#shes got Alien/Robot army to kill

[gamequoteshowdown]

WARNING THIS POLL CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FOLLOWING GAMES: Metroid Dread

Quote 1: "In this world, it's kill or be killed." - Flowey, Undertale

Quote 2: "Hadar sen olmen (Power is everything)" - Raven Beak, Metroid Dread

Propaganda under cut

Quote 1: It's Undertale. It's Flowey. It's his most famous quote. I don't know what to say about any of these things that hasn't already been said.

Quote 2: "(Spoilers ahead, continue at your own risk) Raven Beak is the last surviving member of the Mawkin, a Warrior tribe that he commanded. The Mawkin helped a different Chozo tribe, the Thoha, to excavate planet SR388 and to keep the Metroids at bay when they went out of control. After the Metroids were sealed away, the Thoha wanted to destroy the planet, as they thought that the danger of the Metroids were a danger far too grave for the galaxy. But Raven Beak refused to comply, as he thought that the Metroids symbolized "a power great enough to bring order to the galaxy."

To keep the Metroids, he ordered the slaughter of the Thoha on SR388, leaving only one alive in order to use his genetic ability to control metroids. After the massacre, the Mawkin returned to their home planet ZDR, planning on returning for the Metroids at a later date. But whoops. While they were gone, Samus stormed through SR388, eliminating the Metroids. Not only that, one of the soldiers has been infected by the X, a parasite that takes over the form of its host and rapidly multiplates. Seeing this thread on his planet, Raven Beak did what every good leader does. He locked them all away and let them all die out while he was chilling on his flying fortress. That was the end of the Mawkin.

But Raven Beaks' plan of using the metroids to take over the galaxy could still work, as Samus herself carries Metroid DNA within her. So he lures her to the now abandoned ZDR, almost kills her, which awakens the Metroid DNA inside her, and sends out robots to hunt and extract the DNA from her. Fun!

But of course, Samus makes it through ZDR and faces off against Raven Beak. He reveals that she has some of his DNA inside her (you would not BELIEVE how much DNA this girl got stored in her) and that he plans to clone an army of the most powerful Metroid of all, Samus Aran. As Samus loses consciousness, he tells her, "Hadar sen olmen." "Power is everything"" - submisson 1

"(Metroid Dread Spoilers go wheeeeeeee) He first says this after choking out samus and telling her that he will clone her to create an army of the strongest Metroid of all, Samus Aran.

But the Samus wakes up and literally RIPS HIS FACE OFF and crashes his fortress onto the planet, he gets infected by an X and transforms into a giant alien Kraig hybrid monster. While Samus fires the hyper beam to kill it, you can still hear "HADAR SEN OLMEN" in the background." - submission 2

"I got nothing this entire finale was just. Absolutely amazing." - submission 3

@is-metroid-prime-4-released-yet @tarn-ati0n

[cityzenshark]

Firsts to Grow Up | Humans in the Malto Family

Dorothy “Dot” Malto

The strict and loving matriarch of the Malto family. Dot was once a lieutenant in the U.S army during the Cybertronian war on Earth. Having fought alongside the Autobots and against the Decepticons, her opinions regarding the alien robots depend on them as individuals. But as for her general feelings towards them, she’d rather not be in their vicinity unless necessary. Dot lost a leg from knee down whilst defending civilians during a Decepticon attack. The one who rescued her and delivered her to medical assistance was none other than the now former leader of the Decepticons – Megatron. Fifteen years have passed since their last battle together, Dot and Megatron rarely see each other since. The conspiracies that follow Megatron wherever he goes is a burden that is his alone to bear. As his close friend, Dot will help him should he asks. As a mother and wife, her main priority is her family. The last thing she wants for her children is for them to be involved in the aliens’ politics that took Dot her entire life to get out of. The Terrans’ existence causes a mental war between Dot’s motherhood and her trauma.

.

Alex Malto

A dotting husband to Dot; father to Robby and Mo. Alex has a doctrine in Cybertronian culture and history. During the Cybertronian War on Earth, he was drafted into the Philippines military as a consultant in Cybertron-Earth relations. He and Dot first met during their services in the U.S. The two fell in love fast and got married. When news of Dot’s near fatal injury reached him, Alex left his station to visit her in a hospital at another state -- unbeknownst he would avoid a catastrophe that killed hundreds of his colleagues and refugees. While the catastrophe drastically shifted humanity’s views on Cybertronians, Alex’s boyish admiration of their kind remains. He kept the toys, the comics, and every physical media that promoted the Autobots when he was young. Despite that, he shares Dot’s wishes to stay away from their politics. His profession may force him back but right now, he is a historian teacher in Witwicky’s high school and to his adopted children – the Terrans.

.

Robby Malto

Fourteen-year-old son of Alex and Dot; twin brother to Morgan. Robby grew up in the city and the city life was where he wants his future to be. He had a great reputation at school, has many friends, and won several competitions in robotics and science. However, his dreams crumble when he and his family move to the small town Witwicky, surrounded by mountains, wildlife, and terribly weak internet signal. Robby doesn’t understand his mother. She was partners with Megatron of all Cybertronians, yet she doesn’t see him often nor wants to be around Cybertronians. He doesn’t understand his father. Since he knows so much about the alien robots’ culture, why did he agree with Dot’s decision to not have any involvement with them? He doesn’t understand his twin sister. Mo is at cloud nine since the move. The night crickets doesn’t disturb her sleep, the smell from cows doesn’t bother her, and very oddly, she’s excited about their new school. Robby wished he could wear his headphones and play games until he magically had his old city life back. After he gained the cybersleeves, Robby endures the pain coming from beneath it all while handling the Terrans’ emotional hive mind and his family distancing from him that he is very well aware is his own doing.

.

Morgan “Mo” Malto

Fourteen-year-old daughter of Alex and Dot; twin sister to Robby. While Robby would brood at his desk staring at his computer all day long in their new home, Mo would run free at the wild outdoors. The Malto’s new home in Witwicky is like haven to her. She gets her own room, no vehicles that might run over her, no nosy neighbours, and nature all around her! Mo’s life in the city was lonely. She was an odd one out at school and none appreciated her imaginative personality. Her new school in Witwicky gave her many good friends, and a chance for her to play role-playing board games. The Terrans are a great surprise addition to the new chapter in her life. Mo quickly grows into the role as big sister and learns to understand how the emotional hivemind functions quite fast, though she has no idea how to explain it. She spends most of her free time with the Terrans so whenever they have questions and their parents or their teachers aren’t around, they go to Mo. Despite this, however, Mo desperately wishes to keep her emotions private again. She doesn’t want her siblings to know how bad her period can be, she hates how the Terrans keep guessing her activities at every jolt of emotions, suggesting what she “should” do, and she doesn’t understand why her twin brother keeps pushing her away when she can literally feel him calling for help. Her new home is becoming more hurtful than joyful, but Mo keeps wearing a big smile on her face. For her family’s sake.

.

.

[dragonridernoobie]

Okay, This is kinda in the realm of angst and horror since I live that kind of thing so since Raf have a large family, imagine he have an older sister who is the black sheep of the family but look out for him even support him with his love fr science as she gifted him the best text book she can afford for him but one day she just left home leaving his final gift and note saying she is sorry and couldn't take it anymore as all the fight she have with their parents is not good for her mind and don't blame their parents as she explain that she have her own demons and hopefully one-day he'll understand why she leaves

She left and joined the military, but something happened on a mission that went wrong that she had been tested by MECH with dark energon, and basically she a corrupted human with ability that similar to Unicron then rescue by the Autobot when she mids of a vengeful rampage then in a middle of a mental break down

( I'm not good at explaining things )

Be emotional when both siblings reunited, but she sees her nothing but a monster, telling Raf to stay away from her as she didn't want to hurt him but he just hugs her they both reunited and is very emotional to see

Hmmm, I've done horror and angst before, but never like this. I tried my best since there was part you dident say that I kinda just took over. For example, you never said this was an autobot request or a raph reqest so, I'm going raph to make it more emotional. I really hope you like it, and I might have a tad bit of fun making this XD

TFP Raphael X Mutated Sister

9 years...it's been 9 years since Raphaels sister left. Raphael misses them so much. They always remember his birthday. He still got the last gift he got from them. A textbook about coding. He loved it since it tought him everything he knows now.

Though, after they left, he hated how his family reacted. They acted so happy and actally forgot about (Y/N). He hated his family except his mother. They still remmber his sister and misses them to.

All he knows about them from searching online is that they went into the army. He dosent believe they died since his mother would have been told if they did die.

All he can hope is that they did not die and aren't suffering. If they where here now, he would show them Bumblebee, the autobots, and his new friends.

He knew, he just knew that they would have stars in their eyes from how awsome it would be to see living alien robots.

For now though, he had to wait for them to show themselves.

Currently, he was with Bumblebee and the team. Everyone has been on edge and there has been no action from the decpticons or MECH.

So, they decided to go to a forest in the amazon where a gaint Lake was. The autobots would be able to transform without being seen, and kids could play in the water.

It was going well for a few hours intel there was an explosion near by. The autobots obviously go check out what it was and they find MECH.

Well, it's more of a destroyed MECH building. There were MECH gaurds shooting at a human who was throwing MECH vehicles at them.

Raphael noticed who it was right away. It was (Y/N)!!!

But they looked diffrent...they looked more angry, sad, in pain, and diffrent.

They had purple vains across their arms, legs, and face. They clearly had super strength to. They where destroying and killing MECH guards.

The autobots jump in and take out the rest of the MECH gaurds. When done, they try to help (Y/N) but they attack them to.

It takes ratchet, bulkhead, and optimus to hold them down. Ratchrt scanned them and announced that they are filled with Dark energon.

They immediately take (Y/N) back to base to help them. No matter what. Especially now they know this is Raphaels' lost sister.

Raphael watches them put his sister in a container.

He sees how she is in pain to.

She was crying purple tears from the pain she was in but was such in blind rage that she couldn't tell that he was standing right in front of her.

Ratchet comes up with a plan to heal (Y/N), but the success rate is extremely low since this was just theory but the best they got.

So Raphael watches them start the plan and hook the canister that (Y/N) is in, ontop a machine.

He watches them start it up and inject clean energon into it.

(Y/N)'s screams echos through the base.

They beg, cry, and scream for it to stop but they have to keep going.

Eventually, when all the dark energon is gone from their body, they turn it off.

They open the canister and get (Y/N) out.

There, lays an unconscious (Y/N)

Ratchet scans them and says they are alive but need to go to the hospital since their body won't be able to survive without assistance from machines.

So, the next 4 months is Raphael sitting next to (Y/N)'s bed in the hospital, reading them books, talking to them, and telling them about the adventures they went on.

(Y/N) would eventually wake up and welcome Raphael to a hug.

Once they where healthy enough to leave the hospital, off to the autobot base.

Raphael was right.

They did get star eyes from meeting them.

He doesn't want to lose his sister again.

I hope you enjoyed this! I tried by best with one hand so I hope you like it!!!!

[forthedancingandthethriving]

Got some fun ideas for a few things that could happen during the big battle of the Vacation arc;

-You remember that gauntlet Andrew made out of the Atl0s drone that's the breakout squad's ticket to not having to keep working for the Abyss while still making a break for it? Well, given that it was originally designed to collect DNA samples for the Omnitrix's database it has a lot of hardware and software in common with said device. So, during the chaos of the battle, he and Trixie end up running into each other (since Ben's crew came along) and the combination of Trixie's code being weird due to her origins, Andrew's modifications during the process of turning a flying camera into a glove with his bare hands, and the large overlap in the gauntlet and Omnitrix's designs makes the universe basically go "fuck it, why not" and give the gauntlet the features of an Omnitrix on top of. Fortunately he only gets a random set of ten starting out just like every Omnitrix wielder should. Specifically he starts out with ten of the many species that the drones have found so far in their explorations of the digital multiverse. So no actual canon Ben 10 aliens for him yet.

-Francis obviously goes after Meggy and Desti first, because he's a sadistic fuck like that, and is really excited about Desti's presence in particular. Not every day you get the opportunity to kill someone a second time after all. Too bad for him Saiko had the exact same thought when she realized he was there, and Kaizo and Whimpu are also here because why not. Whimpu being here is particularly interesting because you'd think he wouldn't be able to contribute much given his Whole Deal but apparently he's been studying the properties all the weird Spaghettis he, Mario and Bowser made during the Orange Spaghetti Saga and has found some actual uses for them. Including combat utility in some cases. This eventually results in Francis deciding to be opportunistic and snagging one of the spaghetti's with his tongue. Said spaghetti happens to be the blue one that turns people into Anime Girls. The combination of his two biggest obsessions (hot anime titties and himself) causes a horniness feedback loop that short-circuits his brain a-la Narcisus from Greek mythology. The breakout squad still makes sure to grab him on their way out since while they were scouting he mentioned having a place they could lay low if things went south.

Francis finding out there's a way to turn people into Waifus certainly won't have any consequences!

-The Goomba Who Sold The World is back again because of course he ended up in Computer Hell what did you expect. In order to make him actually, you know, useful (seeing as he's an ordinary Goomba and all, and a dead one at that) the Abyss turn him into a vessel for a portion of its power, resulting in a horrific transformation akin to the Smash Ultimate version of Marx.

-While a lot of the Abyss's army is the escapees, some of them given similar power boosts to the Goomba for similar reasons, the main bulk of it ends up being Black Arms, because when Black Doom got out of Computer Hell his connection to the hivemind got restored so he can summon his troops again.

-Also there's a build-your-own-rollercoaster attraction in the park and he's using it to make Biblically Accurate Radical Highway to cause problems for the heroes because of course he is.

-Mind-Controlled Full-Power Diana vs Fury Bowser vs hijacked movie-style Death Egg Robot (with Eggman stuck inside), courtesy of one of the more powerful inmates, with Lily, Bowser Jr. and Sage trying to save them (and save everyone else from them).

I'm beginning to think the Abyss needs to do a vetting process for people it decides to have join it..

But there are all great!! The last one is super intriguing to me because a mind-controlled Diana?? Fury Bowser?? Hijacked Death Egg?? That's a battle no one wants to be caught between..

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Nickel Propaganda Post

Did you know Tumblr has a 4096-character-per-paragraph limit? I didn't! Whoever submitted this, I love you.

Ok so Nickel is the sole survivor of a genocide that wiped out her entire world. Said genocide was carried out by “organic” aliens (carbon-based, fleshy lifeforms, like us, as opposed to silicon-based, mechanical lifeforms, like the transformers) because of anti-mechanical racism that pervades throughout the galaxy of the Transformers IDW universe. At some point soon after that, Nickel was found by the Decepticon Justice Division — Megatron’s personal kill squad, whose sole purpose is to hunt down, brutally torture, and kill any defectors or traitors to the Decepticon army/cause (or really, anyone who pissed off Megatron enough for him to put them on the DJD’s hit list). And when I say “brutally torture”, I mean prolong the victim’s death in the most creatively cruel, painful ways you could possibly think of, from shoving them feet-first into a meatgrinder, to melting them, to brutal electrocution, to stabbing their face with an iron-maiden-like mask, to literally ripping out their brain and shoving it into their mouth (the victim is still alive, mind you, because they’re robots and their brain remains connected to their spine).

There are five members of the DJD, and each of them specializes in a specific method of torture (and most of them transform into instruments of said torture, like the aforementioned meatgrinder, smelter, and electric chair). The leader, Tarn, even has a superpower that allows him to modulate his voice to match the frequency of his victim’s robot-heartbeat and then induce an excruciatingly painful (fatal) heart attack by gradually lowering his voice until the victim’s heart stops. These guys are absolute monsters. On top of that, they’re all zealots who wholeheartedly believe in the Decepticon Cause, which has gradually gone from aiming to eradicate the caste system and freeing the working class on Cybertron, to wiping out all organic life in the Galaxy and establishing a galactic Decepticon empire. So these guys find Nickel, and wouldn’t ya know, she’s all in on the whole “organic genocide” thing. Plus, the DJD happens to need a medic, and Nickel is one. So she joins them and becomes the den mother to an organized lynch mob. She has absolutely no issue with any of their “activities” and treats them all like her children or grandchildren, scolding them for not taking better care of themselves and admonishing Tarn for bringing her a “smooshed up” organ from a victim because, oh yeah, the main part of her job is now giving Tarn regular organ transplants because he’s addicted to transforming and regularly burns out the organ that allows him to transform. It’s honestly kind of sweet how much Nickel cares about her new sons, when you ignore the whole murder and torture thing.

After the main five members of the DJD are all killed, Nickel becomes the leader of an entire army of Decepticon fundamentalists, who are currently fighting the organics who genocided her planet, but she gets separated from her new army via a series of coincidences and hijinks. This gets her stuck with yet another group of five Decepticons, the Scavengers, but unlike the DJD (who were the best of the best cons), the Scavengers are literally the worst. They’re all basically incompetent, they regularly get mixed up in wacky adventures, and they’re much more interested in hanging out and having fun than carrying out “justice” in the name of the Cause. On top of that, the Scavengers actually had a run-in with the DJD before and only lived to tell the tale because the DJD got called away on a more important mission. When they find out that Nickel used to be part of the DJD and incredulously ask her if she’s trying to apologize or make up for her time with them, she declares that she was proud to be one of them. There’s even a kind of hilarious panel of Nickel watching the Scavengers goofing off, and reminiscing about the DJD.

Through another series of hijinks, Nickel and the Scavengers eventually meet up with the comic’s main cast, a group of Autobots, in the so-called Transformers heaven. However, heaven turns out to actually be a euthanasia clinic for terminally ill patients, where the whole planet is programmed to place patients in a simulation of their greatest fantasy, give them a sense of peace, and then euthanize them. The power source of this massive clinic is a group of organic aliens hooked up to a life support machine, and disconnecting the machine will turn off the simulation and terminate the euthanasia program. Nickel, the Scavengers, and a few of the main cast (the Autobots I mentioned) figure out the nature of the clinic and find the room with the organics on life support, but they have no idea how to end the program. Upon seeing the organics, Nickel immediately turns of their life support and kills them, freeing the main cast from the clinic’s influence. One Autobot, a fellow medic, praises Nickel for figuring out how to free them, and her response heavily implies that no, she didn’t figure it out, she just wanted to kill those organics. However, while the reader can easily see this implication because we know Nickel’s backstory and motivation already, the Autobots have no idea, so they welcome Nickel and the Scavengers into their crew. Then, near the climax of the whole series, Nickel saves the day by killing a god (it’s a really, really long story). The last time we see her, she’s basically riding off into the sunset with the Scavengers to go on more adventures.

[jj3ddd-blog]

Alright, so I was thinking in my head, how could I summarize a crazy story with multiple settings and make it make sense? I want everyone to hear me out; I thought this would be really interesting. 

So a bunch of people start playing this game until the creator of the game installs this "update." Everyone playing the game gets sucked into it like Jumanji. The main character creates a harem in this game until he defeats the game. After that, every other player dies, and he's traumatized by this when he comes back to the real world. While he was gone, the creator (what we'll call him for short) made a contingency plan a long time ago where he shot a rocket into space that contained a whole transmission tower to contact aliens. The aliens travel to Earth right before the creator gets caught by the FBI and gets beamed up as the chosen one of his people. The alien overlord on their ship is dead. The aliens believe they could use the creators "life essence" to bring their overlord back to life. Instead, they infuse his soul into the overlord's body, and he uses that to his advantage to wipe out humanity. The aliens are so physically weak that they base their military on viruses. The main character comes back to a world where he's the last human due to 3 main viruses. The first virus started a zombie apocalypse. The second virus used the internet to create an army of evil AI robots. The third virus was unknown to the aliens, and it turned the humans into orcs, elves, vampires, dwarves, centaurs, lycanthropes, etc. To avoid everything on the surface, these beings traveled underground to make their own kingdoms undetected. It's been 50 years in the real world since then. The main character goes on this adventure killing zombies and robots until he finds the secret underground caves. He asks this vampire what happened in the real world, mistaking her for a human, and then gets bitten and turns into one. She tells him everything that's happened so far, and then he kills her for what she did. Instead of helping anyone, he watches as the race wars begin and waits for each winning side to finish their genocides. After a few decades, the last few races are the orcs, the kobolds, the hobgoblins, and the lizardfolk. The main character convinces each race to band together and raise armies to challenge the so-called forbidden surface. The armies wage war on the zombies and machines while the main character flies a plane into the alien spaceship. He blows up the spaceship from the inside, and his armies defeat the zombies and robots. The creator survives through an escape pod and uses the last of the alien technology to open multiple time portals. These portals open up to every single war in human history. The creator laughs and watches as the main character's armies are obliterated by Nazis, Soviets, Crusaders, Ancient Romans, Mongols, Persians, Egyptians, etc. The main character can't take this anymore. He's so traumatized that he stabs his own heart with a wooden stake. After he died, it was only a matter of time before the space-time continuum broke. The creator grabbed him and spoke an incantation before he died. Both of their souls were saved from their broken reality but fused together in death. They were stuck in limbo. Two personalities fighting internally. After a while they got tired and were at peace. Over time they became toxic yaoi lovers. The angels finally showed up, separated their souls, and judged them. It was a very funny conversation. The main character ends up taking the fall for the creator and goes to the underworld willingly while the creator stays in limbo. The incantation unknowingly gave the main character superpowers, so he used them to fight his way through the underworld to kill the devil. He uses these powers to wage war on the angels. The main character pulls the creator out of limbo, locking eyes in slow motion with this song in the background. 

They make out passionately, kill all the angels, create a world where every demon becomes an animal, nobody has a gender, and everyone gets reincarnated. The creator becomes pregnant, and the main character says, "Guess you can say we're the new Adam and Steve!" 

The End

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Trick or treat!

Another continuation of the Pinocchio fic, the previous one being for @chasm-side here and the first one being for @zeroducks-2 here :3

Tim is tired. His whole body is sore. He's hungry as hell. He's thirsty. He's too damn hot, practically sweating through the kevlar of his suit.

However, the world is safe again, and so he's feeling pretty damn good laying here next to one of the watchtower's external windows, watching the beautiful blue marble that is Earth turning peacefully below.

He hears a loud pair of 'bwa-ha-ha' laughs and turns around to see Booster Gold and Blue Beetle on the other side of the room. Huh. He hasn't talked to Ted Kord in ages, and you know what? He may as well give Booster a shot, right? The straight Fs jock probably won't have any leads worth a damn, but Tim'd have to kick his own ass if it turned out getting answers was that easy all along and he didn't go for it, right?

He drags his weary bones off the ground and goes over to shake Ted's hand.

"I had no idea you were picking the goggles back up!"

Ted gives a tight laugh, "Hah ha! Neither did I! But hey, what else can a guy do when he's suddenly kidnapped by aliens?"

"Yeah, can't say I recommend fighting them in your underwear. Take it you're putting it right back up in the closet once you get home?"

"Ehh, I dunno, I might need to wear it into my cardiologist's office - she's gonna kill me."

Booster shakes his head. "I keep tellin ya, just let her know you got your thirty minutes of cardio in this week and leave it at that!"

"See the thing is I knew a much younger guy who used to try that line on her all the time and for some odd reason it never seemed to stick..."

Tim laughs. "Call me if you need backup against the nurses."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles lightheartedly, "Anyways, you sticking around for the speeches or are you gonna scram?"

"I'm a Bat, there's no getting out of them for me. Gotta stand up on that podium, rain or shine, health or broken tibia. Real quick though, Booster Gold! Need a quick word with you, there's something you just might be able to help me with."

"Hey, throw it at me! There's nothin' the Gold can't handle!" Booster gives him a patented crest toothpaste commercial grin.

"Awesome, it's a history question."

"Oh... goodie..." His smile instantly becomes strained.

"Does the name Inverz Pinocchio mean anything to you?"

"Oh shit, yeah that actually means a lot to me. That's not even history that was slash will be current events almost, uh, shit okay so you know furbies?"

"Incredibly cursed way to start an explanation. Yes, I know furbies."

"Okay, cool, great, this will only get more cursed! So Inverz basically made tons of furbie type stuff except a million times more advanced, we're talking artificial muscle fibers and animal level intelligence. They were super popular pets until the pinocchio scandal got out, cause like it's all the benefits of a cat, except you didn't have to feed them and could store a bunch of music in their brain."

"Oh gods, they were selling sentient androids, weren't they?"

"Oh yeah, and here's the real kicker: they didn't even know they were androids."

"What? Like the buyers thought they were getting real human people?"

"No no no, like, the androids themselves didn't know they weren't human! They were designed as sleeper agents, it was nuts, like they had all this shit in them that was designed to mimic human biology and then bam!" Booster snaps. "The CEO of Inverz pushed a button and suddenly all the energy keeping up that disguise went straight into the weapons systems."

Horror pours down Tim's spine.

"But- no that- there'd have to be some way to tell, right?! Like, it's just not possible to hide that much tech perfectly!"

"Well yeah obviously, once people found out that apparently there were thousands if not millions of people out there who were robots-"

"Millions?!"

"Oh yeah, that's the part where it got bad. Turned out Inverz was trying to build an army and had been planting their sleeper agent androids into the wider population without anyone's knowledge for decades and... uh... hey you're lookin a little pale there...?"

Ted puts an arm around his shoulders and starts steering him away from the crowds and towards a couch. "How about we sit down for the rest of this history lesson."

"Okay..." Tim says distantly.

This can't be happening. He can't be a- He can't be what this implies. He can't. He's been through medical exams - he's been through surgeries! Oh gods, the surgery was from Ra's Al Ghul, there's no way he would have told him anything, and Leslie's always told him that his blood pressure was a little wonky, and gods this can't be happening.

"Soooo, uh, yes there are a few ways to tell." Booster Gold continues awkwardly. "Most of them are pretty invasive? But you totally don't have to worry about those! Nobody's saying you have to crack your- er- somebody's skull open!"

Beetle makes un-subtle 'STOP' gestures with one hand across his neck.

Tim stares into the middle distance, stone faced.

Booster attempts to pivot. "So yeah totally just gonna list some like, little hint things? Little clues? Um. Infertility."

No data points on that one.

"Can't really get a concussion."

He thought he'd been lucky. He assumed that Dick and Jason and Steph and everyone had so many more problems with TBIs simply because Tim got hit in the head less but... but he didn't, did he? Deep down he kinda always knew he was taking as many blows but he still hadn't thought...

"There was also something about a lot of things feeling and looking just a little different? Like they'll be weirdly numb to some things but super sensitive to others and the way they do logic just doesn't quite line up with how humans do it."

Ted says, "Guess that makes sense, what with them having a whole different brain structure. The whole way they process the world is probably just a little bit off from human norms."

He thought he was just a little weird. Though, at the same time, he'd kinda always suspected it might be something more? Sometimes, when he was a teenager, he'd look at what his classmates were doing and feel like an alien. Sometimes he'd have to mimic them without truly understanding in order to keep up.

"That's no guarantee of anything though, plenty of humans are just oddballs."

...Was this why his parents had traveled so much? Why they shoved him in boarding schools and left him alone at home for weeks? Because they purchased him? Because he was a robot and not a real child?

But if they'd cared about him less, if they'd known... then why had his Dad been so frightened for him when he went out as Robin? Why did his mother bother tucking him in at night when he was little?

Why had they given him a birthday at all? Oh gods, that hadn't actually been his fourth birthday! Those were his first memories; that had to have been right after they switched him on for the first time. And- and they got him cake. And gifts. And carried him around and-

And they'd loved him... hadn't they?

Ted studies his face for a minute. Then he pats his shoulder and asks, "Say, Boost, ol' buddy ol' pal, any chance they made a proper diagnostic kit for that whole thing?"

"They did! Totally non invasive and everything, um, we thinking maybe put that down on the wishlist for an early Hanukah gift?"

"Yeeeaaaaahhhhh, that sounds like a good plan. That sound like a good plan to you bud?"

Tim nods.

[akkrosu]

My Favorite Books of 2023

After seeing everyone’s end-of-the-year QL posts and having a look at my meticulous list of books I read this year, I was a little inspired to write up something myself, just not about QLs but books. I’ve been trying to be more vocal about things I like, and post things for myself, and only myself. So I don’t even care how long this is, and just have fun with it.

In terms of literature, this year was pretty slow for me (with only 48 finished books, about half of what it used to be, probably because I’ve been watching so many QLs) and fairly limited to the YA genre because I got stuck with high-school and college stories and haven’t really moved on since. But still I managed to put together the 10 I enjoyed most. Books (like shows) are very subjective to me in that it takes the right one at the right time for me to fall in love with it, so take every one of these with a grain of salt, I guess.

I’m not including any danmei I’m reading because they are so separate from other books to me in what they are and how they work that I can’t be objective with them. Also, I don’t care when any of these books came out, all that matters to me is that I read them for the first time this year.

1. The Inexplicable Logic of my Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This might be my favorite book out of those on this list. I knew I loved Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s poetic and reflective writing after I read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, but this one hit all the right spots for me in a way I can’t compare to any other book I’ve read. It tells the story of a 17-year-old boy named Salvador, his close friends, and his gay father, who go through a million setbacks and tragedies and learn the meaning of life—in its essence, it’s a book about growing up and grieving and living. This author has a way of being painfully real while also wrapping everything in a beautiful language that makes it all even more real and touching. Two of my favorite quotes:

“I wanted to tell (my father) that all the awful things that happened in the old world were dead. And the new world, the world we lived in now, the world we were creating, that world would be better. But I didn’t say it, because I wasn’t sure it was true.”

“I realized that Sam wasn’t angry at all. She was hurt. At that moment I heard all the hurt she’d ever held. And it seemed to me that the whole house had quieted down to listen to her pain.”

2. If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang

I read this around the beginning of the year, so my memory isn’t the best, but I still love it like I did back then. In the story, Alice, the only scholarship student at a Chinese school for the Rich and Powerful, suddenly starts turning invisible and, due to financial and other pressures on her, decides to turn these new ‘powers’ into profit by obtaining information for classmates and selling it to them. The whole thing starts out pretty innocent, but the requests become more and more severe and dangerous, and Alice essentially has to decide where she draws the line and caves in to all the pressures surrounding her. It’s essentially critical commentary about Chinese society while taking a look at the blurry lines between good and bad, all wrapped in a modern story with fantastical elements.

3. Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

I finished this book only a few days ago, so I’m still in my feels about it. Even though it’s a little sci-fi and not at all like the books I usually read—what with the army of powerful heroes using giant transforming robots to fight a war against mechatron aliens that eerily remind me of insects—, it absolutely grabbed me with its narration full of incredibly precise and succinct descriptions, balanced out by lines so funny that they had me cackling, and incredible character depth (which, to me, is often the most important thing). Wu Zetian as a main character was compelling to follow, because she is so strong and true to what she wants, rising to power while killing everyone in her path. And the poly storyline brought a lot of joy to my heart, because we get so little of it in YA literature. Plus, it was really nice to read a book examining gender roles without feeling dysphoric even once, which I think was only possible because it was written by a fellow enby person. Some more favorite quotes:

“Where does jealousy come from, if not an insecurity that I’ll lose you because of him? But that’s not how it works, no matter how many people believe it so. You’re not something to be kept or taken, and love isn’t some scarce resource to battle over. Love can be infinite, as much as your heart can be open.”

“Perks of refusing to play by the rules: you don’t have to choose between the boy who’d torture a man to death with you and the boy who’d welcome you back with pastries after.”

“It’s as if I’ve got a cocoon shriveled too tightly around my whole being. If I had my way, I’d exist like that butterfly, giving onlookers no easy way to bind me with a simple label.”

4. Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli

I hit this phase around the middle of the year where I was craving some sapphic romance novels, and this one fell right into my hands. I remember I started this on the 12-hour flight back from China, and it gripped me so hard I finished it in about a day, even though I guess nothing about it is super unique. It’s just a love story about a soon-to-be college student falling for her childhood friend’s new college friend while visiting campus, even though said childhood friend told everyone they are exes. I guess what I really liked about it is the exploration of community, especially queer community, because the protagonist often feels at war between starting to have feelings for a girl and not thinking she fits into what she believes queer people are or should be, causing her to repeatedly deny the possibility of her being queer. Plus, I love deeper thoughts and reflections under the guise of a simple romance plot, and this book is quintessential Becky Albertalli in that regard.

5. El fabuloso mundo de las letras [The Fabulous World of the Letters] by Jordi Sierra i Fabra

Okay, so this is technically a children’s book written by a well-known Spanish author that was given to me while staying with a friend’s family in Spain, but regardless of the target group, I still absolutely loved it and ate it up. It’s a wonderful look at language and writing and creatively tries to spark enthusiasm for reading in children through fun little games, stories in which letters coming alive and form things like huge forests, crossword puzzles, and more. The frame for it is a story about a boy who hates reading sucked into the world of letters, where he gets to know them and how they work and learns how beautiful language is, which is 100% my thing as a linguist. I will forever grieve all the H’s in the hospital.

6. Tokioregen [Tokyo Rain] by Yasmin Shakarami

One of the few German books I still read, English has just taken over by now. It’s about a German high school student who spends a semester abroad in Japan, falls in love with the country and a classmate who shows her the hidden parts of Tokyo, and has to witness an earthquake that destroys most of the city. Somehow the author managed to convey Tokyo’s magic in a way I never expected, even though I’ve never been all that interested in Japan, so it sucked me in.

7. When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert

Oof, this one challenged my mental health, but I guess that’s exactly what it was trying to do. We have here a story about a group of close friends who are the most important people to each other, but when they find out one of them, Jason, is abused at home and he tries to kill himself, they all spiral and friendships start to fall apart. It basically takes you along for the ride as the protagonist Beth’s mental health and her friendships go through one of the most terrible experiences of their lives, and that makes you think about a lot of things in your life.

8. I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

I’ve been a huge fan of Casey McQuiston since Red, White & Royal Blue, because they write incredible queer stories with some of the best characterization I’ve ever seen. In this one, Chloe, held hostage by a Southern Christian small town with her moms, has made it her mission to beat child prodigy and good girl Shara as valedictorian, but instead Shara ends up kissing her (and two other classmates) before disappearing, leaving behind only a series of clues for the three to follow. Let’s just say I didn’t expect the plot to unfold like it did at all: it turns everything upside down and, once again, in the way Casey McQuiston does, ends up with the most compelling characters I’ve ever read about.

9. A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin

Ugh, I love fantasy stories based on Chinese culture and mythology (see Iron Widow and If You Could See the Sun). This one makes use of the art of tea-brewing, which the protagonist Ning uses to create fantastical illusions and to participate in a competition looking for the new palace tea master, hoping to save her sister’s life by winning. The writing was great, and I really liked Ning, the protagonist. But to quote from my little book diary: “I’m rooting for the straights with the tea-induced magical connection, but I might be rooting a lot more for the princess-and-her-ferocious-handmaiden side couple.”

10. XOXO by Axie Oh

Okay, the last one, which I never expected to be good or original at all, and it’s a bit cliché even for me. But something about the story stuck with me, and so it made this list. It’s a bit of a typical k-pop (which is a genre I don’t even listen to) idol romance, in which Jenny, a cello player, spends an evening with (unbenownst to her) k-pop star Jaewoo in LA, only to reunite with him at a music conservatory in Seoul a few months later when Jenny moves to Korea. I guess you can sort of figure out the plot from there, but the characters are written very well (I think you can see the pattern here), and it’s a really nice read when you want something simple and sweet.

[galaxysharks]

Much like the proverbial boomerang, my love of beautiful women who scare me has once again returned to the one being in this world that should have made even my asexual ass realize the gay thoughts weren't going to go away: Samus Aran.

And because I am the way I am, and am also thoroughly unmedicated, I have developed a game story three sections deep within the span of a few minutes. Full disclosure, it's been a hot second, like Metroid: Corruption era-ish and I have forgotten a lot, so don't come at me for canonical discrepancies.

I mean do, cause I want to know, but don't be an ass about it.

Anyway, onto the 'theory'?

Prologue:

Tutorial has player as classic fully upgraded Samus making tar out of a massive flood of enemies. Learn basic maneuvers, basic puzzle features, possible crafting, ect.

Tutorial ends with epic boss fight with some alien/robot that has ice/cold based attacks, because I remember that due to freaky alien DNA splicing, Samus doesn't handle cold very well. Samus technically wins but appears to be killed in the process as her suit is entangled in debris and flooded with coolant.

Some time jump later

Act 1

Cut scene opens to landing crew of a research ship docking at the remains of the 'final resting place' of the legendary Samus Aran. There are three people. They are talking to an admiral about the mission to research Arans power suit, as a way to combat the now growing issue of the alien/robot forces that she died fighting.

Admiral: just look for any remains of the suit, we can figure out funeral details once your back at the main ship.

Crew 1 (Doctor/Medic) : Understood. I will stay with the drop ship and coordinate while Lighter and Slip search the facility. Slip, take the upper floors, Lighter, bottom floors, move out.

Now the player controls Lighter, he is a thin man,5'6, and probably a little bit too excited to see the famous suit up close. His whole thing is fire and plasma weapons, but he is very weak compared to Tutorial! Samus, kind of to simulate Metroids whole, 'loose your gear and backtrack' thing.

Players go through a very destroyed facility, but are clearly taking a different path onto the building than in the tutorial, so there are still enemies to deal with.

Makes it into the boss chamber, and to his utter glee, the suit is more or less fully together, suspended in wires and debris. He has been lighting oil puddles on fire to provide light, and also warming up the room which is frigid from rampant coolant leaks. Very carefully cuts the chest plate and helmet in half, but halfway through the chest plate, he notices that the dead legend is staring at him, and not in the dead way.

Proceeds to nearly shit himself, as 6'3 Aran slowly shakes off dust and collapses out of the suit. Now in heavily damaged Zero suit, Samus growls at him and uses Lighter's torch to cut off the handcannon from her suit and it's power box.

While this is happening, Lighter is panic-calling Medic to help him.

Lighter: wholly shit, Medic, Shit shit shit shit....

Medic: is Aran functional? Does she recognize who she is?

Lighter: I don't know, I havent gotten to that just yet.

Medic: you didn't talk to the woman whose armor you cut to pieces?

Lighter: I did! But she doesnt seem to want to chat. She's hissed at me twice though. I told her we could get her off this planet.

Medic: So a giant genetically enhance soldier who is possibly incoherent and definitely feral now is alone with you and has your weapon? Brilliant, look just get her here, and I'll take over, I need to recall Slip. And call the admiral.

This part of the game is almost like a reverse escort mission. Since the objectives come from medic, they lead back the way Lighter came, but Samus has decided to ignore that entirely and starts limping back her way. Lighter tries unsuccessfully to get her to go towards the ship. Citing her extensive injuries and the prospect of a shower.

Samus does pause at that one, but then notices a waterfall nearby and stands under that instead.

They make it back to Samus's ship but set off alarms in the process. Samus throws on a back up suit prototype and glares at Lighter before tossing the upper body of a different one at him, as he does not exactly have the legs needed to wear the full thing.

Players now control Samus as the two fight their way back to the drop ship. Solving two-person puzzles and beating back the hoards of aliens/robots that have now woken up.

They teach the ship, Medic helps them aboard while Slip pilots.

Slip (turning around): soooo, what do we do with the demon nest we disturbed.

Samus looks at her armor, and presses a button, causing her ship in the facility to explode massively, taking the place with it.

Slip: I guess that works. Setting a course for Main ship.

[chongoblog]

Brawl Tier List (Based On The Relevance of What They Were Doing When We Meet Them In Subspace Emissary)

I'll explain some of my choices under the cut

So a lot of these choices are pretty obvious, although some are a bit iffy or require explanation of the Subspace story which can be found in trophy descriptions & The Dojo.

The first category was for characters who were engaged in the Subspace plot from the get-go and were the "good guys". In case you didn't know, King Dedede is the hero of Subspace, and if it weren't for him, Tabuu would have won, since he made the "reset badges", and his initial plan was to hold onto some people and give them the reset badges in case Tabuu used his Off Waves. Meta Knight is considered to be a good guy, even though he mostly just wanted to get the Halberd back. Fox I put into this category as well since he's first seen giving chase to the Halberd in his Arwing, so I consider that pretty engaged, even if we don't know the exact reasoning.

The second category is open and shut. They're the Bad Guys. Ganon, Bowser, and everyone's favorite winner, Wario. Technically Wario kinda defected from Tabuu and wanted to just steal all the trophies, but I'm counting him here.

Next was the "Used by Tabuu" tier. According to the lore, the entire Subspace Army is made from the power of Game and Watch (although it says the Game & Watch are unaware of this). Pikachu's electricity was being used to power a lot of the operations (most notably the Subspace Bomb Factory iirc). And it's implied that R.O.B was coerced into helping Tabuu, feeling so ashamed that he put on the Ancient Minister garb to hide himself out of shame.

The "Was Doing What You Expect" Tier is a tricky one, since some characters like Mario & Kirby weren't doing what you'd expect in their normal games, but they were fighting, which is something you'd expect in Smash, but I was kinda lenient. Pit was watching from Skyworld, which is in character. It's shown that Pokemon Trainer was looking for Ivysaur and Charizard, so we can assume he was on that journey when we found him in the Ruined Zoo. ZSS's motivations are kind of unclear about whether she knew about the Subspace Bombs and tried to stop them or if she just knew her Power Suit was there and wanted to get to it. I always figured it was the latter, so I'm putting it in this tier. Marth was defending a castle, which sounds right (I haven't played Fire Emblem). Ice Climbers were climbing ice. Monkeys were getting their bananas. Link was getting Master Sword. Yoshi was sleeping (which only gets him out of "Just Standing There" tier because he is Yoshi).

Next are the ones who just kinda showed up. And it so happens that all five of them make a pretty grand entrance. Sonic is the obvious example here. Ness also counts since there's no implication that either he or Lucas actually live in or even near the Ruined Zoo, but then again in the dialogue-less cutscenes tying together over 30 characters, I don't think that detail was important. Falco makes a grand entrance, although you could argue that he was meant to be Fox's backup. Ike makes a grand entrance with this Great Aether. Captain Falcon literally shows up to jump out of his car, punch a robot and kill approximately 50 aliens in one fell swoop, so either there was an F-Zero track around the Island of the Ancients that we don't see and he quit in the middle of his race to do that, or he just did that. Either way there's something wrong with him.

And then finally we have the characters who were Just Standing There. Luigi obviously was minding his own business when he got got by Dedede. Peach and Zelda I almost put in the "Doing What You Expect Tier" (or at LEAST Peach since she knew Mario at least), but honestly? They were just standing there. No hate, obviously. Sometimes you just gotta Stand There. Olimar was minding his own business letting his Pikmin eat a robot before they were murdered. Lucario was vibing on top of a mountain (as you do). Lucas was just being sad. And Snake? We don't see any sign that he's on a mission. We just see that he's been on the Halberd for an undisclosed period of time before dramatically revealing himself way way later. I like to imagine he accidentally fell asleep.

And then the last tier are for the 3 characters that are unlocked after Subspace, so I don't really count them.

Anyway in case you can't tell I am back on my ADHD meds! Hope you enjoyed this. See you all for the Nuzlocke stream later.

[itsclydebitches]

I just watched the "10 most incompetent Star Trek Admirals" on Youtube, and realized that Idiotwood from Volume Two to Volume 7 shares the same tunnel vision and paranoia/fear of these incompetent admirals. No wonder Ironwood was a villain. CRWBY studied well-intentioned extremists from Star Trek. Team RWBY was like the Enterprise. No wonder I felt bad for Ironwood yet hated him from the beginning.

I’m no expert in Star Trek admirals, but from what I remember they’ve often got two significant problems that Ironwood doesn’t: extreme xenophobia and specific, selfish motivations. A lot of the bureaucratic antagonists in Star Trek function as a foil to the open-minded crew of the Enterprise: they don’t trust the Klingons, or the Romulans, or the Changelings, so they release criminals, or develop secret cloaking technology, or create elaborate attacks on their own people to later blame on the aliens, all in an effort to create some long-term, presumed peace with -- you guessed it -- the Federation at the center of it all when the dust clears. Yeah, there’s the underlying message that the ends don’t justify the means (something Ironwood is absolutely arguing in Volume 8), but the far more significant message is that the admirals only reached this conclusion because their xenophobia blinded them to other options. They won't even consider working with/compromising with/sacrificing something for an alien species whose culture is "uncivilized" to them, so the only option that's left, to their mind, is a horrific one. The Enterprise crew is the one (usually) offering to talk it out, or find another, non-violent solution, even with their worst enemies, demonstrating the acceptance of diversity that the bureaucrats not engaging in first contacts and not putting their lives on the line in the name of peaceful exploration have lost sight of.

So there are some key differences there. The first is that the admirals tend to be active whereas Volumes 2-7 Ironwood is reactive. He focuses on defense (a robotic army on hand just in case, built so that real people aren’t put on the front lines) rather than secret, offensive strategies that knowingly endanger others. Penny most definitely technically falls into that category, but like so much else in RWBY, the comparison falls apart once you dig one layer down. Though Penny is indeed a secret project who is meant to bring peace to Remnant -- a purpose which, notably, RWBY drops after Volume 3... -- she’s not a threat to innocents, or to a morally gray enemy that the narrative argues should be compromised with, not destroyed. From the get-go Penny is presented as just a girl with powers, like our protagonists, and though our generic Vytal audience is shocked at her existence, they’re not afraid of an android by default. The people adore Penny when she’s resurrected and the whole “Omg she attacked Robyn’s party!” was... badly done, to put it mildly. The point being that Ironwood’s secret, morally ambiguous project (which, for the record, is really PIETRO’S secret, morally ambiguous project) isn’t a threat to anyone or perceived as such, unlike most of the admirals who are doing shady things that also pose a legitimate, unambiguous threat.

In order for Ironwood to be like many of ST’s admirals I can remember, he’d need to have made a major sacrifice/endangered others in the name of achieving a long-term goal. The closest we get to that is him abandoning Mantle, but that’s a reaction to Salem’s attack, not something he comes up with on his own. There’s a big difference between “Holy shit an immortal witch is going to kill us all, so I’m going to save who I can because no one can come up with a way where we all survive” and “Hmm. Maybe if I kill these people and blame it on the witch, everyone will join together and defeat her. Getting rid of Salem is worth a little murder, right?” Basically, Ironwood is not Watchman’s Ozymandias.  Ironwood’s plan to achieve peace is to build a communication tower and, again, we might have a legit comparison if RWBY had ever established why materials for a CTV tower were supposedly decimating Mantle and the ways in which Ironwood is ignoring a better solution. The admirals plans’ are always actively harming someone -- they’re threatening an already established peace, or willfully hurting a community when there are other options, or covering up someone who deserves punishment, etc. -- and it’s firmly established that they Did Not Need to Do This. In contrast, RWBY establishes that it’s 100% necessary to use these resources if they want the tower built -- remember, Ruby wants the tower too -- but Ironwood is somehow still bad because there are consequences for using them, even though those consequences don’t make any sense. It’s like going “Yes, if you want a cake we need to use sugar and then there won’t be any left for other bakes today” only for someone to respond, “No, I want the cake and for there to be plenty of sugar left for other projects because that’s Fair and Good. How dare you not find a way to manage that. I don’t know how to do it, but YOU’RE the bad guy if you can’t magically make the cake and have plenty of sugar leftover. What’s our other project? Oh, building a wall. What do you mean that makes no sense? Don’t question why we want sugar to build a wall, just magic up our cake without using the sugar!” Unlike most Star Trek plot-lines, RWBY is terrible at establishing the basic facts that allow the audience to go, “The Bad Guy is indeed doing a terrible, unnecessary thing in the name of a larger, sympathetic goal and thus though we might understand their position, we can’t support it.”

The other major difference is that the admirals often have some selfish goal that’s an underlying motivation. They want to appear important and in control; the one who always knows better than the starship captain. They want advanced technology to increase their/the Federation’s power, presenting a colonizer-like ideology that the rest of the Federation must fight against. They want to eradicate a planet/culture due to that xenophobia and hide that desire behind ‘protecting’ others. I’m pretty sure at least two in Star Trek’s history were after freaking immortality. The point is that they’re almost always bad guys outside of whatever “the needs of the many” arguments they’ve got going on -- and the fact that Kirk and Spock are the originators of that claim certainly complicates things. Kirk himself is an admiral who does some Shady Stuff in the name of getting what he wants, Spock, but of course we support that because we care more about their relationship than we do the rules, or even a ship full of Klingons -- but Ironwood doesn’t have anything else going on? He’s overtly set up to contrast another antagonist, Jacques, who is known for his racism and his greed. He consistently supports the heroes in ways that never backfire, or turn out to be manipulation (praising Ruby, telling the kids they can leave the Beacon fight, Yang’s arm, defending Weiss, letting them stay in Atlas, etc.) He’s not shown to be racist against the faunus. He’s not after some selfish gain like, say, securing the Staff to enact a personal wish. He’s shown to put off martial law until the final hour and until he went Cartoon Villain, frequently and in earnest sought out others’ opinions. Up until hours before his death, Ironwood has the least information out of the entire group, putting him in the worst position to pull any strings. We literally get a scene in which a child fills him in on the Biggest Secret Ever and his reaction is to quietly grapple with that, a huge contrast to our heroes’ violence and dismissal. The fandom claims that Ironwood is power-hungry, but power-hungry people don’t beg allies to help them fix problems, or go through 99% of their run-time with very little, actual power (being on the council means nothing in this war. Ozpin, and then later Ruby, hold all the cards that matter). Ironwood possesses a lot of political power due to a flawed system that he’s likely too young to have built and he can be stubborn when he thinks he’s hit on the right solution, but damn... he’s got nothing on Ruby. Presenting tunnel-vision as an antagonists’ crucial flaw depends heavily on not giving your hero the exact same flaw, only worse and presented as a defining strength.

Now toss in that the Enterprise almost always has a plan that the admiral refuses to listen to. I’ve long argued that it’s crucial that Team RWBY were unable to come up with a better solution for Ironwood than, “Idk we’ll just win somehow because we’re the good guys!!” Ironwood was never offered a better solution and, crucially, he is shown to be in the right. As fans have said over and over, it's not paranoia -- a dangerous, inaccurate fear -- when the character is 100% correct in the level of threat they're facing. Ironwood says it’s too dangerous to hold the festival without additional protection and sure enough, Cinder launches a massive grimm attack that decimates the school. This event proves that the Kingdoms are all in danger, thus necessitating more security and, lo and behold, huntsmen are being murdered off and again Cinder sneaks past their defenses. He wants to create the communication tower which our heroes are BIG fans of... despite knowing, unlike Ironwood, that more forces won’t defeat Salem due to her immortality. Ironwood said they couldn’t defeat Salem and guess what? They couldn’t. The heroes ran just like he planned to, the only difference is that they waited a whole lot longer, lost two Relics along the way, got a friend killed, ‘died’ themselves, and still didn’t rescue everyone--the one thing that would have made their choice better than his. It’s important to show that the antagonists are operating under flawed thinking, which indeed usually happens with ST’s admirals, but with Ironwood I’m always going, “He’s right though? I mean, the fandom likes to ignore/twist/make up stuff that makes him seem wrong, but based on actual, canonical facts the guy has been nailing it when it comes to assessing the danger of each situation. The fact that the assessment is continually ‘Our situation sucks and there are no good options here’ isn’t his fault.”

TL;DR

Ironwood reacts to established threats rather than plotting attacks of his own.

His reactions are primarily defensive rather than offensive.

The enemy he’s fighting is an Established Evil (Salem) and Literal Monsters Without Souls (grimm) as opposed to a different species the story has worked to get the viewer attached to (Klingons, Romulans, etc.).

Despite what the fandom would like to claim in an effort to make things more palatable, Ironwood is not doing all this to achieve a selfish, personal goal.

The heroes are not able to offer Ironwood better options like ST’s crews usually are.

The plot consistently proves Ironwood right, rather then demonstrating how unnecessary and needlessly cruel his plans are.

+1 Ironwood is an established character a lot of fans love, not a one-off side character whose sole purpose is to Be The Bad Guy.

+2 Star Trek is a show that’s all about the morally gray, tough decisions, and how we fight for what’s right in the face of that ambiguity. RWBY wishes it were Star Trek. If CRWBY did study ST, they studied it like all their other inspirations: copying the basics without understanding what made them work in the first place.

[shadamyheadcanons]

Okay my headcannon is that amy was neglected by her parents because a freaking 12 YEAR OLD WAS IN WAR AND THEY DIDNT STEPPED IN.

I also have this scenario in my head that Knuckles and Sonic walks in on Amy and Shadow watching a movie (Awfully close 🤔) and gets sus that something is going on.

Hope you don’t mind if I combine these two.

The absence of Mobian adults in the Sonic games is VERY conspicuous. As far as I know, we’ve got Vanilla (old enough to be a six-year-old’s mother), Vector (20), and a handful of older teenagers--Rouge, Wave, and Big (18) and Storm (19). Vanilla’s the only Mobian parent in these games!

The only easy explanation is the out-of-universe one: execs wanted the game’s young demographic to have kids to relate to and teens to look up to. Things get messy when you try to read past that.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t try anyway.

I don’t feel comfortable accusing characters of being neglectful without any real evidence, especially because almost none of these kids have parents. Tails is eight, and he’s been on his own since his inception! Amy isn’t the exception, she’s the rule. Either every Mobian parent save for Vanilla is neglectful...or they’re just not around anymore.

Let’s look at the Sonic universe, shall we? Villains in this series take the forms of killer robots, aliens, demons, and even gods. Some are immortal and capable of boundless destruction, even genocide. We all saw what happened in Silver’s future.

The Sonic universe isn’t a very safe place to live. The most frequent villain is a diabolical genius who creates robot armies. He’s demonstrated that he can and will kill without a shred of hesitation or remorse, regardless of the victim’s age.

I don’t usually go the gritty route and I know I’m not the first one to point this out, but...would it be so unreasonable to think the parents all died fighting and their kids took up the mantle? Eggman’s age isn’t confirmed, but he’s a grown adult who could believably have been trying to take over the world for a few decades. Vanilla only avoided it because she’s not a fighter. The kids never talk about their parents, but why would they? It would be a sore subject for pretty much all of them. I had Silver and Amy briefly mention their relatives in Shellshock, but they were all deceased, and this is the unspoken reason.

I try not to focus on it because it makes me sad, but that is my headcanon. It makes the most sense to me.

That said, I’ll answer the more fun parts now! I love Sonic and Knuckles walking in on Shadow and Amy being suspiciously close. It’s especially funny if they try to tease them, but Amy’s oblivious or unashamed, so it’s just Shadow trying to hide how flustered he is, heh. Knuckles would have to be careful, though. If he ever tried to tease Shadow about Amy, Shadow could throw it right back by teasing him about Rouge.

As for the Sonic movies, if they do include Amy, I’m not sure how much they would bother with, tbh. Tails had basically nothing! I was so disappointed! When I saw the ending scene for the first movie, I was excited because I thought Tails was tracking down Sonic for some sort of important mission...but then the second movie just says he was stalking Sonic, watching him take bubble baths and stuff, and idk. That was really unsatisfying for me. I really liked Knuckles’ backstory, but Knuckles is a more serious character. Amy and Tails are pretty similar. We already had “younger character stalks Sonic and looks up to him,” so I fear they’d see Amy as redundant--both with her backstory and her presence. We know there’s more to her than that, but given how many times Amy’s role has been stolen before, I’m...trying not to get my hopes up.

However! I do have a story that goes into that. Someone asked me to do a high school AU a while ago. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it (sorry!), but I might as well talk about that one aspect. Amy’s mom really likes Shadow because he was a total gentleman when he introduced himself, but Amy’s dad is different. Shadow and Amy were hanging out in Amy’s room, and Shadow wears the required school uniform in a really sloppy, disheveled way, so the dad took one look at this, panicked, and immediately assumed the worst, even though Shadow and Amy really were just friends at that point. Later on, Shadow says to Amy, “Your dad doesn’t like me,” and she goes, “Oh, don’t worry about that! Dad’s just weird around my male friends sometimes. Don’t worry, it’s not you!”

And then the scene changes to the parents, and the dad is like, “I’m telling you, it’s him! My readings are never wrong!” And it’s explained that the dad uses tarot cards, too, and he got a vision/reading when Amy was young that she was destined to wind up with a male hedgehog, so he’s overly protective whenever Amy befriends one. He basically scared off poor Silver, and Sonic won’t sit next to Amy when he’s around. Shadow’s different, though. He doesn’t shy away from Amy at all because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. The mom adores this and reassures the dad that yes, his readings are always right, just not always in the ways that he expects. She says that she’s proud of how they’ve raised Amy and knows she’ll make the right decision someday--and if it did wind up being Shadow, she’d be happy for Amy because she’d be with someone bold enough to want to be around her even if others disapproved. The dad calmed down after that, but he did have a mini heart attack when Shadow took her to prom because he was in a tux and Amy’s pale pink dress was a little too close to white.

Of course that doesn’t really work for canon!verse, but it’d be cool if she had a parent who also got overzealous when analyzing tarot cards. I don’t know what I’ll do with that story, if anything. I like a lot of the ideas I have for it, but I doubt I’ll ever finish stringing them together. It’s an undertaking. I might post a snippet or two, but idk.

Update: I posted what I’ve written for this story here!

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

So, watched Dragon Ball Superhero, and you can tell whoever write it wanted it to be chock full of references and call backs for Fans.

A couple things.

1) As people already mentioned, Piccolo's house really does look like Nail's Traditional Namekian House on Namek, while also creating small Kami Observatories while meditating.

2) The movie is a combination of the Cell Saga, the Bio Broly movie and the Garlick Jr Movie (not the filler arc mind you the original movie... Tho you can see one major reference to the filler arc too).

3) Piccolo really is the best father figure in this show ESPECIALLY given how angry he gets over Gohan possibly becoming another Goku to his own kid preferring other interests over raising her (interests being his work rather than training as is for Goku of course).

4) Anyway, the movie is, as mentioned, half Bio Broly half Garlick Jr. The Resurgent Red Ribbon Army hires Doctor Gero grand son to build the proverbial Android Army to face off against the "secret evil organisation" Capsule Corp and it's Traitor Androids and Alien Conquerors, and start their operation by targeting the weakest links in the organisation according to their research, them being Piccolo and later Gohan.

5) First, the Elephant in the room. Yes, Doctor Gero fucked, we knew that already, Android 16 was based on his dead son Goku killed when he wiped out the Red Ribbon Army as a kid, his anger and rage against him was literally based on that (hence him putting the earth destruction bomb within the robot copy of his son of course, dude was still really twisted). Doctor Hedo, his grandson however, is actually not the son of the dead RR soldier Gero son, but ANOTHER son who left the kid orphaned at a young age when both him and his wife died in an accident.

6) Side note, yes, his grandmother is Android 21. Yes, Doctor Gero fucked Android 21 from FighterZ the fighting game, she's confirmed as canon in the Super timeline now.

7) Perhaps due to being orphaned at a young age, Hedo seems obsessed with Superheroes, hence why the two Androids he does create, Gamma 1 and 2, are both based on a Superhero motif. Before anyone asks, NO, there was NO GREAT SAYAMAN In this movie, which is a TRAVESTY and the GREATEST INSULT IN THE HISTORY OF ANIME. What a missed opportunity.

8) By the way, VIDEL FINALLY GOT A JOB! She's a martial arts and self defense instructor, which fits her Dragon Ball Z characterization quite well. Unfortunately, we don't see anything from any of it, because the writers are still dragon ball writers is a miracle she has a job at all right now.

9) Goku and Vegeta literally spend the entire movie locked up in Beerus planet fighting each other for no reason, like, completely removed from the narrative which was honestly GREAT we got fucking tired of them cheapening all movies they are in. Finally other characters have time to shine. Broly is also there being a Fanboy. His girlfriend and his other friend are hired to become Beerus maid and cook respectively as a result. Yes the god of destruction has a crush on Broly's girlfriend.

10) Anyway, classic Garlick JR movie plot, Pan gets kidnapped and Gohan has to save her, Piccolo already infiltrated the organisation to stop them from within, usual shit.

11) Dr Hedo is also working on the Cell Max project, but isn't so sure about it since he's incredibly unstable and isn't planning to activate the thing any time soon. Cell Max, basically Giant Semi Perfect Cell, gets activated during the climax of the movie.

12) The movie finally remembers a lot of Namekian lore for Piccolo to finally get him on par with the other characters in terms of strength. He gets his "Potential Activated" like Guru did on Namek to Krilin and Gohan, he grows to giant size like Slug does and like he did at the Martial Arts Tournament, and he gains a new transformation, Orange Piccolo, which is very similar to the power buff he gets during the Garlick Jr filler arc as his old Earth Demon Powers reawaken (here is implied it's Kami's original powers before the split activating tho since it's from Shenlong as a buff).

13) Gohan also finally gets his time to shine by activating back his Zen powers at the sight of his daughter being in danger, and he does fight against Gamma 1 pretty evenly, both Gammas implied to be on par with Goku and Vegeta btw.

14) Cell Max is activated by the RR leader, which is Red's son (Red being the original leader of the RR), and we do have a pretty big raid battle against him (I'd argue this is a reference to the Hirudegarn movie since Gotenks is also there, tho they fail the fusion). Krilin has a moment of glory during it by using Solar Flare on Cell, a classic move of his, to blind him for a combined surprise attack from anyone.

15) Side note, one of Gero's data collecting bugs shows up again, it's created by Hedo tho as a spy bee.

16) Anyway, Gamma 2 sacrifices himself to weaken Cell Max to save his brother and their creator, which btw is a really nice inversion of original Gero and his creations. I would have loved a scene exploring 18 (who is also there with Krilin btw, she shows up for the raid boss scene) trauma at seeing 1) Cell Again and 2) the grandson of the man who made her what she is and the way he genuinely seems to care for his creations unlike Gero. We don't get any of that because we have to be dumb action packed anime mind you but a bitch can dream.

17) Anyway, climax of the movie is Orange Piccolo becoming giant and holding Cell Max still so that Gohan can kill it in one attack, and yes, it is LITERALLY the Raditz Piccolo Goku fight down to the very end.

18) Piccolo gets his arms destroyed and is seemingly killed in front of Gohan which is what triggers yet another trasformation turning him into GOHAN BLANCO.

GOHAN BLANCO REAL.

19) Gohan Blanco is stronger than Cell Max in his depowered, damaged state, which is admitted by Gohan and Piccolo to be, at full power, stronger than both Goku and Vegeta, and manages to beat the shit out of him with one punch, before Piccolo, who has regenerated, can come back and wrap him up in his limbs to, again, do the Raditz fight on Cell Max.

20) GOHAN BLANCO FIRES A SPECIAL BEAN CANNON TO DESTROY CELL MAX WHILE PICCOLO HOLDS HIM DOWN. NO SHIT.

21) Cell is defeated but his body starts bloating up like original Semi Perfect Cell before his explosion, only for everyone to run away from him before he can blow anyone up. A bit anticlimactic mind you for a reference but still.

22) Gamma 2 is the only good guy casualty in the movie, and his body disappears. No one mentions bringing him back with the Dragon Balls btw which is BULLSHIT especially given how much his brother and "father" were devastated by his death and heroic sacrifice. You could argue since they mention how both Gamma 1 and 2 were created from scratch rather than from adapting a human that they are Androids like 16, 13, 14 and 15 were "Androids," so they have no soul to bring back so to speak (case in point, Hedo pretty much teaching them all they know of the world, among them the concept of Heroism) especially given the only other androids we see from Hedo are using corpses he stole from the local morgue as a base, not living being like 18 and 17 (Reference to Android Number 8?)

23) In a post credit scene we find out Vegeta win his fight against Goku, finally managing to beat him in a fair fight, much to his delight, causing Broly to cry at the sheer manliness of the scene or some shit. His girlfriend just thinks they were being stupid. This is probably a subtle dig at previous Dragon Ball media being just a fight fest in the eternal dick measuring contest between Vegeta and Goku, with Broly being there as the audience, whose character was originally the perfect example of everything wrong with Dragon Ball before Super gave him a better Backstory and a Girlfriend and also some emotional depth (IE Absurd power levels and generic mega battles between more and more powerful Sayan forms).

24) All in all, a surprisingly good movie honestly, I'm just glad we gave Gohan and Piccolo time to shine.

[lunarspiral1127]

*Thor: Love and Thunder SPOILERS*

Sorry for the long delay. Honestly, I forgot to do this cause work and D&D. 😆 Here's the last part of my thoughts on this movie.

So, Mjolnir gives Jane the powers of Thor, making her stronger, but is making her cancer worse every time she transforms. Y'know, when Thor asked Mjolnir to watch over Jane, I don't this is what he meant. Still, this was something from the comics.

Speaking of the comics, Jane dies like she does there. Even gives Thor a last kiss before she dies. The difference is her body turns into gold particles like Frigga and Odin when they died. There's a post-credit scene where she arrives in Valhala and meets Heimdall. Question is, is she dead permanently or is she gonna come back as a Valkyrie like in the comics? Well, at the moment, she's dead....which is gonna piss off some fans. Cause they got Mighty Thor and she dies in the end.😅

Speaking of pissing off some fans, Valkyrie doesn't participate in the climax of the movie. Cause she gets stabbed by Gorr so she's gotta sit out from the final battle.

I've been trying to figure out why Gorr brought the children with him to Eternity's lair, but the only reason I could think of is to further use them as hostages just in case. If not, then there's really no point in bringing the kids along with him. I mean, he got what he wanted to get to Eternity, no need for the kids.

Oh wait! There is a reason for the kids to be there....TO FIGHT GORR'S SHADOW MONSTERS WITH THOR'S POWER! I'M NOT KIDDING!!! 🤣 Thor temporarily give the children the power of Thor, and they fight those monster....SINCE WHEN CAN HE DO THAT?!?!?! Like, don't get me wrong. Seeing a little girl use her stuffed bunny to shoot lightning out of its eyes is hilarious (dunno if in a bad or good way), and that was the one scene that got a laugh out of me (again, dunno if in a good or bad way). But, since when can Thor give his power to other people?! He never did that. EVER! The only explanation I could think of is that he used Zeus' lightning bolt to do that cause the lightning was yellow, not blue like Thor's lightning. That or you have to be a believer/worshipper or whatever to Thor. But, if it's not any of these, then what the hell?! He could've imbued his power to the Avengers and the Wakandan soldiers in Infinity War! He could've imbued his power to anyone during that huge battle in Endgame! It could've given them more of an edge against Thanos' army and put up more of a fight against Thanos! So, WHAT THE HELL WRITERS?!

So, I had to look this up cause I think I missed this in the movie. Apparently, the necrosword was slowly killing Gorr and when it got destroyed, he was going to die.

Gorr just stops his revenge plan when he's so close, cause Thor said that he wants love not revenge, and he chooses love. He goes to Jane, holding her when she's dying and seeing this Gorr is reminded of the time he's holding his dying daughter and that's enough to convince him to not kill all the gods but wish his daughter back. My boyfriend had a theory that Eternity reincarnated as Gorr's daughter, which would explain why she can shoot lazer beams out of her eyes, why her silhouette looked like space like Eternity's and why Eternity disappeared. But, I believe he's wrong, cause I think she has a bit of Eternity's power.

I think learning self defense should've been the first thing the Asgardians should've done for the children when they arrived on Earth. These guys got attacked a lot back in Asgard and Earth gets attacked a lot by aliens, evil robots, enhanced beings, evil secret organizations, etc...well, better late than never I guess. Also, that would mean that those kids didn't have any fighting skills when they fought those shadow monsters. But, at least we get to see Sif training Axl, and she's okay now....even though she one arm....yeah, that'll probably be the last we'll see Sif. 😕

Also, I had NO IDEA about this, but I looked it up. Gorr's daughter's name is Love. Now, I don't know if that's the name Gorr gave her or if Thor gave her that name, but I do know one thing....it's the reason why the movie is called Love & Thunder. Korg was doing the ending narration and said the two were known as "Love and Thunder". When we heard that, we groaned cause it was lame. But, yeah, Thor's a dad/uncle now and they go across the galaxy to help those who need it....wasn't that what he tried to do with the Guardians of the Galaxy? Have space adventures with them only now it's with his...adopted daughter/niece I wanna say?

Oh and he got Mjolnir back. Still got the cracks but it's back....and Love put makeup on it to look pretty....yay.

Hercules is coming to the MCU. I would be excited cause I like Hercules, but I'm worried over how the MCU will mess up this character as well. Either way, he and Zeus are gonna be future antagonists to Thor and Zeus sends Hercules to go kill Thor. He looks okay, but I think I need to rewatch that scene to get a better look.

So, yeah, I think that's all that I gotta say about this movie. I thought it wasn't good, and I think it's even worse than Ragnarok. Hell, I think this was the worst Thor movie out of the four we got so far. That's all my thoughts. See ya later.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

The villains of the MCU

PHASE 1

Iron Man: Capitalist father figure (but not really)

The Incredible Hulk: Russian-British man who wants to be the Hulk so bad

Iron Man 2: Angry Russian man who blames Tony for his problems

Thor: Jealous little brother who just found out he was adopted

Captain America - The First Avenger: Super Nazi (but not really since he cut ties with the Nazis)

The Avengers: Jealous little brother is back and this time, he's got an army

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PHASE 2

Iron Man 3: A "nice guy" toxic nerd who formed his own company

Thor the Dark World: Generic Lord of the Rings villain

Captain America - The Winter Soldier: The War on Terror / American foreign policy

Guardians of the Galaxy: Really angry blue man who is angry that his people chose peace over war

Avengers - Age of Ultron: Robot Pinocchio who wants to kill everyone after surfing the Internet

Ant-Man: Generic capitalist villain

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

PHASE 3

Captain America - Civil War: Regular human who just wants the Avengers to be held accountable for their actions

Doctor Strange: Evil sorcerer who worships CGI Benedict Cumberbatch

Guardians of the Galaxy - Vol. II: The deadbeat dad who comes back home and tries to pretend that he didn't abandon his kid for years

Spider-Man Homecoming: Working-class father who got screwed over by bureaucracy and billionaires

Thor Ragnarok: The long-lost sister who your estranged father didn't tell you about

Black Panther: Revolutionary who wants to stop imperialism with imperialism

Avengers - Infinity War: E̶r̶e̶n̶ ̶J̶a̶e̶g̶e̶r̶ Purple, space Hitler

Ant-Man and the Wasp: A woman who just wants to live

Captain Marvel: The "I was just following orders" guy trying to explain their horribleness

Avengers - Endgame: Purple, space Hitler round 2

Spider-Man - Far From Home: Fake news

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

PHASE 4 (so far)

WandaVision: Witch who is having too much fun messing with people

Falcon and the Winter Soldier: V for Vendetta

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

ABC SHOWS

Agents of SHIELD S1: Abusive father figure who makes his kids kill dogs

Agents of SHIELD S2: Creepy mad scientist / Long-lost mom who is just trying to protect her people

Agents of SHIELD S3: That one guy who you thought was cute until you learned he was a Nazi / Squid monster who is somehow a founder of fascism

Agents of SHIELD S4: Robot yandere who just wants some love

Agents of SHIELD S5: Alien overlord from the future / Military man who gets possessed by liquid gravity

Agents of SHIELD S6: A literal Incan goddess

Agents of SHIELD S7: Bootleg Joker

Agent Carter S1: Evil Sigmund Freud

Agent Carter S2: A Hollywood actress who is revealed to be a mad scientist

Inhumans: Bootleg Loki

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

NETFLIX

Daredevil S1: Mobster who can't control his temper

Daredevil S2: Immortal ninja who performs blood rituals

Daredevil S3: Mobster who can't control his temper...but now he's even more pissed

Jessica Jones S1: Selfish rapist who just discovered love for the first time

Jessica Jones S2: Long-lost mom who has gone insane

Jessica Jones S3: Best friend/sister-figure who went bad because of envy and insecurity

Luke Cage S1: Half-brother who quotes the Bible because...it's scary, I guess

Luke Cage S2: The two leaders of a gang war. One uses pocket sand as a weapon, the other has a Game of Thrones backstory

Iron Fist S1: Corrupt businessman who has ties with magic ninjas

Iron Fist S2: Magic ninja version of the Punisher

The Defenders: A clan of magic ninjas led by Ellen Ripley

The Punisher S1: The military industrial complex

The Punisher S2: Y'all Qaeda / Christian extremists

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

HULU AND FREEFORM

Runaways: Aliens and witches (so, two of Sam Wilson's big three)

Cloak and Dagger S1: Oil tycoons

Cloak and Dagger S2: Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Despair but if she was a black, male, jazz musician

Helstrom: Literal demon daddy

[sh17poster187]

Anyone ever think about the psychological ramifications of the shit that happens in Futurama on its characters?

TW: mention of suicide, survivor's guilt, psychology, war, hostage situations, mental illness, blood, violence

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Anyone ever think about all of the psychological ramifications of the shit that happens in Futurama on its characters? I'll use the example of S04E12 "The Sting": Fry fucking dies because of something Leela does, and she effectively tries to kill herself because, not only does she feel insanely guilty and blame herself for his death, she also loved him, and keeps hallucinating that he's still alive (which also ties into the pseudo-suicide plan, in which she would consume three spoonfuls of royal jelly, which would put her into a permanent sleep state in which she could dream that she was together with Fry and that he was alive). And after *all of that*, it turns out that *Leela* was the one that got stung, and it was all a coma dream, and that Fry had been by her side the entire time doing whatever he could to make sure she pulled through. Like, that's some *deeply* traumatic shit.

There's plenty of other examples too:

S02E09 "A Bicyclops Built for Two" (Leela thinks she's found the last living member of her alien race and then it turns into a Married... with Children parody and it eventually turns out he's just a shapeshifting con man who's been gaslighting her and multiple others).

S02E17 "War is the H-Word" (Fry and Bender enlist in the Army as part of a scheme to get 5% off gum, and instead get drafted into a war on an alien planet where they both almost end up KIA and Bender specifically is horribly wounded and gets a bomb planted in his chest by his own military in order to subjugate the planet).

S03E11 "Insane in the Mainframe" (Bender and Fry get forced by an insane robot to aid him in robbing a bank, and are then committed to a robot mental institution where Fry ends up being conditioned to believe that he's a robot. Fry fully believes this with every fiber of his being by the end of their stay in the institution, and only snaps out of it when he gets cut by aforementioned robot in a hostage situation and finds out that he bleeds blood and not oil).

Hell, even S01E01 "Space Pilot 3000" (Fry "accidentally" ends up ~1000 years in the future, where everyone he ever knew is dead, *which he's overjoyed about*). There's still multiple other examples I could list. Like, *a lot*.