#in fact id go as far as saying that they originally planned this arc to have a hydreigon

[vaugarde]

so dont get me wrong, “iris and the rogue dragonite” is a really, REALLY good episode. it does wonders for iris’s development and shows that she’s more in tune with her dragon powers, and she gets a new member on her team that’s finally a new dragon type. but i’m sorry, the episode and iris’s overall team would have worked so so much better if it was a hydreigon instead of a dragonite. im willing to die on this hill

[spikeinthepunch]

i have my 2022 art summary queued up and just want to ramble about the last year,... lots of stuff happened, good and bad! been a strange time.

i imagine most followers around have probably been here since late 2020 but 2020-21 i did art quite a bit, but the thing that really stuck for that period was i was super involved in warrior cats RP for some time-- i love RPing and these group also got me motivated to draw too! but i feel like i kind of wasnt around in the typical way due to how consumed i was in it. i dont think i need to go into detail of every month during that time, but it wasnt until early this year where i dropped it, and i didnt really publicize in detail why due to the issues surrounding it, but it was probably the biggest impact on me this year mentally, and in terms of art direction. and i feel like itd feel good to document this in a blog after it has now blown over- and why ive shifted my direction too.

i was very happily running my own RP server for just a year before i had to close it this year and it still makes me sad, as much as i moved on. ARP was like... a very big deal for me and i cant deny that. i dont have a lot of projects i get that into or get even close to setting off with its story figured out. i wrote well over 100 pages of documents for the world and the 6 planned arcs. i drew loads of art i couldnt even share until it closed (tbh im not positive i have shared it anyways bc i didnt wanna post it here). i made a website, i made riddles and code, i developed lore that was far outside of the warrior cats scope to it basically just being original!

truly i have never developed a project as far as i made ARP and to shut it down in order to save my privacy and past trauma from being further exposed in such an inappropriate way really sucked ass. a lot. it was a situation where there was no control given to me, no sense of understanding from the community. im not writing this out now to be pointing fingers and calling out names- just venting how it took a toll on me this year. what had happened with my server was that one of my own mods decided to dig into my profiles and found an old nsfw page, which even more indirectly led to an old flist, which exposed various things i was into around 17-19, reflecting trauma and abuse id been through (in it, voiced wanting to take part in certain kinks; ex. being a victim to violence and dubious consent scenarios). this information was at first presented as a threat to minors viewing my RP page (as in "ppl can see your nsfw profile from the blog!") which wasnt true/accessible as they said it was and required many many clicks to find, and then slowly revealed to me the people exposing this were in fact two of my own mods and was promptly cut off from explaining anything else as it spread in a private mod discord in the RP community. Which was worse to me than everything else that could have happened honestly, and i only learned this second hand from a person who saw it in that discord and thought it was horrible this information was spreading like that behind my back. in some ways things were okay-- i didnt get "called out" openly as i did my best to explain how these pages were not current to those around me, and that they had dug into some deep cutting trauma and a period where i wasnt getting any help to cope properly. it still didnt stop the fact i left every other RP i was in due to connections w those exposing it, and in turn closing my own. i dont want to say im thankful i didnt get called out publicly, but the damage was bad enough in so many other ways because i couldnt continue my server at all, and in the end people's obsession with purity culture in the fandom still made them deem me "bad" because i had nsfw accounts in any capacity. thats not a space i want to be around anyways...

ill forever be thankful for those who stuck it out to the end and witnessed the documents i got to share before closing it for good. but this was a HUGE part of my life for the last years of the pandemic, and i wasnt there for warriors cats- i was there for the people i knew, and the stories i made. i still miss RP a lot, and i want to host projects like that again after moving on mentally from that ordeal.

but my 2022 art summary shows a major shift that was 100% in part to disconnecting from wcrp. humans everywhere! seriously. for a solid few months i couldnt even bare to look at anything related to ARP. i didnt want to think about how i lost this story i developed so hard for so long.

honestly didnt really start drawing properly again until the summer- my art during my HL phase was very very light and very messy. i fell into a hard depression early summer and i only crawled out when i got into mcyt- and even then i was hiding it from this blog. i think i just needed to not feel like i was "online", because August included me joining a onceler RP and again, not saying anything about it. which Weehawken was the first RP thing I had done since i closed ARP too, and it was weird. not the RP itself, it just felt weird to try that again.

and it wasnt my favorite month, i just felt so tired and exhausted- that depression was kinda lingering and drawing a lot for an RP again was something i wasnt really used to anymore.

the past three months have been.... better? or i have at least enjoyed what i am drawing more. i think im far enough removed from what happened with ARP too that it doesnt weigh on me as strongly. i wasnt blaming myself for anything but it doesnt feel good when you know you have to kill something. we talked about recovering it, i had ideas, but i just knew it wouldnt be worth trying to with so much damage caused in my own self, and the impression that whole community left on me knowing people would willingly spread such personal information without question. having trauma exposed after going to therapy and relearning how to use the internet in a way that doesnt lean on trauma dumping and whatever unhealthy bullshit? its quite a blow. i dont make personal blogs like this often because i have good methods to deal with my shit these days.

despite this messy year im doing well. its been ups and downs. overall i know im far more confident in myself, i moved out to live on my own, and im just doing my thing. whatever bull shit happened this year, call out or not, i know im still just gonna keep doing whatever it is im doing. and heres to hoping i can bring a world to life like i did with ARP again, bc i really have a lot i want to tell and show and do.

[the-phantom-ender]

okay serious entity assignments time now because i said i might yesterday and i am better rested now.

first off, ill say that like... i dont know everything about every empire, i might be a little off base with some of the members i know less about.

second, the thing about aligning characters with entities is that it doesnt tend to be as easy as just something they fear. they also have to thrive in it. if all it took was fear, there would be lots of people marked directly by the web, if all it took was the ability to thrive, most introverts would be marked by the lonely. it takes a careful balance of both (unless the characters hand is forced, which we do technically see in t.ma canon at least once) for someone to be effectively marked by a fear, much less be an avatar (which is... a loose term at best but i digress because the explanatory bit is getting long dfjkhdf)

stuffs under the cut because it got. long. and feel free to share your own thoughts about them!!

shelby: an interesting case where my gut said corruption but upon reflection i think aligning her with the eye makes more sense? she definitely is shaped by corruption, but her arc thus far has mostly revolved around her desire to learn and her fear of what that knowledge might reveal. after her encounters with xornoth, she also seems very nervous about the idea of being watched.

lizzie: the vast is obvious for her, but it does make sense. its the fear of heights and deep waters and human insignificance, infinity. lizzie absolutely thrives in the depths and holds no fear for the waters but she does show hesitance when it comes to leaving. the danger comes from the outside, the other. which seems more like the lonely, sure, but the vast and lonely link greatly.

joel: im a little biased with the desolation alignment for joel because of 3l. i still think it could work for empires, but... the stranger might work better. i dont think theres anything quite as 'stranger' as filling your home with statues of yourself, giving workers your face, but everything is just slightly... wrong. be it that they dont fit quite right or that their limbs are leather and wood. Unfamiliarity, the uncanny.

gem: so id originally said eye for gem but @loganprobably (i hope the tags cool sjgkhdfh) mentioned the lonely and... both work i think. gem has an appreciation for knowledge, for awareness and learning. but shes also in a position where she both isolates herself and gets overly involved. being one of the people to try to ally with everyone but having a clear side picked. the welcome and the shunning. whats a girl gotta do for some peace and quiet?

scott: scott is... hard. itd be so easy to just throw lonely or eye at him because he stays to himself and knows a lot. id wager the web might work better, though. he keeps his distance, keeps an eye on all that goes on, and... makes no moves. he waits, plans ahead. if war brews he needs to be able to side with the winners. he shows a distain for the idea of being controlled and avoids situations where he could be. hes careful with his choices when theyre made.

jimmy: jimmy. lonely, but for a different reason than gem would be. he is friendly and kind and cares deeply for others, yet hes so clearly... the outcast, even within his own circles. hes the picked on, the betrayed. a friend to all but loved, respected, by none. in his times of need he is forgotten, silenced. yet he doesnt seem to hate the loneliness, just the fact that no one came.

joey: oh god here we go. joeys hard to pin down. the hunt might work? he could fall into the lonely but being lost doesnt inherently mean lonely (it actually ties more in with the vast). i say the hunt, though, because he refuses to back down from his stances, even if theyre objectively wrong, and will do so by whatever means necessary. hell instigate the death of others for the sake of getting what he wants.

fwhip: the slaughter. sacrifice and destruction follow him in everything and he thrives in it. his violence isnt entirely mindless but he has a penchant for war and the things that go into it. heres where my stuff starts getting less cohesive as i watch these members much less ;^^

sausage: the corruption and the desolation lay equal claim on sausage. in everything he plays tricks and feigns niceties and makes himself out to be the one in the right. all the way he makes it seem as if hes kind and just in his actions even if his motives are chaos and destruction. he still holds a fear for things going wrong and holds tight to his alliances.

pixl: the end. his vigil is very very 'end' to me. death, to him, is inevitable, a fact of life, and he choses to honor it and give it respect. in all things he does he knows death to be a cause and an end to the means. even if his trickery may just be a signal of the spiral... whos to say?

katherine: okay. bear with me for this one, yeah? the flesh. no im not only saying this because of the bone garden. the fear that we are just meat and bones, the realization that animals go to the slaughter. i believe its a fact that many involved with the flesh become vegetarian after encounters and her whole thing is plants. she shows a distaste for killing animals but a desire to use them in projects.

pearl: the dark. yes, this is the obvious choice, but i do have reason beyond it. pearls character in empires is directly contrary to her name. she revels in the light and lives around sunflowers and growth. despite this she will let herself work into the night, she will let herself turn a blind eye to damage being done. what she cant see cant hurt her.

bonus:

xornoth: the extinction. i know there are no actual avatars of the extinction in the source, however: it makes sense, right? more than this creature is corruption or the end it wants mortals gone. it wants mortals gone and to be released and freed to do this deed.

[showrunnerihardlyknowher]

Idk about you but that trope where a giant gets angry and accidentally scares a tiny and feels bad abt it afterwards makes me go absolutely feral,,

So, originally, I was planning for this scene to be in a future chapter of This Is Nothing Like The Disney Star Wars Trilogy, but I could never really think of a full story arc around it, even though I still really really really love this idea. In any case, if I happen to brainstorm a better plot and find a way to squeeze this in I might edit it into the main story, otherwise enjoy some classic Giant Catboi and Twink Solider fearplay >:3c

--

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was!?”

As expected, the little one did not respond to his rhetorical question, though his tone certainly helped snap it out of its previous stupor as it released its death grip on his shirt in favor of squirming as soon as the bedroom door slid shut behind him. His aggravation at the situation was clear as day even without the usual language and cultural barrier that impeded any sort of deeper relationship Edix tried to form with the human. Red ears were still folded back against his curls and his shoulders tense, the stiff posture traveling down to his hands were they gripped the earthling to his chest perhaps just a touch more tightly than usual, not that it prevented it from trying to push and wriggle itself out of his overprotective hold.

Fuck no, he wasn’t ready to let it go yet, not when flecks of blood were still smeared against his knuckles as a result of an impromptu rescue mission. The satisfying snap of cartilage under his fist after one good sucker punch to Talan’s smug face still echoed in his mind, blood gushing from the surely broken nose while the biologist stumbled backwards into the shelves. Edix wondered if he would be reprimanded for that by the directors later, or if Talan would be too proud to report the ass kicking, maybe even taking the lesson to heart to not fuck with his things in the future. And yes, that included trying to vivisect his sweet little pet.

How was I supposed to know the stray belonged to you? He had asked with sarcastic innocence, as if the human in question hadn’t been seen with Edix a thousand times before, and wasn’t drenched in his scent, and didn’t have his ID code printed on the back of its little suit, Maybe if you weren’t such a wuss and actually put it on a shorter leash-

Asshole. He was lucky Edix’s only goal at the moment was to get the little one off the table and back to the appropriate sector rather than rip Talan to shreds with his own tools. A taste of his own medicine, perhaps. Still, he admittedly did have a point about the human, what with how much it would run off and get lost and damn near killed. He simply couldn’t figure out what was so terrible about staying in his company that the little one would risk injury and mutilation in a foreign environment as opposed to the safety and comfort he so desperately tried to provide for it. They might have had a bit of a rocky start, sure, but stars above that was far in the past now. There’s nothing either of them can do to change the facts so why not accept things as they are and make some type of effort to be happy in this new life? By all accounts, Edix was a great owner!

And yet, the little one still fought him every step of the way. Even now, having just saved it from a fate of having its tiny organs sliced while it was wide awake, it made it known it did not want to be near him anymore. It might have been clinging to him the entire walk back to the bedroom, but it must have remembered it was supposed to be oblivious to the notion of genuine love and safety because now it started to stutter out little squeaks on top of struggling. Normally, Edix adored any and all of the sounds it made, especially when it was directly trying to talk to him which only served to give him the mental image of a pup mindlessly babbling before they managed their first few words. This time, however, it only worsened his irritation.

“Stop.” He ordered, which the human somewhat complied with, though it probably had more to do with his harsher tone and the fact that he was already lowering his hand towards the bed to set it down. As soon as it was free of his hold, it scrambled back, looking at him with those wide brown eyes that were full of so much fear it made him sick. Why did it have to be so afraid of him? What could he have possibly done that even now, almost a cycle later, it was still overtly wary of his intentions. All he ever did was care for it. Feed it, pet it, cuddle it, protect it, and still nothing was good enough!

With a tired sigh, he rubbed his hand down his face and resisted the urge to tug at his hair. “I just don’t understand,” he pleaded, begging some cosmic being out there to suddenly grant the little one the power to understand what he was saying, “what can I possibly do to prove to you that I’m not going to hurt you? I’m trying to keep you alive and it’s like...I don’t know, you resent me for that or something!”

The sweet thing looked more confused at his words than anything, but he could tell his body language and voice were making it uneasy. The human was used to soft words and purrs and slow movements, rarely any agitation in his being. After a beat of silence marked by an intense stare down, Edix gave up on hoping the earthling would miraculously explain itself and open up to sharing its thoughts on the matter. He reached for it and it instinctively back up, flinching when a growl rumbled in his throat in response.

“Stop running,” it was a fruitless endeavor, but like hell if he wouldn’t stop trying. That was how new pups learned how to understand a language anyways, wasn’t it? To repeat certain words over and over until they got the idea? Maybe that’s all he needed to do here, maybe by now it already knew the Venandi words for no, stop, be good, and so on. He reached for it again and it did the same thing as last time, always sure to stay just out of the most convenient reach. Not that it mattered how much it inched away seeing how it was trapped on the bed with Edix directly in front of it, but it was the principal of the matter.

And it was then that something inside him snapped. Something primal as a result of dealing with an unruly pup far too long for his nerves to handle at this moment. He wasn’t even aware of his actions, belatedly realizing how he pounced on the bed in a flash, the human scrambling to get away but only having enough time to turn around before being roughly pinned on its stomach against the mattress. His teeth were bared and pressed tightly against its back, fangs scraping against the layers of its clothes to no doubt bruise the tender flesh underneath, though thankfully they didn’t break the skin. A loud growl reverberated though its entire body, shaking it to its core.

“Enough.” He hissed against its back, keeping his teeth pressed into its skinny frame for a moment longer before pulling away. The second he did, his glare softened, all the anger he felt gone in an instant as soon as he saw the sight underneath him.

The poor thing was absolutely petrified.

It was probably the worst it’s ever been scared, arguably. Not even the first time they met, when it had so gracefully tumbled down that hill and landed face first in front of him, compared to the level of fear that radiated off it. A split-second thought had Edix wondering if he had legitimately scared it to death. Soon enough, though, he was able to pick up the minute tremors that shook through it, almost like an aftershock of the warning that it felt more than heard. It was pale, baby face devoid of color not unlike that time before when it had been sick with fever. But its eyes...those sweet little doe eyes he loved so much were wide and wet with a sheen of tears that refused to fall, locked in a blank stare straight ahead towards the wall and refusing to look at him.

A small, choked hiccup made its body twitch every couple of breaths, but it refused to open its mouth to allow any of these sniffles to turn into cries. Shit, it refused to move at all, too terrified of Edix’s threat display that if it did anything he didn’t like there would be dire consequences to pay. He supposed it worked exactly as intended, in that case. It was still, it was quiet, it was technically obeying him after he just forced it to behave via alternative punishment. That didn’t change the fact that he felt absolutely, terribly, extremely awful about what he just did.

It was just a pup, as he always said, regardless of what Ylva would tell him about human adolescence and such. It didn’t know any better, it had never been raised in these situations before and needed much longer than a measly cycle to unlearn all of its prey behaviors it needed to survive on its home planet. Besides, it wasn’t that it didn’t fully know that it was perfectly safe with Edix, it was smart enough to know he was at the very least the safest option when presented with any other Venandi. Edix had been upset, and it knew he was upset, so of course it would want to avoid a potentially hostile predator before-

--before it snatched the little one in its teeth.

Fuck, fuck, he was an idiot. Maybe he wasn’t as cut out for this as he thought, not like Ylva who was the very essence of motherhood. No. Now wasn’t the time for self doubts and pity, not when the human was in such a state. Slowly, hands cupped around its shaking form, mindful to make sure his fingers were in its view so it wouldn’t be any more startled when he lifted it up, not that he was completely sure it was actually seeing anything in front of it. The little one hardly reacted to the movement, laying limp when he pressed it against his chest and moved to sit up against the headboard of the bed in a similar fashion to what he had done the first night the poor thing was on the ship.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s okay,” he whispered to it, rubbing his thumb along the curve of its back just how it liked whenever it dozed, “you’re okay, we’re fine, it’s okay to cry. I’m sorry I scared you, I’m so sorry.”

Normally in these types of instances, he’d be purring and shushing the little sweetheart until he was able to get it down for a nap, but he had little confidence that any other types of chest vibrations would have its usual effect of making the human drowsy currently. When it finally started blinking again, the tears that had welled up ran freely down its cheeks, quickly biting down on its wobbling lip to prevent any sobs from escaping and get it in trouble for misbehaving. He softly clicked his tongue at it and cooed, anything to put it at ease with a softer demeanor. “I know, honey, I know. I won’t ever do that again, I promise."

Well, if nothing else, at least the little one’s apprehension of him wasn’t unfounded anymore, much to his dismay.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Thoughts on this weeks episode? And gsr on a whole - cos I’m freaking out over that last scene…I’ll never go away, if you need something to hold onto hold onto me?!?

hi, anon!

so i've got some meta on the hug scene specifically here, here, and here, if you're interested.

otherwise, my thoughts on the gsr in the episode are:

overall, i think this episode was the best one for them yet. for as much as i enjoyed the bickering last week, it was even more satisfying to see them united, working as a team, and flirting at every opportunity.

the thing that really strikes me watching their interactions is that it's obvious that they always wanted to be this affectionate with each other before—that every time they bit back smiles or gave each other long looks during the early seasons of the original series, there were unspoken words of adoration playing through their minds. we already knew that such was the case in theory, of course, but to see them finally be at liberty to say those things aloud and be straightforward about their intentions now just makes that fact all the more explicit. everything that used to be subtext is now main text. what once existed solely between the lines has now been filled in. especially in the scene with the id badges, the message couldn't be louder or clearer: they loved each other back then, just like they love each other now. it's just that now they don't have to check themselves. they can be as transparent with their love as they like. it's so gratifying to see them enjoying that freedom and to be so comfortable doing it. they so obviously adore each other, and they waste no opportunities to express how much they do.

like @bartramcat talks about in this post, i'm also very pleased that they are both still recognizably themselves. they have a strong shared identity as a couple, but they also are still both individuals, as well. though we now get to see a side to grissom where he serenades his wife with joni mitchell and is able to be openly vulnerable when he has a problem, which is new, there is also still so much with him that's familiar, from him quoting shakespeare to speaking latin to cautioning restraint as they pursue new leads. ditto for sara; as jorja has mentioned in a couple of recent interviews, she's softer and chiller now than she's ever been—have we ever seen that girl smile so much?—but she's also still passionate and relentless and jumps into whatever she's doing with both feet. billy and jorja have done such a beautiful job bringing back everything that is already established with these characters while also adding on this additional layer of polish. these are absolutely the grissom and sara that we love, just plus six years of happiness. it all feels very real.

favorite scenes for me were probably grissom singing, the id badges, and, of course, the hug.

the posts i linked above cover both the landsickness storyline and the final scene in more detail, but, suffice it to say, i'm very happy with how that development is being handled so far. grissom is communicating. sara is supporting him. they're going to figure this problem out together. it's a narrative conflict, sure, but it's one that is external to their relationship and that they're facing as a team, which is exactly what we've wanted to see with them for years. not sure how the writers are planning to resolve this arc yet, of course, but so far, they're making the right moves, so i'm willing to trust them with it.

as for what's coming next week—i mean aside from the kiss and the bathrobe scene—it looks like the grissoms will be coming under scrutiny themselves. it'll be interesting to see what iab digs up on them and how much "being in the hot seat" will interfere with their secret investigation into the hodges case.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[daresplaining]

[ID: Excerpt from Zdarsky’s Daredevil run. Daredevil, backlit and in silhouette, opens Foggy’s office door. Kirsten McDuffie is there.]

Matt (caption): “What... oh no... this can’t be happening. Foggy wouldn’t. He wouldn’t dare--”

Kirsten: “There he is... Was worried you weren’t going to show up. Especially now that the legal dream team is fully assembled.”

[ID: In the office are Kirsten, Foggy, and Mike Murdock wearing sunglasses and a brown suit and tie, and holding a white cane. Kirsten motions to Mike, who is sitting in a chair next to Foggy’s desk.]

Kirsten: “Matt Murdock’s onboard.”

Mike: “Hell yeah.”

Daredevil vol. 6 #23 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Marcio Menyz

CAN I GET A HELL YEAH?

(I’m sorry, I'm just very excited.)

    Mike has officially re-entered the main series, fresh from his reality rewrite in the Volume 6 Annual! And let me just say: the guy knows how to make an entrance, because I freaked out when I hit that last panel.

    Let’s talk about what exactly is going on here, because it is wild, as the best Mike Murdock stories ought to be. Matt, as Daredevil, has turned himself in for the murder he accidentally committed in the first issue of the run, and is due to stand trial. Foggy is, of course, defending him, and he has called in Kirsten McDuffie (former A.D.A., Matt’s ex-law partner/girlfriend from Volume 3 and 4-- I assume everyone knows who Kirsten is) to help. Thanks to the Purple Children’s mindwipe in Soule’s run, Kirsten-- along with 99.99% of the rest of the world-- no longer knows that Matt is Daredevil. And so when, in this issue, Kirsten asks Foggy a very reasonable question-- “Where the heck is Matt?”-- Foggy is forced to make a choice. He could disregard Matt’s wishes and restore Kirsten’s former memories by telling her that Matt is Daredevil, which is something he has wanted to do since the beginning and is, in fact, something he’s done before (while drunk, in Volume 3 #19). Or he could completely screw with Matt, lie to Kirsten, and potentially (if he takes this far enough) commit massive legal fraud and do... this. 

    Personally, I think he made the right choice. (And clearly, he does too. Look at that grin.)

    First and foremost, Mike’s timely (and, shall I say, stylish) slide into the main plot means that we’re now going to see the impact of his reality re-write in action, which is really exciting! Who is Real Boy Mike in a world in which he has always existed? What is his relationship with Matt at the moment? Is Kirsten aware that he exists? Does Foggy remember that Mike kidnapped him at gunpoint? And how did Foggy even convince Mike to do this? What did he tell him?! Like Kirsten, Mike doesn’t know that Matt is Daredevil, and so while I can absolutely imagine Mike agreeing to pretend to be Matt just for the sheer chaotic hell of it, he must also be wondering what’s going on and where his brother is.

[ID: Another panel from Zdarsky’s run. Mike is standing in a boxing ring, gripping the ropes, and his face is in shadow. Daredevil is standing in the ring behind him.]

Mike: “You didn’t even hire my brother to rep you, eh? What’s up with that? I thought you were close.”

Matt: “Mike. Whatever you’re up to-- don’t.”

Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Rachelle Rosenberg, et al.

    While we know Mike has pretended to be Matt before (the Annual implied he did it pretty regularly while pulling heists with the Hood), this is different. Is he really going to be able to 1. pretend to be Matt and 2. pretend to be a lawyer in front of Kirsten? Is he going to do it in court? Kirsten and Matt have a long and emotional history, even taking the mindwipe into account. Is Mike aware of that? And-- again-- is Foggy seriously planning to bring Mike into court as Matt? (I really hope so.) I can only imagine this turning into an absolute soap opera, and I can’t freakin’ wait. It is highly reminiscent of the “Playing to the Camera” arc, in which Matt (against Foggy’s very sound ethical advice) managed to sue himself by convincing Peter Parker to appear in court as Daredevil. I respect that this run’s serious tone may prevent it from becoming an outright comedy of errors the way “Playing to the Camera” was, but regardless of whether this ends up being funny or tragic, it’s going to be very, very entertaining-- because with a setup like this, how can it not?

    Finally, of course, I am geeking out about the way it parallels the original Mike Murdock Saga. Matt walking into that room and finding his twin brother dressed up as him feels like a direct callback to Foggy and Karen walking into the office and encountering “Mike” in Daredevil volume 1 #25. We have seen Matt masquerading around pretending to be his twin, and now we’re going to get the reverse: Mike’s best(?) impression of his nerdy brother. This has to be an intentional mirroring, and I am freaking out about it. Next month can’t get here fast enough.   

[traincat]

I’ve read Waid and Hickman’s FF runs and am currently reading Zdarsky’s 2 in One. I’m planning on eventually reading the Lee/Kirby run. Can I ask, what other runs would you recommend? Is Claremont’s good? Sorry for bothering.

I LOVE Waid and Hickman’s Fantastic Four runs, and Zdarsky’s Marvel Two-In-One was excellent to the point where one of my lingering disappointments is that Marvel brought the Fantastic Four back in a way that prematurely cut off Zdarksy’s 2n1. I know I said I wanted them back but wow did we all get monkey’s paw’d on that one. Zdarsky did really excellent stuff with both Ben and Johnny and the multiverse hopping was honestly fun and interesting. Lee/Kirby is also, in my opinion, just a really terrific run -- it lays the groundwork for not only the future of the Fantastic Four but a lot of big concepts for the Marvel Universe in general, and I think it holds up really well by modern day storytelling standards. Lee’s sense of humor works well with the retrofuturistic vibe and Kirby’s art is always wonderful. In particular I think it’s interesting to look back on The Galactus Trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50) as the granddaddy of all event comics, for better or worse. 

Claremont -- okay, I love Claremont’s run, let me start off by saying that. Claremont’s run follows on what is in my opinion one of the worst periods of Fantastic Four canon, and I mean bad to the point where the literal canon at that point was that to get things back on track the Fantastic Four had to be put in a bubble universe. Claremont’s run kicks in one or two issues after their return to the main Marvel universe and it’s so fun. I think Fantastic Four is one of those series that kind of flourishes in adversity and Claremont’s run starts off with the Fantastic Four trying to regain their footing in a world that had assumed them dead, their Baxter Building gone, living in a warehouse property. Claremont, in my opinion, also has one of the best if not the best handle on characterization for a lot of key Fantastic Four figures, including Johnny, Reed, and Sue. His Ben is also very good, but I think Ben in particular tends to be an easier sell for a lot of comic book writers -- the outcast, the gruff man, the comic relief. He’s easier to identify with than Reed, the Smartest Man on Earth, or Johnny, defined by his youth and beauty and queercoded since the ‘60s, or Sue, by sheer factor of being a woman. So I think a lot of writers identify with Ben first and foremost and put the most love and care into his depiction, whereas the others are a little easier for them to leave by the wayside. Which isn’t a bad thing -- I love that one of the most beloved comic book characters is also one of Marvel’s few canonically Jewish characters, but there is a wealth of truly excellent Ben canon in comparison to the other three. Especially with Johnny, there’s no one else who has written for Fantastic Four who has put nearly as much thought and detail into Johnny’s relationship with his powers, both the positive and the negative, as Claremont has, even reworking the origin story from Lee and Kirby’s joyous scene of Johnny flaming on for the first time into a deeply traumatizing incident -- being sixteen and traumatized and bursting into uncontrollable flames. 

(Fantastic Four v3 #11) There’s also a lot of women in Claremont’s run! A valid criticism of Fantastic Four canon is that by its initial core team makeup it tends to be lacking in female characters compared to some other big Marvel staples, but Claremont brings in a ton, from Reed’s college friend and fellow genius Alyssa Moy (who has been done dirty by pretty much every other writer who’s ever touched her, including Waid and Hickman) to multiversal bounty hunter Bounty to the most platonic of Johnny’s gal pals Caledonia to Valeria Von Doom, a “time dancing” teenage incarnation of the baby Sue lost back in Byrne’s run, who sets up baby Val’s eventual return. Claremont is also king of Reed vs Doom setups -- if you haven’t read his Fantastic Four vs X-Men miniseries, I highly recommend it, and he brings a lot of the two sides of the same coin energy from that into his Fantastic Four run. 

The downside of Claremont’s run is that the plot is always there and always running and I could not explain half of it if you paid me. Things certainly happen! Like all the time! For seemingly no apparent reason! Stuff gets set up and then it’s not resolved and now we are in Latveria! I don’t think this is necessarily all that detrimental -- the run is still massively fun and the characterization is always fresh and interesting. It’s just that sometimes you have no idea what’s going on and you have to roll with it. And then sometimes you do know what’s going on but in the way where you know Claremont was just writing it because it’s his kink. Which is like, whatever. As authorial ids go, you can pretty consistently do worse than Claremont’s, I’ll give him that. So I do recommend on it the whole, as long as you’re not going into expecting the kind of plots either Hickman or Waid brought the book. Claremont’s is kind of like “stuff happens and it’s either weird or fun so just don’t pay too much attention to it.” 

Aside from Claremont, I feel like I generally like far more Fantastic Four runs than I dislike -- but also I don’t hate Millar’s run, which is honestly bad, so it’s possible I’m just very forgiving with the Fantastic Four. I really like Robinson’s run, which is the last run before the Great Fantastic Four Drought of 2015-2018. It’s short, self-contained, and devoted entirely to one story, so it’s pretty tightly written, with good characterization and some very shiny art by Leonard Kirk. Straczynski’s run is decent enough for the fact that it intersects with Civil War -- I think he does his best to get into the heads of the characters re: their actions in Civil War -- and it leads directly into Dwayne McDuffie’s run, another brief one where Black Panther and Storm take over for Reed and Sue. Very fun. Marvel Knights 4 is also a fairly recent run that’s got some strong moments in it, although I feel it’s a little inconsistent in its handling of the characters. It’s still fun, though. For an older, longer run, I like Simsonson’s -- the art is very dynamic, even if the storyline kind of gets too involved with itself. 

(FF #337)

I recommend Byrne’s run with the caveat that there’s plenty to dislike about it and plenty of reasons to avoid it, not the least of it being Byrne himself as a creator and a person. It’s heavily sexist in how it deals with Sue, it retcons a huge age gap into Sue and Reed’s relationship, and Byrne’s early departure sets up my all time least favorite Fantastic Four story. (Though that one is Roger Stern and later Tom DeFalco’s fault.) It is historic as Fantastic Four runs go, though, and there’s a lot in later runs that’s built over it or references it or borrows from it. So it’s a rec with a lot of caveats and I also understand why people might give it a skip -- I think it’s more important for an understanding of the greater body of Fantastic Four canon and the impact it had than for the actual run itself. I do think Byrne has some very interesting subtext with Johnny, although it never come to fruition, and while his Sue falls victim to a lot of sexism, I really like what he does with the character of Frankie Raye, who like poor Alyssa Moy I don’t think has ever gotten really good treatment ever since.

I have mixed feelings on both Millar and Fraction’s runs, not in the least because I think they end very similarly -- and that Millar did it better, which doesn’t say great things. Millar’s run is kind of like a trashy popcorn flick version of Fantastic Four; it’s not actually good, but I can’t say I don’t like the terrible eldritch monster in Scotland Christmas arc (Fantastic Four #564-565) and I’m sort of into future Sue. Fraction, on the other hand, takes a space road trip and makes it boring, which is the greatest Fantastic Four sin of all. He’s one of the rare writers who I think actually writes a bad Ben Grimm -- not the least because his run goes out of its way to try and label it Ben’s own fault that he was transformed into a monster. I do really like his FF (just the initials) though. 

The only Fantastic Four runs I can say I really truly dislike are Tom DeFalco’s and Dan Slott’s, which sort of unfortunate because DeFalco’s is both long influential (I have no idea why because it’s honestly terrible like in terms of storytelling) and because Slott’s is happening right now. DeFalco comes onto the book on Fantastic Four #356 and stays on until Fantastic Four #416, at which point Marvel hit a literal retcon button to get out of the mess he’d made. (This leads into Fantastic Four v2, which is largely skippable -- it’s basically a mid-90s retelling of a bunch of early Fantastic Four stories that leads back into the FF heading back to the main universe.) DeFalco’s responsible for the Skrull retcon in the JohnnyAlicia marriage and for dragging that out for over 50 issues, the entirety of which feel like he was writing without a plan or outline or literally anything, and I have never felt like a comic book was attempting to gaslight me through its own incompetence or refusal to commit to things it set up itself as badly as I do with DeFalco’s run. (I like other non-Fantastic Four Tom DeFalco runs. I just hate this one.) Dan Slott’s run is just 25 issues and counting of badly written emotionless unfunny pages blandly stapled together and I so badly want Marvel to kick him off the book for its own good.

[bigskydreaming]

What if dick is de aged just like you said some time ago (back to when he left the manor and he thought anyone would be robin anymore, in robin year one) and Boone find him just like the other guy who id remember his name did. BUT Boone knows Dick, He knows how to control him, and he cares about Dick, so he is in the assasins league, and he has dick... Imagine the batfam fighting back, without even know Dick is a kid again

Its an interesting idea. I’m assuming you’re referring to the original Shrike when you say ‘just like the other guy’ in R: YO. If he was around in the vicinity or keeping tabs on Dick when Dick was de-aged to his YO age, Boone certainly would recognize Dick, of course, I agree - and I could definitely see the scenario you’re describing happening. 

It fits his character, and while I don’t know I’d use the term ‘control him’ as being the right fit, lol, mostly because I think many have tried to control Dick and yet it always takes actual brainwashing in order to succeed, Boone would have the advantage of knowing Dick and his mindset from that time and thus how to at least influence him.

One of the things that makes R:YO so compelling to me and why I return to it so often is because its such a fascinating ‘sweet spot’ in terms of where Dick is character wise at the time. Like, he’s only so distraught and runs away because of how much he’s grown to care for Bruce and rely on him and his opinion of him in just the couple of years since his parents died….but at the same time, it is still only a couple of years since his parents died and despite working well with Bruce by the time that story starts, I think he’s still very wary and suspicious of people in general. Still bruised by his experiences and upheaval in the wake of his parents’ death…..and another thing that’s interesting to me about that story is it takes place before Dick’s really even had a chance to form other attachments within the hero community. 

As far as I can tell, it was set before he ever met or became friends with Roy, Wally and the other original Titans, and he didn’t even meet Babs until the literal last page of that story arc……so I just mean, he’s still at that time a fair ways away from having recovered enough to become the lynchpin of the hero community he’s often cited as being - trusted and trusting of so many others in turn.

So that makes this scenario interesting to me in the sense that like….time travel or de-aging or in some other way regressing Dick to this specific place and time in his life would inevitably make him a lot more vulnerable to a lot of his enemies, or Bruce’s or villains in general….but it wouldn’t IMO inherently make him more….malleable, or easily manipulated by any of the many, many villains who have tried to turn him to their side in the past. The core root of the conflict between Dick and Boone was always that Boone saw the original Shrike’s interest in them (well, in Boone specifically) as proof that he cared about him….whereas Dick never had any such illusions about Shrike and was always cynical in regard to him and his intentions for them. He stayed at the Vengeance Academy not because he felt he was wanted or respected there, the way Boone did, but simply because Dick felt he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Which I see as likely to play out similarly should most villains happen across a de-aged Dick Grayson and think it was the perfect opportunity to get their hooks into him. He was emotionally wounded, distrusting and cynical at that point in time - even without knowing who say, Slade or Cobb or any of the Court or various other villains were….he’d be wary and resistant to trusting them, or trusting that they had his best interests at heart - because he’d heard that a lot, from a lot of people, by that point, and only Bruce had ever seemed to mean it….and, at this present time, he felt even Bruce had shown that he couldn’t actually be trusted in that regard either….so even with master manipulators who knew his future self well, like Slade….this younger Dick would be waiting for the other shoe to drop, perhaps playing along but far from actually being sold on whatever lies they were telling him.

The part of this ask that really has my wheels spinning, actually, isn’t just Boone himself, but rather all the other villains who might see this de-aged Dick as an opportunity…and totally fuck it up….because I talk a lot about how most of his friends and family members would be thrown by meeting a Dick Grayson of this time, given that their impressions of him based on who he became would not really match up too well with him back then…..but one thing I’ve never really extended that to, is how many villains could be similarly thrown and shoot themselves in the foot by believing that they know his future self well….but that doesn’t mean they know THIS boy, at this particular time. This is before Dick ever even knew the other Titans, which means its yeeeeeeeears before Slade had the opportunity to observe him in person and form his own views of him and his strengths and weaknesses, same with many other villains….

So now I’m picturing various other villains trying to play this de-aged version of Dick Grayson and ending up played by him instead….because all their plans hinge on him being as trusting and optimistic and committed to believing the best of even strangers….that they view his older self as being. Not realizing how much he’s changed between then and now.

Actually, a really interesting thought that just struck me is other than Boone himself, having been friends with Dick at this time, the one and only other antagonist I could see truly having enough knowledge of Dick to take full advantage of his de-aging here, and capitalize on knowing his true state of mind and personality of the time…..is Talia. Given that Talia was the direct contact for the original Shrike, when he was training his students to vet them as potential recruits for the League….so even though Robin: Year One was literally years before Dick and Talia ever interacted in person, or before Dick knew anything about her…..Talia already knew a lot about Dick, just from whatever Shrike told her about his student “Freddy Lloyd” during Dick’s time at VA. Even if it wasn’t until after Shrike’s death and Dick’s return to Bruce that even she connected that Freddy and Bruce’s ward Dick Grayson were one and the same.

LOL sorry to go off on a tangent from your actual ask, was just exploring where that train of thought took me. But yeah, I could see what you’re describing, especially if Dick was de-aged specifically to a time right smack in the middle of his time at VA, so that Boone would have some way of getting Dick to believe that he was the kid Dick knew from that place….but without Dick being aware yet of how things had ended between them or at the Academy as a whole. Because even back then, as much as Dick and Boone were ‘friend-ish’ rivals, depending on your read of things, I wouldn’t actually describe them as like….I don’t think Dick ever actually fully trusted Boone, or vice versa, like, they both had a ‘its a dog eat dog world, and we’re both looking out for number one’ view of things and each other at the time. 

So they could get along, and I think there was enough commonality that I use this as the basis for my headcanons about them later in life, where looking back on it, both of them have potential for more….’fondness’ for each other, or at least regrets, because they’ve both experienced enough since then to know how rare it is for anyone to even be able to understand each other at least as much as I think they could……so the key thing to me about Dick and Boone, is most of their potential to me is in them coming to view each other as missed opportunities - both for someone who was really ‘like them/how they’d been then’ to grow into an actual ally or brother-in-arms….and more in Dick’s case, as viewing the other as someone they could have persuaded down a different path than they ultimately ended up on.

Which to me suggests that Boone would have more of a chance of manipulating a de-aged Dick here than most anyone else….but it still wouldn’t be a given, because most of the leeway and emotions I headcanon Dick having towards Boone as an adult are more of an after-the-fact thing…born of nostalgia and regret, rather than because at the time, as kids, Dick fully trusted Boone and vice versa. But again…if Boone played it right, by virtue of being the only one of them who actually knows in this scenario how that all ultimately played out….he could feasibly ‘rewrite history’ when catching Dick up to speed on what their lives had been like since then, and plausibly feed Dick an alternative take on how things ended between them (or didn’t).

Because the other thing here is that I mean, obviously so much of anything to do with Dick and Boone is just headcanoning your ass off, as I’m wont to do, lol, given that Boone is hardly used in canon - but if you’re basing it enough on canon as I like to do….another key thing is that Boone DOESN’T associate with the League of Shadows as an adult….he goes solo before he and Dick ever meet up again in Bludhaven, and is a lone operative/mercenary-for-hire. For some reason or another, even though he went with Talia for training with the League as a kid, by adulthood he’d broken away from them himself, even if we never got the full story on when or how or why. Sooooo….my take on this scenario wouldn’t be Boone manipulating Dick in order to get him on the side of the League….if that were the goal, I would use Talia instead. Boone, IMO, would be more likely to try and convince Dick that its just them against the world, ‘misunderstood’ by both Batman and his later allies and family, as well as by the League and various supervillains. Smack in the middle, only looking out for themselves and each other.

And either way, yeah, Bruce and the rest of the family would have their work cut out for them getting Dick back, because without any memory of Bruce ever coming for him back then and repairing the bond between them, to Dick, all these many successors - many of them having worn the Robin mantle themselves - would give a LOT of credence to whatever Boone told Dick, and make it very easy to spin as ‘proof that Bruce moved on/didn’t care about you/replaced you.’

Thanks for the ask, there’s a lot of food for thought here and a ton of different ways this could be taken and played out! Very interesting to contemplate.

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Dynamic Duo [Arc Beginning]

[Different Unnamed City, 10:43pm. It’s late, but the streets are still well lit and busy of people]

...

*Tsurugi is walking down the busy street when someone speaks through his earpiece.

???: Tsurugi. Status.

Almost there...I’m near the morning crepe stand...Of course, it’s shut, since it’s past 10, but...

In fact, I’m heading your way right now. If you look left, you might see me...

???: Yeah, I see you...

And you see the other guy?

???: Yeah...

...

???: He doesn’t have a clue...You’re pretty good at this...

Oh yeah. I’m so good I honestly scare myself...

???: Well, I wouldn’t go that far...

That was a joke. This ain’t my first rodeo...

???: It’s weird to hear you with a sense of humor...

To change the topic though, I have to say, this is like some weird TV show...

???: How do you mean?

I mean...I’m a police officer, and I’m tailing a lawyer. Seems a little weird to me, for one man with a law-abiding occupation stalking another...

???: Well, Pierce is a special case...As you know.

Yes, I know quite well.

???: Alright, you’re about to pass me...Be careful now...

*Tsurugi passes by his accomplice and slightly turns to her and nods. She nods back before moving away from the wall she was hiding her face from.

Well...I suppose that’s my queue...

*Rei lets a few minutes pass before she decides to make her move.

Are you still on him?

Tsurugi: Yeah. He’s heading into an alley in Green Street. There aren’t a lot of people around, so I need to be careful.

Ok, I’m on my way.

Tsurugi: Rei, hurry up. I think he might be catching onto me...

Already? I thought this wasn’t your first rodeo?

Tsurugi: It’s my first rodeo in a while! Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to tail someone secretly while your in a freaking wheelchair!

Right...right...

Tsurugi: Just hurry up! If we lose him, that’s on you!

What!? I’m not the one in charge of a whole organisation of people! That’s just not fair!

Tch...Thought you’d never catch up.

I’m sorry ok...?

*Rei and Tsurugi are within the same vicinity, but are talking over comms to not seem suspicious to Pierce. When she arrives, Rei leans up against a lamp and pretends to check her phone as she waits for the lawyer to pass her.

Where’s he going now?

Looks like the Master District.

The Master District? Come on, that place is like a maze...

That’s probably why he’s going there...?

Yeah, probably. In that case, I’ll keep tailing him. You get the dove ready...

We’re still calling it that?

Yamato called it that in his blueprints, so the name sticks I guess...

*Sigh* Yeah, yeah...

[In a dead end alleyway of the Master District]

So...you got the cash?

Yes, I have the money. Take it.

You sound super desperate for some reason...still though...can’t say I ever thought a prosecutor would be doing this kinda stuff...

You know that that stupid rookie defense lawyer dragged my name through the mud! I’ve got nothing to lose at this point...

Except for that money, that you’re betting.

I’m going to win it big! And when I do, I’ll hire investigators to sweep this situation under the rug!

Midori Yamaguchi will pay for what she’s done...

I’m afraid you’ll find Ms Yamaguchi a bit untouchable Mr Pierce.

Huh!?

Good evening gentlemen?

You know, I’ve heard the betters in this city are pretty hard-earned guys. You win 20% more, you lose 20% less. Not bad...

Unfortunately, we DO have gambling laws in this country, you know that?

...

*As Rei says this, the betting man begins to leave the alley.

Hey, where are you going? Don’t you need the money?

*Despite saying this, Rei makes no attempt to stop the man, and he’s soon completely out of sight.

What is this!? Who are you?

Let me put it simply for you sir...You’ve got some money that doesn’t belong to you, and you were just about to spend...sorry...LOSE that money on illegal gambling.

So they hired a random nerd girl to pursue me? Proud of ourselves, are we?

Well, the nerd comment wasn’t too far off...I used to be a teacher, you know?

*Rei shows Pierce her ID badge.

Rei Mekaru...Kisaragi Foundation...?

Wait! That symbol! That was-

Yes, it’s the same symbol on Ms Yamaguchi’s ID. You’d be surprised to know she’s one of our own.

The people who you owe couldn’t track you. You kind of went off the map after your big loss...So they sought us out...

Be that as it may, I don’t have the money on me...

We both know that’s not true...

Ah!

*Rei points up above her, and Pierce recoils in shock as he sees a little white drone, being piloted by Tsurugi, who is lying in wait nearby.

You can’t get out of this easily. Just surrender the money, and I won’t have to take things any further from there.

Tch...fine, yes I have the money...

But as soon as I win big at the next horse race, I’ll pay it all back!

Are you being serious right now? Look here sir I-

SIKE!

*Pierce suddenly whips a lit flare from behind his back and throws it at Rei’s face!

WAH!

*She dodges, but she’s stunned enough to allow Pierce to make a run for it!

Are you fucking joking!?

Tsurugi: Rei!? What’s going on!

He’s making a run for it! He attacked me with a flare! Who the hell just carries around a flare!?

Damn it! Get back here!

Eat! Shit!

AHAA!

*Pierce tries to make a run out of the alley, but Tsurugi is lying in wait for him, and trips him up. He then grabs his body and drags him back into the alley where they were originally.

Hah...thanks...

No problem...

Seriously...You need to learn when to quit it...

Screw you...I have it all figured out! I’ll get the damn money!

*Pierce recovers and takes a swing at Rei. However, before he hit her, Tsurugi grabs his wrist.

Sorry...but you can’t be doing that...

*With an agitated expression, Tsurugi twists Pierce’s wrist and breaks it!

AAAAAHH!

Y-You Bastard! What the hell!? I’ll sue you for this!

You’ll sue!?

Gahah!

*Tsurugi kicks Pierce in the face and after knocking him down, proceeds to stomp on his body several times.

That isn’t how this works! You have no power in court anymore after what you’ve done! Because of you, the court systems in a state! I wouldn’t be surprised OR against it if they forged evidence to get you behind bars! It’s what you deserve, you selfish, useless prick!

*The more Tsurugi attacks, the less merciful he becomes. Rei, however, does not step in.

I...I’ll call...the police...! I’ll call the police on you!

*Instead of hitting him again, Tsurugi kneels down to Pierce’s bloody face and shows him his own ID card.

Try saying that again...

Wh-what!? Y-You’re...a police officer?

Tsurugi Kinjo. I’m not just any old police officer. I was accepted into Hope’s Peak as the Ultimate Police.

Fair warning. Calling the police on me is a bad idea...

You didn’t seriously plan on leaving him in an alley with a broken nose and god knows what else, were you?

No, I’ve called the local force to take him in. There are a few other charges to his name that need to be cleared up, so they have a right to take him in...

Right...though I have to say...

When I first found out they’d made braces for your legs that would let you walk again, I never expected you to use them like this...

Life is strange like that...

Anyway...Now that that’s over...You’re aware of what’s happening this week, right?

Yes...you’re going to investigate that place, right?

Something isn’t right about it. And I’m going to find out...

[famous-aces]

Zenobia of Palmyra

Who: Septimia Zenobia Augusta (born Septimia Btzby [Bat-Zabbai], changed it to Septimia Zenobia, the name I gave as her "full name" is the name she chose as her regnal name. The name "Zenobia" basically means "child of Zeus" so just by meeting her she made her divine origins and importance clear.)

What: Empress

Where: Palmyrene (modern day Syria, potentially Arabic, Aramean, or Jewish. Active throughout the Middle East and Turkey)

When: c. 240 CE - c. 274 CE

[Image Description: coins from Emesa (now Ḥimṣ, Syria) from 272 CE. The front of the coin shows shows a portrait of Zenobia from the shoulders-up, surrounded by Greek letters.  She has a stern sharp profile with a long large nose and round chin. She has extremely curly hair that seems to be braided in the back. She is wearing a diadem. On the left (the back of the coin) it shows a full body portrait of the goddess Juno is holding a scepter.  She has her peacock and a star beside her There are more Greek letters around her. End ID] 

The coolest conqueror you have never heard of.  The asexual Alexander the Great. Warrior queen. Rebel against Rome.  Badass. In under two years Zenobia swept through the Roman East, took over, and set up her high culture court, a place where diversity and intellectualism were highly valued.

Zenobia came onto the historical stage as queen consort to the Ras Odaenathus. But then he was until assassinated, at which point his throne passed to their son, Vaballathus. Vaballathus was too young for the crown so Zenobia was appointed regent. And she pretty much took over. She had big plans for the Palmyrene Empire.

This is going to be a longish bio, like with Bessie Coleman and Joan of Arc I have been totally taken in by Zenobia's story. And I had never heard of her before a follower recommended looking into her! (Thank you whoever you were!  I didn't write down your name I am so sorry!) 

Zenobia's origins are extremely mysterious and there are a bunch of different versions of her story. She has fascinated people since her lifetime. Many different cultures, historians, and writers have given her bio/life their own unique cultural quirks. Plus there's the whole being an enemy of Rome thing, that never ends well for your legacy. I am going to try to stick to the facts rather than the legend, either the one attributed to her or the one she concocted for herself (she was very good at propaganda, too).

She has been linked to Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba, but probably wasn't related to either of them.  She was the one who claimed to be descended from the Ptolemaic dynasty, specifically Cleopatra, of course. But odds are not even she actually believed it. The claim was a political maneuver to make her Egypian takeover look legitimate, she was a ruler coming home rather than an invader. Her actual ethnicity/ancestry is unknown. All of the ethnicities I mentioned -- Jewish, Arabic, Aramean -- have all been floated by various scholars over the centuries.

We don't even know what she looked like, really. The images that remain are idealized portraiture from her own coins. No statues or portraits have survived, potentially destroyed by the Romans. Everything else has been made long after the fact. She has been adopted as a patriotic symbol of Syria and was used as a symbol of Syrian and Arabic pride, she has been made both valiant hero and tragic damsel in the West, some say she was an idol of Catherine the Great, thanks to Egyptian magazines in the early 20th century she has become the quintessential female ruler. Some describe her as unbelievably beautiful, others describe her as a mannish tomboy. She is sometimes described as stereotypically emperor than empress in behavior, which really just means she was a very good ruler because women were supposed to be too frivolous and stupid for the crown.

[Image Description: a S£500 note from 1998. It has a green creasant on one side and a profile portrait of Zenobia on the other. She is shown with a long straight nose, curly hair pinned up, a square chin, wearing a diadem and a robe. There is a faded drawing of ruins in the middle. The bill is mostly in a green pallet. End ID]

But, what follows is the most likely story.

She was a well educated polyglot, highly intellectual, enjoyed hunting, and was probably of some noble origin, especially if she had those hobbies before marrying Odaenathus. She was apparently also fond of wrestling, less high class than the hunting thing. We know little about her family aside from the fact that she was the result of a second marriage. During this time she is often described as taking part in more male activities, like the aforementioned hunting and wrestling against boys, as well as enjoying a far better education than most, which seems reflected in her rule.

As a teenager she became the second wife of Odaenathus marrying him around 255.  Odaenathus was a loyal subordinate of Rome, and was created King of Kings and Corrector Totius Orientis (Governor of All the East) by the Roman Empire in addition to his royal titles within his own domain. He went to battle for Rome, and although the record on Zenobia is vague, at this point there are accounts that she joined her husband on campaign where she became familiar with the troops.  This friendly relationship would help her later on when she took command. It would also mean she was knowledgeable of battle and strategy and familiar with the battlefield.

Ultimately in 267 her husband and his elder son (from his previous marriage) while away from the capital. The story goes that within the day the crown went to Zenobia and Odaenathus's 10-year-old son, Vaballathus. The fact it happened so quickly would suggest she was nearby, helping her husband on the battlefield. Zenobia had no objections to her son being King and she herself remaining Queen Mother/Regent, but his title was nominal, she was the power behind the throne and everyone knew it.

She was a huge fan/patron of the arts, learning, and philosophy. Her court was one of high culture and discussion.  Zenobia was a fair and tolerant ruler, she maintained a steady, stable, and safe multi-religious, multiethnic, and multicultural kingdom and eventually that extended to her Empire. This included protections for minorities, religious or otherwise. The leaders she interacted with never objected to or were hostile toward her person, reign, rule, or court. People, including the military and her governors, liked and/or trusted her.  Any complaint about her reign comes from later sources. 

In 269 Vaballathus got the title of Persicus Maximus (Victor of Persia), implying a military victory there (certainly actually Zenobia's since the "King" was only 12 at the time and she was well known as a strategic mind, she may have even marched with her troops). And that was the beginning of the end of Zenobia's Roman loyalty.  That year she began expanding out of Vaballathus's allotted lands and into Roman territory. She wouldn't formally secede for quite some time, but she started attacking the Hell out of the fringes of the Roman Empire and Zenbodia had made it increasingly clear to her Roman connections in the East they would need to pick a side (ahem, hers) even before her campaign began.

Rome was, at the time, stretched thin and weakening.  The Emperor was fighting off Germanic threats in Italy and the Balkans, closer to the Roman center. Her reasons for ultimately just going for it in 269 are not really recorded. Or a lot of them have been put forward. It may have been she wanted more direct control over the lands she had been promised. It may have been that she felt encroached upon and undermined by Rome. It may have been concern for her country's trade routes as Rome made diplomacy sticky.  It may have been that she saw the Pax Romana weakening as the centralized Roman authority did. In the absence of direct Roman leadership she wanted to keep the region stable and prosperous. 

In the spring of 270 she marched into Provincia Arabia (Rome's Arabic Province). Between 270 and 272 she took over much of the Roman East with domains extending from Palmyra up to Antioch (Ankara, Turkey), over to Dura-Europos (Salhiyé, Syria), down to Mada'in Salih (Al-`Ula, Saudi Arabia), over to Centralish Egypt, down to the Red Sea. This encompassed important historical cities such as Aleppo, Tyre, Tripoli, Jerusalem, Petra, Memphis, Alexandria, and Baranis.  Really, conquest was a matter of months. A little over a year after she entered the Provincia Arabia, in August 271, the year was counted as "Vaballathus V" all the way in Alexandria, Egypt. In a year she had taken over most of the Roman East through brilliant military strategy, loyal followers, and a well implemented propaganda campaign.

[Image Description: the Palmyrene Empire at its height. End ID]

It was also in August of 271 that she started printing coins with her face on them throughout her Empire and she began using the title of Empresses, including adding on some Roman titles she hadn't been given. This was very open rebellion and Rome wouldn't ignore her anymore. The fairly newly crowned Emperor Aurelian had settled things enough in the West that he could afford to turn his full attention to the Empress in the East. Now, fresh from military victories of his own, Autelian marched the full might of Rome Eastward.

Faced with one of the largest and best trained armies in the ancient world, plus Rome's many loyal subordinates, it is unsurprising her Empire fell as quickly as it rose.  

In May 272 she was defeated at Emesa. She had been on that battlefield leading her troops, away from the capital, but managed to escape to it. This was the beginning of the end, however, the Romans marched on Palmyra, but Zenobia had prepared for the siege. After negotiations broke down she and Vaballathus snuck out of the city and attempted to escape to Persia to try to assemble some kind of alliance. She didn't get that far. A year after she declared herself Empress, August 272, she was in Roman captivity.

Her fate is told a few different ways from there.  She may have killed herself enroute to Rome so her captors would not be able to do what Romans always did, publicly display and humiliate her.  She may have been taken to Rome, displayed as a traitor, marched through the streets, and humiliated. From there she was either executed by the Romans or married a Roman nobleman, retiring to a villa with an as of that point unrecorded daughter. 

Her most likely end is probably the most tragic one: humiliated in Rome and then executed. It is unlikely Emperor Aurelian would have allowed her to live seeing as she committed treason, unlikely she would have married one of her captors, unlikely she had this random daughter only mentioned in this epilogue. Also damning, she doesn't turn up in the record again. Her son, Vaballathus, the only one of her children we know existed, also disappears from the record in 274, which doesn't look good for either of them. Although Aurelian occasionally went easy on his opponents, allowing them to survive in defeat and humiliation, considering that he completely obliterated Palmyra -- razing the holy sites, smashing government buildings, burning it to the ground, and literally massacring civilians -- odds are he was similarly unkind to its leaders. So, while her fate is unknown, my bet is that Zenobia and Vaballathus were executed or at least imprisoned. 

[Image Description: Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra by Harriet Hosmer (you may remember her as one of the artists Edomonia Lewis hung out with), carved after 1859. It is a marble bust showing a woman with a stern expression, maybe a little judging. She wears a crown and her hair is mostly pulled back except for two strands hanging down her shoulders. She wears a robe. Her features are definitely too Caucasian given her actual ancestry but this is unfortunately largely the case. Any ancient images of her besides her coins were destroyed. End ID.] 

Probable Orientation: Asexual (unknown romantic orientation) 

Zenobia's story has been told over and over and over again through the centuries from many different perspectives, many of them telling us as much about the historian's society as it does about Zenobia. There is one thing that remains consistent however, Zenobia didn't have much sex. Likewise Zenobia was a propagandist. She crafted her image. She could be anything, but that one detail stood out enough that everyone takes note of it.

We don't know her ancestry. We do know she avoided sex whenever possible.

She did get married, this is obviously true, but she was a noble. As I expounded upon with Elizabeth I nobility has obligations and this stretches back to the establishment of an aristocracy. If your continued power relies on blood relationships, making a baby is vital. Even if she wasn't a noble before marriage she was wanted by a monarch, that is not something anyone could turn down. If she wanted more power or authority marrying a king is a great way to do it and that means babies. 

But it was said at the time and onward that she had no interest in sex. She kept her room separate from his. After marrying she said she would only sleep with her husband for procreation, some say that she only had as much sex as she did children, which may be as few as once.

There are some who say she had other kids, but we only know one of them for sure, Vaballathus. Some other kids have been attributed to her because they have no recorded mother others, like that daughter who supposedly integrated into Rome, exist in only one account and may have been fabricated. There are modern historians who argue that her chastity is just sexism, robbing powerful women of sexuality. I would argue that is just aphobia. An allosexual woman is not more powerful than an ace one and the historical record is consistent on her disdain for sex. Some say this may have been for propaganda's sake, but I don't see any evidence of that. It seems she really just didn't want to have sex. Many male historians have turned it into a focal point. People refuse to just allow her to be ace, there must be some reason, some point to it.

Once she took over she ruled alone. It doesn't seem she was looking for anyone to rule with her nor did she have anyone on the side. No Antony to her Cleopatra.

"She would not even know her own husband, except for the purpose of conception. For when she had lain with him, she would refrain until the time of the month to see if she was pregnant; if not she would again grant an opportunity of begetting children."

-Trebellius Pollio

[image description: Queen Zenobia Addressing Her Soldiers by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo c.1725. A bright painting showing (again a very white) Zenobia on the battlefield and in armor directing her troops who listen intently. End ID]

[venus-says]

Futari wa Precure Episodes 01-26

Am I rewatching precure? I can't believe this!

Yes, this is not a fever dream, I'm really rewatching precure, and not just Futari wa but THE WHOLE FRANCHISE. Am I crazy? Yes, because I'm already watching too much stuff at the same time and I barely have time for that as of right now, but I love screwing myself over so here we are!

I can't really remember the exact thing that sprung this desire of rewatching precure on me, but I've been thinking about it for quite some time now, at least since I wrapped up on the Aikatsu marathon before On Parade started, in fact, one of the reasons I started doing the old Kamen Rider reviews was because of this. I just didn't start it earlier because I'm the kind of crazy that picked a calendar, looked at the dates, and made the calcs, and realized I could watch pretty much everything in one year so I decided to keep this "project" for 2020 and start the new decade with a bang.

So this is how it'll go: I'll be dividing each season into quarters and pretty much covering one season per month with posts coming out weekly every Wednesday, the only exceptions for this rule are Futari wa and Yes! since these are the only seasons with sequels so instead of dividing into quarters I'll divide them in half and watch two seasons in a month rather than just one. Also, different from Kamen Rider's case, since I'm more familiar with the franchise and I know how the movies go I'll also be watching the movies and posting about them as I go along (All stars movies will come out usually in between the first and the second week, while solo movies will be in between the third and the forth). I really hope I don't go nuts and that this can go as smoothly as possible. XD In any case, it's precure time!

I promised myself I'd keep nostalgia out of these rewatches and do them like if it was my first time watching the series so that I can be less biased on certain aspects, but when it comes to the OGs is really difficult to not have my thoughts clouded by it. I may not have been around since Precure first aired, but Futari wa was effectively my first precure season too, I joined this bandwagon when Heartcatch was airing and I was so in love that I wanted to watch the past seasons and Futari was was my first choice and it holds a very special place in my heart because of that. I tried my best to keep those feelings out of this review and in some cases I was able to it effectively while on others not so much so, I apologize for that. XD

I usually try to separate these reviews on blocks of Plot, Characters, Designs, and commentary on specific episodes and I'm gonna try to apply this structure here more or less.

Talking about the plot... there's not a lot of it. XD

Like yeah, there's the whole Dark Kingdom attacking the Garden of Light thing, and the sort of scavenger hunt for the Prism Stones (not the Pretty Rhythm ones, just to be clear) and all of that, but there's not a whole lot going on beside it, is just Nagisa and Honoka goofing around while their friendship solidifies, they sometimes bump heads but that's pretty much it. And honestly, that's not bad, as while isn't a story about Nagisa and Fujipi the more slice-of-life portions are amazing.

The cure portion that is the problem, to start the action in these 26 episodes isn't the greatest, most of the time is just the cures being thrown away until they get fed up, say "I'll never forgive you!", hold hands, and they throw either a Marble Screw or, in rare occasions, a Rainbow Therapy. Of course, special fights with generals sometimes get a little more flare, but in general, they're pretty lackluster. Also, it feels like things weren't paced properly with the beginning and the end happening very fast and the middle being overly long in comparison. And of course, there's the element of defeating a villain or a set villains while there's still half a season ahead which means change of villains for people who we never knew existed before and apparently were a big deal, and if you read my Kamen Rider review you know how I feel about huge changes affecting the antagonists...

But oh well, I have lots of things to get through so I won't hammer on this for too long. MOVING ON.

Futari wa's biggest strength, at least for this first half, is CHARACTERS. The side cast has many hits or misses, but the protagonists Nagisa and Honoka more than compensate for it. One fun thing of this whole experience was kinda re-discovering them? Because I never watched the OG precure and Max Heart again after my first time watching like 10 years ago and I also don't have the best memory so I forgot a lot of minor things, like how Nagisa is such a downer in regards to their mission, and how positive and bright Honoka is and these are traits that are kinda opposites to their personalities with Nagisa being more outgoing and energetic and Honoka being more calm and polite, and this is so perfect and so much fun, I love it to that. Speaking of surprises I forgot how much of a savage Honoka was, like, the girl put a group of thieves on the line by just yelling at them. THAT'S THE DEFINITION OF POWER.

Unfortunately, they don't come alone. Their fairy partners, Mepple and Mipple, are... annoying. Mipple not so much, she has moments where I go "Really queen?" but for the most part she doesn't bother me, in fact, I'm sympathetic towards her who has to be partnered romantically with such a piece of crap of a male that Mepple is. I don't know why but I completely forgot the jerk that Mepple actually is and let me tell you, it wasn't fun seeing him being misogynist, selfish, and just plain rude, not just to Nagisa regularly but also with Mepple, it's actually very sad. I don't remember if he gets any better in the future, but for now, I'm hating him.

The side characters aren't very special, the girls in the Lacrosse Team and the Science Club are more or less just extensions and supporters or Nagisa and Honoka but I overall like them. The major highlights in terms of side characters are Akane and Fujipi. Akane is a huge positive because she has great energy, she's very fun, and he not only provides a meeting point for the girls but also has a mentor role, though its a very little one, that is great to see. Fujimura on the other hand... I admit, the dude is okay, he never really did anything relevant so there's nothing to hate on him per se, but he's a love interest and his situation with Nagisa never develops on any sort of way is just a very flat experience which makes his relevance even smaller so I can't help but think "what is he still doing here, just disappear with him already" every time he's up on the screen.

There's no other way to put this, the villains are plane as hell. Some of them have good designs but overall, they're very band. Pissard seems like it could've been a cool dude but we spent only 5 episodes with him, that's not enough time with him to make him interesting. Gekidrago is the boring and stereotypical "dumb villain", I think I don't need to write anything else after that. Irukubo is the stoic powerful villain, but much like in Pissard's case, we barely see him in action so it's not enough to make me care for him, and the Dark King is just a horrible CGI blob of darkness. The best villains of this first half are the siblings Poisony and Kiriya, Poisony is actually the best one of the generals seeing that she's a strategist and most of her plans were all pretty good so she was always able to get the cures corned in some way, she may have flunked her cover in that episode where she disguises as Honoka for not doing her research well before assuming the role, but overall she's amazing. Kiriya is the villain that never attacked the cures directly, as far as I remember he never summoned a Zakkenna, and putting it like this may sound like a bad thing, but trust me, it's not. He's the first precure villain to get a "redemption" and as rushed as it was his presence in the story and his arc as a character was also pretty well done so he deserves to share the podium with his sister as best villains.

Since we're talking about villains let's talk about the cures now. Black and White have a very simple design and that's not a bad thing, they're simple but they're still pretty different from each other and it's not a difference that screams to the eyes like id there was something wrong, they complement each other perfectly which only helps in making them this iconic duo that they are. The transformation items, as well as the Prism Hopeish and that notepad thingy, are very 2000's but they have their charm. I think the thing that didn't age very well were the effects for the transformations and the attacks, don't get me wrong I love their original transformation, there's a frame on it that is just marvelous, but watching with 2020's eyes there are parts that feel very wonky. Following the theme, the attacks have a very simple animation but in this case, it works because they can make some very interesting stuff with it, like launching a Marble Screw through Poisony's Umbra Witch hair.

Going into more detail on the episodes, these 26 ones feel like a normal seasonal anime, despite the pacing problems if these 26 episodes were a single season it would've worked well because there was no loose end lost in the mix, maybe the Fujipi stuff would be the only thing that would end with no proper closure, but then again that's not important so it would be a satisfying end. There were four major arcs inside this mini-season so I'll comment on them separately.

The first and shortest arc is the introductory arc that goes from Episodes 1 to 5. And there's not a lot to say here, they introduce the characters, the mission, and the character relations on a good way, there was nothing stellar but it's a good introduction to the series, the only let down is the fighting portion that is very lackluster, in special the final fight against Pissard that was supposed to be a big important moment but that in the end was just very not impressive at all.

The second arc goes from Episode 6 to 11. This is probably the most boring arc of all despite some interesting happening here, we have the introduction to the Prism Stones and the Prism Hopeish, they first use the Rainbow Therapy here, and we also have the famous arc where Nagisa and Honoka fight for the first time and tighten their bonds. These are all interesting points but the set-up for these things to happen weren't the best, like for example Nagisa and Honoka's fight, I always remembered this as a very important moment, AND IT IS, the lesson learned at the end is pretty good and it results on them calling each other for their first name which is a key moment, but all of that happened because of Nagisa's feelings for Fujipi and all that misunderstanding and ughhh that's such a boring reason to make them fight, it was really a letdown. I think after everything the thing that stroke me the most was Honoka's birthday episode and how badass she was for putting some sense into the head of three adult men, which was really magnificent. Also, the first proper fight happened in this arc in the final battle against Gekidrago, it was short but it was good nonetheless.

The biggest arc is the third one that goes from Episodes 12 to 21. This is my favorite arc and a big part of it is because Poisony and Kiriya start to get active here. I don't know how to explain but their addition to the cast made things more dynamic and interesting to watch. Poisony's plans always led to interesting situations like when she hypnotized their classmates that were playing dress-up as the cures, or when she trapped them inside that mirror dimension, or even her last moments in the show where she used that old trick of impersonating someone and making the protagonist having to choose who's the real and who's the fake one, you know even if the precure portions weren't the best, they were put in the most interesting situations in this arc. Together with that, we have Kiriya that goes through a very interesting arc, until now I don't really know why he infiltrated in the school since, as I mentioned, he never acted directly as a villain against the precure (not as far as I can remember) but his interactions with the crew and especially his relationship with Honoka was quite interesting to see it develop. My high points from this arc were episode 18, the one where a girl confesses her feelings for Kiriya - there's a lot of interesting stuff happening here, and episode 20, Poisony's defeat and one of the best fights of this portion of the season. My low point would be episode 19 more because Mepple is being a jerk here than anything else, but I didn't enjoy this episode as much as I did to the other in this arc.

The final arc of this portion is another small one, it covers episodes 22 to 26, and this one is very odd. We start with a filler centered around Honoka's dog of all things that are followed by two two-parters that wrap-up this first half. I'm gonna be honest I don't like this arc, one because it introduces Pollun and two because the "final" fight is very unimpressive, yeah Shining Star debuts here and is a big moment but overall isn't the best, which is understandable after all are two girls launching a beam at a giant dark blob of CGI and there's not a whole lot there, but its fun to see a preview of what will become the Extreme Luminario in the next season. I also don't like how they didn't let the episode finish on a downer note with both of the girls missing their partners and such. But oh well, at least we had Episodes 23 and 24 here there were very interesting, they had this mystery/horror film vibe to it and I loved it.

And that's pretty much all I had to say! Thank you for reading all of this mess, I really appreciate it, I'm very excited to be doing this and I hope I can count with your support through this year. What are your thoughts on Futari wa? Let me know in the comments. I'll see you, folks, on a next time, and don't forget, if you ever see a shooting star be careful with what you wish for, a cellphone thing may fall from the sky right on your head and unless if you're an anime girl you will be in risk of having a concussion. XD In any case, see you around. o/

[irmacornelia]

30 Days of WITCHversary - 14-18

This week was hectic so Im dumping the last few days all at once.

Ahhh the shit-talking ones, I adore WITCH, but boy do I have some salt.

14- Something that irked you

I have to say the biggest thing is the fact that there simply wasn’t enough dragons, especially past the 2nd arc. Their power origin is dragons(until the late-series retcon nonsense), the motif is ‘you are something more than human now’, and then???? nothing? They forsook the ‘you are not fairies, you are not witches, you are something more ancient, strange, and lovely’ stuff and went sparkle fairy. Oof ouch the retcons.

Dragons all over the four dragons issue, dragons on the restaurant, Nerissa’s panel here? dragon.

This isnt something that the comic is guilty of only either, the show is guilty of it too, and they had no excuse, the comic was already out pretty far, and they wanted a show that appealed to boys, so why didn’t they go all in???

There were dragons on Taranee’s laptop when they talked about quintessence, there were dragons in the origins episode, there was dragons in the Phobos fight, in the one where Nerissa tries to take Earths Heart the first time, and there was the mention in the last episode, but did we see anymore dragons? Especially as their Zenith forms which I’ve complained about before was the PERFECT opportunity to tie in the motif? No.

There should have been way more dragon flavor.

Some dragon-shaped auras, the zenith deus ex transformation should have been dragons, Id have even taken totally western dragons, just,,, pls. More dragons emblazoned on coats and people referring to them as dragons. Maybe have part of Phobo’s goal be becoming a dragon. IDK just toss more in there!

And why did they strip the dragons out in the later arcs? My answer is Marketing. Things needed to be pink and sparkly or they are seen as encroaching on different demographis, and not sellable, as CEOs love the minmaxing. Dragons aren’t considered cute, for some reason, and so they had to go. That cash cow was primed to be power-milked until it died. And well. It did.

Im not saying that the shift in priorities from juicy dragon-flavored undertone creeping horror of being uninformed newly minted child soldiers against their will to sparkily faerie idols who do magic sometimes and smooch a lot of boys totally killed it but... Well... 

You know.

You can tell im salty about this, and have been salty about this for over a decade, can’t you.

15- Something that needs a quick fix

In the beginning issues, some of the wording implies the only worlds are Meridian, which is just basically hell, Kandrakar, which is basically heaven, and Earth, and no other worlds. Which is all well and dandy, except.... 2 arcs later that stops being the case.

Change that, because it goes off the rails from that view so fast its not even funny. The simplistic, ‘Meridian evil lizards, Kandrakar good glowing green immortal gods or whatever’ can stay, I guess, because its part of the deconstruction of the ‘evil’ world and ‘good’ world, with Earth as the purgatory thing that media does but just. Right from the start say ‘multiverse’ ‘many worlds’ ‘many dimensions’ one or any of those. It would be just the tiniest, but most wonderful continuity fix.

Just a couple word changes, no panels need to be changed at all.

Something that needs an overhaul

The retcons and plotholes in general. Ive spat quite a bit of salt about the retcons and plotholes already but. WITCH has an undeniable plothole and retcon problem. I love WITCH more than anything, but oh man. It has that one glaring, unfixable flaw.

There are regular adaption plotholes in the cartoon (Biggest one- Why did Yan Lin not give them lessons on how to fight, negotiate, what powers they have and can grow to have, the species that live on Earth and Meridian, a primer into the history of Kandrakar and the other worlds when she was ALIVE to give them?? They didn’t have them and didn’t know anything in the comic, because she DIED and Kandrakar wasn’t gonna go shit for WITCH! They were ALONE!) but oh no, im talking about the comic more than anything.

Everything contradicts itself just. So Much.

It would be fine if it were an american-style comic where each run is its own canon, but its trying to be serial and im dying squirtle.

Decide whether their wings are stylized feathers or butterfly wings or what (in ONE chapter book they changed the canon 3 times!!). 

Decide whether dragons are their powers or not, how their powers even work, what time of year and how old they are judging from the canonical minimum of days that have passed, how serious their job of defending the universe is. Pick a set of truths and stick with them!!!! Twists are ok and you can change the focus and tone over time but you cant just. Kick out established truths and replace them with shit that makes previous nonsense invalid. The overhaul needs to chose their truths BEFORE they start and then stick with it the whole way through!

And their truths they say and then never talk about why they came about need to be de-plotholed. Kandrakar has a noninterference policy? Why? What the fuck does that mean and how come they can send the guardians then? Kandrakar commands the dragons, yeah? Ok, why do they leave them alone all first arc. Matt was part of Kandrakar? Yeah, why didnt he train them into the dirt and not tell them anything whatsoever? Why did he base his relationship with Will on a den of lies that totally shit on his character before that arc????

What it needs to get this overhaul is just a total reboot that takes all these truths and plots, and makes them one cohesive thing.

Only problem. I dont want this fandom getting The V0ltr0n Treatment. I couldnt bear it, to have it get really popular and be filled with people who think its ok to threaten VAs and suicide bait and viciously bully people for daring to have redemption arcs in their fics. I don’t want this place to become a place of fear, I dont want to have the cozy atmosphere be transformed into a hectic high-traffic disk horse zone, even if it gets us an official Perfect WITCH Cartoon.

So no matter how much I want WITCH to have this flawless unfucking of the plotholes... I think I’ll be content with it the way it is.

17 - Something that needs to be revisited 

CHYKN

P… ple ase,,, give me flashback arc.

Previous guardians can give us padding arcs until the writers figure out how to plot the main stuff, previous guardians can give us worldbuilding, previous guardians can give us backstory for characters we have met, and can give us villains that feel connected to the current plot.

How neat would it be if we had an issue following Kadma and halinor setting up their magic Illuminati? 

How neat would it be if we had Luba and Yan Lin working together while Yan Lin was still active?

How neat would it be if we got a more in-depth Nerissa origins story, complete with what she plans to do after she stamps all over Kandrakar for the inhumane 40+ years of solitary confinement?

How wonderful, storywise, it would be to have villains and allies who knew past guardians, howevermany cycles back, to see and hear of guardians before, and how they failed, but this time, WITCH wont?

Day 18 - Something that needs more love from the fandom

Hi Yes Have You Heard The Good News Of The Four Dragons And Xin Jing?

Dragons,,,,, good. Please let us make more dragon content.

I am a biased dragon who wants more dragon things, yes. I am aware.

But oh, I cant be one of like 3 people writing dragon AUs. I mean, considering the fandom size, thats like a whole 3% but You Know.

‘What fan content do you want to see more of?’ Dragons. Always dragons no matter the fandom or appropriateness of giant flying lizards.

Everything is improved with dragons.

[ssj4]

Sorry to bother you, but I keep seeing posts about a future Goten AU and I keep getting really curious! However, when I try to find links to anything about it I end up at some abandoned URLs.

SECOND TIME TRYING TO ANSWER THIS CAUSE MY IDIOT ASS FORGOT I HAD ONE TYPED OUT AND CLOSED EVERYTHING :)

some disclaimers im getting most of this from an old draft i had written about the au, i havent watched the specific scenes in dbz and dbs that these are based on in well over 2+ years so i dont remember the timeline of events that well so im sorry if some of it just straight up doesnt make sense lol

this whole thing did start out as an excuse to replace the romantic scenes with mai in dbs with goten actually so the truten themes are pretty significant but that aside future goten is a very good boy with a much different personality and outlook on things… much like how future trunks is compared to his main timeline counterpart :3c the whole thing was developed by me and my gf together and we never rly posted too much about it and the broken links you did end up finding were probably from like the one or two times we did but here u go im glad u asked 

I HOPE THE READ MORE LINK WORKS ON MOBILE IF NOT IM SORRY

the big change is it starts out with chi chi getting pregnant before goku dies of heart disease or whatever in the android saga instead of the cell saga, so even after he dies in that timeline she still has their 2nd son and he grows up in the future timeline with trunks.

when they were kids (like 10-15) goten was stronger than trunks just bc gohan and chi chi were there to teach him just a little bit. trunks and goten sparred a lot though so he was able to keep up but never really passed him. (that part isnt really important but i figured it was a nice detail that made sense)

thats when history of trunks comes into play, and they both get really serious about gohan training them. the scene in the movie where gohan knocks trunks out before flying off and getting killed is the same except now he just knocks out 2 kids instead of 1 i guess. 

i feel i gotta add that this au was created when the future trunks arc in dbs was airing, and mai was introduced as his love interest, and honestly in my opinion the scenes were written really well but i just wasnt digging the fact that before she was granted a younger appearance she was already middle aged, like she was old enough to be his mom if that makes sense. so it really isnt a dig on mai at all cause i love her and id die for her its just the romantic plot that i didnt like. so when that was airing i thought “WELL what if that was someone else” 

she’s still with them though in this timeline and she still has her younger appearance! 

the future timeline is still progressing the same as it did in canon, the androids still wrecked the place and no one was strong enough to do much about it so trunks is still set up with a time machine to meet with the other timeline. goten stays back and does his best to protect everyone while hes gone just in case

some stuff happens in between here but skip ahead to trunks coming back from the trip after the cell games i guess! lots of stuff happened obviously like trunks literally dying, spending years in the time chamber with his dad, meeting a whole gaggle of clowns that he’d only heard stories about, seeing gohan as a preteen. hes got a lot of stuff to share!!! now hes back and he can take care of the androids + cell + and goten can catch up and lifes pretty good over there! 😇

during the rebuilding period goten would spend a lot of time with chi-chi and ox-king and still slept over there occasionally which she really appreciated, and he invited trunks and bulma over there with him frequently.

despite this he wasnt present when she died as no one really expected goku black to wipe out the landscape so far from the city, but she and ox-king died along with more than half of the population. (ugh god im so sorry queen i love you😓)

as i said before mai is still here and she’s still the leader of the resistance!

events of future bulmas death is the same as well as mai originally intending to go with trunks when they meet up together in an abandoned building. goten is already there as the three of them rest up a bit and start making their way to capsule corp. goten was planning on staying behind anyways but he wanted to see the two of them off. when goku black interrupts them as they arrive, trunks and goten encourage mai to escape, seeing as she only has a gun and everyone already knows bullets arent gonna work. 

this scene is the same as it was in canon, where trunks tries to rush black but gets beaten quickly. mai trying to buy him time to let him escape is replaced with goten actually fighting him and taking a hit for trunks but getting knocked out as mai did. trunks under extreme stress from already losing his mom today assumes hes dead instantly, (he has dumb bitch disease, he didnt even check for a pulse in canon!🤔) and fires a masenko to escape into capsule on his own 

after trunks pops back in time and black is focused on searching for him, mai sneaks back in to retrieve goten (even though they told her to leave she really just ducked behind some rubble and stayed close, because she wasnt just gonna leave them!)

she takes him back to an underground bunker with other members of earths resistance and when he wakes up she tells him that trunks made it to the time machine and that hes presumably in the other timeline now. 

idk if yall remember it well but i rewatched some of the episodes just for this, and trunks in the main timeline believing goten was killed and mai is alone and he wont be able to get back is so sad. and when he spent that day with gohan and his family and cried thinking about how if black hadn’t have shown up, he couldve had a family too… he doesnt deserve to be this sad 😥

skip to when he’s finally able to get back home with goku and vegeta with him and they make their way to the bunker where he sees mai and goten together! the scene in canon where he rushes over and starts spilling his heart out is the same, with him telling goten he thought he died

they get a really sweet hug moment here when theyre both happy to see the other is still safe and it gives both goku and vegeta some Food For Thought, because goku actually didnt know there was a goten in this timeline, and he doesnt really recognize him at first. vegeta has the idea in his head that this is probably goten.

goten never really had any sort of real attachment to his dad. it makes sense hes never met him, hes only ever really heard about him through others, (his mom, his brother, trunks, and probably bulma has mentioned him as well) so he definitely knows OF him its just that, he doesnt know him. so when he sees the real goku standing there for once a lot of thoughts run though his mind, like, “that looks A LOT like goku black!” “thats definitely my old hairstyle” and “holy shit is that my dad?” but the first thing he actually says out loud is “Holy shit its goku orange” and vegeta really almost loses it because cause any doubt in his mind about this kid being related to kakarot just went right out the window cause only someone related to him would say that

and as you probably know a lot happens after that with them all finding a way to defeat zamasu but i dont want to include all of the rest when you can probably just interpret which scenes were changed  

ANYWAYS now instead of trunks surviving the apocalypse its trunks and goten surviving the apocalypse. thats why its not a really super romantic deal like Who has time for dates when goku black Might possibly be hiding in this abandoned olive garden?? so theyre just very close and privately affectionate

the ending where trunks and mai get to live in a new world with their counterparts is the same except gotens there with them of course, dbs left their ending pretty open 

so that takes care of the story changes, heres some additional details and information on gotens character in this au! 

heres his design, drawn by my girlfriend @ssj2 uwu !! 

he kept his natural hairstyle for a while, but i think he changed it sometime during the rebuilding period after the androids and just let it grow out a bunch. up until then he kept his natural style purely to honor the guy he’s heard so fondly of even if it brought him a lot of mixed feelings when people said he looks just like him. a really distinct feature about his new hairstyle is that the spikes look like horns and i love that a lot !!

and the shawl he wears was the same one chi chi wore 

some personality traits for future goten is that he has a habit of bottling up his negative emotions and has trouble taking care of himself, as hes always more focused on the well being of his loved ones. he can be mischievous and cocky but hes not overconfident (or he hasnt been since gohans death) however in some situations he can be charismatic and assertive which works really well imowhen their timeline is erased and theyre temporarily in the main timeline, goten gets to meet a bunch of people like gohan and his family, chi chi, and even his counterpart 

sorry if this post was messy i wasnt really sure how i wanted to make it look and im kinda bad at dumping information out so if any of its confusing just redirect me to it and ill try again gdjfksjdgsfk 😭❤

hmmm anyways thank u for reading!! its an au we made years ago and we love a lot and i hope u do too! be nice pls!! and send asks about it if you’d like cause its fun to think about! 

[divine-identite]

So March through July has been most interesting lately -

So, in short, we are going to call these Arcs (like story arcs). There are five of them right now. 

Facts to remember about this person; she’s bisexual, into open relationships, looking for fwb, is on the spectrum, had depression and social anxiety - which is why she smokes.

So I met a coworker who I got along with in march. I thought she was really cool and knowledge, however, I had a strange intuition that something was off with her at the same time. So before all that, I tried inviting her out to some events - concerts and stuff. Cause I thought she was legit cool and whatnot.  She says no to this and eventually, in late April she invites me out to see Avengers: endgame; she does so because she works Fridays and Saturdays, and her friends are busy on those holidays. So I pick up, okay, so im just 2nd pick for this event? So I let it go and I buy our tickets and set the date and time. She cant do it because she is a tech and im just PRS. ( i just answer phones).

1st Arc

So on the movie day, I meet her at her place. her place is very lacklustre, she lives in a one-bedroom with no furniture - which is fine. Her roommate lives in the living room with an airbed. It’s all fine to me, I know the struggle is real. She’s nice enough to offer me coffee and scrambled eggs. I take just the coffee. She goes on a smoke break in her room, she's nice enough to close the door for her roommate.  I sit on the roommate's bed and how she gets off it is odd as fuck; she kind casually brushes her hands along her arm and wrist before asking me to stand up, and it takes her a while to get up and go. Because shes trying to decide what coat she wants to wear. So finally go off, get a ride up to the mall centre in german town. She starts talking about her stories and stuff - and about one time post-banging some freshmen on her sophomore year. I was thinking okay that’s good on you lol. Now the worst part is she starts leaning her head on me afterwards through the whole ride. We get to the movies afterwards, and there two seats left because her dumbass wanted to take her time getting here. So one guy pointed us to two seats left in the crowd. The theatre was packed so what she did was cling to my arm and lean to my shoulder- again. So after the movies, we go to chipotle, and then to the beer & spirits which I pay. Because her ID is expired, how the fuck do you let your Id expire? so I have to get it. We order a lyft head back and drink at her place and play some games. We both had a good time but I left once I saw the roommate had teased her about being autistic and etc. The shoulder leaning thing had me confused - she told me im an associate. 

So I bring up the issue with the shoulder leaning issue. So apparent none of that mattered. I got on her about how people can misinterpret that and she said few to interpret that. She gets upset because I bring this issue to mind like a few days. However, she mentioned one time a guy assumed she leads her on. Again she makes it clear we are associates the whole time.

2nd Arc 

Next week May 5th we scheduled to watch the game of thrones at her place. I get off at 10:30 pm on a Sunday, and she doesn't work on a Sunday. I  had to buy beer again - because so she meets me at my job. it was quite odd because her excuse for coming was “she was in town and though to drop by”. Nothing wrong with that but it did lead to some speculation. My coworker Gloria kept up asking questions like “Oh did you say hi to her?” “She usually doesn't wear dresses, Kelvin, what do you think?”, “ She doesn't work today here” so yeah it was hinting she knew something. Now after my shift we went to CVS and she offered to buy me snacks and food. She asks if I was sure? Now on this day, I had a sausage, cheese & egg. So I went to her place we had to go into her room since her roommate was sleeping. So she offered popeyes which I took only a wing. I sat by her bed rather than on it because - it felt weird lol. She said I could join her bed rather than sit by it - we are coworkers bruh. She leaves out too. So after smashing like 8- 9 beers I get on her bed because my knees were killing me on that hardwood floor. She comes back like “ It’s about time” so after a while she starts to lean on me again.  So the beer takes its toll - and I start to nod off. So while watching Game of Thrones she would ask some questions. So around season 5 she stops it there - tells me to get my things. Escorts me out to the door of her complex. The original plan actually to use a spare bed but she apparently didn't want to do that. So she escorts me outside 4:00 am in the morning, it's cold as fuck in may. She couldn't stay out because is only clothed in a skimpy sundress and she's anaemic and plus she left her house keys in her house. So understandable but still no check-in. Which contradicts with her usually thing because she would always see if I got home. I got home around 6 am had like only 4 hours of sleep and had to go to work lol- I had a slight headache but I was good. I texted her to see if she was okay, said she was fine and that I was doing too much. I just added that hey you were right that I should have eaten something. Now this issue sparks something on her end, this literally causes her to snap off and she literally bans me from coming to her house. 

After dropping her shoes off that she sent to my location because she lives in an apartment complex. we go to the gym together because of her social anxiety, now the fun part is after the gym. I found out apparently I had spilt beer on her carpet and pissed over her toilet while drunk, to be fair her bathroom is really dark. The only light is a night light behind you when you use the toilet. She had an emotional connection with that carpet so I sympathized with it and made to right my wrongs. So she asked only for three meals and me to go to the gym with her for a week. I decided a month because I felt bad about the situation. we agreed on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Friday. Wednesday and Thursday are my days off.

3rd Arc

So off to the gym, some days she goes - some she doesn't - but either way I got continuously. Knowing discipline is necessary for progress. But usually, she is very inconsistent. So one week on Saturday she isn't going-  rather than going I just leave it be. She's being too indecisive about the matter. I tell her to just tell me when she would be going and went home.  So Tuesday comes up and she comes to work. She follows her usual routine; what's for lunch and etc? she comes up to check up on me and etc. But I wait until her shift after 12:30, now after that - my coworker comes up to ask “” Arent you going to the gym”. her reply, however, was “ No, I didn't do any laundry today. So I don't have any clean clothes to go with” That would’ve been news to tell me.  So she leaves without telling me the matter - and leaves me hanging there. Wednesday and Thursday im off, and not once did it cross her mind. To make amends, so I actually have to reach out and confront her on the issues. She owned up to it but said her new meds for her depression. I understood in that second but for that whole three days? I felt that was really considerate tbh. I stopped doing favours because that was massive and just focused on me tbh. That was a huge disrespect to me and my time. So around June, I brought up the issue again to make sure we were clear and realised I had backtracked on it based on her logic on of the issue. 

4th Arc

After a while, I agreed to invite her out to the movies. Went to see spider-man: Far away from home, I bought the tickets. We went over the seats and I set the time. So on the fourth, I reach the train station to meet her around 10:00 am, the movie starts at 12:45.  She literally tells me to meet her at the theatre though we agreed to the train station, because of its fucking raining. Now the forecast said it would rain - but she chose to dress for the heat tbh. So I let it go and get a ride to the theatre and get there. We are early like its 11:45 pm so we decide to go to Starbucks. So she pulls me aside and asks if she can send lingerie and stuff to my house somewhat nervously (think of a typical anime girl who is fidgetting her fingers nervously) - because it's for when she goes to the gym. Still, quite an odd favour but i accept it. So after the movies, it starts to rain, so I got to CVS and buy an umbrella. Because she's wearing a sundress and if she got any wetter it is porn show. So off we go to across town to the Vape shop because the vape she has, has been burning her throat. So at the shop, the lady shows us how it works and after that she needs ID. She doesn't have ID....still so I had to literally use my ID. After a while, we go eat, and meet her roommate at the firework place. She arm links up with him and tries to get me to join - I literally shoot her down like “Nah im good”. So the roommate introduces us to his friends at her house - and off we go to park. Im literally lacking behind and she comes and checks up behind me multiple times. I state that im okay until we get to the park. Now at the park it's fine until it starts to rain, being the only practical person with common sense - hold up a single umbrella for five people. After 20 minutes of holding this damn thing up, I pass it off before she starts asking me if I want to watch Netflix. I say no, and then I went on my phone to text my friend for a while. Again she asks it before not too long she is leaning my whole thigh with the phone on it.  Like you would with a couch armchair. This was no way platonic. After she leaning back on my chest with her back while we watch Netflix and stuff. Im like....you have your roommate there fam why not do this with him lol. After the fireworks, we leave but the large crowds cause her anxiety; she clings to my arm and literally is like “sorry for invading her personal space” ... it's a little too late for all that :T. We head  to safeway , use the bathroom and head home.

5th Arc

We were supposed to go to Otakon together - because she invited me out to the invite. So I told Mike, a coworker of mine, I and she are supposed to be going. The whole week is excited about Otakon and stuff - and Saturday tells me “whenever she gets up she’ll let me know when she goes down to the convention centre”. I’m like.... what kind of rude shit is that? but I let it be it is what it is. So Friday comes up I call mike, he is down there and I meet him there. He tells me to call her to figure where she is - because she told him she’d be here 3-4. I called her and phone rings twice before going to voicemail. So she tells me “Oh im just got sick. Just my luck!” now I know this feels like bullshit really. You were super excited about this event - and Mike told me she looked healthy yesterday - again not making any sense really. So rather than just telling me you aren't going to show up at all. And she scheduled this event the whole time tbh.  

[gronjon44]

Welp... here we go...

If you dont want spoilers then I recommend you skip this entire post because I do not respect this film at all to not talk about the shit that happens in this film.

⚠️AFTER THIS LINE ITS ALL SPOILERS⚠️

This films wants to be an emotional gut punch but it is so... I your face about it. Emotional beats are either predictable or just... they don't hit. And the ultimate sacrifice from Bhgs at the end while sad just doesn't hit anything. And the plot of "Oh the main villain manipulates the kid to go against his dad and the villain ultimately joins the rival team" is really predictable. And I know that in the end this is a film targeted to kids and thats fine. But this film felt like it was trying to be too hip and too aware (the entire joke about LeBron acting hip and the 'don't dab' comment is just not funny)

The jokes

The jokes in this film do not land for me, albeit 2 (the joke about Sylvestar grabbing Michael B Jordan instead of the actual Michael Jordan was ok and the fact Wiley Coyote was in Mad Max was really cool) ; most the jokes either fell flat or completely missed the mark (this film tried to be hip and modern with its humor and honestly it was more cringe than anything else.

Also idk if this was intentional or not, but can we stop making jokes about how companies are stealing our info and spying on us? We get it Zuckerberg is trash Facebook and other big companies are taking our personal info but seriously it does get old. Mitchell's vs the Machines was at least clever because it was about a big tech company abusing it's power. Space Jam: A New Legacy is about an A.I trying to make himself feel better cause he doesn't feel appreciated and is projecting his issues on a kid he cyberstalked for a whopping 3 minutes.

The Plot

The films Plot is predictable, short, and a around not engaging. The idea of bringing another pro basketball player to aid the Tunes in another wild game for their survival isn't the problem, it's the rest of the Plot that's the problem.

The first film had a simple enough Plot that worked really well (The Tunes have to win a basketball game against roided up aliens or they'll become Amusement Park attractions, and they need a bow retired player to hp them win) Its short and sweet and it works.

This film felt the need to overcomicate it by forcing a dramatic subplot into the fold which, can work. You can have a dramatic subplot while still being a Zany and fun film. But SJ:NL can't seem to decide which to focus on; it goes from zany and over the top one moment moment then gives you tonal whiplash when it jumps to the dramatic bits in the plot.

I genuinely think that this film would've benefited from focusing on the zaniness over the drama, since frankly that's always been the focus of the Looney Tunes

Loony Tunes: Back in Action and Space Jam 1 are two tonaly similar films but both have better comedy and each have their respective dramatic beats, though their both saved for the climax of the film.

LT:BIA and SJ1 both have they're own dramatic subplots (M.J makes the deal with Smackhammer to raise the stakes of the game and J.D has to save his father from the Chairman and his plans. The difference here is that these films, while adding a level of drama, don't let the drama overshadow what tnis film is actually about (the Looney Tunes)

SJ:NL let's the drama completely overshadow the actual Tunes and isn't really engaging (to me anyway)

Also I'd like to say that, while giving this film a video game feel was an interesting concept it just reminded me more of Pixels or The Emoni Movie (though this wasn't NEARLY as bad as the Emoji movie I'll say that)

That's something else about this film. It feels like one big advertisement for everything WB owns (much like how Emoji Movie was one big Smartphone ad) and while that isn't inherently a bad thing it can be a hinderence to the film as well (I wanted to watch the films that cameod in this film more than the actual film itself)

The Characters

Look this is the Tom and Jerry film again, we don't go to this film for LeBron and his fictional family (if some people do then that's fine) but most of us go to see the film for the Tunes and the cartoon asthetic, and there's plenty of that here. But I'd like to actually care about the human characters in this film frankly.

Let's just get this out of the way, LeBron is not a great actor. He tries his best yes but he is not a great actor in this film; he reminds me more of Vin Deisel when he acts (he has a voice yes but he doesn't act physically. It's like he's trying to have his voice match the film but his body isn't in tune with it.

Now I don't wanna hate on kid actors, they do what they can and they're kids. But listen this kid was not interesting at all, and id have rathered the film not include him (or very least make him more interesting other than the "Gosh Dad stop pushing your ways and beliefs onto me" archetype.

The Tunes are fine I have no beef with how they treated the Tunes (all for ONE detail)

The way thsi film treats the Tunes in this film bothers me on so many levels. "Send him to the Rejects" "Losers" The fact that they treat the Looney Tunes like they're some forgotten property is really unsettling to me. The Tunes have never been forgotten the notion that they ARE forgotten bothers me so much, regardless if it's a plot point for the film. The Looney Tunes are some of the most recognizable faces in ask of media, and I get this is supposed to be a "New School vs Old School" message like with the Father vs Son but my God I do not like how this protrays the Tunes.

Speaking of the rejects, let's talk about AL G Rythm.

My God this is the most uninteresting villain and his whole plan is so easy to spot from the start of the film. "Oh look at me, I have a bruised ego cause I feel unappreciated in my time and im gonna project my issues on this kid I cyberstalked while praying KING JAMES would bless me with his support." Holy shit my guy you have a bigger ego than Tony Stark and its more bruised than Bruce Wayne's back after Bane was finished. He is one of the most bland villains I've seen in awhile, and the Goon Squad is no better. The Goon Squad is nothing but cool designs and a refderence to more popular Basketball players (and yeah they're supposed to be cronies but at least make them cronies with personality; the Nerdlucks were funny, had personality, and were an integral part of the story (also the fact that they ACTUALLY HAD THE NERDLUCKS CAMEO in in film but they were rooting against the Tunes just... Ehhhhhhhhhh) And the Goon Squad was boring and didn't add anything say for AL G. stealing the kids algorithm to make his own team.

Also sidenote, them constantly calling him "King James" got really annoying really fast. Like we get you gave yourself that nickname, you're the current too NBA player rn and all that but you don't have to keep saying it my God.

Now what did I actually like about this film. Well quite a bit actually.

For starters, the animation was top notch and everything looked great. I thought the 2D models were a little odd at first (too shiny compared to the faded sleek of the original) but they grew on me. All the CGI models of the Tunes looked really great, say for Sam who just looked really weird to me (probably cause he loses his hat by the end and a CGI Yosemeti Sam without a hat just looks strange)

The Tunes also felt exactly how they should in a Space Jam film, Bugs especially. Yes Daffy was his usual comedic self and I like how they had him try and be the manager of the team instead of a player, and every other Tune was just as zany as usual; honestly of all the Tunes I'm genuinely impressed with how they treated Bugs (till the end)

Bugs was the most interesting to see in the film, wherein every character left Tune World except Bugs and he kinda became this Castaway parody (with his own makeshift Porky Pig dummy) and he was just really lonely and stayed true to the Looney Way and he just wants his family back. That entire subplot is the most interesting part of this film hands down; the only thing about Bugs's arc I didn't like was the end which was predictable, but i was still more invested in Bugs's arc than anyone else's.

Also when they showed the Tunes on the other WB worlds in the Warnerverse that's not the name ik but it's basically the Warnerverse the only Movie refferences that i thought were clever were Mad Max, Austin Powers, and Themyscira. And as much as it pains me to admit it the Rick and Morty Gag with Taz was probably the funniest of them, and I don't even like Rick and Morty anymore.

The Matrix was just eh, Yosemite Sam just didn't land, Game of Thrones was just not funny and I won't apologize. As far as the cameos/refferences in the end I'll say it again, I wanted to watch the movies and shows that cameod more than the film itself. I'm not gonna try to list them off but some highlights were seeing Gremlins, the Mask, every Tim Burton Batman villain/Adam West Batman, Thundercats, and Scooby Doo. Aside from that this was all just one big add for Warner Bros.

So I'm gonna try end this on a note that I know alot of people are gonna bring up or use to say shouldn't be brought up: Nostalgia.

Listen. This film has the same issue that alot of modern film reboots tend to have, which is the fact that it has to match the same hype as the film that came before it.

Now I'd like to say that this isn't gonna be a Power Point on reboots, God knows this is long enough as is, but the issue with alot of reboots is that they try to remake something that more often than not did the media justice the first time around. Robocop, Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostbusters 2016, litterally every Disney L.A Remake. This isn't to say these films can't be good, or even surpass their predecessors. But more often than not they tend to miss the mark either just barely or drastically.

And here's the thing, this argument can also apply to sequel films that are following up an iconic film that for fhe most part is still very prominent in modern media.

Space Jam has, for better or for worse, remained one of the most iconic films every made, if not for its premise alone. And when they announced a sequel it was only inevitable that people compare it to the original because, let's face it, we want the new film to live up to the original.

We want this new shiny film to live up to the film we all knew growing up as kids and adults, seeing the Tunes on a basketball court for the first time back in the 90s. And frankly, this film did not do that for me.

This film, to me, wants to be what Space Jam already is. But it felt the need to try and thats the first step it failed; it wanted to be hip and aware and make loads of refferences to the original

This film has a similar issue to Ghostbusters:Answer the Call I think, where in it wants to stand on its own two feet, but jt cant help but constantly remind us of a much superior film. We know they've done this before you don't have to keep saying it "We need help with a basketball game Lola!" Been there! Done that!" "So you want me to help you win a high stakes basketball game? One that could very well decide both our fates? Hmmmmm where have I seen that before?"

This film is like that one kid in class who already proved he was right, and is still trying to prove he was right.

If you think this film is great and you enjoy it just as much as the original that's perfectly fine, I'm not gonna try to overshadow your opinions, I just want to share mine.

In the end, I'm gonna rate this film a solid 4/10 (and most of that 4 is the comedy and the animation and the Tunes themselves.) Can you watch this just for the Tunes? Absolutely. Can you like this film more than me? Also absolutely. Do I think this film would've been worth it if I'd have seen it in theaters? No not at all I'm glad I waited for HBO Max.

[itsyokythings-blog]

My Five Acres. Travel. Adventure. Yoga. My Five Acres. Travel. Adventure. Yoga. - Travel. Adventure. Yoga.

Want to visit the spectacular Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy? In this post, we share the best things to do and how to get the most from your visit. Read on to start planning your to Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso!

What’s in our guide to visiting Gran Paradiso National Park?

1. 3. 5.

When you’re in Turin, the Alps call to you. The mountains arc around the city, far away enough to be mysterious, close enough to be incredibly tantalizing. While wandering Torino, for all that I love the city, part of me just keeps thinking “Why aren’t we in the Alps right now?”

The great news is that it’s easy to visit Gran Paradiso National Park (or Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso, if you want to practice your Italian) from Turin.

The park is nestled in the Alps on the border with France, not far from the city. Driving takes a little more than an hour, or you can hire a guide to take you, or even go by public transport.

Hiking in Gran Paradiso, you will get to see spectacular views. Photo by Davide Glarey via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

Whether you want to take a gentle stroll through an Alpine meadow or challenge yourself on an almost vertical hike up above 2,000 m (6,500 ft), you’ll find the opportunity in Gran Paradiso.

The bad news is that there are so many places to hike and so little information available, especially in English, that it can be tough to decide where to go for your day trip!

Start with the Gran Paradiso tourist map — which we didn’t discover until after our visit — which will be big help in planning your trip.

The Gran Pardiso tourist map is very useful to help planning your trip.

We opted for a challenging day hike, taking us to the peak of Punta Quinseina, just above 2200 m high. Luckily we drove up to about 1500 m first, otherwise we never would have made it to the top!

Though the hike was marked as “medium” on all our apps, it was more than enough challenge for us for that day, leaving our legs sore and our knees aching by the end. It was also incredibly rewarding.

So, if you’re interested in exploring the mountains and finding some time to reconnect with yourself through nature, read on to discover…

How to do a Spectacular Day Trip to Gran Paradiso National Park

Before you start reading the details, watch our short video of our day hike in Gran Paradiso to get inspired!

Also don’t miss these posts:

Your complete Torino guide → The best day in Sacra di San Michele → Your guide to visiting Mole Antonelliana →

Don’t forget to stop and breathe deeply and enjoy the views while you’re in the park.

The park’s origin story is a little sad — it all began because people love to kill wildlife. The area had been a hunting ground for the royal family and was also frequented by poachers. It was originally protected by Vittorio Emmanuel as a Royal Hunting Reserve, so that the Alpine ibex would be protected from poachers (and reserved for Royal hunters).

In 1922, the land was donated by the royals to Italy and it became Italy’s first national park. Though the ibex were supposed to be protected, the law was not enforced at first and the population dwindled to dangerously low numbers.

Now, they are properly protected and the ibex population is healthy and thriving! They are also daredevils.

You won’t lack for any amazing views when you visit Gran Pardiso National Park.

OK, you probably climb every mountain in the park, but there are lots of opportunities for rock climbing and ice climbing in Gran Paradiso.

For climbers, basing yourself in Turin or somewhere on the Piedmont side of the park is perfect, as this is where you’ll find the best climbing routes in the park. Check out the Orco Valley and the Soana Valley for incredible climbing opportunities.

Sleep in a Refuge

If you’ve hiked to a refuge hut anywhere in North America, you might be picturing a small wooden hut, with some sleeping bunks, a fireplace, and not much else.

But in Gran Paradiso, many of the huts (refugio) are European-style. That is to say, they are almost full-service hotels, with restaurants and comfortable beds. Your chance to in style.

Different huts offer different services, so make sure you know what to expect and what you need to bring before you go.

Spot the Wildlife

We didn’t get to see a marmot on our trip to the park. Next time! Photo by Dario de Siena via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

On our hike up Punta Quinseina, we kept our eyes and ears open for marmots. Alas, it was a little early in the season and we didn’t get to se any. The only wildlife we saw, apart from lots of soaring birds, was the not-so-rare Italian hang-glider. They did make for an impressive site, soaring through the air at 1500 m!

Marmots do populate the park though. These plump rodents evolved to deal with the harsh mountain climates, and can hibernate for up to 9 months of the year. You’ll often hear marmots before you see them. They make a high-pitched chirp that sounds a lot like a bird, and, if you get to close, their chirping will increase in frequency.

Deeper in the park, you might see the Alpine ibex (also know as the Steinbock) which is the symbol of the park. As we said in the intro, it’s because of these long-horned wild goats that the park was established in the first place.

You might also spot a chamois, another species of goat that looks like the steinbock but with shorter horns. However, female steinbocks also have shorter horns, so it’s easy to get them confused.

Keep your eyes to the skies to spot golden eagles, impressive birds of prey that feed on marmots and other small mammals — but are sometimes big enough to make off with a small goat. Yikes!

Finally, a wolf pack has recently taken residence in the Aosta Valley. You probably won’t see wolves (which is a good thing) but you may hear them howling at the moon.

Get on Your Bike

If you’d rather roll than walk, there are plenty of bike trails in the park, from fully paved gentle routes to all-out technical mountain bike trails. Many routes pass through some of the historic Alpine villages that skirt the lower edges of the park.

Explore a Winter Wonderland

If you do a multi-day trip, you’ll be in the mountains for sunset. Photo by Martino Nicolino via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

If you happen to visit Italy in winter, strap on your snow shoes and hit the park trails. You can also cross-country ski, downhill ski, and go ice climbing in Gran Paradiso.

Visit the Botanical Garden

If you want a little less energetic outing, the Paradisia Alpine Botanic Garden is a great destination. Located on the Aosta Valley, this 10,000 square metre garden gives you a chance to see Alpine flora up close.

The best time to go is mid-June to mid-July, when you can take a guided tour or visit independently using the garden brochure to navigate.

Driving in Italy is truly mind-boggling / terrifying!

Once you’re off the busy city streets and fast-moving highways, you’ll also have to contend with winding, narrow roads, often single-lane, that switchback their way up the mountains.

If you don’t have a lot of driving experience and/or nerves of steel, I’d suggest you find another way to get there.

But, if you want drive to Gran Pardiso, here’s how:

From Turin to Valle Orco, point your GPS towards Rivarolo Canavese. From there, take road 460, which follows the route of the Orco River. Turn right at Pont Canavese, onto the SP 47 to reach the Soana Valley.

Getting to Gran Paradiso By Bus or Train

From Turin, you can take the bus to Rivarolo (line 131 Torino to Rivarolo) or the train from Torino Porta Susa to Rivarolo and Pont stations. From there, public bus lines serve Valle Orco (line 137 Rivarolo or Pont to Locana or Noasca) and Val Soana (line 140 Pont to Valprato Soana).

To get to the Aosta Valley from Torino, follow the instructions here →

The day hike we did was up all the way, but you can do flat hikes in the park, too.

If you’re looking for a rewarding day hike within easy reach of Turin, you can try the same hike we did — up Punta Quinseina di Santa Elisabetta. Technically this hike is not inside Gran Paradiso but it’s close enough to get the idea!

The hike starts at the tree line and goes up from there, so you get to experience panoramic views of the foothills and the mountains the entire way. No dull forested trail where you can’t see anything!

If you don’t like climbing, this one is not for you.

It starts with a steep uphill, which takes you to a gorgeous alpine meadow. Spend a little time taking in the views of the Alps and watching the hang-gliders soar above your head. There’s also a small stone hut which is interesting — but resist the temptation to go inside. The structure looks fundamentally unsound.

Past the meadow, the path turns upwards again, and continues on a steep incline until you reach the summit. The trail is rocky and somewhat technical. You’ll need shoes with good grip and support to be comfortable.

As you climb, you’ll be rewarded by the continually incredible views. The most magnificent one is at the summit, where you experience 360 degrees of Alpine perfection.

There’s a guest book at the summit, hidden inside the small cabinet connected to the steel cross. Look for our entry and make sure to leave your own!

If you haven’t had enough after you summit, you can continue along the ridge trail and off into the wilderness. As we took about 3 hours to climb up, we’d had plenty of walking and did not extend our hike!

How to Get to Punta Quinseina

Once you get into the mountains, you may have to contend with narrow steep roads, like this one used in the Giro d’Italia.

The drive from Turin to the Punta Quinseina trailhead is an experience in its own right. The first part is simple highway driving from Turin to Castellamonte (though that didn’t prevent us from getting lost and having to backtrack).

From Castellamonte to Colleretto Castelnuovo, it’s quiet, well maintained country roads. There are lots of speed cameras, especially around the villages, so stick to the speed limit. The fines are around €70, so not worth it!

After Colleretto Castelnuovo, which is a charming sub-alpine town that’s worth a stop, things start to get interesting.

A paved but extremely narrow road leads out of town. Soon you’ll find yourself on a series of (seemingly never-ending) tight switchbacks up the side of the mountain. It is steep and narrow — only wide enough for one car in many places. If you aren’t a confident driver with nerves of steel, you might think twice before attempting it.

We didn’t meet a single car coming down as we were going up, which was a blessing, because I was not prepared to back down that winding ribbon of road.

If you start the drive and feel like it will never end, just think about the cyclists in the Giro d’Italia — this road was part of their route in 2019. It must be absolute murder trying to cycle up here!

Even iPhone photographers will love the photos you can take in the park.

Hike stats. 8 km, 787 m elevation gain, 2,231 m highest elevation, out & back, 4–6 hours for return trip.

Hike summary. There is very little flat terrain on this hike. It’s mostly up, up, up. The trail markers are painted onto rocks along the way, with only a few real signposts.

Go when the weather is clear, as it would be easy to lose the trail in fog. In fact, we managed to lose the trail a couple of times on a perfect, sunny day.

Parking & facilities. There is a small parking lot at the foot of the hike with picnic tables and a public restroom.

Trailhead. The trailhead is a bit hard to find and I think we didn’t manage to start the hike in the right spot. To find the trail from the car park, walk up the paved road until the paving ends.

A road on your left leads to a popular hang-gliding launch spot. Continue past this road on the dirt road that leads toward a small farm. Turn left into what looks like the farm driveway, and you’ll find the trailhead on the left, just before reaching the farmhouse.

There’s an alternative trailhead that starts just behind the hang-gliding launch spot. It’s a little harder to find and starts the hike off with a very steep climb. But it’s do-able, as it’s the one we took!

Use the AllTrails map here to find the directions →

What to bring. As usual, bring all the typical necessities you would bring on any wilderness hike. This includes first aid kit, plenty of water, extra snacks, and warm layers.

We went in early June, and there was still a little snow at the peak, though typically you might find more snow at this time of year. At the bottom, we were in t-shirts and by the time we reached the top, we needed winter hats, gloves, sweaters, and jackets, so be prepared to layer up!

The weather can change extremely quickly up here, so be prepared for any conditions.

Hiking poles would be an asset, for balance and to save your knees on the steep descent. We did the hike without, but I would have loved to have a pair with me.

Also bring a GPS-enabled device and an offline mapping app, so you have assistance in finding your way if you lose the trail (like we did a couple of times). You don’t necessarily need a paper map if you stick to the trail and don’t wander off, but it can be an extra safety asset if your phone dies.

The Alpine Ibex is the originator and symbol of the park. Photo by Dario de Siena via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

If you’re not comfortable Gran Paradiso on your own, or you just want to increase the quotient, you can hire a guide to organize everything and take you to the park.

Mountain Guides Society of Gran Paradiso

Variety of trip lengths and difficulty

The official park mountain guides organization operates every day all year long. They are based in the Aosta Valley but can organize an activity for you closer to Torino if you don’t want to drive that far.

They can guide you on a huge range of activities, from trekking, canyoning, and rock climbing, to snowshoeing, off-piste skiing, and ice climbing.

Explore Gran Paradiso National Park with Trekking Alps

3 days, €449 per person

Rated as 4/5 on the difficulty level, this exciting tour will immerse you in the wonders of Gran Paradiso and give you a chance to completely disconnect from everyday life (to forge a deeper connection to yourself, naturally).

Accommodation is in mountain huts — which are more like rustic hotels, where you get a soft bed and a hot meal — in the wilderness. You can do this as a private hike, or join a scheduled group tour. You can also arrange a self-guided trek through Trekking Alps.

Whether you just want a few hours outside, or you want to challenge yourself on a multi-day hike or back country skiing trip, Gran Paradiso is ideal. Much less crowded than the French Alps, this spectacular corner of Italy offers a true getaway — a place where you can immerse yourself in nature and truly disconnect from everyday stress.

Whatever you’re looking for, big or small, you’ll find it in Gran Paradiso National Park.

We hope this short guide to Gran Paradiso helps you plan your trip. Leave at least one day in your Turin itinerary to visit this magnificent park in the northwest corner of Italy. But if you have time, we recommend spending at least three days to get the most out of the park.

♥  Happy mindful s, Jane & Stephen

We’re not going to lie, it takes a LOT of work to create guides like this. But it’s easy to help us out! If you book or buy something using one of our personal links in this post, we’ll earn a small fee at no extra cost to you. Of course, we would never recommend anything we didn’t 100% believe in! Huge thanks in advance! –S&J

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