#handwaving the hell out of this timeline

[spidey-webs]

ok ok hear me out

Things go slightly differently. Just slightly. Kon doesn't settle down in Gem World and decide to wait. Maybe he just doesn't meet fake wife. Maybe he impulsively whoops ass before Evil Gem Dude even thinks of grabbing some Kryptonite. The council still goes, "wow thanks but also please leave". Kon says, sure, if you have a way to send me home.

And that's how Kon finds out his universe is gone. Erased. Wiped out. There's nothing left--if it exists at all still, it was remade into something completely different, different enough that there's no identifying it from any of the other worlds in the multiverse.

He's not from anywhere still in existence.

Right. Cool. Kon can be so cool about this. He is not going to be all Superboy-Prime about this. He's cool. Everything's cool. Maybe everything and everyone he's ever known is gone but it's fine. He'll figure something out. There's gotta be a way to fix this.

So, they send him to an Earth. Any Earth is fine. Because he's got this.

It's Earth-3.

And instead of a way back home, Kon finds a kid trapped in a volcano.

[unexpectederawhilesubmitting]

WARNING: DOCTOR WHO SPOILERS EXPLAINING REGENERATION SHENANIGANS

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okay so I was kind of not on board with the concept of bi-regeneration, mainly because of how it seemed like all of the Sad and the Trauma that the Doctor had undergone got kind of handwaved away? i'm all for ncuti's Doctor being sort of a fresh start/jumping on point for new viewers, but i didn't get how that could work if like, literally 40 minutes ago he was David Tennant being a sad wet puppy dog of a man

however, after rewatching it, i've realized what i think happened there, and it goes all the way back to something introduced with the 4th doctor's regeneration that was never explained: the Watcher

^this spooky guy

so, for those that don't know (or haven't seen every episode of a show that is over half a century old), the Fourth Doctor regenerates at the end of a story called Logopolis (he falls off a satellite dish, but that's not important right now). all throughout the episode, this weird figure, The Watcher, stands off in the distance, and even intervenes slightly by saving the Fourth Doctor's companion. there's not much given in the way of an explanation until the Fourth Doctor regenerates, saying "it's the end. but the moment has been prepared for..."

the watcher walks up, and gets absorbed in a super rad 1980's digital effect (never change doctor who), while his companion just gives us the not-super-helpful-for-lore statement "He was the Doctor all the time!"

then, in a crossfade, the Doctor goes from Four to weird-powder-man to Five

canonically, the Watcher is explained as a future version of the doctor that comes about in sort of a weird overlapping thing with the doctor's timeline, it's very wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.

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

SO what does this have to do with biregeneration and satisfying character arcs/moving on from trauma?

Well, remember, Fifteen said this, about Time Lords doing rehab out of order:

so, here's the thing: Fifteen is the Doctor AFTER Fourteen (duh, I know?) But to be clear...Fourteen lives out an entire lifetime with Donna and family, gets to a ripe old age, and then, when his lifetime of healing is over, he gets yeeted back through his own timestream just to zoot himself out of David Tennant's chest.

Remember, his first words to Fourteen (after popping out of his chest) are "So good to see you! So good!", not the RTD classic "what?". He greets himself like he's almost expecting this, he then says "does anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on here?" which only makes sense if he's coming from a different point in his own timestream (remember, when two doctors interact, memory gets really weird, 10 and the War Doctor don't remember the events of Day of the Doctor until they live through them as 11).

SO TO BE CLEAR: Ncuti Gatwa is playing the Doctor AFTER he has spent years healing from his traumas. His Doctor is fine because Fourteen takes the time to rest and work on himself.

tl;dr: I didn't like biregeneration at first because I thought it looked like this:

In actuality, it looks more like this:

[romanadvoratrelundar]

not gonna lie saving gallifrey was such a boring asspull to bring other time lords back in the mix. & the way the time war was portrayed took all the genuine horror out of it. like, think instead about how interesting it might have been to bring in gallifreyan refugees or something as a way of having time lord stuff to play with without undercutting the horror of the time war and the the doctor’s genocide. honestly the fact that gallifrey got brought back at all kills the really interesting implications of the doctor being the one to singlehandedly end the war, & what that means for their character. and it also kills the horror of the end of time, and how to bring gallifrey back, in any form, would bring with it all the horrors of the time war, war crimes and weapons to terrible to be described, with names like the nightmare child. and in one episode, they just. bring it back and everything is FIIIIINE. the doctor never committed genocide, bringing gallifrey back has no real repercussions the likes of which were implied in the end of time. (like, imagine the creations of a society like the time lords primed for war. even if all were stripped of weaponry, consider the terrible knowledge of such things that might be unleashed, the repercussions of such a war on time lord society & thought.) give us the skaro degradations, the horde of travesties, the nightmare child, the could-have-been king with his army of meanwhiles and never-weres. like, show us the hell that the doctor himself said the war had become by the end!! the doctor only takes the gun from wilf when he realizes the time lords are returning. that holds meaning!!

like, imagine if they actually HAD explored the full implications of how the time war had been lampshaded in previous episodes, gave us a full arc of the doctor dealing with the fallout of the timelords returned, weaponized and wielding horrors unimaginable. bring back the rani! explore the full implications of the doctor’s willingness so commit genocide upon both his people and the daleks. what was so terrible that the doctor decided that for the universe to live, both must die?? there’s so much to work with in that idea alone!!

or like mentioned, give us gallifreyan refugees! surely not all died or were trapped, surely there were other time lords, if even a few. and like, i know that house thing kinda explains that away as “any remaining time lords got eaten by the house” but frankly, i just think that if that’s the excuse you go with as to why there’s no other time lords besides the doctor &the master until gallifrey returns, you’re handwaving it. that could be fascinating!! you could tie it into the audio dramas, or the novels, give us characters from those, bring back characters from classic who! hell, you could bring in the valeyard as a doctor from a timeline that spooled out of the time war, a vesion of the doctor who was never meant to exist, and who practically doesn’t.

at the end of the day, i’m just never getting over the wasted potential of the time war in nuwho. it makes me feel absolutely bonkers, because there’s so much there!

[zmediaoutlet]

so i know we just have to accept certain retcons, but the big one that bugs me is yellow eyes's plan for sam and how it doesn't fit with all the vessel stuff. how do YOU make that work in your head?

hallo hallo anon, you have hit on one of the Great Big Bugaboos of spn canon and also the #1 evidence we have to throw in the face all those goofs who uncritically repeat the "Kripke had a 5 year plan!" factoid. He clearly did not, he was flying by the seat of his pants, and while he managed to put stuff together in a fun way the pants are Not Coherent.

Nevertheless, we can make it work, and the way we make it work is that the various members of the angelic and especially demonic hierarchies do not have complete information. Let's do a rough timeline:

In the beginning Chuck created the universe. This is widely regarded as a bad move.

Then, you know, handwaving on him setting up some version of a 'destiny' story arc which will inevitably end in his two sons fighting to the death, via characters he'll create called The Winchesters.

After inventing demons and being a real jerkface, Lucifer ends up in the cage.

In the 70s or whatever, Azazel goes to Ilchester to butcher a bunch of nuns and talk to daddy Lucifer -- Lucifer says "you have to help get Lilith out of her pit so that the seals on my cage can get broken." Azazel says, "But how, Evil Daddy?" Lucifer says, "This really special child." -- HERE IS WHERE THE RETCON APPEARS TO HAVE HAPPENED, BUT WE CAN WORK WITH IT

Sam Winchester is fated in the demonic archives among the true higher-ups, but lower-level demons don't necessarily know about him and his importance.

Azazel starts seeding the earth with special babies. COMPLETE CONJECTURE TO FOLLOW: While he knows that Sam is the one who will be Lucifer's vessel, he also knows that a series of events will need to occur so that Lucifer will get out of the cage to take his vessel in the first place. The first seal is the most important: a righteous man must shed blood in hell. How do we get that to happen? CONJECTURE TWO: I think that Dean must be the Righteous Man because of his place within the tripartite celestial structure: God-Michael-Lucifer mirroring John-Dean-Sam. I do not think that John could have ever actually been the one to 'spill blood' that would allow the first seal to break. (Ethical conjecture three: perhaps it's the weakness itself which has its own kind of righteousness? John's implacable; Dean is not.) CONJECTURE UHH FOUR I GUESS: Azazel is designing an elaborate scheme to ensure that Sam will die on a particular day (maybe bc it works well for opening the door to hell?) specifically to ensure that Dean will sell his soul to bring Sam back, and thereby doom himself to the hell where he will break the first seal.

This should be 6b but tumblr doesn't work this way: now, would it be a hell of a fucking lot easier for Azazel to just ensure Sam dies somehow? Yeah. But given everything we know about him and the dorky-ass demons who hang out in s1 and s2, Azazel is clearly a dramallama and does stuff for the lulz. Plus, I think there's an element of 'proving' to Sam how much destiny has a hold on him, because that is so important for his grooming into saying yes to Lucifer. If he was just hit by a car or something it doesn't have the same effect than if he's part of the emo hunger games.

Sam dies; Dean sells his soul; Sam lives, and wants to save Dean. But of course, he can't save Dean, because Dean *must* go to hell to ensure the first seal is broken. This is why the angels don't help Sam at all, and why Ruby is allowed to run around with impunity. Happily the writer's strike intervened and gave us a miserable fucking s3 finale where that happened, because that is WAY more interesting than Hero Sammy Saving The Day.

Ruby has been getting instructions from Lilith the entire time, presumably since she became a demon herself, and gets launched literally as soon as Azazel is out of the way to continue the Sam-grooming.

CONJECTURE FIVE(?): Azazel and Lilith fucking hated each other, lol. But it's Lilith who's the *actually* important demon, so she wins and Azazel gets sacrificed for being really bad at teaching drama.

It's not actually that complicated, but you do have to take "the special kids were just sacrifices on the altar of let's see what we can get Sam to do" as a given. If Sam had actually started killing all of them, that'd be one thing, and Azazel could have turned that to his favor before maybe having Ava stab Sam in the back regardless. (Then, a Special Kid will go and open the devil's gate for him anyway, so the demons can get out there and start their important seal-breaking prep.) Since Sam was being such a Good Guy -- well, so what, Ava will kill all the rest of them, and then either her or Jake will get turned easy-peasy and kill Sam too. Dean will make his deal either way, and the apocalypse is off with a bang. Or a sick crunching of knife into bone.

Anyway, that's my theory. It fits alongside my ironclad theory that all of history and fate and destiny was leading toward two brothers standing in front of each other in a cemetery, and the only real free will starting once Dean could choose what to do when Sam-as-Lucifer stood in front of him, and what he chose was to be there for his brother. Thereby giving Sam a solid space to grasp and overcome Lucifer, and then save all the days. The Righteous Man who begins it is the only one who can end it, as they say.

[imabillyami]

7. & 42. Samijey 💕

Hi lovely anon! Thanks so much for sending these! I had so much fun writing them! 💕

I was originally gonna go for a more plot driven fic, but then I started writing and somehow ended up with a matching set of character (relationship) study type of fics from both POV’s instead - “Silent Fury” (Sami’s POV) & “Savior” (Jey’s POV).

I hope you don’t mind and still enjoy them! Set roughly somewhere between EC 2023 and WM39. We're handwaving the timeline a bit.

(Seeing as they belong together, I'm posting both of them here.)

-> Mini fic challenge (Still accepting prompts! Send me a number and a ship/character and see what happens.) 

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Silent Fury (Sami’s POV, 862 words, PG, pre-slash) 

Despite what everybody around him claimed to know, there had been absolutely nothing easy about leaving the Bloodline. 

Not with how much brotherly love and genuine friendship he’d felt towards Solo and Jimmy. 

Not with how much he used to in equal measure look up to, respect and fear Roman. 

Not with how fond he’d grown of Paul and his smarmy weaseling ways and his at times invaluable advice. 

And especially not with how tits over ass in love he’d found himself with Jey. 

He genuinely had no intention of ever leaving the Bloodline behind the way he did, despite seeing the writing on the wall for a while, until he swung that chair at Roman’s back. But once he did, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it. 

Not even when it meant destroying what he’d built for himself for months and months. 

Not when it meant turning on his found family. 

Most of that had been an illusion anyway if the recent weeks had been any indication. 

In that moment - the one that changed the trajectory of his life in ways he still couldn’t fully wrap his head around - he simply couldn’t bear the thought of spending even one more minute stuck under Roman’s thumb, playing his cruel games, letting himself be used like a puppet on strings. 

So despite how it all went down, he had no regrets when it came to himself. 

The way he’d betrayed Jey though? The way he’d left him behind? That part was still eating him alive. 

He’d had an inkling about where their relationship was headed before all of this happened, his feelings for Jey growing stronger by the minute and Jey not shy about his own feelings towards him either. Not that they’d ever really said it out loud. But Sami thought it had been heavily implied at least. He could be wrong though. 

And that’s just the thing - where others would’ve long since given up and moved on, writing it off as a failed relationship, an ‘it simply wasn’t meant to be’, he wasn’t gonna let Jey go this easily. Romantic or platonic love, chance or no chance, he’d seen the betrayal and the hurt in Jey’s eyes at the Rumble and he couldn’t ever let him down like that again. Not when there was still hope. 

Jey had refused to attack him alongside his brothers. He’d left. Disappeared. Gone radio silent on his entire family, hell even his own twin, for weeks. One didn’t have to be a genius to know what that meant. 

The night Jey chose his family over him, honestly,  it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Roman had threatened Jimmy, after all. And there was nobody in this world Jey would ever love as much as his twin. 

So really, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him that after a fierce hug - one that still played on a constant loop in his head - Jey had given him a proper ass whooping. 

And yet here he was, still completely thrown off his game by Jey’s obvious choice. A choice that should have been a clean cut if there ever was one. 

Except it wasn’t. 

Yes, his heart was aching at the mere sight of the Uso, but the familiar longing and the insistent pull were still there. 

Call him foolish or delusional, but he had no intention of giving up on Jey anytime soon. 

And so he kept seeking him out every single week, stubbornly trying to drill the words into Jey’s head, trying to get him to understand, trying to help him break free. 

And every single week he kept watching in silent fury when his words seemed to have the exact opposite effect. 

Instead of breaking free, Jey threw himself deeper into the arms of his family, willingly submitting to Roman’s mind games, his now borderline obsessive obedience to his cousin stronger than ever before. 

Sami was pissed off at the situation as a whole. He was just about done with Roman. The urge to add a sequel to the chair incident at the Rumble was truly overwhelming. 

But even more than that, more than anything else, he was furious with himself and the fact that he couldn’t seem to do anything right anymore when it came to Jey. It honestly felt like he just kept making things worse. 

The fact that they were now pitted against each other for WrestleMania sure didn’t help. 

As time went by their promos kept growing more and more hostile and antagonistic, heated and emotional in a way he could’ve never anticipated, and more often than not they ended with fists flying everywhere. 

Still, violence and hostility be damned, week after week he kept approaching Jey the second he was alone - much to his own tag partner and best friend’s bewilderment and annoyance - cause he still had hope. 

They’d had a genuine connection before and something like that didn’t just go away, did it? It still had to be there for Jey as much as it was for him.

He believed in Jey. He always would. And he’d be damned if he ever gave up on him.

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Savior (Jey’s POV, 620 words, PG, pre-slash) 

Jey didn’t fucking know what Sami’s problem was. 

If there were a way to Google ‘How do you move on from your mortal enemy turned potential love of your life after he betrayed your family, left you high and dry and then had the nerve to come back to tell you he believed in you? Add that he likely has no clue about the love of your life part. Oh, you also kicked him in the face and gave him a beatdown after almost leaving your family behind to be with him.’ Jey would’ve done that ages ago.

But there seemed to be no handy solution to his very unique problem and so Jey was left fumbling while trying to figure out how to deal with this shit by himself. 

It didn’t help that Sami didn’t seem to ever get the fucking memo and stay out of his way. 

No, instead he kept running after Jey like a forlorn puppy biting and gnawing at his ankles, constantly trying to get into his head and under his skin. Constantly telling him he’s better than he actually is and that there was an easy way out of his situation. Like he had any damn clue. 

And the worst part? 

It worked. 

Jey knew Sami was his savior about as much as he himself was an innocent damsel in distress. Which was not at all. 

But still. 

As much as he kept pretending to be indifferent to them, Sami’s words rang loud and clear inside his head and settled heavily on his conscience. They resonated with him against his will, they made his heart beat faster (though that might’ve actually just been Sami’s presence in general) and he had no fucking idea know how to make it stop.

And the words? They actually gave him the most fucking dangerous thing there was: hope. 

Hope that there’s a way out from under Roman’s reign of terror without his brothers getting hurt in the process. 

Hope that he gets to stand on his own two feet again one day. 

Hope that once he gets there, Sami would actually be waiting for him.

Hope that the whole ‘love of his life part’ isn’t the one-sided fantasy he thinks it is. 

It was a major fucking inconvenience that Sami was so good with his words. That they made Jey wanna give in and say ‘fuck it’. Like that was actually a thing he’d be able to do. 

He’d let himself hope before. 

He’d hoped to provide for their family. 

He’d hoped to become Roman’s equal. 

He’d hoped there was still a shred of compassion and humanity left in his cousin. 

And when Sami had wormed his way into his stupid heart, he’d learned about a new kind of hope altogether. 

The hope that someone would be willing to step up and step in and share the burden of his family with him and they’d stay despite the mess they found themself in. 

It had been a childish dream. And see where that had left him. 

Heartbroken and feeling like a fool. 

He absolutely couldn’t allow himself to fall for Sami’s white knight routine all over again, no matter how genuine it felt.

At least that’s what his head kept shouting at him. 

His heart, however? 

That was a different story entirely. 

And he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to deny it, to lie through his teeth, to hurl hateful words and throw punches at Sami when all he wanted to do was whisper sweet nothings and use his hands to caress him instead. 

So no, Sami sure as hell wasn’t his savior, but he could very well prove to be his final downfall.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 6 Tsumihoroboshi pt. 22

I am very undecided if I should call what’s about to unfold here a retcon. Apologies for another massive screenshot dump.

See, the reason I’m hesitant about calling this a retcon is because it’s portraying these events from the view of this timeline’s Keiichi being able to think about things rationally. This Keiichi is able to remember these events from Onikakushi and think about them from the rational angle of Mion and Rena were probably on the up and up, but that doesn’t really hold water with the way it was portrayed in Onikakushi. After all Keiichi did find a needle in the ohagi, Mion did have a syringe (probably H173) that she was going to inject Keiichi with. Hell even with the part where Mion is crying because of Keiichi accusing her of murder she did very swiftly start to rant about how she should have killed Ooishi long before he started Keiichi on his path of paranoia.

Clearly this span of screenshots and exposition is meant to try to mesh Onikakushi more cleanly with the larger plot that has come about as of Tsumihoroboshi. So it has to try to explain away Keiichi’s paranoia with his onset of Hinamizawa Syndrome, but really I think you could just as easily explain it as Keiichi remembering events from other timelines that did happen the way they did. I don’t doubt that Keiichi had Hinamizawa Syndrome back when everything went to hell in Onikakushi, but this sudden turn of trying to explain that Keiichi doubting his friends and becoming excessively paranoid just rubs me the wrong way.

Except he didn’t! Up until this very moment he had no recollection of any of this happening! Even at the time when he did homerun derby his way through Rena and Mion’s skulls he very definitely didn’t act like they deserved it! He never outright expressed regret at the deed of murdering them, but he never explicitly blamed them for their deaths either. Keiichi acted like they were used by the grander conspiracy to get at him.

Keiichi’s freakout worsens as he is overcome with guilt over having killed Rena and Mion five chapters ago. This makes Satoko and Mion thoroughly confused because as far as they’re aware Keiichi might as well be having this meltdown over a bad dream. Rika however approaches Keiichi to confirm that Keiichi is aware of his sin of having killed Mion and Rena five chapters and four years ago. Keiichi confirms that he is acutely aware, and that he didn’t even realize it when he clawed out his own throat at the end of Onikakushi and only just realized it now during the later half of Tsumihoroboshi. It never really goes into detail about her rebirth process, only that Rika prefers to have some time to come to grips with what happened “recently” but I can’t help but wonder if this is similar to how it works for her. But really I suppose that’s more a question for Minagoroshi than anything.

This… is a very ironic screenshot given what happens later on in Minagoroshi.

Rika then goes on to make Keiichi remember what it was like when he gave in to paranoia and eventually killing Rena and Mion. She rationalizes that because he went through this he could save Rena. Probably.

Now, I don’t know about Ryukish07’s writing process, and I don’t know if Wikipedia should be believed about the release dates between chapters. But given the short amount of time between Tsumihoroboshi and Minagoroshi I can’t help but assume that the pair of these were probably written together for the most part. Four months doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to have completely forgotten the characterization for who is probably your most important character in the franchise. But it is just wild to me how Rika seems to do a complete 180 in terms of characterization from Tsumihoroboshi to Minagoroshi. I guess maybe you could handwave it away as she doesn’t remember this particular conversation due to dying shortly after this chapter ends? Even though that doesn’t make a bit of sense considering she mentions things that happened right at the end of the chapter in the next one.

Anyway, thus now burdened with the memory of killing Mion and Rena in a past life Keiichi apologizes to Mion for it, and vows to be there to protect her in the future if she needs protection. A flustered Mion accepts this.

[popculturebuffet]

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Boom! Retrospective: Issues 4 and 5: The Power Rangers Explode!

It's morphin time once again you happy ranger. TLDR iv'e been covering Boom Studio's Power Rangers for my good patron brotoman.exed in between transformers reviews. This will be the last for a while as I have Transformers One Next month, possibly Transformers: The Movie after, and Transformers: More than Meets the eye returns after. But the power will protect us again in 2025.

For now though we wrap up the round of mighty morphin with a giant cliffhanger and a flashback. And get used to those clliffhangers as Mighty Morphin, both during this run and when Ryan Parrot takes over tends to be one big continuous story. But rather than just.. do power rangers then get back to more than meets the eye in a few years, we're going back and forth so expect a lot of cliffhangers from both.

So to breifly recap for those just joining us, i'll collect the link to this arc in one post later, in an arc set in an alternate timeline where Mighty Morphin takes place in present day but green with evil still happened Tommy laser eyeing bulk and skull into a trashcan and all, Tommy is dealing with his ptsd in the shape of a rita ghost haunting him and hid it from everyone, while the real rita plots her hideous revenge using a mysterous black crystal powered by the green energy. As for everyone else Billy and Trini are hanging out and being good buds, Jason has doubts about tommy, Kimberly is thirsty as hell and Zack is

Constantly bitching about "WELL MAYBE TOMMY'S EVIL GUYS". And spoilers despite being called out on it he only gets worse in this one now he thinks he's been proven right. And on top of all of this, Rita has hyjacked the dragonzord and sent it the rangers way. And shit's only gonna get worse as we see how our heroes save the day only to still loose while we find out WHY Zack won't shut up.

So we begin the issue with the dragonzord having wrecked a cruise ship. There were some surivors but scorpina defintely just killed some people. Unless that boat was just haunted then the ghosts are fine.

Point is shit is bad as the dragonzord is headed for land and our heroes head to stop it.. minus tommy who Jason benches.. not unfarily given you know, the untreated ptsd he just confessed to and the fact the one strategy Tommy does have, telport into the cockpit, isn't available.

The rangers strategy after a badass looking half page of the zords

Such a cool panel. I've given this comic's art some crap but it's megazord art is incredible. So their solution is rather than you know, form the megazord since last time they fought the dragonzord it was on par with it they ... use their zords to drag it into the sea to hang out with godzilla and cthulu.

Rita is actually ready for this as she NEEDS the dragonzord to kill people so she has finster... send a bunch of generic shark monsters and make them grow because.. rita can do more than one at a time now?

Look i'm not the kind of nerd who goes nitpicking every minuta of a plot. I like to analize stuff yes, find deep meanings, character arcs, that sort of thing. I'll poke fun at stuff I don't like, i'll call it out but I try not to nitpick. There's stuff in power rangers like "Why don't they just call the zords right away", "why dosen't rita make her monster grow right away" i'm willing to handwave or can be explained in a more grounded take like this. This very comic , in the only issue i've read besides this arc pre-ryan parro, has a great issue we'll get to in a few years i'm sure that explains WHY Zordon picked 5 teenagers with atittude instead of experinced adults. I'm not saying it's not fun to try and fill said holes with your own theroes, but it's weird to mock a show with a pumpkin rapper. Some later power rangers series do deserve more praise and scruitny but mighty morphin is camp personified so it can get away with weird lore swings.

This series takes it seriously.. and thus really can't jus tsay "oh finster could always make more and didn't because shut up" I dont' mind saying he can do that.. but you have to explain HOW. Rita building a new dragon dagger made sense and they gave it the limit of being far more unstable. This is just plot convience and the comic just proved with said dagger twist it can do better.

So with Rita pulling out the cheat codes, our heroes are in a bind, angle grove's about to be attacked and Tommy is getting impatient.. and for the final time has a confrontation with his PTSD Ghost... and it's confirmed that I was right, I had genuinely forgotten but yeah.. PTSD Rita..is just that.

It's a great scene and pays off the PTSD Ghost rita well: doe sit mean all of Tommy's problems are solved? No. It isn't that easy and I don't think the comic is implying "oh well solving your PTSD is just as easy as confronting it". But it is right in that simply burying trauma.. dosen't fix it and from personal experince same with self loathing. The only way to deal with it is to face it head on. It's.. honestly inspired me a bit. I may not like this comic on the whole.. but it has it's moments of greatness.

So Tommy decides fuck it, he's going to ingnore jason's orde rand go to help. Zordon.. isn't so sure, partly because he knwos damn well this will rattle the stick firmly planted up Jason's ass, and partly because he's worried about the ptsd ghost. Granted Tommy could've given him more than "I'ts handled now", but what I like is this isn't Tommy trying to prove something entirely. This isn't a one side thing: Zordon is right this is going against his friend and commander and that's going to have consequences.. but Tommy's right that if he CAN save lives, he has to. No question.

So Tommy ports in directly on top of the dragon zord to try and control it proving Tommy Oliver being the biggest badass of any reality he's in is a multiversal constant. This gets him bucked off the thing but kim catches him in what I feel's also a sweet moment. While Sure Tommy could've just been winging it, given his next step it feels like he KNEW kim could catch him and tells jason he has a plan to just trust him. Jason reluctantly agrees and Tommy... well TOmmy tops himself

FUCK YES. The climax here is awesome as the rangers take down generic shark man while Tommy takes down scorpina. She does the normal villian bragging "It's too late" "our plans can't be stopped" and tommy just.. breaks her dagger stopping the zord while the rangers can this fish.

Back at the center though.. it's sadly not a happy ending. Jason at his limit with Tommy is pissed he defied him. Tommy does make a valid point: he wona nd had no hallucinations.. but he is being a bit of a dick basically saying "We won shut the fuck up" instead of being apologetic that he broke orders.. but still making his point. Still he does try to walk away, and while dickish it PROBABLY would'e solved things. The divide would've festered a bit... but cooling down and not biting each others heads off was the right call. Jason however.. just can't let it go saying we're not done. Which they arne't, Tommy is being a dick but as i've learned when your getting into a really heated fucking argument sometims it's best to take a break and circle back later. Don't ignore it, running away, as we established in this arc, dosen't help either, but the two of them bickering over whose right isn't going to help anyone. Unfortunately.. SOMEBODY DOSEN'T AGREEEEEEEEE

I will lay into this bitch in a second, but as a DIRECT RESULT OF HIS ACTIONS, Jason and Tommy resume their fight, Tommy is a petulant ass saying jason isn't a good leader, which apart from not adressing the zack thing better, isn't true, and Jason wonders if they really need 5 while Zordon begs his kids to stop fighting.. and as they prepare to throw hands.. the crystal is fully powered. The villians have won: the black dragon.l.. is awake and the comman dcenter explodes as Jason has the rangers put their helmets on and we meet the big bad this has all been building towards , the black dragon

Yeah while he is intimdating to a point... his deisgn is so damn generic and clashing with power rangers as a whole , like the other monsters it feels like a let down. We'll see if he gets better next year.

For now though... let's circle back to why this is Zack's fault and why i'm tired of his bullshit. Tommy was walking away. Tommy was a doucheballon, I havne't sugar coated it, but he was walking away.. ZACK is the one who grabbed him and ZACK is the one whose been doubting tommy, constnatly assuming he's evil, being a prized asshole. Jason's only leadership failing is not recognizing that and reining it in, telling Zack it's okay to have some doubts but to TRY or having the two talk it out. The last part's a bit understandable given how much has been going on, but Jason KNEW Zack was constantly being a dick to tommy, was saying shit behind his back, being passive agressive as fuck did nothing, and then ends up fighting his new friend because of that. Zack didn't START the fight, both tommy and jason share blame, tommy for his ego, jason for not accepting tommy made a good call and sometimes the rangers need to make a hard call by themselves. Being a team means both respecting your leader AND knowing when to break rank if it saves lives. On those two arguing it's well done: Tommy seroiusly rankled Jason by not telling him then disobeying while Tommy solving his issues dosen't solve his tendency to lash out, he just switched targets from himself to Zack, who deserved it and Jason, who didn't entirely.

But Zack's petty grudge against Tommy, his refusal to belelive tommy was a victim and not evil because of his own backstory, his own moment of weakness we'll get to caused it to escalate. It's fine to be wary, tommy was hiding serious hallucinations from everyone and his own doubts, and while he had reason to, he shoudl've been honest. Tommy did get cocky and did defy jason. But Zack isn't doing this because he's jason's friend he's doing this becauasse he WATNS tommy to be evil, wants to pick a fight with him and has ever since zordon recurited him. Billy and Trini have doubts, but genuinely tried to be welcoming: Billy apparently also put Tommy in their group notifications and Trini had that nice heart ot heart last issue. Kim is the most welcoming due to her crush but tried. Jason has clear doubts that explode here, but tried. Zack didn't give a fuck, was a petulant toddler and now the whole team is going to pay for his bullshit. The character gets way better under Ryan Parrot thankfully and will HOPEFULLY get some development from this debacle, but for this first Arc zack is easily the worst part: I don't mind having a ranger doubt tommy, but they take it WAY too far with Zack who spends the entire arc being a giant dick then caps it off by causing the next one. Fuck.. this.. dude.

Now I will say this last issue of the arc proper.. is pretty damn good. The conflict that ultimately leads to the bad guys winning is well built up and I like it more on this read through: Jason has shown to be way too far up his own ass in trying to be leader, and Tommy has shown to have a loner streak, so both's actions, Jason taking Tommy's last ditch move personally and Tommy being a spiteful dick and then getting utterly pissed Jason keeps having Zack's back all feel natural. Zack still sucks, the three sharks thing makes no sense.. but the rest of the issue IS pretty great and does give me hope when we get back to power rangers, i'll enjoy it more. That Higgins simply needed time to sort things out or was building his story slowly.

This first arc.. still has issues but their more structural: boom shoudl've just started from scratch instead of trying to dance between the raindrops of ranger history, though it does a decent job of it and would sustain 100 issues, so it worked out in the end, but I still feel the fresh start their doing now is a good call. Let them use the wide canvas instead of just the most profitable one. But it's not as bad as I remembered.. which I know, it's faint praise, but there's a lot more good character work than I remembered: Zack aside, the other rangers all feel like distinct well built indviduals building their sterotypes from the show out into something: Jason is a scott summers style leader, good at what he does tactically, carring for his men, but also with a tendency to expect military precision and obdience when that's just not always fesable. Kimberly is sassy, won't hestiate to confront her friends on their shit, but warm and kind. Trini is the team's heart, helping both billy and tommy with their self doubt issues and wanting to help the world as a whole. And Billy is the brains but is self concious, knowing he's the only one in the team whose not a trained martial artist or gymnist. Zack is an ass but at the bare minimum the next issue gives us context for that, showing he has a deep well of resentment and is quick to anger. It's not good still, and I hope the character grows and I prefer Ryan Parrot's take, but I appricate fleshing these 6 teenagers with attitude out as people. I've been hard on this book and might be again, but I respect what it does right and hope it fixes what it does wrong.

So onto our last issue. It's a flashback that takes place one month before Tommy arrived. The prime minister of italy is speaking out against Rita.

Now THIS... this is really neat. I like this idea: that while yes Rita tends to target one american town's abandoned warehouse district constantly, other countries probably WOULD have throughts on giant fucking monsters being real. Honestly it woul'dve been neat if we saw how other countries responded, maybe saw some try to make their own rangers, though that last part at least DOES get used much later in the continuity. But this little snippet is still fun as is Rita's response. After sending more generic monsters with no real creativity previously we FINALLY get a goodun.

That my friends is leonado da vinchi's vitruvian man, which I and you likely know better as this

See THIS is the kinda camp we were missing. I'm not asking the monster break tension, but i'm asking for some creativity. Just throwing a generic monster or a shark, and I love me some sharks, at the rangers is boring and you could do better. now throwing a fucking da vinci design at them spouting out generic quotes Squatt and Baboo got off the internet as it attacks italy with twin swords and a crossbow. Fuck yes. And it's still intimdating. Rome is still in deadly danger and this thing still comes off dangerous. But you can have fun and make a threat for your heroes. It's what I love about superheroes; you can have dark gritty stories dealing with police shooting a masked criminal they unleahsed to cover their tracks and getting away with it or a ghostly highway man who hates the poor who has to be defeated by batman using a magic ritual with alfred's help. BOTH of those are plots from the recent series Batman Caped Crusader, which slaps by the way, and both work swimingly. Even in a moody work you can have camp and when your heroes are the power rangers.. it's kinda demanded. It's why I hope while this new reboot seems serious it still has some fun with it.

Our heroes head to italy to fight the giant naked man.The finish is also awesome. The Vitruvian man is about ot kill the prime minister so jason leaps out of the cock pit, also a nice parallel to tommy leaping in last issue, and fucking stabs the bitch. Tommy may be the supreme badass of all power rangers universes, but Jason is easily #2. Carter Grayson is #3 of course.

Zack also gets a moment of triumph out of this, piloting the zord, and I like the touch that it's shown doing so isn't easy, it requires them all working in concert and thus zack filling in for both himself an djason with a killer swipe is impressive. Sadly.. he gets no credit and stews a bit as Jason did the flashier heroics.

So as Goldar admits they already have a sequel in the works, Rita decides nah... she notices Zack's quiet stewing.. and has an idea. So the next afternoon Zack is kidnapped by putties and brought to fog machine dimension from Green with Evil. Rita is being nice.. which can't be good and it's not: She tries to play zack admitting she only did so because he wouldn't likely come to hear her out willingly and wants to show him her place. Which is creepy given she's a grown ass woman and he's a teen, but I feel the predator vibes are intetnional without overplaying them or making them actual text.

Zack to his credit.. dosen't buy her sales pitch that she's misunderstood, the world would be better than her and Goldar's entirley bs claim she didn't start growing monsters until Zordon pulled out zords. Especially since... most rangers are linked to some set of Zords. While zordon didn't build his, most ranger teams are both some sort of ancient force and have zords attached from the get go or linked to them in some way. I mean there are wild ones from wild force wondering the world at this point. So Rita, especially since they fought before, KNEW Zordon had them and Zordon knew she could lkely make them grow. it was an even repsonse and Zack figured it out without any of that evidence.

Rita does try to make a good pitch: that yeah she wants to conquer the world.. but to make it better. Is it really that good without her? It's a great sequence too as she tempts him, shwoing a vision of him and the green ranger. She even sympathizes: she knows what it's like to be an underated second in command, a nod to Zed before he properly debuts after the time skip and something I like: while working in the confines of the original show limits the series slightly... it also means they have the whole map: everything that will happen and things they never built up to because the show was only lightly seralized: having strong continuity but only occasional story arcs before season 3. They ddin't plan for zed, master vile or rito. But they can hint at that, hint at dark specter or other future events and other rangers.

Zack things about it and decides.. nope. not going to betray his friends and tries to yoink the dragon coin away. Zack does go straight to Zordon which explains why the others didn't know during green with evil. I'ts also why again I wish they'd adapte dit: it would've been a decent starting point and while most fans know it, ther'es a lot you could do to deepen the character and stakes. Still it works:W hile Zordon is midlly stupid for not telling them about the power coin.. it makes sense he'd be careful.. and is also being respectful knowing Zack's probably ashamed they came to him. Zack in turn is honest: he WAS tempeted by the power and the good it could do for the world, and Zordon assures him, as a good mentor should that he's only human: of course he considered it, what matters is he didn't and zack honestly wants to DO more, again setting up the peace confrence that'll never happen here. And Zordon to his credit agrees they should, he just has to think it over. Unintended consequences and all that.

So I do like this explination: that zack was offered the coin, reseted and thus resents tommy as he probably assumes he wasn't so easy and is projecting his own insecurties about nearly saying yes. It dosen't fix things: Zack is still a giant ass even with that explination as he's projecting all his bullshit on tommy instead of empathizing with him and using this incident to help assure his new teaamate. Zack still sucks.. but this does show the potetial for the character when given some more depth and that he could be fleshed out well if given the chance.

It ends sweetly though... Zack goes to meet the others who welcome him and praise him for what he did, making it clear their a team... Jason may of gotten the glory but they needed each other. A shame neither jason nor Zack remembered this lesson, but it's some good irony. We also end on another om inous hook, the black dragon talking to rita saying the green ranger will fail.. and when he does.. he'll be waiting as Rita plans to grab tommy.

So now for Bulk and Skull which to my delight is not ending after 6 issues. We pick up from last time as trini and Kim despatch the putty.. as they shoudl've. Like again your martial artists, it's fesable. But they use baskeptball. and spot bulk used some of the same streamers on the putty as he did on himself, so not only are the girls pissed.. but our heroes.. get arrested.

We gloss over Bulk and Skull go to jail sadly, but it's compesnated for by something truly awesome I forgot happened a sthis was the last issue I read monthly before giving up. (I also tried the trade later and thus didn't even get this far). So the judge sentences our heroes to 1993 hours of community service, a bit excessive.. but also a fair punishment given their jackassery would've gotten someone who wasn't a power ranger hurt bad and I like said judge, the principal's brother, 's logic: thedy want to be heroes, they get an actual shot at it. And their officer monitoring this? LT STONE

For those who forgot him, Lt Stone was Bulk and Skull's boss in season 3. Our heroes joined the junior police to meet women, and Stone thus served as their straight man. Stone would actually last a shockingly long time, being their boss still in Zeo and running a juice bar in turbo for some reason. So it's a neat way to get him in early, with Bulk still afraid of him this early, clearly havnig met him before. It's a fun way to bring in a character from later that makes perfect sense and frankly our heroes having a straight man does help their comedy. They work fine without one, but with the rangers kinda busy unless your giving them a bigger story, putting stone against them is great.

So that's MMPR for now. We'll be back I assume next year for more, and i'll see if it improves. For now may the power protect you and thanks for reading.

[duhragonball]

Super Dragon Ball Heroes 13-19

“I am the universe itself!  You might even say that I am... The World?  Eh?  Sorry, it’s a little inside joke I have.  You probably wouldn’t get it.  Anyway, I’m gonna drop a big heavy thing on you now.”

Okay, so this is the second half of the Universal Conflict Arc, which is basically about Hearts attacking different universes to gather energy for the “Universe Seed”, which will somehow help him kill all the gods, including Grand Zeno himself.  In Episode 12, Hearts’ group arrived in Universe 7 for a final showdown.  Either Goku’s group defeats him here, or he collects the last of the energy he needs.  I’m a little fuzzy on how that energy is being collected.  Is it the fighting itself that makes it possible?  Or does Hearts have some mean to passively drain the energy from a universe just by being there, and the fighting is to keep anyone from interfering with that?

Anyway, while Goku takes on Hearts, he tells him that he’s read Goku’s mind, and knows of his desire to fight strong opponents.  He then offers to satisfy his need, which might offer a clue as to how he got all these guys to join his team in the first place.  Kamin, Oren, and Cumber don’t seem to have much of an agenda, but Hearts can actually read their minds and discover their true goals, and offer it up.  Whether or not he can deliver is another matter, but just being able to know what someone wants is a powerful way to manipulate them.

Hearts is generally pretty carefree in how he fights, as if he’s got nothing to fear, but Goku manages to get the drop on him with a Kamehameha, and that seems to make Hearts lose his cool for a moment.  It doesn’t actually hurt him, though.

Meanwhile, 17 and Piccolo are taking on Kamioren, and it looks like the Tuffle siblings have got them pinned down.  17 has to keep a force field up to protect themselves, but then it collapses under the assault, but then--

Piccolo fires back with a Special Beam Cannon, which he had been charging up while 17 protected him.  Pretty smart teamwork from these two.  See, this series has its moments.

Meanwhile, Vegeta and Trunks are busy with Zamasu. Trunks asks Zamasu why he would follow a mortal like Hearts after he tried to wipe out all mortals, but Zamasu refuses to explain himself.  Okay, a couple of things about Zamasu. 

First, it’s kind of weird how he’s just back. Side stories like this aren’t afraid to bring out a movie villain or two, or to resurrect a dead villain without much explanation.  Trunks’ presence in this story is kind of weird enough as it is.  But Zamasu’s a unique case because he was erased by Grand Zeno.  And before that, he got chopped in half and exploded, so his indestructible essence was spread out across the entire multiverse... which was also erased by Grand Zeno.  I mean, that’s about as permanent as it gets with this franchise.

Of course, Jiren and Hit were also erased in Dragon Ball Super, only to be wished back when 17 made his wish on the Super Dragon Balls.  So maybe Hearts wished Zamasu back the same way?  Maybe Zamasu got revived by the same wish 17 made?   Like, he wished back all the erased universes, and didn’t realize this would also bring back the erased multiverse from Trunks’ timeline, which would revive Zamasu as well.  But then Zamasu would still need a body, right? And even if we handwave this, what happened to his eye?  Why isn’t the left side of his body distorted like it was before?  And why is he helping Hearts?

It raises a lot of questions, but Zamasu refuses to elaborate, which is the second thing I want to bring up.  In his original appearances, this guy never shut up.  He would explain his motivations to anyone.  Repeatedly.  He’d tell his victims, his enemies, mortals, gods, himself.  Hell, he’d monologue even when no one was listening.  Now, he’s this strong silent type, and I gotta say, this is a very refreshing take on the character. 

This sort of exemplifies my gripe with bringing Frieza back in the 2010′s.  He’d been defeated and killed, and then he comes back and he basically hasn’t changed at all.  I think we’re only just beginning to see Frieza mature as a character, what with his scheming in the Broly movie, and his ten-year training stint in the Granolah arc.  He’s got a new outlook, so maybe it’ll lead to something interesting. 

With SDBH Zamasu, we don’t get a lot of details, but it’s clear that he’s been profoundly affected by his defeat.  His goals and motives are the same, but getting deformed and bisected and exploded and disembodied and erased has changed his outlook.  Maybe he just doesn’t have the words to explain what he’s feeling.  Maybe he’s decided that working with allies like Hearts might be safer than trying to go it alone.  Maybe Hearts told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and Zamasu’s too in love with himself to notice that Hearts is just repeating his own thoughts back to him.  Wait, did I just start shipping these two?  Hmm.

Anyway, Hearts starts doing that gravity shit to Goku and basically ragdolls him.  I don’t get why he doesn’t just use this all the time, since it basically shuts down his opponents 100% of the time.  Maybe there’s a cooldown for the technique? 

Then he notices Kamioren struggling with 17 and Piccolo and decides to give them more power by combining them with the Universe Seed.  This seems like an extreme solution to the problem.  Couldn’t he just beat up 17 and Piccolo for Kamioren?

So I thought this big crystal thing was the bad guys’ spaceship, but this is what Hearts puts inside a cube, shrinks, and then sends into Kamioren’s body, so I guess it’s the Universe seed.

And once the transfer is complete, Kamioren gets huger and dumber.  They can still talk and everything, but their fighting gets really sloppy.  Fortunately for them, they’re so powerful now that they can afford to brute force their way through this.  The rest of the good guys drop what they’re doing to support Piccolo and 17, which seems kind of screwy, since Zamasu and Hearts were pretty major league threats already.

Kamioren clobbers everyone, but then Goku taps into Ultra Instinct again and turns the tide.   He wears himself out in the process, and the others have to help him, but he manages to smash that red thing in the center of Kamioren’s chest, which kills them, apparently.

But that doesn’t destroy the Universe Seed.  Instead, it flies back to Hearts, and he declares that it’s finally complete.

Hearts does some stuff, and it turns into a big gold cube with green balls around it.  While he’s messing with that, Zamasu fights the rest to buy him time. 

Here, Zamasu finally starts to show off the power he had in the DBS arc.  I mean, he wasn’t just indestructible, he was damn near unbeatable in this form, so it seemed weird how he just sort of horsed around with Vegeta and Trunks for so long a little while ago.  As he dominates the U7 guys, he finally explains that Hearts’ goals tie into his own.  Once Hearts succeeds in killing Grand Zeno, there will be no one to stop Zamasu from carrying out his Zero Mortals Plan.  Which... kind of makes sense, except that between their two plans, there wouldn’t be anyone left at the end, so one of them must be planning to turn on the other, right?

Jiren and Hit show up to reinforce the good guys.  Their respective Supreme Kais sent them, but it doesn’t do any good, since Hearts finishes his transformation while they fight Zamasu.

So now he’s glowing yellow all over, and he has six spikes coming out of his back like Omega Shenron.  The first thing he does is turn on Zamasu, because even though he’s grateful for Zamasu’s help, Hearts wants to kill all the gods, and that includes Zamasu.

I’m not clear on how he kills him, though. We see him immobilize Zamasu and then trap him in a cube, but what does that actually mean?  And even if this is a lethal attack, Zamasu’ indestructible, remember?  Did Hearts take that into account?  Maybe that’s why he recruited Zamasu.  He needed a god to test his powers on once he got this far, and Zamasu’s overzealousness makes him gullible enough to walk right into this.

Whatever he did to Zamasu, it gets the attention of the Grand Minister, all the way from Zeno’s palace.  Is he actually concerned about this?  Can Hearts actually kill Grand Zeno with this new power?

Well, he makes quick work of the good guys, but that’s hardly the same thing.  As they fight, Goku convinces Vegeta to do the Fusion Dance, since Goku can’t predict when he’ll tap into Ultra Instinct again, or how long it’ll last.  Gogeta might be their only chance.

And a lot of screentime is spent on this moment.  That’s probably because the Broly movie had come out by this time, and Gogeta Blue was the hot thing, so Toei wanted to use it here.  Fair enough, except we’ve already seen Vegito Blue and SSJ4 Vegito in this same series, so it makes this fusion feel less special. 

Anyway, Gogeta takes it to Hearts, and Hearts is genuinely impressed by his power.  He even says that Gogeta is strong enough to kill Grand Zeno, so he proposes that they team up and wipe out all the gods together to free themselves.  Gogeta doesn’t understand, and Hearts is amused that someone as powerful as Gogeta fails to recognize his lack of choice.

So Hearts uses his gravity powers to hurl a big meteor down from space.  He doesn’t say “Road Roller”, but I’m sure he was thinking it.   Gogeta has some trouble pushing it back, but then Jiren and Hit join in to help. 

And Gogeta gets an opening to punch a hole in Hearts, which defeats him for good.  Hooray!

“KONO DIO HEARTS DA!”

As Hearts’ body disintegrates, he finally explains that he wanted to destroy the gods because Grand Zeno can erase whole universes on a whim, and he wanted to liberate mortals from that predicament.  But then Goku and the others pushed past their limitations, and this reaffirms why Hearts loved mortals so much in the first place.  So he seems pretty happy despite his failure. 

From Zeno’s palace, the Grand Minister congratulates the good guys for their victory.  I don’t think they can hear him, but the point is that he was monitoring the battle.  Was Hearts actually a threat? Could he have truly killed Grand Zeno as he claimed?

All we really know for sure is that the Zenos have been playing hide-and-seek with the Gods of Destruction from all twelve universes, so they’ve all be unaware of what’s been going on.  The Grand Minister seems more relieved that Goku managed to solve the crisis without anyone disrupting the Zenos’ playtime. 

At the beginning of the story, Fuwa, the U6 Supreme Kai, said that he couldn’t reach any of the Destroyers when the conflict started, and I guess that’s because they were all summoned to Grand Zeno’s Palace.  So I don’t know if Hearts saw this as an opportunity to strike, or it just worked out that way.  But my interpretation is that if Hearts had gotten his way, the best he would have managed was to irritate Zeno enough that he might have erased Hearts along with whatever universe he might have been standing in at the time. 

But it’s all over now, so it doesn’t really matter. Jiren asks Gogeta why Goku and Vegeta didn’t use fusion during the Tournament of Power, and Gogeta defuses on the spot.  Vegeta explains that he hates using Fusion, but here they had no choice. 

From his lab, Fu observes the outcome of this battle and seems quite satisfied with it all.  Apparently he wanted Hearts to complete the Universe Seed, but he didn’t care if Hearts won in the end.  Fu now turns his attention to his next experiment, whatever that is...

And that’s the end of the Universal Conflict arc.  To sum it all up, I think there’s a lot of great action in this thing, but it’s had to take the plot seriously when the villain seems completely unconcerned with everything that happens.  His henchmen defy him and he seems totally at ease with it.  He loses a fight and he dies with a smile.  And his plan was to assassinate God, which is kind of hard to take seriously.  Was anyone watching this seriously worried that Hearts might succeed?  I mean, Zeno can erase things just by thinking about it.  Hearts could vanish before he even knew he was under attack.

Also, you have Fu in the background, basically making Hearts look like a pawn in a larger game.  That might work for the series as a whole, but it makes this section of the story kind of tedious, as Hearts is nothing more than a means to an end.  Also, how do Cumber and Cooler fit into all of this?

Hearts’ team was kind of interesting, but it seems like a waste now.  Lagss defeated Ultra Instinct Goku, but then she just... left and never came back. Eyepatch Zamasu and Kamin and Oren had some appeal, but they’re dead now.  Hearts will return, from what I understand, but I’m not sure where the character could possibly go from here.  I guess we’ll see...

[edelgarfield]

Have you ever thought about durge sibling angst but as the younger sibling? Idk much about bg1 and 2 but in bg3 it's cannon that that protagonist was morally good and a bhaal spawn and was the previous ruler of the gate before wylls dad but died when bhaal came back to life 20ish years ago. If your durge is old enough and has been in the gate for long enough, why didn't bg1 protag notice the cult to their father under their feet? Why didn't they save their siblings? Why didn't they care?

I actually don't think I have and I'm not sure why now that you mention it.

as far as the timeline with respect to bhaal's resurrection, it's a huge damn mess that I'm pretty sure the game just handwaves for convenience, I don't think theres an actual answer. So the "canon" protagonist of BG1 & BG2 is "Abdel Adrian" or "Gorion's Ward" on the wiki.

And he died exactly 10 years before the events of the game in 1482. the dark urge is mostly left up to the player, BUT the "canonical" version of Dark Urge was operating under Bhaal's influence by 1477. the ARG where Durge was revealed has them committing a string of murders in Baldur's Gate in 1477.

this part is just my headcanon but it's also the closest we ever get to a "canon" age for Durge; iirc Sceleritas says he was sent to serve Durge when they reached the "age of maturity," meaning Durge has to be at least 18 by 1477, meaning they have to be at least 33 by the events of the game. If you assume the string of murders from the ARG is Durge's first outing as a Bhaalspawn, which is my personal hc, that would make them exactly 33.

As for why Abdel Adrian doesn't notice the cult, that's an extremely good question. also Durge & Abdel Adrian being alive at the same time kinda throws a whole wrench in the resurrection plot in the first place, but you can potentially handwave it by saying Durge is special.

But ignoring all the timeline weirdness, there's a tweet thread from one of the creators of the Forgotten Realms that basically says even after choosing to reject Bhaal, Abdel Adrian was still under Bhaal's influence to some extent, so you can potentially use that as an explanation;

basically "abdel adrian rejecting bhaal was actually part of bhaal's grand plan all along" & you could theorize that Bhaal's remaining influence over Adrian kept him from discovering the cult's operations. (and i have no idea what exactly this means for Durge post-game but I have thought abt it)

imo it makes the most sense for the Cult of Bhaal to have been operating largely in secret before Bhaal's resurrection. For what it's worth, they are technically STILL operating in secret during the events of the game. Even though to the player their involvement is extremely obvious & blatant, narratively the average citizen of Baldur's Gate isn't aware of the resurgence of the cult. and even in the game, even though you KNOW the Cult of Bhaal is involved, you still have to jump through a ton of hoops to get into their temple, and that's during a period of high activity. Hell, Orin literally invites you there and you STILL have to do a bunch of bullshit to get in.

Like obviously the parts of the city we get to explore feel very dense & crowded, & people joke abt the temple of Bhaal being three feet away from Cazador's dungeon, but I think you have to chalk some of that up to quirks of the genre. It would be much more realistic to have a giant empty city with all the points of interest spread out, and a giant empty sewer with the temple of Bhaal hidden super far away. but no game is going to make a bunch of assets just to fill space & it would drive players absolutely nuts if the map was filled with Empty Warehouses 1-49

all that is to say, I think if the Cult is actively trying to lay low, especially during a period where they're, say, planning for the resurrection of their dead god (and obviously they're only going to have a handful of very devoted worshippers at this time, bc their god is, y'know, dead) I think they're capable of more secrecy than we see in the game. especially since they're known to use changelings & doppelgangers.

additionally, even if you know the Cult of Bhaal is back in business, I think knowing they're around & actually being able to find and enter their temple without getting yourself killed are two different things.

while abdel adrian's involvement/knowledge of Durge is up to speculation & honestly i would love to see more people delve into the game's lore & answer these questions. did Durge look up to gorion's ward as a hero when they were young in baldur's gate? did they always feel a connection to the story of The Hero of Baldur's Gate & not know why? how did they feel abt Sarevok in the legends? did they cross paths with Abdel Adrian once like two ships passing in the night, not realizing they were actually siblings?

my personal take is that abdel adrian just didn't know abt the Cult's resurgence or Durge. Or even if he did know abt the Cult beginning operations again, IMO he was under the impression that Bhaal's divine power was hidden away beyond Bhaal's reach & he shouldn't be a threat, so even if his cult is acting up again, I doubt it's the first time they've tried to convince people Bhaal is definitely for sure coming back this time believe us. He probably had people keeping an eye on it, and tried to counteract the cult when he could, but it wouldn't be the most pressing issue on his plate bc he had a whole ass city to run. and again, exactly how much influence Bhaal still had over Adrian at this point is up to speculation, but he had at least SOME.

[teecupangel]

In fact, I was going to cover Harry's sixth and seventh years as well, and then I was going to introduce Desmond, like in an open-ended epilogue or something. That would be 2009, so... Hm... Harry would be what, 27, 28 years old? Old enough to sign adoption paperwork, at least lmao The funny thing about this is that Bill and the other Assassins know since 1995/6 there's something going on in Europe, but they don't know what the hell is going on in Europe, just places like Tiber Island are open again and HOW THE FUCK DOES NOBODY KNOW WHERE TIBERINE ISLAND IS, WHAT THE FUCK THIS SHIT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING wait a minute, what was he talking about?

I put the Rogue theme in there because I think it's really beautiful and also because it would be a great theme for the first kill of Harry's cute little novices lol

Hunting season for the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters is open and it's going to be amazing

Oh, and a meme:

Harry, in the pensive, learning about the Sunburst and Desmond Miles' role in stopping this just after a round of "detention" with Umbridge/Snape and three days without sleep because of the mental connection with old snakeface:

Oooohhh, got it.

Also, you can handwave Tiber Island being ‘unavailable’ as the Assassins actually not having any idea that Tiber Island was an Assassin base because it’s one of the secrets only given to the mentor.

Speaking of which, by your timeline, the Mentor would still be alive and this means that William Miles would be a ‘field agent’ or a team leader at best. You can totally make William Miles be in charge of figuring out why there seems to be some discrepancy in the memories of the Brotherhood that seemed to originate in Rome for some reason. You don’t even have to give him the full ‘William Miles’ name, maybe Harry and the others hear him talking to someone above them as they try to ‘fight off’ the spell and they’d be a mysterious organization that is connected to Tiber Island. Having a smaller part than a minor character, almost like a shoutout or a reference then bam! The epilogue introduces Desmond Miles and the readers finds out that small (almost throwaway) scene was meant to hint Desmond’s inclusion to the story.

Although, instead of the entire Tiber Island being ‘unavailable’, it might be better if it’s only the Assassin hideout in Tiber Island that’s unavailable since an entire island would be hard to hide, even if we use Fidelius Charm (also, Tiber Island is open to the public and has a hospital in it so hiding the entire island would mean making everyone in the island at that point either be hidden as well (and not knowing they’re hidden?) or would mean they’d have to evacuate the island and that seems too unfair to them),

Ooohh, yeah, Rogue would also work as Harry and his novices are ‘rogues’, both to the magical world and to the Assassin Brotherhood. Magical Assassins would definitely be scary af and, at some point, the Death Eaters would be faced with the realization that they weren’t hunters but preys.

And a meme for a meme:

[onceandfutureoshainspector]

- did the fourth one, no sweat.

- ah. :(

- in other news, this numbering system is BULLSHIT! this should be the oldest file, but instead it’s the most recent. also, this and the last one break the established pattern of #A-#AA#, instead going for #A-#A#A. all bets are off on the timeline >X(

    - i guess the system could work in a numerical base that includes both numbers and letters? both A and Z are represented, as are 0 and 9, which would put us at base 36 (0-9, A=10, B=11, ..., Z=35), based on the fact that all of the files so far begin with 0.

        - except this is the earliest memory, and it’s already got a Z in the second-to-last column! in order for it to tick over into an A and eventually a H, the last column would have to also tick over into a 1! i would say this must be working in a larger base - 64 is the most likely candidate, and the lack of ascii gibberish in any of the file titles implies smaller rather than larger, but who even fucking knows - except that still wouldn’t explain why H is a greater value than Z!!!!!!!! if one of them were lowercase it’d make sense, but they’re both capitals, and it’s not just a lack of differentiation in the subtitles because otherwise i wouldn’t know that these files were written by “DiMA”.

            - what even is the purpose of the dash, also? it can’t be one of the characters, unless all the file designations just happen to be multiples of x^5.

                - who named these files? i just want to talk.

- :(

- wtf. given who woke up in the garbage and who walked away, i think i can guess who’s raining blows down on who here. DIMA didn’t mention this...

- and he just LEFT him there! no attempt to get him to a quieter location to explain, no note saying “this is where you can find me if you want” or anything. they just broke out of prison together, all DIMA has is the guy lying face down in the garbage, and he just walks away! what the hell.

    - NICK doesn’t remember this - he said as much back at ACADIA. DIMA kinda handwaved it as “our brains can only hold so much memory”, but that’s not how memory works - if synth brains just deleted the oldest files first to make room, NICK wouldn’t remember waking up. he wouldn’t remember the mechanic who fixed him up, he wouldn’t remember the kid who first talked to him like a person. he’d forget being DIAMOND CITY’s abused handyman before he forgot KENJI.

    - my point is, did getting knocked out wipe NICK’s ram (INSTITUTE tech is generally hardier than that - this wasn’t too long before the INSTITUTE went after SHAUN, so KELLOGG either had or would soon get his BACKUP BRAIN, and that survived for A While in my GOOP-filled pockets)? or did DIMA wipe himself from NICK’s mind intentionally?

        - if he did, probably even he himself doesn’t know - DIMA has shown a pattern of deleting/archiving memories over guilt, and this is probably one that he wouldn’t even bother to keep for posterity.

- and that’s fucking that i fucking guess! no details on how they escaped, no explanation of DIMA’s thought process here. incredible.

[nitewrighter]

Have any of the fankids gotten into specific main-conflict-related messes that they were afraid they might not get out of?

I mean for Aedan and Rei there was the "Breach" and "Dragonback" arcs and I'd say "Breach" was more main-conflict even if it was Rei centric. The twins became starkly aware that there was a solid chance they would never make it home on the night Rajeev lost his eye in "Sword of Akasha," but that mission was very personal to them and thus arguably not main conflict. Hell I wrote a fic where Marti kicks Reaper's ass, but I wouldn't really call that one "main conflict."

I mean I'd say the tough thing about distinguishing the "main conflict" is that you can very much write Overwatch adventures as a sort of "monster of the week" type thing, or, as I kind of reason it, something kind of like G.I. Joe and Cobra, or the Justice League and the Legion of Doom. Like there's certain elements of "How much of this is like... desperate, life-on-the-line stuff every time, and how much of this is kind of a weird waltz of rival powers? Of this organization and its dark reflection?" Like, if a story involves Reaper and Soldier:76, does that instantly make it "main conflict?" Arguably the presence of Doomfist or Ramattra can make it "main conflict."

I guess where I'm going with this is, I tend to see the kid's adventures as more about their character development on their way to the general endgame showdown between Overwatch and Talon/Null Sector. And I've accepted long ago that since Overwatch 2 is going to have this big showdown with its PvE campaign, that obviously my story is going to look very different from that because with this second generation I've placed it on a much longer timeline.

But honestly with any of the kids you could do what Overwatch writers do already and just throw out a random location and handwave that a mission happened there, like "At least this isn't as bad as things got in Vienna." Or,

"How about we pull a Salto again?"

"Salto, Uruguay or Salto, Cape Verde?"

"Uruguay."

"God you had me worried for a second there."

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

What about Rani Sandyhill and the load-bearing timeline? Sounds fun :D

me, throwing my hobbit burg into the background of other people's stories: this will be fun :D

me, trying to figure out where and when she is, ever: uh oh

so, rani's part of the quickpost, and is also just. nosy as hell. she meets some of the iron garrison when they pass through on their way from ered luin to moria, she bothers isena & isedd before they finally decide to head home, and she impulsively invites herself on silear & halthel's gaunt-lord adventures more than once- and most of that is background to most of her plot, which is Adventures With Bingo. somehow she's in all the places and ended up tying everyone else's stories together

also yondershire happened and she had Opinions on that, and also new and exciting motivations along the lines of 'ruin lotho's day'. this did Not help with the timeline things, but i can and will handwave some of that anyway, and her having an actual character is more important so! there she goes. she's far less bothered that other people are messing with the mail than by the fact that they're being sloppy about it. she's gonna run all the way to rivendell to ask bingo a question and pretend this is a reasonable thing to do. she happens so much

[sos-gonetolake]

In honor of S2 showing up on Netflix on my country, here's the novel-length rant I wrote in the subreddit that then got removed by the mods

I will vent actually because, I really didn't like it. The present storylines were lazy to me, idk.

- This season introduced adult Van. Adult Van did absolutely fuckall, I really enjoy Lauren Ambrose and she had some cool lines (Jeff didn't come through on the phone sex thing) but Van did nothing of note in the adult timeline. They took what? 5? episodes to draw Taissa to her, and Taissa didn't move an inch forward because of it. Still sleepwalking, still with her wife in a coma and her kid with the grandma, no mention of the job she spent all S1 vying for. nothing. Tai and Van reunited, kissed, and were background characters. That's a waste of two fantastic actors and core survivors for fuck's sake. Literally, what was Taissa's storyline this season? the adult timeline spans only like one or max two weeks too, that hurt its chances from the get go.

- The crime, we wrapped S1 with dead adam and dead jessica. All 4 core survivors implicated. We spend season 2 seeing only Shauna deal with it, the other three are completely unbothered with their respective share of the crime, makes sense for misty. This season however ends with a new dude (Walter) finding a magical way to make BOTH crimes just go away with a little blackmail, in ONE episode. OFF-SCREEN. He monologues his solve. We don't see him plan or execute him, involve Misty who is an actual important character for both crimes, nothing. Extra #3 solves the two crime cliff-hangers from the first season. Dark Tai went to Jessica's house and (somehow) walked in and out with files, and left her assistant's car with the window open by the highway after and the show never acknowledges that?

- Kevyn, oof. Ok, kill him, he's a bit irrelevant I suppose. But you poison the man with what I guess is untraceable, but shove him in a trunk and shoot him there post mortem, and the plan is that pornstache doesn't yap? Walter's finger prints are on the gun, I'm sure they can determine he was shot after he died, there's now blood in his trunk... it just seems like SUCH a sloppy plan, but I feel the show wanted me to think Walter was so clever for it. I suppose We shall see how everything develops in S3, they might just say it was dumb as hell and now they're in even more trouble.

- Lottie and the teenager in the cult. What was the point of that girl? If they wanted to humanize Nat... did they need to? Did any of us feel like Nat needed a teenage girlie to be nice to? seems like bloating the cast without thinking it through. The time spent on her should have been spent on Adult Lottie. What do we really know of her? She was taking meds and stopped and is having hallucinations. She runs a successful wellness center cult though so she was fine on meds, seemed like a fast turnover into we should make a sacrifice actually. Like with Van, more time should have been spent in fleshing out Lottie. I feel like Adult Lottie's storyline was simply plot contrivances to get them in one place to kill Nat and keep the wilderness myth alive. It sounds nitpicky even to me, but she doesn't feel like a character in the present? just a plot device? idk.

- Jeff, never change bby

- Shauna and Misty, were actually doing things and serving monologues. Good for them. Shauna looks so pained all the time, it's insane to me she might get off free because of fucking Walter. Two seasons resulting in not much if that's the case? But at least she has a weird compelling thing going on with Callie.

- About the 96 storyline... I will handwave it all because they're literally starving. Travis biting into a heart, raw. Lottie resigning as president and electing Nat of all people as successor and them all going with it when she hasn't been praying at all lmao. No one else acknowledging Krystal's death for more than 30 seconds, or asking about coach Ben. Them letting Shauna beat Lottie at all. Them letting Javi stay quiet about his whereabouts after that one scene. Them never sitting down to really ponder how the symbol in the trees forms a symbol in the maps, and how Taissa just knows where they are in her sleep, after Van blurted out Tai knew where Javi was. Just a bunch of choices and slightly unfinished storylines that were weird, but they were starving and maybe slightly chemically poisoned so it's fine.

- The music was too intrusive, don't use super famous songs with unrelated lyrics playing loudly over every two scenes. I get we're doing 90s nostalgia but it actively distracts me sometimes. The VHS effect to transition scenes is... a choice, a too-quirky one maybe. The slowmo in the season finale was... bad. The entire sequence of Shauna jogging away with the others on tow, capped off with Callie shooting Lot and the other girl showing up, ending with Nat's slow mo "Misty, stooooop" and the needle stabbing.... it was so poorly shot? They just did not look to be moving fast enough guns were needed or Nat couldn't have side stepped misty, or literally tripped her a little. It was a goofy-ass death scene. For one of the most important characters. And lord, the plane? why not the same plane? A modern plane? that's a choice, the lightning in that scene and the little tremor? also a choice. Seeing kid javi, kid nat, kid lot, and not the dude whose death has been a big question mark since ep one and who she has the most history with? a loud ass choice, what does it scream? idk and I don't think we're gonna find out because I guess they also wrapped Travis' death with that explanation Lottie gave in like Ep3.

So yeah, I kinda hated it. I think it was a steep drop in quality and a lot of the writing was wasted on things we're now being told aren't quite important (teenager in the cult, crime outcomes, nat's self discovery that didn't even finish before she was killed,) and a lot of questions and unsolved stuff sat basically on a shelf on was handwaved with a few lines (Tai's sleep and personal life mess, javi's friend, lot's gap between Switzerland and now that even Misty didn't find info about, Travis' last day, Van's random cancer that wasn't even shared by the group and I guess was now healed by the power of murder)

I did like how they handled Shauna's pregnancy, and the first hunt. The acting remains superb, the super sudden adult Lottie transformation into this trembling girl in the finale was so so good. And teen Nat has been amazing at looking worried and broken, as has teen Van at looking straight up psychotic and pro murder lmao. Teen misty girl, you're the one. Destroyed the black box (whether it would have led to a rescue can be debated but her intention was clear), led to Krystal's death, and now gaslit Lottie into co-signing the hunts. They need to know all these things. She's a fucking menace. And adult misty? shit.

Sorry for the rant lmao. See you all in a year or two.

[veryflirtytransportalate]

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"Wow. This is going to be a great story! Just wait till you see this in print. You won't regret this, Blue." - Piper

Oh, Piper. Always there. Always chilling. Always ready for whatever. I cannot stand how she is about me stealing stuff, but other than that we get along great. She runs a newspaper with her little sister, although she's been following me because she wants to publish my story. In exchange, she takes some pics for me to post here. We all win.

She and Dogmeat get along really well. I'm actually kind of confused about Dogmeat on the whole. He's... I met him on the road one day out of the blue, and ever since, he's been following me. I'm not saying we met, got to know each other, I literally looked at him and went, "Hey," and he just made himself my dog. I don't feed him. I pet him, stab him with Stim when he needs it, but I don't know where he gets water from. I've never seen him poop. He can take a .303 round like a champ, too. He is also a vicious murderer who attacks anyone I get into a scrap with. That's true friend material right there and also, maybe, a, robot, I'm suddenly realizing. That's cool, actually, robo-dog. Why do Stimpa-eh they work on Nick too, funk it, like anything else makes any sense here.

Honestly, I get why people are falling over themselves to be with me (see: my legs, my torso, my face), but I'm sometimes weirded out by how into me they can get? And it does not take a long time. Preston made me dad of his local cub scouts after knowing me for fifteen minutes. All I'd done up to that point was get high, kill like two dozen dudes in a suit of armor (I think one of them turned into a dragonman but I was pretty up there), and insult his old lady friend right to her face. Hell, Strong Mad can't stand me, and he still spends all day riding my Red Rocket. ...okay hold on, I just meant he hangs out where I told him to, okay, me and Strong Mad aren't... we... well... let me go to the Red Rocket, and take a good hard look at him, and get back to you. There... may be potential there.

(Outfit credits, my thoughts, and a few more shots below the cut.)

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Cait is here too! I use Koozebane's Loving Cait mod (opens in new tab) to change her general vibe some. Piper's hat is Niero's CROSS_MojaveManhunter mod (opens in new tab).

Fallout 4 companions, dude. I've only ever gotten as far as Virgil's cave so I haven't met most of them, but like... bro, they are in rough shape.

Cait's storyline I think lays it out the best, which is to say, is one of the worst: it combines a desire to tell a deeply empathetic story of sorrow and trauma and regret and redemption, but that desire is so mishandled and poorly considered that it feels more like an insult to people who have lived experiences similar to her's - if you've ever been told 'you're so brave' by someone and suddenly felt a not terribly intense form of insulted, that's the exact emotional response I think this combination elicits. Her description of the physiological and mental effects of her intoxicated lifestyle feels like only a rough impression of what long-term functional intoxication feels like in the body, she doesn't follow the rules of addiction the player does, her story has to actively ignore the magical addiction cures around every corner*, but then plops a science-magic chair McGuffin into play with the same 'it's an instant cure' handwaving that the rest of the game already does as a deus ex machina to a story that could have been about the redemptive power of self-forgiveness, and there's not even time to mention that the story of the Vault you find the chair in implies that a group of addicts would turn kill mode over a single stash of drugs so fast that they'd storm in and murder an entire therapy group in their chairs, implying a discovery to murder timeline of less than an hour, and the fact that someone signed off on the only Irish character in all of Fallout just to have her be defined by violence and addiction and red hair and an accent feels funking nasty. Irish people in post apocalyptic Boston? Super fun. Thematic. Represents the reality of Boston and would have been an excellent addition! But Cait... the elements of her story could have been something really powerful to explore in a second person narrative, but instead, the writing placed on top of her damages the cohesiveness of the world in every place it touches.

We're all on the same page here**, and literally all of the characters are like this, although most other companions don't have narratives nearly so long or with nearly such personal themes (thank goodness). Nick is a hardboiled detective who smokes cigarettes. He does not have lungs. He also has memories of his previous life? I never do his quest. Piper is a scrappy reporter lady. She is upbeat and supportive and cares about her sister. The end. Codsworth is a robot who is a butler. Mr. Handycock is a ghoul dressed like a red coat, and, in his free time, something like a character. McGravy is a merc and a lazy Fallout 3 callback. Strong Mad is just Fawkes again but worse, which is ridiculous when we could have had Fawkes be the lazy call back, or another lazy call back, I guess. Danse is the words "semper fi" injection molded into a human shape (with a hot face). Preston is... actually a fun combo of dorky dude in a bad situation with good intentions, Preston gets... ugh, as much of a pass as I'll give anyone, even though he holds the terrible distinction of radiant quest giver. You never wanna be the radiant quest giver, okay, even Mike Rowe wouldn't do that dirty job. Lucky for him I kind of like the radiant quests, but that's only because the un-radiant quests usually have writing in them, and I have a hard limit on the amount of Fallout 4 writing I can stomach (I can't remember if I've ever through mods or whatever gotten to the Institute but I remember the cutscene with Father where you meet him and I Just... oh wow... if... if I was in a class, and someone presented that scene as a project, I'd be so embarrassed for them).

I downloaded a few mod companions (the super mutant lady, an Enclave general, and someone else, I forget), but they don't quite fit in with the general mood I'm trying to tweak Fallout 4 into: this Cowboy Bebop-esque colorful and bombastic adventure world with weird tech and sexy badasses.

I'm going to keep trying to Collect 'Um All! but... I don't have high hopes.

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*Addictol, which I carry on me at all times, doctors, who are in every town we stop at, a special tea from the chemistry station, or a funking omelet can cure addiction and if you don't believe me well than (opens in new tab) - your move, funko.

**Oh my gosh I just Googled "why is cait irish fallout 4" and the top answer suggested by Google was "The reason Cait has a (terrible, stereotypical) 'Irish' accent is because Bethesda didn't stop to think about how little sense it would make." YES, JUST RIP THEM APART. Oh, internet, you weird commercialized corpse of a thing - thank you so much, that made my day.

[lex-munro]

[Glitter on the Wet Streets: Part 5] The Men Cry Out, the Girls Cry Out

The clues point to Trust A Bro Moving Company, where Eddie meets an important-looking guy in a red tracksuit and proceeds to get himself into trouble.

Chapter 5 of (probably?) 12.

Why do I insist on naming chapters instead of numbering them when I’m notoriously Bad At Titles™?  A mystery for the ages…

Warnings:  Canon divergent based on the MCU.  Oblique spoilers for Black Widow, Wandavision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, and Daredevil.  Discussion of abusive relationships (both romantic and platonic) and recovery from abuse.  Brief ableist language, quickly corrected by those present.  Peter and MJ have been making Venom go to therapy (without actually going to therapy).  Canon typical violence.  Brief descriptions of wounds/regeneration.  Language: PG-13 (primetime TV plus s***, f***, and g**damn).

Pairing:  Matt/Eddie, background Peter/MJ, past Eddie/Venom.

Timeline:  A year after the events of No Way Home, but concurrent with the events of Hawkeye (told you it was canon divergent), sort of.  Like, I know Yelena’s chat with Kate was the 22nd, and that was just one night before Clint confronted Maya, but SHUSH I PUT ANOTHER DAY IN HERE FOR MAH FLOW.  This universe has Hawkeye set a whole year later than canon, so I can do what I want *throws glitter at you, but bioglitter because microplastics*.

Disclaimer:  I doesn’t owns the movies or the characters.  Or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.

The Men Cry Out, The Girls Cry Out

The intel from Rafa’s phone shows calls from ‘Ivan’ days before each suspicious article, and just once a call from ‘K’ the day before an article (after a series of back-and-forth calls with ‘Ivan’).

“What do we do with this information?” Ned asks aloud as they all stare at the newly gathered data on the case board.

“Well, Ivan must be the contact within the Tracksuit Mafia,” MJ concludes.  “He must be the guy I saw handing Rafael money.  So then this ‘K’ dude must be someone higher up, somebody who had to get involved when Rafa was pushing back or wasn’t able to get a writer to fall in line.”

“None of which helps us find them,” Eddie concludes with a sigh.

“Maybe if you weren’t so busy with your defective toy, you could have gotten more info this morning,” Venom scoffs.

“Whoa!” they all yell.

“Not cool!” Peter tells the symbiote sternly.

“Only an ableist asshole whips out the D-word,” says MJ.

“Like, we get that you’re working this jealous-bitter-ex thing, but there’s such a thing as good taste,” adds Ned.

“I am not jealous,” Venom grumbles, sulking in a creepily bubbling mass in Peter’s collar.

MJ grabs Ned’s laptop.  “I’m gonna do some searching.  That Ivan guy got into the same kind of moving truck I saw in the chase footage on the news.  Some kind of dark green, with the attic-space extension over the cab.”

“I’m gonna go get us some donuts,” Ned says, tucking tail the way he usually does when suffering secondhand embarrassment.

“No,” Peter hisses to himself.  “No, I’m gonna tell him.  Because this whole thing between you is really becoming intolerable again and it’s your fault for not talking about it, so I’m gonna tell him!”

Eddie waits.

“Mr. Brock, Venom needs to tell yo—”

“Don’t you dare!” growls the symbiote, lashing out with a tendril that Peter easily dodges.  “Hold still so I can kick your skinny ass!”

At that point, they become a mess of flailing limbs and deflected strikes (and at one point an alarming amount of pointy teeth which then get mercilessly punched with a super-strong fist).

“Don’t break my shit, or I’ll set you on fire,” MJ threatens, eyes still locked on her Internet search.

“Venom feels really terrible for making you feel bad before and that’s why he keeps getting angry when people bring it back up,” Peter rushes to say before dodging another strike.  “Also, he’s really jealous of Mr. Murdock because he’s always wanted to make you smile like that.”

With a growled accusation of betrayal, Venom rips free of Peter and splashes into the enormous aquarium in the living room.  Peter shakes himself like a dog (Eddie remembers that awkward, ticklish, semi-naked feeling of having Venom leave).

“Don’t hurt my fish, either!” MJ yells.

And shit, now Eddie kind of wants to go sit by the fish and talk about their shit.  Therapeutic, or whatever.

But what the fuck good would that do?  Not like V’s learned a damn thing.  He ends up in a body he can’t bully, the kid outs his emotions, and his response is to go pout in a fish tank?

Unbidden, the memory of that botched breakfast surfaces.  Venom had tried to get Eddie and Anne back together to make Eddie happy, and when Eddie gave up, Venom tried to make breakfast to cheer him up…

Being shit at it doesn’t mean he’s not trying.

Stupid damn parasite isn’t gonna get better at being a friend if nobody shows him how.

So Eddie goes and sits next to the fish tank.

“Hey,” he says without looking.  “Not a fun feeling, is it?  When somebody you love—somebody you’re in love with—does things against your wishes and you can’t stop them.”

“if you’re here to gloat, you can fuck off,” says a tiny, soggy voice.

“Not gloating.  Just pointing out I know how it feels.  I also know how it feels for somebody you’re in love with to make you feel like you’re constantly fucking up.”

“i don’t feel like that.”

“Yes, you do.  And you made me feel like that, too.  There’s a lotta stuff I like about Matt, but that’s my favorite:  he goes outta his way to make sure I don’t feel like a fuckup.  I told him last night—I like who I am around him, and I haven’t liked myself in a long time.”

“…not even when we were together?”

“No, V.  When we were together, I liked us, and I loved you.  But I hated me.”

Venom is quiet for a long time.  “i was a shitty friend,” he decides.  “and a very shitty boyfriend.  but you loved me anyway.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“i’m sorry, eddie.  i am bad at being kind.  peter says i have unresolved trauma, and according to the internet, he’s right.  he has suggested we hug it out, but i am not a fan of hugs, as you know.”

Eddie looks over his shoulder and sees a jellyfish-like blob of blackness floating in the water.  “Okay, that’s progress.  You can’t exactly talk to a therapist or nothin’, but maybe you could talk to me?”

“my first host was a kree soldier,” Venom says in a slightly bigger voice.  “i was a weapon, regardless of my own wishes.  when riot and the others rebelled, i ran away with them.  riot said we could never trust a host, and we should kill them before we could be used again.  i didn’t kill my host; that is why i was a loser on that asteroid.  they called me weak and trusting.  naïve.  i hurt you because i wanted to feel strong, which dr. phil says is a classic expression of generational abuse cycles, but does not excuse bad behavior when we know it to be hurtful.”

Eddie is grudgingly impressed.  “Dr. Phil, huh?  So you really have been working on yourself?”

“peter and mj have forced me to.  but also i want to be better.  for him.  for you.  for whoever hosts me next.  i have to fix what the kree broke in me, or i’ll only keep hurting my hosts.  i have a lot of anger, but the people who deserve it are dead.”

Wow.  Venom definitely has a better handle on identifying his issues than Eddie ever has, which is kind of humbling.  Eddie clears his throat and nods.  “Good, uh…good for you, V.  And…apology accepted.”

“…he’s the one who makes me feel like a fuckup, not peter.  that’s why i don’t like him.”

Eddie frowns.  “Who, Matt?”

“it was so easy for him to make you smile, and he can’t even appreciate it.  you’re pretty when you’re happy.”

“I’m really not.”

“you are.  anne always thought so, too.”

Eddie clears his throat again, pretending not to be flattered and embarrassed.  “You want me to go get Parker?”

“i will stay here for a while.  the fish are relaxing.”

~*~*~

MJ’s (extremely thorough) search determines that the green trucks were at the underground auction, at the apartment fire, at the bridge chase, and at the scene of the bribe.  ‘Trust A Bro Moving Company,’ which is a part of Sloan, the company Eleanor Bishop spoofed onto her fiancé’s file.  Other Sloan businesses include Fat Man Used Cars and Fat Man Gym.  It’s like Kingpin gets his jollies from daring people to find his shadier dealings.

So, here’s the team mascot, the faithful Great Dane, poking around with the most harmless, airheaded persona he can.

“Hello?” Eddie calls as he sticks his head in the door (a bell jingles discordantly, several years past its prime).  There’s nobody in the front office, but he can hear talking in the next room.

A guy in a red tracksuit comes out with a fake-ass smile.  “Happy holidays!  What can a bro move for you, sir?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just saw one of your trucks in my neighborhood the other day,” Eddie says, waving his thumb at the green eyesore outside.  “My place just burned down, and I was wonderin’, do you guys haul junk and trash?  ‘Cause my landlord’s telling me I gotta spring for the cleanup if I want him to pay the repairs, and I looked in my rental agreement and the tightwad’s right.  I got a quote from some contractor guy who was staking the place out, but it’s a little rich for my stomach, if ya know what I mean.”

Mr. Customer Service gives a slightly more sincere smile.  “Sure, bro, we’ll haul anything.  Junk’s even easier, since you don’t care if it gets broken.”

“Great!  You got, like, a form for me to fill out?”

They do.  It asks for his name, phone number, address, estimated square footage, preferred pickup time, destination, and payment method.  The payment options listed are ‘Cash,’ ‘Traveler’s Check,’ and ‘Gift Card.’  Oy vey.  Why not just put ‘money launderers’ on the front window?

“Oh, good, you take cash,” Eddie says cheerfully.  “Everybody seems to want plastic these days, but who can afford all the fees, am I right?  Banks are just gangs of thieves in suits anyhow.  Wall Street bastards, overcharging honest folks into obliv—”

“Thank you very much, we will call you soon!” the guy interrupts, snatching up the form with gritted teeth.

Something suicidal in Eddie can’t resist snarking with, “I catch you at a bad time?  Bro?”

The guy visibly collects himself and huffs out a humorless laugh.  “Ah, yes, sorry.  I don’t mean to be rude, but my boss has really been on my back.  You know how it is, holiday rush…”

“Yeah, no, I get it.  The big guy’s riding you to get results.  Must be rough, being a slave to the Fat Man’s whims.”

Mr. Customer Service is no longer amused.  “What did you say?”

Eddie casually points to the jolly ceramic figure on a nearby desk.  “Y’know—Santa.”

“Ah.  Yes.”

“Happy holidays,” Eddie says with a smile, and walks out.

Outside in the cold, he shoves his hands in his pockets and curses himself.

“Great job, Eddie, always gotta poke the fuckin’ bear…  Trying to take down this evil bastard is what got you run outta town before.”

He pauses a step, then starts walking again.

What if some of what he knows carries over?  The presidents have been the same, the key senators are the same…  Yeah, there are people with super powers, and that’s a pretty big diff, but other shit seems real close.

He found five laundering businesses, two arms stockpiles, and a drug lab, all an instant too late to tie it to Fisk before shit got sanitized or scapegoats got trotted out.  What if even some of it’s the same?  Two of the laundering operations were on MJ’s list for Sloan.

“Heh, mascot, my ass,” he mutters.  “Get some Scooby Snacks ready, kids…”

He calls MJ just because she’s his usual point of contact, so it won’t look weird if Rafa or somebody gets his phone.  After a few rings, it goes to voicemail.

“Shit.  You guys better not be in trouble and need rescuing right now, or I’ll ground you all for life.  I’m chasing some old leads, hoping they’ll turn into new leads.  Once upon a time, there was a guy named Lopez who worked at a place called Fat Man Auto Repair, which happens to be on the same property as Fat Man Used Cars, and he was definitely in deep with organized crime near Hell’s Kitchen.”

And away he goes.

~*~*~

And really, the first warning should have been the boarded windows.

The second warning should have been the angry chick stomping off into the snow just as the sun came back out.

Red flag number three should have been all the Tracksuits lollygagging around the place.

But, hey, all that seemed to point to Eddie being right.  Deliciously, beautifully, vindicatingly right.

The bloom of hot pain just below his ribs seems to point to Eddie being a goddamn idiot.

The guy who pulled the trigger looks surprised for a moment, like maybe he never shot anybody before, but then he gets that mad dog look they sometimes do, and he pulls the trigger again, and a third time.

It’s not Eddie’s first time being shot, but the novelty hasn’t worn off yet.  It hurts, and he can’t catch his breath, and his hands are shaking too badly to put pressure on the wound.  Wounds.  And that’s problematic, since he doesn’t have an alien goo monster putting him back together.

So much for those Scooby Snacks…

Somebody is yelling—roaring.  There’s a fight going on somewhere, but Eddie’s trying to stay on his feet, but he can’t remember why…

It doesn’t hurt when he hits the ground.  It’s cold and wet and crunchy.  And red.

White sky, high up.

Can’t catch his breath.

His mouth tastes like pennies and warm milk.

There’s something heavy on his chest—in his chest?

Gloved fingers on his face, then bare skin.  His ears are filled with a low hiss and a high ringing.  Someone’s talking, far away.  More voices.  Crying out.  They sound sad.  More fingers, smaller.

MJ’s pinky ring stings like a bitch when she slaps him.  For a moment, the ringing clears.  “You’re going into shock,” she says loudly, firmly.  “Focus.  Squeeze Matt’s hand.  Ned says Peter’s—”

Her voice fades away under the ringing again, and he chokes for a moment before managing a cough.  But then he still can’t catch his breath.  Something liquid is sliding down or up, like accidentally swallowing pool water, or getting his sinuses irrigated when he had a bad infection…

White.

Cold.

And then nothing.

I got us.

Black.  Sliding between bone and tissue, eating the misplaced blood to use as raw material, growing holes closed, discarding three little lumps of lead.

Nestling back in the hollow space between stomach and heart where it belongs.

HOME

Whole.

Wet fingers squeezing his—theirs—a little too hard.

Matt

They squeeze back, and Eddie manages to open his eyes.  “Well, that coulda gone better,” he admits.

Matt laughs at him, but he’s crying, too—nose gone pink and hair mussed from the mask discarded next to him in the snow—and he’s so damn pretty.  “I’d yell, but Foggy would call me a hypocrite.”

“I thought the Devil only came out at night.”

“What, like a blind lawyer would have been a ton of help against those guys?”

“Coulda made cute faces at ‘em till they either adopted you or begged for mercy.”

Matt yanks him upright and into a hug.

Two other sets of hands touch his back.

“Had us worried, Scoob,” MJ teases, but Venom can taste the heat in her hands, hear them trembling ever so softly.

“Sorry,” says Peter.  “I’m sorry.  I know you said you didn’t want him, but I couldn’t think of anything else, and he didn’t want to do it against your will, but I made him do it, and it saved your life, so—”

“Parker.”

Venom curls away from Eddie’s heart for a moment, but settles right back.

“What I said was, it wrecked me when he left.”

STAYING

“Yeah, for how long?” Eddie retorts.

missed you love you. home. home not going not ever never neverneveragain.

“Said that last time.”

what if

He waits.

He can feel Venom curling through his thoughts, less obtrusive than the other times he’s done it.

we could keep Matt.  he can make me behave, and he can make you happy.

Eddie stares as Matt senses something and tilts his head with a little frown.

YES that settles it, i have decided we are KEEPING MATT.  you are welcome.

Eddie laughs and kisses Matt’s cheek.

“Is that good?” Matt asks.  “That seems good.”

“V says if he stays, we’re keeping you.”

You have something in your pocket.  Bumpy paper.  I read about it on the Internet!  It says…  Oh, that is SUPER-ROMANTIC, Eddie, you are being WOOED!

Aloud, the alien says, “MATT.  Eddie is an idiot who cannot read the bump-writing, but I can read his bird-brain mind, and since I am the most helpful friend-boyfriend ever, read this and become intolerably smug!”

A black tendril nudges Matt’s right hand and settles under his fingers.  After a moment, he looks confused, then stunned, then—as Venom predicted—smug.  “So, I hear you and Snowflake are in the market for a place to stay long-term?”

“Uh,” Eddie says with all the charm and eloquence of a squirrel that ate somebody’s reefer stash.

“We can discuss that later,” MJ says.  “Now that you’re not dead or dying, explain why the hell you thought it was a good idea to come here at all, let alone without backup.  And keep in mind that you’re lucky your boyfriend has really weird attachment issues and that Peter followed Hawkeye and found out he sent a note to meet somebody here tonight so we were already on our way check it out.”

“Oh.  Right.  One sec—”  He steals another kiss before handing Matt his mask.  “Okay, so in my universe—”

(“Wait, what?” Matt says.  “Shhhh,” says MJ.)

“—I had gathered up all kinds of great leads to taking down Kingpin, but I was just a tad too slow, and he got all his alibis and scapegoats and payoffs lined up.  Bastard got me blacklisted from every paper in the city, sent me running to the opposite side of the country.  I figured enough things were the same here that I might try to scope out my old leads.  Unfortunately, it paid off.  I still got more leads to follow up on, though, and with V aboard, I fix up good as new.”

“And I pay better attention.”

“Asshole.”

“It’s true!  Remember Kasady and his little map?”

“You’re not cute enough to be smug about one case,” Eddie declares.  “You’re gonna have to work your way up.”

“Tell you what, boys,” says Matt—well, the mask is back on and he’s just pulled on his gloves, so technically he’s Daredevil now.  “I know a private eye who works pretty cheap when good people are getting the short end of some rich guy’s stick, and she happens to have kept off Fisk’s radar.  Give me your list, and she and I can have a look.”

“No way, the Tracksuits are my scoop!” MJ growls.

“Also, two more superheroes, right here,” Peter adds, pointing to Eddie and himself.

Daredevil shakes his head.  “You’re a minor, Peter.”

“Super!  And a really good scientist-in-training!”

“Peter is objectively much more super and heroic than you are.”

“I will blast you out of my boyfriend and stuff you in a fish bowl,” Daredevil threatens.

“Kids, stop fighting or I will do all the heroics myself and probably end up dead again!” Eddie yells.  When the others have shut up, he goes on at a more reasonable volume, “Babe, invite your PI friend to the Batcave.  We’ll, uh, have a con-fab or whatever, divide the labor fairly, see about helping Hawkeye and nailing the Fat Man in time for Christmas.”

“How are we gonna pay her?” asks Peter.

Eddie heaves a sigh and pulls out his phone.  “Snowflake has currently raised us twenty-seven thou and counting, thanks to that viral marketing thingy Queen MJ pulled.”

“H-h-how—”

MJ shrugs.  “I tagged Flash and showed him that vid of you asleep in the suit with Snowflake on your lap.  Did you know he has three hundred thousand followers on Insta and over a million on Twitter?  He shared the GoFundMe link with the tag ‘give a buck for Spidey’s favorite kitty.’“

Peter looks slightly frightened.  “I love you so, so much.  Please never turn into a super-villain.”

“Now that’s out of the way,” MJ says, standing up and looking around the back lot of the auto shop.  “Whaaaaat are we gonna do about all these unconscious goons?  I think at least one probably needs a doctor.  Daredevil got a little enthusiastic.”

“Mm.  Sorry, not sorry.”

“Don’t worry—not judging.  They shot the dog, John Wick kicked their asses.”

.End.