plot bunnies about an idea i don’t have enough motivation juice to write. red hood identity reveal variety
smol jason
So, Red Hood reclutantly working alongside the Bat to take down a child trafficking ring when he is hit with a de-aging spell. It even isn’t the first time Batman encountered the end of this particular spell so he already knows the victim would have no recollection of their memories, so he protects the now child (he guessing 11 estimate age) and guides him through the panic of not being able to take off the Red Hood helmet. the one that canonically has a bomb in it (cause older Jason is a dramatic bitchTM) so like, Batman catches the child’s prying fingers and takes them away from the latches because Hood has implied the existence of a bomb and that’s enough for dread to set in his gut. Bruce gently coaxes the child to let him confirm this with a device he takes out of his belt and raises it eye level to the kid’s head. It beeps. And B feels the ground sweep out under him. Because indeed this child has a bomb to his head. (and he’s suddenly hearing another bomb go off in the distance and a warehouse and —)
anyways, B ends up taking (read kidnapping) this twelve year old to the Batcave so they can pry off the helmet and I can only picture the ANGST because this is Jason and Bruce each unaware of who the other is. Jason still lives in the streets in his mind according to him and well, according to B, he’s dead. So they start bonding, kinda awkwardly at first cuz of the helmet’s voice modulator, but Jay at that age (at any rlly) was a spitfire and like he genuinely makes B forget this is a crime lord for a second (kinda difficult to that when the kid is stuck in the helmet) but whatever. I can only see Jason being his cautious self but kinda being at ends here because he kinda does need Batman’s help to get this thing off him, so he can only, just like narrow his eyes when the Bat approaches him for a blood sample. (“Need to check for magic residue, lad.”)
(Jason’s only allows this because he has a knife he found in the clothes he’d was drowning in earlier)
As u can guess, Bruce was obviously lying and wanted to run the blood sample to see if it matched any from his database (as the Red Hood has also implied that they have met before)
Anyways Bruce just gets the alert that the blood reading was finished almost at the same time they can pry the helmet off, and because he got a little attached, he just wants to see the face of this lively if wary teenager that has the same name as his (dead) son. (he managed to pry it from him earlier, how, i dunno) It’s literally Bruce’s martyr and huge guilt-complex that goes like ‘ah yes let me see the face of a child that was failed so throughly by the people who should’ve taken care of him’. So they pry off the helmet and then Bruce feels like he’s been doused by cold water. it’s like he’s staring at the ghost of his dead son again, the image completed with ruffled hair, slightly upturned lips and blue guarded eyes that look up to him with recognition but not recognition.
Bruce immediately hardens, shuts down any hope he can feel rushing in and desperately tries to close the dam and let his confusion and rage turn into anguish. “Who are you?”
The boy—the imposter quickly tracks the 180 demeanor change and immediately goes defensive. A painfully familiar scowl appears in his face.
“I’m Jason, I already told you that, what, your old age catching up to you?”
Batman stalks closer and then the boy’s taking two steps back for every one the Bat takes. He tracks the loose outline of a hand closing in tightly around the hilt of a knife in the boy wearing his son’s face and he can only think how dare he.
“Lies! You’re not my son! Who are you?”
Heart in throat, Jason struggles to keep distance between him and the towering black shadow that’s so angry he can sense it in his very bones. He doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t.
“I-I my name’s Jason. Jason Todd. My father is Willis Todd, not—not, Batman.”
And there’s that for the little snippet. Sorry this is so disjointed😭. After that’s just the mental image of Dick cutting in with Zatanna trailing closely behind him and being all “Hey I got your message about a de-aging spell and—“ and just stopping at the scene.
Because that’s Batman towering over a clearly scared kid. Said kid using the distraction to try and stab Batman. The action clearly enraging Batman—that doesn’t make any sense?! B would never— Dick immediately sprints into action and steps in between the two.
like Dick just giving his back to the kid and not seeing. Batman clearly shaking his head in denial and snarling, treating the kid like his crime lord self and Dick not understanding. Having to receive help from Zatanna to get the kid the hell out of here (but like where would they even take him? The manor??)
Zatanna just takes them to the other side of the cave and takes note of the teenager. How he has a dead grip on a red helmet and his gaze is stuck upon it.
Meanwhile Dick has to physically restrain Batman from going after the kid and he raises his voice just enough to demand what the hell is happening?? Why is there a kid in the Batcave? …Batman??? Report. As he is demanding answers Dick had slowly loosen his grip on his dad only to now found him staring at his gauntlet’s data hologram.
The information displayed? 99.98% Match confirmed to Jason Peter Todd.
So as this is clearly pure angst, I want Jason to lash out, sticking only to Zatanna only to realize she’s the magic user that’ll quote on quote will return him back to normal.
Jason is just like on really uneven ground here, even though he doesn’t think he’s ready to retur. But then Batman is just like “Jaylad” … “Jay…” and taking off his cowl and reaching up to him and looking at him like he knows him, like he’s something fragile and precious. Which is sooo fucking jarring you can understand. Jason internally is all what the fuck
Jason just wants them to back off. Jason is an overwhelmed bean. He looks up to Nightwing for help but the man is also mirroring the Bat, domino off and eyes suspiciously bright.
Zatanna is literally the only person in the room not emotionally compromised. She’s with Jay in the ??? train.
Suddenly she looks down and there’s the little boy whose eyes are pleading in helpless confusion. Eyes practically conveying the question you can return me back to normal right?? he pointedly doesn’t rip his eyes from hers as Zatanna puts a hand on his shoulder, pretending she doesn’t notice how he trembles and wordlessly asks if he’s sure.
cut scene
Bruce interrupts because information overload and he can’t compartmentalize this is too important and he and Dick stop Zatanna to which she too is ?? because that was literally what she was called for here. Dick is no help.
Dick is torn.
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Triage: Initial Thoughts
Hello! Venus back at it again with the 4-5 AM theory time! This time we’re looking at Shidou’s second MV, Triage!
I’m going to be going through my various thoughts on everything as usual, going point by point to analyze each thing. I’ll be referencing Triage, his first MV Throwdown, and the always-fast audio drama translation by @onigiriico!
Alright, let’s do this!
Shidou’s kids died immediately, but his wife had a chance to live.
I’m basically just going to give a quick play by play of what I think happened in the video.
Surprise, Shidou has kids! And a wife, but we figured that already. They’re all very cute and all until they fade out like ghosts pretty early on. Before that happens, though, I think that, chronologically, the opening sequence of Shidou walking with some groceries happens first.
He’s just going about his day, walking around, having a great time. He’s intending to take stuff back to his family and cook dinner or whatever he usually does that we see in the cute scenes.
Then, though, he gets a phone call. He answers it (this is the untranslated “Kirisaki desu” part; please let us know if you find a full translation of what he says on the call there!) and we move on to the next scene. However, later, at 1:57, we hear the line die. I think that this is probably Shidou getting a phone call from the hospital. He sounds casual in his initial response because he probably assumes it’s work related, but once he hears what happened, he drops the line and immediately heads over.
I think Shidou’s kids must have died immediately because of Throwdown. Throwdown has absolutely no references to his kids (though he does mention liking children and stuff like that in his first audio drama, which now kinda stings) and, were he also trying to save them, I’m sure there would’ve been at least some references.
I think it’s far more likely that, whatever happened, both his kids died immediately, but his wife was in a condition where he could still try to save her. That’s when Throwdown occurs. Shidou probably focused intensely on trying to save his wife as a way to cope with the death of his children. Then, after his wife officially died, it really hit him that he had nothing left, and he was forced to process it. That’s when he started feeling all the guilt and wishing for death.
This isn’t really relevant, but my best bet is a car crash. It seems like a likely and viable way that his kids could’ve died instantly while the wife could’ve kept living. As a minor note on that, he’s also walking back with groceries, which could indicate that someone else (the rest of his family) might’ve had a car. I don’t remember if Shidou mentions anything about driving or anything like that at any time, but if I had to call a method of death right now, that’s what I’d go for.
NOTE: I do want to disclaim this by saying it’s also possible that one of his kids was the flower person in Throwdown. He gives a receipt to one of his kids, so that could make some sense. I need to go back and compare the flower person in Throwdown with the people in Shidou’s family now that they have appearances. I also need to reread his first audio drama; he says something about it being fitting that Es is judging him, which could check out if his crime relates to trying to save his kid instead. If I am wrong and it was one of his kids that he was trying to save, then everything about what I’m saying still checks out; just swap everything I say about his wife with one of the kids.
Shidou purposefully showed us the least forgivable parts of his crime in Throwdown.
Looking back on it, Shidou painted himself in an awful light in Throwdown, and I’m sure it was intentional. After all, he was trying to get us to give him a guilty verdict. If you say that a prisoner like Muu might have been altering what part of her story we received in order to get her desired verdict in the first round (innocent), Shidou could absolutely do the same thing with a guilty verdict.
He doesn’t show us any of the context of his loved ones and how much he loved them; that was all stuff we had to read between the lines of. We see him butchering plant after plant only to end in horrific failure without ever seeing him succeed at anything surgical. (He still should’ve hypothetically been saving lives while doing all of this; it’s not like he was ONLY killing people.)
He even shows us the horrified reactions of the loved ones of patients he killed. I can only imagine that he would do that if he was trying to spark a negative reaction in us.
In contrast, this MV is very straightforwardly showing how the day he lost his family went for Shidou and directly examines what verdict Shidou wants (more on this later). I think, therefore, that this is probably a much more honest view of the situation than Throwdown, at least in terms of how Shidou perceives the truth.
Shidou is constantly plagued by the guilt of what happened.
The simplest way to explain this is with this image:
When showing Shidou’s family turning to ghosts, he views the man that he used to be as dying with them. Shidou, as he was, is dead. Still, what happened clearly still impacts him. That’s pretty obvious, but I’m talking down to the details. He mentions kids and liking them in both of his audio dramas. Further, take this lovely image:
Pancakes. Shidou made pancakes for his kids. In BOTH Minigrams 3 (Pancake) and 24 (Pancake: a Second Trial) Shidou is directly shown talking about pancakes and their relation to children. He really wants Amane, the young child, to try some. It seems like he used to make pancakes for his kids before they died. He’s very clearly not recovered in any sense. That’s not surprising, but it’s still something to point out.
Triage takes place almost entirely before and after Throwdown.
That sounds a little confusing, but all I mean is that Throwdown is completely isolated from this MV. Some parts of this MV happen before the events of Throwdown; those are the ones featuring Shidou’s wife and kids, as well as the ones where he simply looks younger. The other parts are clearly looking back at the same time frame, but are from Shidou’s present perspective, here in Milgram. Those are the ones where he reflects on his verdict or directly addresses what verdict he wants.
Most directly, I think the part at 2:14 indicates this. Shidou, looking back on the death he caused (knives in the pomegranates and other food, dead flowers, receipts from the surgeries that we also saw in Throwdown), says “I want to be INNOCENT / I want to live.” That’s him, in the Milgram prison, right now, coming to terms with the fact that he actually, genuinely wants to live right now.
In the audio drama, he’s clearly conflicted. He still says that he wants to die, that he wants to atone for his sins and that dying is the only way he can make it up to the people he killed. He also, though, says that, at least for right now, he wants to live. Futa and especially Mahiru are on death’s door, and there’s no telling what other injury might occur. He believes he’s essential to saving lives within the Milgram prison (and I think he’s 100% right).
He even directly references this in the song lyrics, talking about “extracting the fang.” The fang is clearly Kotoko, given that Milgram has referred to the damage Kotoko does with fang imagery before and given that that’s what he’s currently healing. He has to be the one to save them because he’s the only one who can; as a result, to save lives, he has to care about his life right now. While he’s still unsure of what final verdict he wants, he knows that he needs to stay alive, at least going into trial 3.
VOTE: INNOCENT
Personally, this one’s a no-brainer. Es theorizes in the audio drama that Shidou only harvested organs from braindead patients, and though he never outright confirms it, based on his responses, it seems to me like that’s true. That means his crime isn’t as severe as we initially thought it was.
Additionally, he’s right; he is indispensable to us right now. He outright says in the audio drama that if he stops giving Mahiru care, she’ll die, whether or not anything else happens to her. That basically tells us that voting Shidou guilty means Mahiru dies. That’s not good, and I’d rather avoid prisoner death when we think it’s possible.
I also just don’t think it’s smart to change verdicts on him here. If we decide that, after all is said and done, we can’t forgive Shidou, we should do that with the third verdict. Here, we want to leave both options open. Right now, Shidou is torn between wanting to live and wanting to die. If we switch to guilty, we’ll ruin any chance he has at recovering a will to live and a will to atone through any means other than death. If we want to preserve the option of forgiving him in the end, I think we have to forgive him here. We can debate whether his actions were forgivable or not in the last round.
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Bunch of teams that i think are fun and been playing with lately just because talking about them making me excited and thats the point of this blog so:
Noelle burgeon team
(Non of these teams are supposed to teach you anything)
I like Noelle, i actually like most healers so I really wanted a team of her that felt *to me* fun to play and her burgeon team is pretty fun, she is a healer, driver and shielder she is on 4p exile and a fav claymore, i get her burst before we are done one rotation and its so fun and feel freeing in a way, noelle feels so right for this team, and the burgeon dmg looks amazing lol (tried it once in abyss and got two stars but i play on mobile so idk if someone more pro can actually get all three)
2. Lisa vacuum cleaner
I Like lisa, actually every character i bothered making up teams for i do like so, but i like lisa especially i crowned her lol, its an aggravate team, but the release of Baizhu made her more fun to play, venti is much more fun than C0 kazuha especially in the overworld but if i want an effective dps lisa team it would be c2 kazuha or sucrose depending on who is available atm (with fischl ofc)
4. Keqing&Tignari team
Ngl the entire point of this team is working around no Miko in my account but still wanting to maximize tighnari team dps, And who would have thought these two would fit together :D!!
it works thanks to baizhu mwah mwah, with him both healing and shielding we are killing baby lets gooo quick swapping never been this quick swapping before
Honorable mentions go to Candace and my mistsplitter kaeya because hydro infusion, extra buff, extra dmg, nice blues etc etc i love them please send me suggestions to who else to add
Teams im waiting for hoyo to give me something for: more variations of wanderer teams because im dying here plz give me something new for him i don’t want broken dmg i want functioning funny, also double geo double electro team just because purple and gold look nice together like come on ppl!!? how are we still here-
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Something I keep seeing when I speak to others about MTMTE Megatron is basically the idea that he's going on a personal journey to become a better person, that the point isn't for him to be "redeemed" but for him to get a chance to do good and die as a person he can live with again. That MTMTE presents a unique take on this because being away from Cybertron gives Megatron a chance to be a person rather than a political figure and this is how it gives him more depth as a character. Or just generally pointing out in a narrative sense that Megatron being in MTMTE limits his story options so of course his story is going to be more focused on a personal journey than on politics of him dealing with the Decepticons/Earth/etc and that just because JRO made a choice to take that path with Megatron doesn't mean that it's inherently bad.
And I'm just, mmm like I understand all of those points and acknowledge that they all contributed to the MTMTE Megatron we got. I even think that without JRO writing Megatron we wouldn't have had his lore be as fleshed out and 3D as it ended up becoming.
(Post starts out as a sort of meta analysis or at least me giving a reasoned explanation for my interpretation of the story, ends up being petty bitching in the last 1-2 paragraphs)
I just..... I just personally don't agree with the "he's becoming a better person by getting a chance to relax and experience happiness and trust after a life of trauma" as being the best choice for his character? Because the problem is that maybe if he were a random Decepticon foot soldier that would be appropriate, but he was literally the leader of the Decepticons that made them Like That and has political/cultural/societal responsibility for why things are the way they are? To be completely frank, I don't care about him going on a personal journey for self-peace, I think that he should become a better person by helping to un-fuck all the things he actually screwed up???
Like idc about the debate of whether he can be "redeemed" or if he should've been killed/imprisoned/etc at the ending. It just comes down to the fact that for me personally, I feel that since Megatron's wrongdoings were at a social level, him "being a better person" would've been better shown by him engaging with those people who he wronged instead of just going on a frigging personal journey for his legacy and self-peace???
Especially since in other series (exRID, possibly Windblade) we literally got plots like "the neutrals hate Autobots but they hate Decepticons even more" and "the Decepticons have been taken over by Galvatron and are now invading earth 2 electric boogaloo" and "yeah the Decepticons are literally living in slums because people hate them so much and won't give them any work." It just leaves me wondering why in the hell people are like, "oh Megatron got to be happy and have a chance to be a normal person." I don't want him to be normal! I want him to repay his debts to the people he actually wronged! Like if you want to cast Megatron as a hero of the people so badly (which so many of his stans do as if he actually cared about the Cons) then how do you reconcile the fact that Megatron just fucked off and left the Decepticons to suffer on Cybertron? Including some of them attacking during his trial and getting killed and Megatron is basically like "sorry, I'm not coming with you and this isn't going to work." And then Megatron complains about "toxic Decepticon loyalty" as if he didn't literally make them that way? Like I get that MTMTE Megatron is still an asshole but if you've read something besides MTMTE and know what the Decepticons are going through, it just ends up being really grating.
I just don't see Megatron as being a particularly good hero or having a particularly fulfilling story if he's completely isolated from all the bad things he did on Cybertron/the way the Decepticons are suffering until LL#25 where it's like "ah damn I'm going to trial now, well this is what I deserve so it's fine." Why could we not have seen something like Megatron trying to deradicalize the Decepticons or change their public image so they could integrate into normal Cybertron again? They were living in SLUMS and getting gunned down by Starscream's badgeless enforcers!
The best we got was the Functionist Universe but like.... I'm sorry, but JRO inventing a whole alternate universe for Megatron to save doesn't do jack shit to save or fix the people he left behind in this one. It was especially grating to read because JRO literally wrote in someone saying "you saved billions of lives from the Functionists" as if he was trying really hard to show how good Megatron is because he saved people (and also if not for Megatron existing Cybertron would be even worse and half of your faves would be enslaved or dead, also the Functionist Council was going to genocide organics too so technically they're WORSE than Megatron since they hate organics AND want to enslave their own race).
I read Barber's, JRO's, and MScott's series concurrently using the omnibus + a release order list for phase 3, and after all that I'm kind of puzzled why the fandom seems to ardently love MTMTE Megatron and think he's so well written but then also shit on Optimus for things that he did during the same points in the story? Because, and I know this is a blazing hot take, I honestly think that Optimus makes a better hero of his story than Megatron does for his, and Optimus' personal journey combines his personal and political identities into a narrative that's a lot more gruelling and questioning of his goodness than we got for Megatron in MTMTE. Which is fucking saying something considering Megatron committed crimes against sapient species and Optimus is the guy who tried to stop him from doing that and has always been pro-equal rights for all beings. But people pretty much just cherrypick things like Optimus annexing Earth or beating up Prowl and go "he's bad" and I'm like no??? IDW OP isn't a bad person or a bad character??? It's just that unlike MTMTE Megatron he's placed in a narrative that actually suits the nature of his actions and has themes that match. To the point that IMO sometimes Barber's narrative shits on Optimus excessively or paints him mainly in the most unflattering ways.
But like. It's just funny to me because Optimus spent his entire part of the story doing things like trying to stop Earth from being invaded/colonized yet again. Grappling with his identity as Prime and dealing with the fact that people literally worship him vs. the fact that his upbringing made him see the Primacy as nothing more than a facade of authority/leadership. Having people get mad at him for prioritizing politics over friendship/relationships with other people. Even getting shit on for being a cop a decent amount so people can STFU about IDW OP being "copaganda" or "not held responsible for his actions". The problems that Optimus dealt with were personal because they had to do with his self-doubt, culpability for the war as a leader of one of the armies, distance from his soldiers, etc. But all of these are also POLITICAL struggles. Because Optimus gave up on the chance to just be a normal person having personal struggles when he chose to become a LEADER, which also means that he's held to extremely high standards that he regularly fails at in the eyes of others.
That's why, to me, MTMTE Megatron falls flat in comparison and really as a "hero" or heel-face character in general? Because he also made a decision to be a leader, and IMO once you do things like become the commander of an army and start your own galactic empire, you lose the right to prioritize your personal problems and instead are obligated by the power you've chosen to wield to focus on your POLITICAL problems. If Megatron's power, influence, and crimes are of a social-political nature, then his heel-face turn arc and ways of showing that he's a better person/helping to heal what little damage he possibly can should have been shown with actions that help on a social-political LEVEL. That's why I'm not particularly impressed with his character arc and feel as if it was overhyped by other people in this fandom: sure, the extra character depth and emotion is nice, but I'm not really going to see him as extraordinary or even particularly good when the extent of him "becoming a better person" happens entirely on a random road trip to fuck-off nowhere. Especially not when the ending of LL tried to sell me a "they lived happily ever after" ending while basically leaving the freaking MUTINY as just Rodimus going "oh it's okay you're forgiven, we're all together again" and I guess everyone was fine with Megatron and wanted to spend an eternity on a ship with him just because Getaway died.
This is why I like (the concept/themes of) exRID/OP and the way Optimus' character arc was handled a lot more. Because for Optimus, the personal and the political were as one. He was held accountable for his actions towards others and the disruptive effects they had on a social level, sometimes to a ridiculous extent (the fucking "oh Megatron is an Autobot so now that makes the Autobots colonizers" plot and that stupid colonist screaming about how Optimus is "literally fascist" my beloathed). Even his very personal issues like his relationship with Zeta were still cast in a wider lens of, yeah this is a personal struggle that Orion faced, but he was still part of a Society TM and his actions were sometimes ill-informed or harmful to others. Even if I had a lot of problems with the way Optimus' story was written by Barber (plot holes, little meaningful character interaction, forced conflicts), at least the BASELINE of it was way better than Megatron's in MTMTE. Especially since Optimus' struggle was explictly about things like struggling with responsibility and how he feels he HAS to intervene in political affairs because has to save people/make up for his past mistakes. That's something that a good leader/good person actually does, so I found Optimus to be a better hero (even if his actions weren't all "good") because he was trying to be a good person by actually getting involved with Cybertron/Earth and subjecting himself to something he hates (leadership, war) and dealing with a shitload of criticism instead of just going on a fuckin "personal journey" lksdlkfsd.
Which just makes me extra salty that people hold up MTMTE Megatron as the pinnacle of Megatrons and literally the best Transformers writing evar! while turning up their nose and ignoring or outright despising IDW Optimus. Like okay. I guess since Megatron got handled with silk gloves on while Optimus got put through the wringer of being shit on by every other person in the story, it's easier for you to pretend that Megatron is a poor uwu boy who just needs friendship and love while Optimus is literally the worst bastard to ever exist. Or maybe it's just that since Optimus' story involves him sometimes fucking up, being criticized, or making things worse, that makes him morally bad. As opposed to Megatron who disrupted a lot of other characters' stories in MTMTE, had to have an entire alternate universe invented so that he could "save lives," and got to sail off on a quantum Lost Light happily ever after, so since he's happy and the story says he saved people that means he's a good hero.
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