beg for your life now, maybe I will take pity on you when the time comes.”  This was CLEAR foreshadowing. But in the end? Lotor’s rotting corpse being used as a puppet. Then in the end, him immediately forgiving his parents & happily reconciling with them in the afterlife. What. The. Flippin. Heck. What was the POINT of that whole confrontation then? More importantly, what was the point of the whole colony plot?! It was the Plot of s6!! It was what led them to abandon & murder Lotor, which then led to a power vacuum in the Galra Empire & death of thousands!! & led to what happened in s7 & s8!!! The entire situation surrounding the colony plot was clearly Fishy as Hell, implied that there was a misunderstanding going on, that Lotor was likely going to get vindicated/redeemed, and also that Haggar had her nasty fingers in the PIe. But literally nothing came out of it. WHAT. WAS. THE. POINT. Clearly something happened behind the scenes between s6 & s8.

Somehow Zarkon comes back via Haggar & quintessence, but he’s Good guy Zarkon (aka pre-corrupted)? I’m not sure how this happened, but okay. I mean, if anyone could give me the full rundown on how things led up to this. He got a redemption arc. Hagerva got a redemption arc too.

I don’t have a problem with redemption arcs. I love them. I hate the whole Tumblr™ “you have to earn redemption” thing. Redemption isn’t something that is earned. Anyone can be redeemed-- even the worst person possible. However, in stories it HAS to be told well. It’s got to be meaningful. And frankly the main reason why I have a problem with them getting redemption arcs is because Lotor never got one while his parents did. He never got a redemption or a vindication arc. Zarkon and Haggar was allowed to have a voice, while Lotor was not. This just comes across as them somehow being More Deserving of a redemption arc than Lotor, which is honestly just bullshit.

Zarkon & Honerva apparently weren’t corrupted anymore when they got redeemed, so that.. makes everything they did over 10,000 years okay I guess? Since it technically wasn’t them? But like, they still did that. They got corrupted by the bad quintessence by their own direct actions, and then proceeded to commit genocide, enslave and conquer thousands of planets and people, and abuse their son. None of that has changed. I never thought that they’d get redeemed mainly because I didn’t think there would be any way it would be written well & that it wouldn’t have been able to be fit into the story’s plot well.

While Corrupted!Bad Guy Zarkon told Shiro that he was Too Weak and Unworthy to be the Paladin for the Black Lion, Good Guy Zarkon told Keith that he was a good leader & a good Black Paladin because of his Galra Lineage. Like.. uh, what? RACISM MUCH? I guess Keith didn’t say anything. What happened to him being the #1 Black Paladin!Shiro stan? Oh wait, he stopped back in like S3 or something.

This makes me think of that one Nightmare post I read months ago. It was basically “What if Shiro is not the Black Paladin because the Black Lion is racist against non-Galra?” [It cited that when Shiro was the Black Paladin, he had a Galra arm. & now that he doesn’t have a Galra arm, he is no longer the Black Paladin.] I thought it was utterly ridiculous and that it was the stupidest thing ever. But I guess being Galra is indeed what makes you great for the Black Lion after all. Oof. Wtf.

Apparently Shiro also barely had a meaningful interaction with... pretty much anyone, least of all Keith, who’s supposed to be like his little brother. This has been happening for a while even before s8. (I honestly hate that Shiro was reduced to just being mere plot device for Keith’s development and arcs. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how JDS & LM called him boring, wanted to kill him off permanently, but then was forced to bring him back, and how they pretty much got around that loophole by killing him off at least twice and finally pushing him into the background. Oh and they didn’t even give him a family either lol. WTF.)

Lance says his “I’m good at winning prizes” line at Allura. Wtf. It seems that the context is Allura asking Lance to get something for her, but I saw the screenshot and.. G R O S S. They KNEW what they were fucking doing, especially with THAT expression. *shudders* I like Lance, I really do. But I hate him for Allura. He became smitten with Allura the minute he saw him, and pretty much called dibs on her. Spent a majority of his time hitting on her while she reacted in distaste & discomfort, continually rejecting him or brushing him off. Showed jealousy and entitlement when Allura exhibited interest in other guys or when other guys seemed interested in Allura. [Lance, you do not own Allura. You’re not even with her, she’s not interested in you. BACK. OFF.] Even made fun of Allura’s Altean culture and heritage, and never once showed any signs of interest in learning about it. And I’m not even going to go over all the ways how they are not compatible with each other at all. A//urance literally plays into the trope that if the Nice Guy is persistent enough, he will get the Girl. The Girl is his Prize. Again, they KNEW what they were doing with that line. So that coupled with the imagery from S3-ish of Lance’s fantasy-- in which he is revered and praised by all, standing at the very top holding a big flag saying “Winner” with a dream starry-eyed Allura at his feet. Ugh, BARF.

A//urance happens. Apparently neither of them are very happy??? [and honestly it just confuses me why it even happened because there is such a stark difference between how Lotura & A//urance was written-- but I guess Lotura was just a stepping stone for the less well-written & clearly-forced ship after all? Tf.]

There’s some stuff about Hagerva breaking into alternate realities because she can’t cope with the fact that her son is dead, so she’s trying to enter her alternate families’s lives.

There’s some stuff about Altea & Daizabaal being brought back. I.. don’t know. I’ve seen some people say that if those could be brought back, then why couldn’t Lotor & the others be brought back too?

Allura kisses Lance twice. Tells him that she’ll always love him. (lmaoooo what? okay sure) She transfers her Altean Marks onto Lance. (What. the. HECK?! THAT MAKES NO SENSE.) She then.... sacrifices herself? To save her Reality? To save all of existence? From what I’m hearing from other people, there was no real good reason for her to sacrifice herself. She then steps into the afterlife with her father, her mother, Zarkon, Honerva, and Lotor. There’s a legit outline of her [who is clearly defined], with Lotor at her back [who is not as defined], in the stars.

I cannot believe they killed off their main female protagonist & a princess. You don’t just.. do that in children’s media. I don’t know of any children’s media in which a princess dies. I thought she was untouchable. Not to mention there was absolutely no pay off for Allura at all aside from her being dead and in the afterlife reuniting with her family. She’s had to sacrifice everything every season-- her planet & her family was destroyed, then she lost her castle, her rank, her crown, her clothes, her people. I thought there was going to be an ultimate pay off for her in end, but no she even had to lose her own life. Really?! This doesn’t speak of Hope to me.

Lance spends the rest of his life with Allura’s Altean marks tattooed on his face. He’s a farmer, growing Altean flowers (???) and it’s implied that he never gets over her. I... just can’t. The bitter irony. In giving Lance what he wanted, the writers took everything from him. Much of his character, aside from growing in his role as a Paladin, bonding with others, and dreaming of being a pilot, also revolved around Getting Allura. He was never allowed to grow out of that. Now they’ve effectively erased his identity-- he no longer has an identity separate from Allura. That isn’t.... what his arc should’ve been. Also does the marks mean he’s Altean now or what?? You can’t just change races like that. Tf. If he has an Altean lifespan now, that means that he’s going to watch everyone he loves die. His infatuation for Allura has become his curse. And while it’s been implied that he’s worked on a farm before [look, it’s canon that he knows how to milk a cow. that’s enough of an implication.], that was never his dream. He wanted to be a pilot.. and now he’s just a farmer forever pining over Allura and growing flowers in her memory, or something. They destroyed Lance’s character.

Apparently Allura didn’t just transfer her Altean Marks to Lance, but also gave him Leadership over the Alteans. WHAT. THE. FUCK? So Lance didn’t just Get Allura & then is cursed by Allura’s selfish act, but he also gets Allura’s ROLE. They seriously had Allura sacrifice HER own leadership & give it to a boy who has NEVER once shown interest in HER culture, & has even mocked it more than once. THE. AUDACITY.

“Lance will get what he needs, not what he wants.” That implies that he was Not going to end up with Allura, seeing as she is what he clearly wants. So.. what is it then? Unless him being a lonely pining farmer for all of eternity was what he needed? Either they straight up lied or like I said before, something happened behind the scenes.

Keith apparently is leading Lotor’s Generals & the Galra now or something..?? WHAT? Why TF would the Galra listen to him? And I guess he gave a speech that was essentially Lotor’s speech in S5. EXCUSE. ME.?! Also apparently Keith now has magical powers and is a diplomat dedicated to spreading good will in the universe..?? So basically he was given Shiro’s position, and then Lotor & Allura’s ROLES. Ha ha ha.

There was a line from a crack-foreshadowing episode in s7, in which Lance says Keith “is the future”-- and a lot of people came up with the Emperor!Keith theory. I quickly concluded that it was total bullshit because it made ZERO sense within canon. It still makes no sense, but then again not much makes sense in s8 apparently.

Apparently Nothing is Really Solved. The Galra still need Quintessence to survive. The Quintessence Rift is closed, so there’s nowhere for them to get their quintessence. Lotor, the only person who had the solution, wanted peace, & intended on leading an Alliance between the Paladins & the Galra, is dead. Allura, who could’ve allied with Lotor to help the cause of leading the universe & Galra into an new era of peace, is dead. But Apparently there’s Peace now. Okie dokie.

I... don’t really know anything about Katie & Hunk. What happened to them?

 I can’t think of anything else right now. All I can say is that s8 sounds vile.

[ljones41]

"SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" (2018) Review

"SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" (2018) Review Following the release of Lucasfilm's ninth film, "STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII - THE LAST JEDI", the STAR WARSfandom seemed to be in a flux. Although the film received a positive reaction from film critics and was a box office hit, for many reasons it created a division within the franchise's fandom. And many believe that this division, along with a few other aspects, may have produced a strong, negative impact upon the next film released by Lucasfilm, "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY".

Why did I bring up this topic? Easy. "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" proved to be Lucasfilm's first box office flop. Certain film critics and defenders of "THE LAST JEDI" had claimed that the negative reaction to the latter film had an impact on the box office performance of "SOLO". In fact, many of "THE LAST JEDI" detractors claimed the same. Perhaps. Then again, I disliked "THE LAST JEDI". But that did not stop me from seeing "SOLO" at the theaters. Personally, I suspect other factors played a role in the box office failure of "SOLO" - media coverage of the film's chaotic production (that included the firing of its first directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) and the fact that Lucasfilm/Disney had released it five months after "THE LAST JEDI". But many would point out that the true reason behind the film's box office failure was its quality. That it was simply not a good movie. Did I agree with this assessment? I will answer this later. But first, I might as well recap the movie's plot. Written by Hollywood legend Lawrence Kasdan and his son, Jonathan Kasdan; "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" is basically an origins tale about one of the franchise's most popular and legendary characters, Han Solo. The movie began some thirteen years before the events of "ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY" and "STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE", when a young Han and Qi'ra, his childhood friend and first love, attempt to escape the clutches of a Corellian gangster named Lady Proxima and her White Worm gang. They fail in their first attempt, but manage to make it to Corellia's space port with a stash of stolen coaxium, a powerful hyperspace fuel. The pair manages to bribe an Imperial officer with the coaxium in exchange for passage off the planet. Unfortunately, only Han manages to make it past the gate, due to Qi'ra being snatched by the pursuing White Worm gang. Before he can be detected, Han signs up with the Imperial Navy as a flight cadet. Three years later, Han is serving as an infantryman on Mimban, due to being expelled from the Imperial Flight Academy for insubordination. He spots a criminal gang posing as Imperial soldiers and tries to blackmail the leader, Tobias Beckett, into taking him with them. Instead, Beckett exposes him as a deserter and Han is tossed into a pit to be fed by an enslaved Wookie named Chewbacca. Since he is able to understand the latter's language, Han is able to plot an escape with the Wookie. Both make their way to Beckett's newly stolen starship and convinces the criminal to allow them to join his gang. The group plots to steal a shipment of coaxium on Vandor-1. The plan goes awry, thanks to a group called the Cloud Riders led by Enfys Nest. Both Beckett's wife Val and their pilot Rio Durant are killed and the coaxium destroyed. A grieving and desperate Beckett is forced to face his employer Dryden Vos, a ruthless and high-ranking crime boss in the Crimson Dawn syndicate. Aboard Vos' yacht, Han has a reunion with Qi'ra, also working for Vos. He also comes up with a plan to steal another shipment of coaxium to help Beckett repay the debt to Vos. So . . . did I enjoy "SOLO"? Or did I dislike it? There were certain aspects about the film that left me scratching my head. And these aspects had a lot to do with Lucasfilm and Disney Studios' decision to declare the Extended Universe (EU) novels as no longer part of the franchise's canon. The Kasdans the screenwriters of "SOLO" had decided to make changes to Han's backstory. Instead of being the abandoned scion of a well-to-do Corellian family, Han was literally re-written as an orphan with no surname. An Imperial Navy recruiter ended up providing his surname. The Kasdans made Han three years older. I found these changes unnecessary, especially the age change. Perhaps the Kasdans had felt that a nineteen year-old Han would not work in the movie's narrative. If that was the case, all they had to do was set the movie seven years before "A NEW HOPE" and not ten years. Also, characters like Han's old crime boss, the pirate Garris Shrike, and the female Wookie who served as the latter's cook, Dewlanna. Shrike was not missed. But without Dewlanna as part of the franchise's canon, how did Lucasfilm and the Kasdans planned to explain Han's knowledge of Shyriiwook, the Wookies' language? He not only understood it, but also knew how to speak Shyriiwook . . . somewhat. But despite my quibbles regarding "SOLO", I enjoyed it. Who am I kidding? I loved it. For me, "SOLO" was a breath of fresh air after the disappointing "THE LAST JEDI". What I found ironic about the movie is that many claimed that a backstory about Han Solo was unnecessary for the franchise and not particularly original. First of all, none of the nine movies that followed "A NEW HOPE" were necessary. Neither was the 1977 movie, for that matter. As for originality . . . despite the movie being about Han Solo's youth, I thought "SOLO" proved to be a surprisingly original entry for the franchise. Although the galaxy's criminal element has been featured in past STAR WARS films, "SOLO" marked the first time that the franchise delved deep into the galaxy's criminal organizations. And this is because "SOLO" is basically a heist film. Well . . . "ROGUE ONE" was also a heist story . . . at least in the last third of the film. But that was a tale of politics and espionage. And although politics made a few appearances in this film, "SOLO" was basically a story about criminals - including one Han Solo. And because this film is basically a story about criminals, one would expect to encounter a good deal of back stabbing and double crossing. To be honest, one could find plenty of such action in political films. It certainly happened in "STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH". The ironic thing is that aside from Beckett exposing Han as a deserter to the Imperial Army, no such betrayals or back stabbing occurred until the film's last act on the planet Savareen. And when the betrayals and back stabbings finally unfolded . . . God, it was a beautiful thing to behold! And the whole sequence was capped by a familiar figure from the past. The production values for "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" seemed top-notched. Well, most of it. I must admit to feeling somewhat disappointed by the visuals for Corellia. From the drawings I have seen of the planet online, I had imagined that Han's home world to be a little more colorful than what was seen onscreen:

But I certainly had no problems with the visuals for other planets like Vandor-1, the Fort Ypso village on said planet, the Kessel Run's maelstrom and Savareen. But I really have to give kudos to production designer Neil Lamont and the film's art direction team for their creation of the interior sets that served as Dryden Vos's yacht. Need I say more? 

   When the media first announced that Alden Ehrenreich had been cast as the young Han Solo, many STAR WARS fans had denounced the casting and insisted that actor/impressionist Anthony Ingruber, who had portrayed the younger version of a character portrayed by Harrison Ford in a movie called "THE AGE OF ADALINE", should have won the role. I have seen Ingruber do an impressionist of Ford in a You Tube video clip. But I thought that the movie required more than an impressionist and I had seen Ehrenreich in three previous movies. I believed he would do a great job as a young Han Solo. As it turned out, Ehrenreich was more than great. He gave a SUPERB performance than ended up knocking my socks off. Oh my God, he was just brilliant. Ehrenreich captured all of the essence of Han's personality and traits with very little effort. All I can say is that I am very happy that he had more than lived up to my expectations. But Ehrenreich was not the only one who knocked it out of the ballpark. The movie also featured a first-rate and enigmatic performance from Emilia Clarke, who portrayed Han's first love Qi'ra. The character is one of the few instances in which I am glad that Lucasfilm did not use any characters from the Expanded Universe. In the EU, Han's first love was Rebel Alliance officer Bria Tharen. I am certain that Bria was an interesting character, but she reminded me too much of Leia. Qi'ra, on the other, struck me as a more interesting and complex personality and romantic interest for Han. And Clarke did a marvelous job with the role. Another great performance came from Woody Harrelson, who portrayed Han's reluctant mentor, a professional thief known as Tobias Beckett. Like Clarke, Harrelson did an excellent job in portraying a morally complex thief who seemed to be a combination of an easy-going personality who was also avaricious and ruthless. No one seemed to mind Donald Glover's casting as Han's future friend, Lando Calrissian. Glover gave a very entertaining and first-rate performance as the witty and smooth-talking smuggler, who seemed to harbor a low opinion of Han and a high opinion of himself, the Millennium Falcon, and his droid companion L3-37. "SOLO" also featured excellent performances from other supporting cast members. Paul Bettany was both entertaining and dangerous as Crimson Dawn's criminal leader Dryden Vos. Joonas Suotamo's first-rate portrayal of Han's life long friend, Chewbacca, struck me both poignant and emotional. More importantly, his character was fully fleshed out and not treated as some glorified Thandie Newton gave a sharp and witty performance as Beckett's wife Val. Erin Kellyman was surprisingly commanding as Enfys Nest, the young leader of a gang of pirates called Cloud Riders. Ray Park surprised the hell out of me when he briefly repeated his role as former Sith apprentice, Darth Maul. The movie also featured some very entertaining voice performances from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was hilarious as Lando's emotional and sharp-tongued droid L3-37; Jon Favreau, who gave a charming and funny performance as a member of Beckett's crew, Rio Durant; and Linda Hunt, who was sinister as the criminal leader of the White Worms gang on Corellia. The movie also featured cameos - live and voice - from STAR WARS veterans like Anthony Daniels and Warwick Davis. What else is there to say about "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY"? It is a pity that it did not perform well at the box office. Then again, I saw it twice in the theaters and felt more than satisfied. It is not the best STAR WARS movie I have ever seen. But I do believe that it was one of the better ones, thanks to Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan's screenplay, a superb cast led by the talented Alden Ehrenreich and director Ron Howard, who I believe may have saved this film, following the firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as the film's directors. For me, "SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY" is another prime example that Disney Studios and Lucasfilm seemed to be better at stand alone films, instead of serial ones.

[aion-rsa]

Invincible Ending Explained

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This Invincible article contains spoilers.

Hit superhero animated series Invincible closes out its first season with a clash of global proportions between Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and his dad, Omni Man/Nolan Grayson (J.K. Simmons), who reveals that his home planet of Viltrum is actually a world-enslaving evil empire and he’s one of their conquerors, sent to Earth to overthrow and indoctrinate.

The world looks on as Nolan puts a one-sided whooping on his son when Mark refuses to join his cause, and Debbie (Sandra Oh) is forced to question everything about her marriage to who she thought was a loving husband but turned out to be a murdering warlord. It’s an action-packed finale with many implications for the upcoming second season and beyond.

Let’s break down everything that went down in Invincible’s season 1 finale and what it might all mean for the future of the show.

Why did Nolan beat the crap out of Mark?

Foolishly, Nolan believes that Mark will pledge blind allegiance to Viltrum and help his father overthrow Earth, despite the fact that Nolan’s lived his entire life on the planet and all the people he loves live there, too. Nolan tries to explain to Mark that, as a Viltrumite, he will outlive his human friends and family by hundreds of years, and that it’s not worth getting attached to inferior beings. Unsurprisingly, Mark refuses to help Nolan on his mission and instead fights to stop him, to no avail.

On one hand, Nolan pulverizes Mark because he’s resisting Viltrum and its grand plans. But on the other, he’s trying to beat sense into his son and show him the insignificance of the human race by murdering hundreds of people on a whim and soaking Mark in their blood. It’s a truly twisted form of tough love that he learned from his wickedly Darwinian upbringing on Viltrum, and it clearly isn’t swaying Mark in his valiant stand for the planet he calls home.

Why did Nolan stop beating the crap out of Mark?

In the middle of Nolan’s shocking, brutal beatdown of his son, he’s stricken by a memory of one of Mark’s childhood softball games. Nolan was perturbed that he had to watch his son play a trivial game when he could be out doing more “important” superhero things, but when Debbie opens his eyes to the value of their son’s wide-eyed perspective on the world, he’s awakened to the beauty of humanity.

In the flashback, he’s holding Mark up to the sky after he hit a home run, his missing front baby teeth making the moment all the more wholesome. Then we’re violently snapped back to the present, where Mark is lying in a pool of his own blood, missing his teeth for an entirely different reason. When he asks Mark what he will have left in 500 years when everyone he loves is dead and gone, he replies, “I’d have you, dad.”

Nolan ultimately shows Mark mercy and abandons his post on Earth, shedding a tear as he breaks through the planet’s upper atmosphere. Against all logic, it seems that Nolan does have real feelings for Earth and its people after all, fight as he may to suppress them.

What is Cecil up to in the labs?

After fully recovering from the severe injuries sustained at the hands of his father, Mark is approached by Cecil who asks him whether he “still wants to be a hero or not.” With Omni-Man gone, the planet will need a new primary protector, and Cecil thinks Mark would be a fine replacement.

But Mark, still reeling from his clash with his father,  declines the offer for the time being. Meanwhile, Cecil gives Mark a glimpse of https://ift.tt/3u3YQ9w secret Global Defense Agency lab running a host of scientifically advanced experiments, including an effort to resuscitate The Immortal after his seemingly fatal encounter with Omni-Man, which resulted in him being literally ripped in two.

Read more

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Why would Debbie want Nolan to return?

Following the horrific revelations about Nolan and his past–his plan to conquer and enslave earth for the Viltrumites, the fact that he murdered the original Guardians of the Globe, his evisceration of Mark, his confession that he views Debbie as nothing more than a “pet”–it’s natural to wonder why, later in the episode, in a conversation with Art, she admits that she wishes he’d “come back.”

While the show may seem to center on Mark and Nolan’s relationship and eventual falling out, Debbie plays just as pivotal a role. She’s a beacon of hope and, most importantly, unconditional love. She knows now that Nolan is a liar and a murderer, but she’s holding out hope that the years of blissful marriage they shared and the family they built together weren’t an illusion or an inconsequential blip in Nolan’s lifetime. If Nolan ever returns, she could be the key to unlocking the humanity in him.

Allen’s Return

After a brief encounter with Mark back in episode 2  “Here Goes Nothing,” Coalition of Planets representative Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) returns to Earth to warn Mark, ironically, that there is a Viltrumite in their midst. They take a load off on a couple of moon rocks to catch up: Mark brings Allen up to speed on the insanity that’s just transpired on Earth; Allen warns Mark of an impending war with the Viltrumites.

Allen represents the full scope of what’s to come in future seasons of the show. The books make up an absolutely sprawling intergalactic epic that folds in so many memorable characters from so many different places that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. Allen is a major character in the books, and to see his story play out in future seasons would be incredible, especially considering how faithful the show has been to the source material thus far.

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Trouble Brewing

At the tail end of the episode we’re shown glimpses of the trouble that’s brewing in different corners of the galaxy that Mark and his allies will inevitably confront in adventures to come.

The pink, tentacled parasites we saw taking over Mars when Mark went on that botched space mission back in episode 4 are shown to have all but completely overthrown the planet, attaching to several hosts, including one of the astronauts that was left behind. The sequids are all part of a hive mind bent on chaos and destruction and will no doubt pose a threat to Earth as intergalactic tensions rise.

The Mauler twins are back in their holding cells where we first met them. They were able to escape quite easily last time around, and judging from the confident smile they wear as they’re ushered into their new digs (by the same soldiers they beat up the first time), it’ll just be a matter of time before they break out and wreak havoc once again.

The Flaxans—the alien race from another dimension who clashed with the Teen Team and Invincible, and were ultimately vanquished in their own dimension by Nolan—are shown plotting another attack on Earth, with a picture of Nolan and Earth displayed on a monitor that is subsequently stabbed by a Flaxan leader with a knife. The last time the Flaxans saw Nolan, he essentially pancaked their entire civilization, dropping a mountain on one of their major cities. It goes without saying that they’re out for revenge.

Doc Seismic was felled by Atom Eve and Invincible back in episode 3, but in the ending montage he’s shown to be raising an army of volcanic monstrosities beneath the Earth’s surface. In the comics, these creatures are known as Magmanites, and if the character’s trajectory is in line with the books, he should be in for some drastic changes to his biological makeup.

We also see a glimpse of Titan, who’s taken his former boss Machine Head’s seat as the city’s top crime lord. He’s confronted by a metal-mouthed old man seemingly in control of a dragon spirit. In the comics, he’s known as Mister Liu, and he’s anything but a throwaway villain cameo.

The almighty Battle Beast is shown kicking ass on an alien space station somewhere in the galaxy, and when he meets Mark again our hero will hopefully be better prepared for the fight.

Finally, we see Cecil overlooking an army of Reanimen—cybernetically resurrected fallen soldiers—concocted by smarmy scientist DA Sinclair, who’s been under Cecil’s employ since the debacle at Upstate University. Cecil makes no bones about doing anything it takes to protect the planet, crossing ethical lines when necessary, and the Reanimen army looks to fall under the same moral grey area.

Invincible is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.

The post Invincible Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[indigo-ra]

The Hungry Ghosts: No Face

I first saw this post on Facebook. I found it very interesting that these facts about  Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” are inherent in Japanese culture, but not so obvious to the outside observer. The one thing, I would like to add to this breakdown is that No Face represents a hungry ghost and could literally be anyone, because of the lack of spiritual identity.

Below is  a list of the 6 realms of Samsara- or the Wheel of rebirth, broken down in layman’s terms for easy digestion :D

Deva-gati

In Buddhism there are 26 Deva realms which would be considered heavens to us. But for the sake of separating the different types of beings born into each realm and simplifying understanding a bit, I’m counting all of them as one: Deva-gati- is  the Realm of Devas (gods/angels) and Heavenly Beings. It is considered the most pleasurable. Being populated by godlike beings (the ones with all the arms and stuff) who enjoy great power, wealth and long life. Since they are all happy, secure and content, they have no understanding of the suffering of others, especially in lower realms. So in spite of their long lives, if they are simply born to Deva-gati - like Svargaloka, for example, where Indra is king, they gain neither wisdom nor compassion unless they make it their mission to understand suffering and pain (would you?). They live in splendor and happiness. Yet even the Devas grow old and die, likely to be reborn on the wheel of Samsara, because even in their realm, one’s actions are subject to good and bad karma.

Asura-gati, the Realm of Asura (Titans, Demi-Gods, and Demons)

Or as I like to call it: Aether. If you are a believer, like me, this realm, in theory, would have housed Mt Olympus as well as all the other demi-gods and titans that, to our knowledge, ever became legendary. In Islam, the Djinn are powerful beings that we cannot see or touch. They are said to be made of smokeless fire (so demons, in a fire-natured sense), but they can see us and  interact with us and don’t think very much of humans in general. They have free will, like man, can be good or evil, spiritual or atheist and are said to live in places like high mountains, where human beings would never survive. They too would likely be housed in the realm of Asura. They too are subject to the generation of good and bad karmas, and thus rebirth.

Manusya-gati, the Human Realm

Jambudvipa, or, the Terrestrial world, is probably not just limited to Earth, but I imagine, includes even parallel dimensions in which the carnal/tangible nature of our planet with interstellar coordinates is what defines the matrix for its existing parameters. When I say parallel dimensions, I mean a world very similar to ours that  may be housed in another galaxy and occupies 3-dimensional space. If time and space were folded like a piece of paper, and we could instantly be teleported, a parallel dimension would still be tangible and satisfy the perception of our 5 physical senses. The beings housed in this realm are you and me, obviously, and you know very well the extent of good and evil that humans are capable of - And That’s just counting the last 3000 years of recorded history on *this* rock.

 Tiryagyoni-gati, the Animal Realm

The animal realm is also within Jambuvipa. It includes all the wild and domesticated beasts. In Buddhism, the belief is that animal beings are marked by stupidity, prejudice and complacency. They lead sheltered lives, mainly led by instinct, avoiding discomfort or anything unfamiliar. Personally, I don’t agree 100% with that assessment, mainly because I’ve met and seen some animals have more selflessness, decency and civility than humans on their best day. BUT in terms of rebirth the Animal Realm is conditioned by a sense of ignorance. As intelligent as beasts are and can come to be, their emotional state is driven by instinct. They are sentient, but do not plan for the future or self-reflect, existentially... except maybe dolphins...because dolphins are awesome. But in all seriousness, people who are ignorant and content to remain so (in the human realm) are likely headed for rebirth in the Animal Realm if their karma isn’t great when they die; assuming they aren't there already *coughcough* because willfully and aggressively ignorant people are akin to wild beasts that can form speech *coughcough*

Preta-gati, the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Hungry ghosts (preta) are pictured in old mandalas as beings with huge, empty stomachs, but they have pinhole mouths, and their necks are so thin they cannot swallow. A hungry ghost is one who is always looking outside himself for the new thing that will satisfy the craving within. So, in laymans terms, they likely reside on the Astral Plane/Limbo/Purgatory. They are constantly wandering, driven by insatiable hunger and craving. They are also associated with addiction, obsession and compulsion, and the real reason I think “Alcohol” is synonymous with “Spirits”. According to the Dhamma,  hungry ghosts and other restless spirits are caused by bad karma of excessive craving and attachments to addictive substances, material wealth and hedonism. They do not have a bodies, are invisible and constitute only "subtle matter" of a being. If you have ever experienced sleep paralysis, where it feels like some invisible force is sitting on your chest, holding you down, it’s likely you’ve met one. If you’ve ever had an out of body experience, there is a feeling that people have named “The witch over your shoulder” in which it feels like some evil invisible force is staring at you hungrily from behind<( this I can personally confirm) and it is because, while you’re out of your body, the being without one, is looking on in a jealous, vengeful, angry or disrespectfully hungry way. As soon as I looked in the direction though, nothing was there and the feeling went away. Buddhist traditions in Asia attempt to care for Hungry ghosts on ritual days every year, by leaving food and drinks out in the open, to feed any hungry ghosts nearby (How sweet is that?). But do not misunderstand, this is a condition of a human being with bad karma who died and ended up in the in-between...when their sentence is up, they can be reborn into another realm, but being that this realm is intangible, lends them almost no options as far as interaction with the terrestrial world, which means their actions (if they wanted to correct their bad karma) are very limited. So in most cases, they are stuck until their time is up and the suffering and discontent of being driven insane with insatiable hunger is, by design, incredibly intense.

One particular type of hungry ghost, that seems to grow in power by gaining the power to feed themselves are classed as No-Face.

No-Face

Remember him? Of course you do. He seemed lonely and innocent. In the movie “Spirited Away”, knowing what I know about the setting of the bathhouse, I would assume that No-Face was a rich pedophile when he was alive. That kind of karma will get you stuck for hundreds of years. So even though the movie is set in the modern era, this particular hungry ghost was likely wandering the spirit realm from the time there were Shogunates and Daimyos who would destroy entire clans villages, while giving orders and permission to rape the women and enslave the children to be sold as sex slaves or otherwise. 

Kaiken, like the above pictured, were pretty knives that women would hide in their kimonos, in the event that such a tragedy would befall them. They would often use them to commit suicide before they could be raped and killed by brigands or mercenaries. It was fucking horrible. Cute knife though.

The “Zero” Tails 

This parasitic abomination somehow made itself at home inside the host of a girl named Amaru in Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Bonds. Without going into too much detail about the plot of the film, Amaru became possessed by this demonic no-face after falling into a deep despair that it used to leech onto. In the end it made her a vessel of a large amount of chakra, comparable to the other Jinchuuriki, like Naruto. BUT the evil force of this powerfully hungry no-face fed on negative emotions, biding its time until it could completely consume its host and overtake her body. It called itself the “zero-tails” which is obviously misleading, because all the tailed beasts,  one through nine, had fucking TAILS. But to move quietly through the world until its endgame was realized, this was the lie it used to convince anyone who could sense its dark presence in a seemingly innocent adolescent girl. In the end, Naruto sensed the leech’s corruption in Amaru, despite the exorcism of it, which was why it had grown to a level of power, even remotely comparable to his own tailed-beast. She and her sensei were feeding it sin, and ultimately, both earned bad karma.

Talk about fucking done-If you are  a fan of Naruto and wonder how he stays so single and ignorantly innocent of the opposite sex for 17 years of his life, watch this movie with abject scrutiny. Actually watch every movie in which he saves the girl and watch how they all slowly disappoint the fuck out of him. Amaru was a piece of work....

Koh The Face Stealer

Koh was a hungry ghost residing in the spirit world of Avatar:The Last Airbender. It would silently stalk its prey and surprise them, using their emotions against them as a way to steal their face. Koh was a very dangerous, powerful and extremely insatiable hungry ghost, as it had a collection of faces that ranged from human to animal alike. The only way to escape it was to keep a stoic expression, no matter how it tried to provoke you. Take notes, kids. If you have shitty karma, you may be fated to wander the hungry ghost realm with debilitating hunger and rage, and if Koh gets the drop on you, no face to feed or express it. 

Koh’s full mukade appearance was shocking enough to put anyone into a frenzy, but all it takes is one gasp in a state of surprise and its got you. If I were to speculate on this being’s life before it was reborn a no-face preta, I could only say that this person had the type of greed that he was willing to kill and steal to satisfy. I can assume this much because for a being suffering this realm to become as powerful as this, their greed and hunger never ceased being their drive for existing in the first place. To actively accumulate bad karmas even after being reborn into a lengthy sentence as a hungry ghost, takes an apex predator level of evil. A being such as this could very well spend an eternity in this state unless it was ever destroyed, then would be reborn in Hell.

Which leads me to the lowest realm of rebirth:

Naraka-gati, the Hell Realm

In most every religion there is a Hell. If any philosophy teaches you otherwise, it’s a bold-faced lie *coughcough* Jehovah’s Witnesses *coughcough*. Hell is in the ground, underneath the topsoil of earth and shit. Antarctica is a good prison- not just some old story made up to frighten children and idiots into being good people, but it can be used to that effect. To teach that there is no Hell or divine retribution to that extent of the law and that one will simply cease to exist when they die, after a life of sin and accumulation of karmic debt measured in trillions, is a sin in itself. The one spreading that lie is ALSO subject to bad karma. It’s a slippery slope and all I have to say is some people take advantage of believing there is no Hell by being the worst and thinking the only thing that awaits them after death is a peaceful unconscious lack of existence entirely as literally and figurative pieces of shit. Though that is enough to terrify most people, The mindset of a person who is basically the living embodiment of a hungry ghost is the destructive and contagious equivalent of an evil epidemic to the karma of every person they come into contact with. These are No-Face in real life and they can literally be ANYONE. Beware of those who exercise arbitrary morality by defying labels and use that to the advantage of rationalization to make themselves tolerable, yet have no true identity. (For example somebody who cries the feminist victim, but is truly a  Male to Female Transgender  “woman with a penis” who rapes lesbians and justifies it under some LGBTQA-Z gender assignment label when the true label is actually just Rapist) I’m saying this because I personally know some such evil people, that specifically fly under the banner of “Jehovah’s Witness” and because they think there’s no retribution waiting after they die, there’s no limit to the evil deeds they are wont to commit. Ugh... talk about remedial... Anyway the Buddhist texts vary in their details, but typically describe numerous hellish regions each with different forms of intense tortuous design and suffering, such as eight extremely hot hellish realms, eight extremely cold, being partially eaten alive, beating and other forms of torture in proportion to the evil karma accumulated. If I want to bank on my promotion, personally, when I die and make even more karma, I will be an architect of this realm. Trust me, The former and current Devils or whoever is presiding over the torture designs of this realm cannot fuck your mind and soul like I can. I’ll even let you choose from little staycation packages uniquely designed to fit your individual sins.  But as always, this realm is also designed to be an impermanent state- at some point every soul reborn in the Hell realm *should*, in theory, be able to claw their way up to rebirth in a higher realm after finishing out a long sentence...but that doesn’t mean you can’t end up right back there if you don’t learn your lesson. Unfortunately that seems to be the one design flaw of Samsara. One never remembers their past life, but that’s okay too. Because if you’re reborn in karmic debt, or just starting at 0, all types of misfortune will be reflected  in the life of that Human/Animal/Hungry Ghost and passing those tests will either advance their evolution or trap them in a loop.  So in the end, I guess The wheel of rebirth or Samsara is perfect.

So you better act right.

A depiction of The wheel of Samsara, representing the 5/6 realms of rebirth.

[wolfie-dragon-rider]

Voltron LD, Season 2 review

I finished watching Voltron season 2 on Friday (Finally!), and I wanted to write down my thoughts on it. What did I like, what did I not like, what worked, what didn't? A sort of review, I guess. Note that I'll go into spoiler territory below the cut, so if you still have to watch it, do that first. Also, I can't be bothered to find tons of pictures for this post, so I apologize for not having the images to represent the scenes I'm talking about.

Also, DISCLAIMER: I am not a shipper for this show. I honestly don't see the Klance or Sheith or whatever. I've got terrible gaydar. I'm not gonna comment on romantic relationships in this review. Ship whatever you wanna ship, I don't care. Just don't bash me for it.

Okay, quick first thought/summary: Overall, I liked it. I liked the first season better, but it was close. But there were some… trends in this season that I didn't like, and I hope those don't get worse in future seasons. I'll now go into a bit more detail on various aspects, and explain what I mean with the previous sentence. It was far from perfect, and this is not going to be some “SQUEE! I Love it so much!!!1!” post. I'm not writing this to bash on anything, but to collect my thoughts for myself, and maybe in some vain hope that the writers will see it and think a bit about it.

Pacing

I am honestly not quite sure why, but the pacing felt off to me. Clearly they tried to create a more overarching plot and narrative, especially in the latter half of the season. But it didn't really work for me. I think one problem I had is that there were several episodes that were clearly linked, but there was very little connection between these 'groups' of episodes.

For example, the first two episodes dealt with the cliffhanger at the end of Season 1, detailing how the Paladins found each other again. But it felt very out of place to me. It felt like they added these episodes just to justify having a cliffhanger in the first place. Pretty much nothing that happened in these episodes actually matters for the rest of the season. No one has any real character growth, nothing is set up, and the only meaningful thing is the “If I don't make it...” line, which, in my opinion, could have been set up in a better part, such as in the Blade of Marmora arc.

Then there are the Blade of Marmora arc and the 'Zarkon is chasing us, shit shit shit shit' arcs, which are pretty much intertwined strangely weirdly. The Blade arc started in Episode 3, with Ulaz' introduction and subsequent death. Then there are some episodes with Zarkon chasing them.

And then there's Space Mall. Oh my gods, what were they thinking with this episode? Look, I loved this episode, I did. It was funny, even if it was ridiculously silly a bit over the top and clearly written for a younger audience than me. But as for pacing? It felt so ridiculously out of place. It was all death and destruction and barely escaping Zarkon, and then along came a goofy episode like this. Now, I perfectly understand you need humor to break up the dark parts. But it did it so… unironically. It might have been nice if the show itself acknowledged how silly this episode was, especially compared to the narrative as a whole. It was like a Big-lipped Alligator Moment, something ridiculously silly, out of place, and then never mentioned again.

Anyway, after Space Mall, we suddenly go back to the Blade of Marmora, who I'd half forgotten about by now, and we get Keith's arc. I'll go into more detail about this in other sections, but I'm just saying I didn't really care about the Blade by now.

Finally we get the whole 'bait Zarkon' arc, which was… badly set up, in my opinion. Several of the episodes, especially the prison break and Slav's character in Escape from Beta Traz, came out of nowhere. I spent all of that episode wondering who the frick Slav was and why they needed him. The plan to trap Zarkon was unclear and explained too hastily. Many of these episodes had the same problem the first two episodes seemed to have: They were very disjoint, and seemed not to really fit in the overall jigsaw puzzle, so to speak. Ill go into this more in the next section.

So overall, to me it felt like the pacing was weird and all over the place, with episodes that didn't seem to have much to do with each other. Season 1 did it much better, with episodes and arcs following each other much more organically. The Balmera arc followed the 'siege' arc, and the episodes following that flowed naturally from the infected crystal. While in this season in went to and fro, with episodes and twists coming out of absolutely nowhere.

Worldbuilding

In this section I'm going to be a bit salty, because worldbuilding and overall plot is something I've had a problem with in the first season as well.

My biggest complaint is just that the world doesn't seem very logical, and not very alive. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few days, and I realized it is like a videogame, with a very protagonist-centered world. What I mean by that is that it doesn't seem like anything at all happens in the universe, apart from the places where the Castle of Lions happens to be at that moment.

For example, in Greening The Cube (which is my favorite episode, by the way, for reasons I'll get into later) apparently the Olkari have been enslaved for years or longer (given that they have build an entire new civilization in the woods, and the SOS spores travelled halfway across the galaxy before reaching Voltron), but literally the very day Voltron arrives the cube is finished. Also, given how easily the Olkari defeated the Galra when they finally rose up, it makes you wonder why they didn't rise up earlier, or how they lost in the first place.

But the most notable example is that the Galra Empire, this vast, evil, conquering nation that (or at least, so we're told) spreads through the galaxy like a cancer, doesn't really seem to do anything. They don't seem to gather forces or mobilize in preparation for a great war with Voltron. They don't follow Voltron and take back the planets they liberated, such as Arus and the Balmera. Why do they not do this? They have an empire spanning a million stars, why don't they spare a few ships to take back the Balmera the moment Voltron leaves it defenseless?

On this note, the Galra Empire seems to be so… cartoonishly evil. In the first season they were at least logically evil, enslaving the Balmera and harvesting the crystals they need for fuel. But in this season… I'm honestly surprised these Galra commanders don't all have huge moustaches they twirl all the time as they do EVIL acts. It's this stupid evil, the silly corrupt aristocrat who sabotaged the Taujeer ship in The Ark of Taujeer for no real reason other than reminding us of how EVIL the Galra are, or the commander enslaving the Olkari who commands the execution of the king in ridiculously hammy fashion.

I get that it's a cartoon, but instances like this make it very hard for me to take the Galra seriously. Also, maybe a minor note and I'm reading way too much into this, but the Galra empire doesn't seem to be that bad? I say this because in Space Mall, things certainly seem to be safer than when the Alteans were still in charge. Coran remembers seedy bars, black markets, places controlled by mafia and thugs. And now, the mall is clean, safe, and calm. It's not like the population is controlled by fear, either. The girl Coran tries to bribe literally doesn't understand what could be dangerous about this place. 

I know it's just a joke, but there are many such instances and jokes, and it gives me the impression that the whole Galra Empire doesn't seem… well thought out. It's evil when Voltron needs something to fight, but for the rest the galaxy seems pretty peaceful and okay.

Also, there are a ton of complaints I have about worldbuilding in general in this universe. It simply feels incomplete, and many episodes just generate more questions. Do the Galra control everything, or are there independent nations? How common is space travel? Why does everybody speak English? How did they get videogames from Earth? Not to mention the cow?! I know they're minor things, but together they make the world feel empty and illogical.

Characters

The characters are… mixed, in my opinion. Some are good, some are great, and some are bad. I'll go over the notable ones. The order is somewhat from bad to best.

Let me start of with the worst: Hunk. What the hell happened to you, man? What did they do to you? They turned you from an adorable smart mechanical genius into a one-dimensional idiot who pretty much only talks about food. I guess about 90% of his lines are food jokes. Another 5% is him being nervous and second guessing everything, and about 3% is him being an utter jerk to Keith. Seriously, that was not cool, man. The rest is him being actually productive. Hunk had no arc, no character development, and what character development he had in the first season (relationship with Shay, determined to defeat Zarkon) seems to have disappeared. I'm sorry, but I can't really say anything positive about Hunk here.

Slav. What the hell. Okay, I will admit this is mostly a personal pet pieve of mine, but I HATE the mad scientist trope. You'd think with a show that got Pidge perfectly right (more on that below), they wouldn't go down that path, but they did. He was funny, and seeing Shiro blow up at him was great, but  he just didn't really seem to add anything to the team or plot. They could have replaced him with Ryner, the Olkari chieftess, and used the Beta Traz episode for something more interesting.

Next worse, probably Lance. Okay, I'm gonna say this upfront: I don't like Lance. In general, even in the first season. So keep that in mind as you read this. Don't kill me for it.

He's not as bad as Hunk, if only for the fact that he's pretty much invisible this entire season. He has some weird moments with Keith, but his 'Casanova' behavior just keeps getting him into trouble, like with the mermaids. You'd think he'd learn at some point not to think with his penis all the time. He sort of had a small arc in Beta Traz, but it was… weak, easily resolved, and he managed to become ridiculously smug about it in about five minutes. Sorry I'm so negative, maybe I'd like him more if he stopped being a jerk for five minutes.

Zarkon was a bit of an idiot. I guess they tried to make him obsessed and determined about the Black Lion, but it came across to me like a toddler having a tantrum because he lost his favorite toy. Not much comment on him. Hagar was a LOT more competent than he is, and it makes me wonder how he even managed to rule for 10 thousand years.

Next up: Coran. I get that Coran is the comic relief here. I do. And I'm probably too old for the jokes here, but many of his scenes just fell flat for me this season. He seems to become sillier and stupider over time, with his worst moment when he became sick and refused to accept it. He had some good moments, for example comforting Allura, but overall I felt he was less good than in Season 1.

Allura was mostly the same as Season 1. I don't have much notable to say about her, to be honest. Her arc where she started hating Keith, then accepting him was a bit sudden (especially the accepting part), but overall I liked it, and it was one of the best (if not THE best) overarching subplots this season.

I liked Shiro this season. He's growing into his role as leader, and is clearly grooming Keith to be his successor (whether that's wise or not is… questionable, IMO). His defense of Ulaz was admirable, and his bonding episode was good, even if it went pretty quickly (only need like an hour to bond with your lion?). This season made me feel for Shiro, and I'm very worried about what happened to him.

Keith's character development was good! I didn't like him much in season 1, but I'm more fond of him now. His blade arc was good, though I have to say the whole 'Keith being Galra' thing kind of… it didn't come out of nowhere, but it wasn't resolved very well. His entire arc was about finding answers. But in the end, we didn't get many answers. Who were his parents really? What happened to them? Why did the Blade come to Earth? We never get any explanation about any of that.

Now, I will admit upfront that Pidge is, has been, and probably always will be my absolute favorite character in VLD. I was nervous watching this, because I was scared they were gonna ruin that. But they managed to make her (I will refer to Pidge with female pronouns here. I personally think she's a girl, but if you think she's transgender or nonbinary or whatever, that's perfectly fine. It doesn't matter to me what her gender or sex or whatever is. Please don't kill me) even better.

Holy freaking crap, I LOVED Greening the Cube. It was such an immense relief for me to watch that, because for the first time I've ever seen, they got a nerd right. They didn't bash Pidge for her nerdiness, she was allowed to be smart, praised for it. And that's rare.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a sidetour here and try to explain why Greening the Cube was so good. If you don't care about math or science or philosophy, go ahead and skip this part.

One thing I liked even back in Season 1 was that the writers actually know their science. Remember when they infiltrated the transit hub in episode 12, and Hunk started rambling about something when explaining how the hack worked? He ranted about something that actually exists, and makes sense in that context, and if you know the terms you see what they're getting at. It's not just buzzwords randomly strewn together.

Pidge is a mathematician and computer scientist. And one important thing about those disciplines is that they aren't limited by physics. A central paradigm in computer science is so called Turing Completeness. Basically, the idea is that any computing device, programming language, or other concept, is equally powerful, and effectively the same, as long as they can do some simple operations, because that's all you need to be able to do everything. It's hard to explain here, I might make a separate post about it if people are interested, but the important part is that you can make a computer from almost ANYTHING. You can define computers based on card games, ant colonies, DNA strings, cell biology (I did my bachelor thesis on this, actually, about representing data as molecules which are modified by biological cells), musical notation, anything.

That's what the Olkari were talking about when they said everything is connected and the same. That's why Pidge was able to bend the wood into something else. Because it's all the same computer, just with a different interface. All Pidge had to do was understand how to convert the magic wood computer into a regular Turing machine, and she can use it. That's what the echo cube was about as well, a learning AI that emulates and copies everything it sees. And the writers get this. They understand this concept which can be so hard to understand when you haven't studied computer science. And it isn't ridiculed. Pidge is initially dismissive, saying she prefers the indoors (implying she prefers her regular computer), but she is curious, open to it.

It's no surprise that Pidge said Turing is her favorite scientist (I'm going to be smug here and point out I totally called this in my fanfic The Imitation Game). Because Turing was the guy who figured this out. And Turing wasn't just a mathematician. Turing was ALSO a biologist, a chemist, a philosopher. He was interdisciplinary and versatile, just like Pidge. No matter how much she moans about sunburn and mosquitos (I sympathize with her, though), she's still curious about the Olkari, and eager to learn.

Anyway, the point is, it's so liberating to see a tech junkie math character who isn't ridiculed or made fun off or made one-dimensional. This show gets what it's like to be a math nerd. It gets the philosophical and scientific concepts. And it uses that knowledge to let Pidge grow further.

Pidge was great in the rest of the season as well. She doesn't give up on searching for her brother, but she learned to give saving the universe higher priority. I liked the moment in the prison where she searches the database for him without compromising the mission. She's badass as always, settling into her support role. She doesn't always have to fight to help the team, sometimes helping Coran with repairs or overseeing security systems.

I loved her moment in the first episode where she made copies of the other paladins and mocked them, it was hilarious and not mean-spirited. It shows how she's the 'jester' on the team, keeping them levelheaded and pointing it out when they are acting like idiots. And the way she made that giant antenna by herself was amazing. She didn't sit back and wait to be rescued.

If there's one criticism I have it's that she didn't get another companion. I want to see a new Rover, or another robot she builds herself. She hacked a robot in Beta Traz, but it kind of disappeared without a word. But I'm eager to see where her journey takes her next.

Conclusion

I guess my review comes across as fairly negative, but I did like it. There were pacing problems, and the world seems kind of empty and lifeless at times, but I still like it a lot. Action was great, the enemies were less gimicky and silly than in the previous season (though the suddenly reborn Robeast in Stayin Alive was kind of weird). The team as a whole is doing great, working together more and more, though Hunk and Lance's characters are regressing a bit. I loved loved loved Pidge, and I can't wait for Season 3!

If you want clarification, or discuss something about this review, you can always send me a PM. Have  a great day!