#there will always be plot holes

[teal-fiend]

i like the idea that a lot of people could be preds, but they chose not to be, just because they never got into it.

Eating someone whole and alive and dealing with the consequences is a lot of work, and even if it's enjoyable, most people won't bother with it.

so therefore many folks have pred potential. but they don't use it (or they don't know about it)

[moss-on-trees]

DP X DC PROMPT: ATLAS AU

The GIW fuck up, Amity is blown up and the Ghost Zone is seriously destabilised.

Danny ends up having to literally hold up the Infinite Realms to make sure that what is literally the lining between dimensions doesn't collapse on itself. Stuck halfway through the portal while putting all of his focus into his task, he stays in the ruins of his haunt for 3 years before the Justice League Dark finally manages to break through the barrier the Ancients set up to conceal him.

The entire JL have been itching to investigate what happened to the town without anyway to get in. To say that they didn't expect the ghost of a teenager playing the role of Atlas would be an understatement. Now they must find a way to relieve him of his burden.

(Danny hasn't aged in all the time he's been there due to his trauma, which is made worse by the fact that time moves differently for him due to the Zone's instability. He has no idea how long it's been, but the bone-deep exhaustion he feels suggests it's anywhere between decades or centuries.)

[lesbian4lqg]

one thing we dont talk about enough is tianlang jun calling out shen qingqiu for knowing his was around the holy mausoleum

like the "bullseye" thing? crazy

sqq literally swaggered in there and kinda beat tlj on his own turf that he should have known nothing about and tlj is the only (living) character that really knows it, and as far as we know he never bothers to snitch!

hes just. tlj about it. like hes just like "wow thats crazy haha sqq is so cool"

to me it feels like one of sqq's biggest weak spots in his not-so-secret identity bc just about everything else can be explained by the usual "it was,,,,, a qi deviation" bs but like. how tf would he know his way around the holy mausoleum. nobody knows their way around the holy mausoleum thats kind of like the whole point

[fiery-emblems]

I really wish people would stop claiming that Fates/Awakening/ect. are the WoRsT wRiTiNg EvEr while propping up 3H as some kind of modern masterpiece. Houses is JUST AS WILLING (if not more so) as any other Fire Emblem game to pull random details right out the butt, or bring up seemingly important details just to forget about them in the next scene and never bring them up again, or introduce details that directly contradict something you learned about previously.

Houses just gets away with more because the first half of the game puts half an effort into making it seem like the characters backstories are tied to the main plot (only the BL though lol), and because OoH tHe StOrY iS sOo DaRk.

[iridescentis]

i really want to do a full lore analysis of just add magic soonish because damn i just remembered how deep it goes like that show had backstory all the way to the 1800s

unfortunately i don't really have the time to watch a whole show and take notes but it is really cool how much worldbuilding they put into the show from the spices and the book to the actual full timeline that revealed itself through the time travel spells they used

as i've said before i also want to do the same for mako mermaids, because i feel like it was quite shadowed by h20 since that show holds so much nostalgia for people and they were basically aired for two different childhood eras i think, but it has SO much story and worldbuilding that i don't see talked about very often

there is a whole backstory of mermaid politics that is just brushed over which i really want to go back and analyse it fully because it is really interesting and deserves attention! mako mermaids added so much to the overall lore of this universe and i love it dearly i just have to find time to rewatch it

i talk about both of these shows at the same time because i feel like there are a lot of similarities in which their backstories are very detailed and they have a similar plot structure (which is probably intentional given the glaringly obvious similarities between just add magic and just add water) but yeah i just feel like they deserve a more thought out deep dive into everything they have because it is so much fun to learn about

[non-un-topo]

Sometimes I procrastinate writing a fic by “storyboarding” it 😅

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[visenyaism]

How does Jaime have any money at all? Does he get like. An allowance from Tywin? Does Tyrion? Is his less than Jaime's? What is the Westerosi equivalent of a trust fund

this is a good question I have no idea. I remember at several points Tyrion just sort of points people and tells them the Lannisters will pay for whatever he is taking. and I know Brienne has a line of credit technically. but how does it actually work

[angelthemanspanker]

I can't believe of all the magic gimmick episodes to make a mess of that BTVS managed to fuck up a time loop. A Buffy time loop episode should be the stuff of legend up there with The No Talky One and The Singy One but no. Life Serial time loop I'm sorry but you're nothing to me. Buffyverse magic is always vaguely defined and the rules change by the episode but the time loop spell Jonathan put on Buffy is so underexplained and overpowered that it severely takes me out of the scene

No one else in the shop but Buffy is aware that they're looping or time passing so is the spell just sending Buffy back in time and no one else? But then how can the Trio watch what's going on with the Magic Box cameras in real time with Buffy/the audience. Are they also looping? Does Jonathan's spell reset time for literally everyone except the three of them and Buffy? Because that means Jonathan, by means of magic bone, is repeatedly sending the entire world back a few minutes, keeping the memories of him, the other casters, and the target intact, until a completely arbitrary task decided by Jonathan is accomplished by Buffy.

Does that mean the awkward customer was part of the spell? Because satisfying an annoying customer was the task Jonathan set out for Buffy, did he just know that lady would be difficult? Did they just wait until a difficult customer showed up and bother Buffy to start the loop? What if none did? Is she a physical illusion or a magic homunculus being difficult under Jonathan's direction? Is she a real person playing out his script under mind control? Because unless it's the contrived coincidence option that's a lot of continuous magic to keep up while also maintaining the time loop, all with what seemed like a damn easy spell.

Why don't we know that spell? Casters' and target's memories unaffected, why didn't the gang cast it on Buffy before The Gift and make the loop breaking condition being defeating Glory without any Scoobies dying? We fail, oh well, try again. We know it doesn't need to be fixed on a room bc it covered the Magic Box and the Nerdmobile (even though trying to leave the shop just reset the loop for Buffy bc this spell just does fucking everything I guess). We know any damage done gets reset bc Buffy broke Giles' glasses and the doorbell and they were fine after a loop so no worries about racking up injuries or wasting the Dagon Sphere. And sure if Jonathan can do it, he of the only reasonably impressive abilities, then experienced Giles or Tara or especially Willow should have no problem whatsoever. And all this for one scene.

Life Serial time loop spell you are my enemy.

[declanisms]

anti new rome as a concept. like it makes zero sense that there are many adults in the society and yet it’s the children who are conscripted. I don’t care if it’s for the plot it’s a terrible plot. like I’m sorry reyna is 16. 16 and in charge of the whole army. and then the next praetors are frank and hazel which is even worse bc hazel is even younger. do you know how stupid that is. they’re children with adults around!! not like chb where all the adults are dead or luke or half horse. new rome is literally the antithesis of percy choosing the prophecy to protect nico, i.e. someone younger than him. new rome should have been portrayed as the dystopia it is not as some sort of haven for demigods I rest my case.

[alexan-2031]

Kate: the Doctor's not here anymore

Me: Nah, I'm pretty sure there's a spare Tennant!Doctor living with Donna. He's got a TARDIS too. He might've been able to help if only RTD remembered his own plots

[somethingaboutmint]

Maccready did not need the sadboy deadwife backstory at all but in my mind the idea of his wife being the same lucy from little lamplight is like kind of genius actually. They're both around the same age and got out of lamplight around a simmilar time and the idea of them finding comfort in being the only thing familliar to the other in a huge wasteland thats unkind to everybody is like. DO YOU GET ME. AND THE FACT THAT FROM THE AGES OF 16 (when they left lamplight) TO 22 THEY MANAGED TO SOMEHOW HAVE A KID WHO MANAGED TO GROW OLD ENOUGH TO PLAY IN A BACKYARD BY HIMSELF (im guessing atleast like 2-3 years old i doubt he was unattended but the way maccready says it its like yeah he was just playing one second and suddenly hes randomly sick idk tangent over back to my main point) BEFORE LUCY EVENTUALLY DIES (brutally. Thems the DC for you) AND MACCREADY GOES TO THE COMMONWEALTH WHERE HE'D HAVE TO BE SITUATED FOR ATLEAST A YEAR FOR THE TIMELINE TO MAKE SENSE IS FUCKING INSANE. AND I KNOW ITS JUST BAD BETHESDA PLANNING/WRITING BUT ALSO THEM BEING RAISED IN A COLONY OF STRICTLY CHILDREN BASICALLY AND THEN ACCIDENTALLY HAVING A KID PRETTY MUCH FRESH OUT OF THE CAVES ITS LIKE. IT MAKES SENSE. Dumbasses do not know what sex ed is!!!!! Like everything in maccreadys backstory can literally be explained by the fact that he and his wife were raised in a fucking cave by OTHER CHILDREN and are NOT NORMAL. Maccready is dark and broody because he lived like 40 years worth of emotional trauma in half a decade. Lucy being from lamplight also connects fo4 maccready to fo3 maccready better than if it was just some random girl cuz maccready could be literally any other bastard with a dead wife but if Lucy is also from lamplight then its ALSO AN NPC YOU MEET AND TALK TO AND KNOW IN FO3!!!!!!! Yeah it fucking sucks that they had to resort to the dead wife trope for the 7th time in fallout 4 alone but it really shows just how brutal DC was and gives mac leverage to like connect with the sosu cuz THEY JUST LIKE ME FR LIKE YOU KNOW???????? In reality his backstory is fucking stupid but in my mind i modified it and now it rocks. I want to give lucy depth. I want to make a million stupid headcanons about her from how she was the only person stubborn enough to keep up with maccready to how anxious she was about leaving lamplight before maccready promised they'd go together (you know to help her feel better not because he thinks of her as a friend or likes her or anything b-baka). Todd doesnt understand my vision

[empyrangel]

Not that the 4th act wasn’t incredible and the angst on point, but I’m still confused about something. Why did Wriothesley do what he did?

So it’s clear he didn’t hurt Lynette and Freminet, nor did he ever intend to. He even closed the gate from the primordial seawater and got Clorinde to save Freminet, but he still kidnapped Lynette, acted like some cartoon villain when Lyney confronted him, and threatened Lyney to set up a meeting between him and Arlecchino using Lynette as leverage. One would think Arlecchino was the reason he did all that, but once he ends up not getting what he wants he abandons the villain act, drops the subject of meeting with Arlecchino and never mentions it again, and releases Lynette. So it wasn’t that important after all? Then why did he do all that? Why go through that whole ordeal just to give up? Did he have other, stronger motives?

[team7-headquarter]

I'm kinda curious about the period of time when Minato was Hokage, because there's so much you could say about Konoha depending on it. It could be that I don't remember what the manga says about it too, but anyway.

We know that before Minato was Hokage, the discrimination towards jinchuurikis was high. We know it from Kushina's story. After Minato, the jinchuurikis discrimination was not exactly as bad as it could have been (and the bar is soooo low) in physical terms, but the level of sheer isolation was ridiculous. Sure, Kushina had guards and she lived in a tower with a perimeter drawn around it, one that she couldn't surpass. The difference is that Kushina knew why she was being isolated, there was someone willing to teach her about it right from the start, a family member even if distant, someone with the same experience.

All Naruto knew is that he was unwanted. He had no family, no one was willing to guide him. No, not even Iruka. I'm talking about before in the manga, before Iruka realized how much Naruto needed him and did something about it.

If that was before and after, how was it during the time Minato was Hokage?

Did Minato push for Kushina to become Hokage? Was the idea rejected? Did he get angry? It was her dream after all. Or did they realize it would be impossible so they pushed Minato to go for it? Were they sad about the idea of Kushina having to live her dream through Minato, because they wouldn't let her go for it? When did Kushina give up and change her goal in life?

Did Minato tell anyone about his plan on how to get rid of the jinchuuriki discrimination? Did he talk about it with Kushina? We know that they planned Naruto's birth and tried to make it as safe as possible. When the time to seal Kurama within Naruto came, they both knew how Konoha would treat Naruto. Minato wanted Naruto to be viewed as the son of a hero, but his wishes were thrown aside as soon as his body was cold enough.

With no law to protect the jinchuuriki of the kyubi, I wonder how bold the people of Konoha were in their discrimination against Kushina while Minato was Hokage. Times were different, Minato was highly respected and feared, but how many times did he have to tell someone to mind their words? How many times did he catch Kushina avoiding a certain restaurant or a street? Did he ever feel a slight of resentment against his home for the way they treated his wife? His pregnant wife?

Were there rumors of the child being a monster for being the son of a jinchuuriki? It could be that some Konoha parents telling their kids to not play with the little Uzumaki/Namikaze was a thing before Naruto was even born?

From what I've seen, Konoha has no gentleness for kids of prestigious lineages. Being a child of a powerful shinobi makes your life worse, in fact. A million times over: it happened to Sasuke, to Neji, it happened to Kakashi in the generation before them, it happened to Itachi in the in-between.

I don't think that being the son of the hokage would have saved Naruto for being mistreated by the village. Not when his mother was a jinchuuriki.

It just makes me wonder, you know?

In the time he had, how did Minato try to change things to protect his family?

Was it a matter of needing more time? Or there wasn't a plan at all?

[y-rhywbeth2]

While I get why they didn't include it (because 4e fucked with the tieflings and now we have archdevil tieflings and the og hereditary tieflings in the same space, and the former are hogging the limelight) I think it would've been interesting to have Bhaal tieflings as a subrace option. They wouldn't look as flashy as the others - no horns, no technicolour skin or tail, for example (unless their mortal parent was a tiefling who looked like that, I guess) - but they would be highly inclined towards violence and murder. Deity descended planetouched are known for having birthmarks in the shape of their ancestor's holy sumbol, so maybe they'd have the Circle of Tears, or a bone dagger marked somewhere on their skin.

I mean, Durge's origin pretty much covers everything they'd bring to the table, so it's obsolete, but the thought stays in my head:

The first generation Bhaalspawn did reproduce: Abazigal had at least one son; Yaga-Shura was attempting to create half-giant progeny; most of the romance epilogues feature children (this was intentional, the original BG3 was supposed to have Charname's child as the protagonist, apparently). There were hundreds of Bhaalspawn who reached adulthood; many of them would've had the opportunity to marry or have children, knowingly or accidentally.

I've said this before, but again, the offspring of a quasi-deity and a mortal is a tiefling, genasi or aasimar and the divine blood may go dormant and activate generations down the line too. It's also not unknown for the planetouched to become pawns in their ancestor's games, and entire lineages (not simply the first half-outsider child alone) may be created intentionally.

Notably, Abazigal's son Draconis - a grandchild of Bhaal, and not a demigod - was not part of the giant prophecy his father, aunts and uncles were drowning the world in blood over (except as a pawn of his own half-mortal father, anyway). These planetouched mortal children would've been passed over unharmed and unnoticed (too unimportant on the divine stage). I wonder how many of Bhaal's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are running around? How many cousins might Orin have? How many nieces and nephews might have Bhaal's strings tied around them? Is resist Durge going to leave behind their sister/niece drama only to run into another one in the future?

(I am aware that it appears BG3 has ignored/handwaved away the existence/possibility of these guys: I don't care. BG2 left these plot threads and I will be taking then and running off with it.)

[what-r-you-looking-at-dicknose]

Something I really want sunny to touch on again

Is the fact that Dennis literally has a son??? That was conceived when he got off the flight in Maryland in the gang beats boggs?

That he literally left to go back to parent and then suddenly returned from it and never spoke about it again? The son he left behind? They gave Dennis this huge plot point and then never touched on it again since he came back, Why don't we ever hear conversations about him paying child support or realizing it's Brian Jr's birthday, or visiting or anything like that.

I need an episode of Dennis feeling remorse for abandoning his child and not being better than Frank, or a reunited episode. He so clearly loved his son and did not want to let him go So why have they not reunited yet? Brian Jr would probably be around ages 5-7 now, does he just not keep up with any of it? Rcg I need answers pleaseee. I'm sure it was most likely just a way to give Glenn an excuse to hop off of the show for a while and work on his other projects, But if it's something as big as that it shouldn't just be ignored for the rest of the show. Thank u for listening to my dumb sick rant.