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call-me-aesthetic · 3 years

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If Twisted Wonderland was an American Public School

WARNING: There are some slight sensitive topics that are featured in here! Reader discretion is advised!

Part 2 can be found here

Heartslabyul

Riddle Rosehearts:

- That one preppy girl who takes all honors and AP classes 😑

- Wants everyone to know that he’s becoming a doctor one day for his strict parents or he’ll dishonor the family

- Reminds the teacher about homework, knowing well that he’ll get slander for it

- Complains about how he got a 90 on his test or a B on his report card, a try hard much?

- Wears a cardigan with thicc but cute glasses since he’s one of those people with can’t see shit on the board so he has to move to the front of the class

Ace Trappola:

- The SoundCloud rapper, that’s it

- “Wanna listen to my mixtape? It’s pretty fire, my guy.” 😩🔥

- You will not miss him BLASTING out some song on his Bluetooth speaker, that shit be echoing through the hallways

- Tells you to stop what you’re doing only for him to either sing horribly or do a backflip, thinking that he’s so cool

- Wears a Supreme jacket with AirPods and waves on his head

Deuce Spade:

- Assuming that he’s still a delinquent, he’s that kid with the most fucked up school record

- Not much of a bully but will still talk shit to your face without caring, might even throw stuff at you during a lesson and you would be the one getting in trouble instead of him 🗿

- If he ever gets mad, it would be overdramatic like kicking the desks, punching the lockers, or walking out of the classroom unannounced and everyone would look at each other wondering wtf happened

- Covers the entire desks with drawings of skulls and those “s” if you know what I mean

- Wears Champion hoodies, wants you to know that he’s broke and rich at the same time

Trey Clover:

- The guy that’s not really popular but everyone knows him since he’s in all their classes

- Most people might have a crush on him because he’s REALLY nice 😳👉👈

- Gives off “older brother” vibes based on the way he looks and acts, like offering you a ride home if you beg ask nicely

- Secretly bakes creme brulee but doesn’t want to mess with the flow so he sticks to the status quo

- Wears the school’s hoodie just because he thinks it looks good on him, and the fact that he doesn’t know what else to wear

Cater Diamond:

- Hot Cheetos girl 🥵

- Has a whole buffet of food in his backpack and will not hesitate to eat them during a lesson, no sharing either sorry

- Excuses himself to the bathroom or full on skips class just to film a Tiktok

- Has about 100 followers on Instagram Magicam and brags about how he’s famous

- Wears a Thrasher hoodie with large hoop earrings and his hair in a bun

Savanaclaw

Leona Kingscholar:

- The kid who flunked their freshman year that also sort of vibes with new classmates

- Always gets mistaken as a teacher by people since he looks and sounds old

- Knows the lessons but still fails them anyways, didn’t really give a damn either 🙄

- Captain of every sports club you can think of, never actually plays but has a lot of knowledge on them

- Wears the school’s letterman from years ago since it used to be his brother’s and that he’s too lazy to buy a new one

Ruggie Bucchi:

- That one kid who NEVER has money for the book fair or any other school event

- Always has to ask his classmates for some cash

- If he somehow does, then he’s one of those kids who buys Diary of the Wimpy Kid or the World Record books

- If he’s feeling cheap, he’ll buy the “cool stuff” like the chocolate scented calculator or fruit snacks 😭

- Wears oversized hoodies and basketball shorts that are clearly hand-me-downs

Jack Howl:

- That one athletic kid who’s both scary good and competitive when it comes to school games like football or soccer

- Literally the best player on his team and without him, they’re trash as hell 💀

- Tries his absolute best to support his teammates without yelling at them for how dumb they are

- “KICK THE FUCKING BALL! DO YOUR LEGS EVEN WORK?!”

- Wears the school’s jersey just to show off his “school spirit”

Octavinelle

Azul Ashengrotto:

- The kid who sell snacks for “charity” but everyone knows he’s keeping the money to himself

- If you don’t have cash or try to negotiate with him, the only thing he’ll do is raise the price up

- “What do you mean you don’t have ten bucks? I can see it in your pocket.”

- Just bring nothing with you, he’ll doing anything to steal your stuff 🤭

- Wears a collar shirt with a tie and khakis that have pockets to keep his glasses and money in

Jade Leech:

- The kid who puts on a goody two shoes facade but is actually a stoner

- Only does “safe” drugs like vape but occasionally smokes weed, mostly in the bathroom or behind the school 🌬

- Can play it off and hide the scent when he’s high, teachers never suspect anything from him

- No one really cares to stop him unless he gets caught or something idk

- Wears clothing that either makes him look like a businessman or a junky, there’s nothing in between

Floyd Leech:

- The kid that’s plays basketball or volleyball just because he’s hella tall, and is actually good at the sports but doesn’t put much effort into them

- Always stays behind after gym, even though the teacher tries to make him leave for his next class 😬

- “I swear after this one shot, I’ll go to class.” *He never made that shot*

- Will jump you no matter who or where you are, and will get angry if you step on his new shoes

- Wears the jersey of any famous team with the latest pair of Jordan sneakers

Scarabia

Kalim Al Asim:

- VSCO girl at best, don’t lie to me now 🤡

- The only words he knows are “And I oop– sksksk.” and “Save the turtles.”

- Walks during a track meet while everyone else is running and sweating hard, the teacher doesn’t care either

- Doesn’t really do anything in gym but talks to his classmates and stands near the water fountain to refill his Hydro flask

- Wears tie dye shirts with cute scrunchies

Jamil Viper:

- That one quiet kid who everybody thinks is a serial killer but he’s actually not, I swear

- He just wants school to be over and spend the rest of his summer relaxing 😔

- Although he shouldn’t abuse his “power,” he‘ll move his hands in his pockets or backpack to make it look like he’s about to pull a weapon out.

- “Chill, I’m just grabbing a pencil.” *Everyone in the class started crying*

- Wears dark colored hoodies that intimidates people but are actually comfy

Pomefiore

Vil Schoenheit:

- The baddie popular girl 😌💅✨

- Arrives to school late with a Starbucks in hand from his local Target

- Fixes himself every 5 seconds like reapplying his lipgloss or spraying Bath and Body Works cherry blossom perfume

- Uses acrylic nails and long hair extensions as weapons during a cat fight

- Wears a crop top with ripped jeans and those clout sunglasses

Rook Hunt:

- That creepy guy in the hallways who tries to get your attention, even if you don’t know him

- Scares people when he says, “Ayo, where my hug at?” 🥶💯

- Uses at least 10 cans of Axe body spray a week after gym class, which stinks up the locker rooms

- Waves at you if he passes your class, even walking into the room just to say hi

- Wears literally anything but always include a hat

Epel Felmier:

- The artist girl who just wants to be alone 🧑‍🎨

- Purposely draws in front of you but pretends like you’re not looking

- If you complement him, he’ll just brush it off and proceeds to diss himself

- “Thanks but I’m not THAT good at drawing, teehee.” *Insert Radio Rebel face*

- Wears a hoodie or a cardigan with big pockets to put his art supplies in

Ignihyde

Idia Shroud:

- I don’t even need to tell you who he is, y’all already know ahaha 🥴

- Sneaks a whole PlayStation in his backpack so he can play with it during lunch

- Is on his phone 24/7 even in class to the point where teachers don’t care anymore

- Tries to get people into anime but only to little success

- Wears a shirt of any anime character or that damn ahegao hoodie, girl bye

Ortho Shroud:

- The nerdy kid who’s known for destroying others at many games

- Plays classics like D&D, Yugioh, Pokémon, the whole shabang

- Daily Beyblade battles during recess with everyone surrounding him, the menacing aura radiates off of him

- Will steal your things if you lose to him but gives it back a week later cuz he’s sweet 🥰

- Wears light up Sketchers shoes and those Minecraft shirts you find at Old Navy

Diasomnia

Malleus Draconia:

- The theatre kid who also goes to band practice, change my mind 👁👄👁

- Takes his role seriously when it comes to school plays and concerts, even if he gets casted as a damn tree or doesn’t go solo

- Remembers the songs and their lyrics to any musical you name, a really good singer at that too

- Plays almost every instrument, you definitely know this since you can hear him down the hallways during a test

- Wears a white button up shirt, black pants with fancy dress shoes, and top it all off with a fricking Rolex watch

Lilia Vanrouge:

- The weird guy who pranks people and vandalizes school property in every way possible

- If you ever get a textbook with a message that tells you to go to a certain page only for you to found a picture of a dick, yeah that was him 😒

- When using a Chromebook, he’ll leave a tab open on YouTube so when the next person uses it, pray that your ears will still work by tomorrow

- During lunch, he is a literal DEMON that mixes milk with chicken nuggets together and having the audacity to eat it too

- Wears an oversized raincoat or a windbreaker but idk wtf kind of things he has hiding underneath

Silver:

- That guy in class who consumes Monster energy drinks and falls asleep 99% of the time but somehow manages to pass the class 🤷

- Whenever he’s awake, he’ll talk to the teachers since he’s basically friends with them for some reason

- Writes his name out of boredom on any desk you sit on but in different places, sometimes around the corners or the sides

- Has a sixth sense because he’ll wake up if you try to draw on his face and if you did get something on him, it’s on sight

- Wears those colorful hoodies that zips all the way up to cover his face with a matching backpack, it’s pretty cool ngl

Sebek Zigvolt:

- That kid who literally knows everything about historical wars and will show it off during class

- Also has knowledge on weaponry, which has people questioning him but he’s just very dedicated on serving his country and people

- Knows how to fight and defend himself from a bitch since he spent his summer at a military boot camp, put respect on my man’s name 😤

- Honestly a great partner for a group project, actually does the given work but not the whole thing for you

- Wears anything that has camo pattern and chunky combat boots

I only made this because me and my friends were talking about our school memories so yeah. This is based from my experience so they might not be exactly accurate. Might even be a part two if you want.

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Owl House Reviewcaps: Eda’s Requiem or Holy Musical Batpeople

Hello all you happy people! And time clearly flies when your having a REALLY damn good season, because I hadn’t realized we’re already in the second half of Season 2. Yes after this there’s only three weeks to go before one of the greatest monsters known to fandom rear’s it’s ugly head...

No not him... he’s not due until the next time I decide to buy a pack of yugioh cards. No of course it’s a hiatus, a necessary evil to be sure, to make sure we don’t get even LONGER hiatuses, but still a pain in the tucus.

So yes you only get three more weeks of me talking about a very queer children’s show while rambling about x-men and throwing in as many simpsons refrences as humanly possible before your deprived for a while. Drink it in.

This week we get a face from eda’s past, the magic version of the bat family, a racing subplot that’s barely touched on, some more juicy plot advancment, some even more juicy shipping, and a horrifying trophy that was probably forcged out of someone’s skin.

So join me after the cut if you want some of that but before you do as i’ve been plugging the past two weeks i’m having a membership drive for my Patreon. It’s a way for me to get paid for doing what I love, help with the groceries and what not so my mom dosen’t have to pay for everything.

But I have realized I haven’t really offered anything in return apart from the usual patreon rewards of exclusive reviews, picking shorts and of course helping me reach my stretch goals so i’ll review even more stuff you all like. So i’m stepping it up. From now until doomsday, if you sign up for my patreon, wether you pledged a dollar a month or a hundred dollars a month, you get a FREE REVIEW OF ONE EPISODE OF ANY TV SHOW YOU WANT. And of course as always if you pledge 5 bucks a month you get a guaranteed review a month anyway if you really want to go full hog but yeah, from now on you get A FREE REVIEW IF YOU PLEDGE AT LEAST ONE DOLLAR A MONTH TO MY PATREON.

And of course as i’ve been plugging if at least three new people join up I will review Season 1 of the Owl House, including the two episodes i’ve covered already in two mega posts. So if you want some owl house content to fil lthe empty yawning void that’s coming up all you have to do is kick in a buck. And while you wait for two other people to do the same, you still get some juicy rewards in between with reviews of The Great North, Tuca and Bertie, and Amphibia season 1 if just one person pledges. And I will be clear here ALL STRETCH GOAL REVIEWS ARE FREE FOR ANYONE ON TUMBLR. If one of you kicks in, EVERYONE gets it. While I wil lthrow up bonus reviews on my patreon to help reward those who do help me keep going and help make this blog possible by paying the two streaming bills I pay, it’s only fair, I will NEVER put my week to week reviews behind a pay wall despite what tumblr’s trying to do and even then the pay wall is a simple buck a month, 12 bucks for a year. I will always try to give you all the most bang for your buck

So if this speech convinced you or anything JOIN MY PATREON HERE. And if you were just mentally tuning me out, feel free to join me under the cut for the review itself.

Our story begins with Eda going over her to do list for the day: getting eda a coat and “checking the itchy boy”... yes that’s really what she wrote down for checking king for fleas. Eda also muses how much she’s changed, becoming a responsible parent and person and being fine with it.

But like any parent she faces the harsh reality her children are leaving: Luz is still working on going back home to the human realm.. and outside while working out, King seemingly mentions he’s leaving which utterly deivstates eda. Eda decides to drown her sorrows by picking up her old lute and jamming, revealing she used to have a taste for bard magic... but with her magic currently corrupted it quickly fizzles out to her frustratoin. And also leaves a nearbye plant corrupted and rotted..

Cue the opening theme music.. which has an interesting addition I didn’t notice last week.

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Nah he’s always been there. No Amity’s hair is purple! I didn’t know if they’d change it because Disney’s notoriously cheap when it comes to changing intros, as evidecned by the fact that Star VS never changed the shot of Ludo in the seasons 3 and 4 intro despite that being out dated 8 episodes in. So either they’ve at least relaxed enough to get sometimes you have to update an intro to fit the series changing over time or Dana is just REALLY godo at convincing them to do shit they’d rather not do. Hopefully we can do the same with getting the season 4 the series deserves so Dana can wrap it up properly.

So Eda mopes a bit as Luz and King come in as Luz has an announcment. Eda HOPES it’s that she’s staying after all but naturally it’s not. Though it still will be a bit as Luz is still working on Echo Mouse. We get a flashback of Luz cutely helping the poor thing come out of hiding... only for Hooty, being hooty, to screw it up by eating it. Honestly I kinda forgot the fact they were bringing a mouse into a literal owl house until this happened. They DID get the little dumplin out of there fine, but it’s naturally traumatized, so it’s going to be a bit longer.

No this week Luz is helping King, as this weekend is the GLAND PRIX, which thankfully depsite the name is not a literally pissing match or some kind of sex decalathon, as they aren’t old enough for that. No it’s instead a broom race, hence the exercise, with the winner getting a horrifying trophy and more importantly a spot on tv, which King intends to use to call out for his dad. Which honestly seems like an inherently risky plan that I wish they’d mention said risk: Not from Belos, he’s shown no intrest in king and is too busy with his conditoin and the day of unity. As we’ve seen so far this season with Eda’s own powerlesness doing the job discredting her for him he really has no reason to go after her unless it serves something else he’s doing, like Hunter’s trying to arrest her during the selkiedama thign. He has the door, and while he lacks a key given the preperations are going ahead at full pace with no attempts to reclaim it, he dosen’t NEED IT.

But the fact remains King’s dad/mom/parent put him in a far off citadel guarded by a carnage golem for a reason, so while King wanting to send out a message dosen’t backfire SO FAR, it easily could’ve. Still it’s easy enough to overlook. I do wish we got MORE of the racing subplot as it coudl be fun and get into some more deep character stuff with king but I get keeping it to the margins: the plot ISN’T about king himself or luz, but about Eda, and her trying to figure out how she moves on without the people that have given her life meaning. To bring this home when King TRIES to talk to king about the l word, she instead runs off.

The whole L-Word thing is easily the weakest part of the episode> It’s very clear King really ISN’T leaving, and while the reveal of WHAT it is is very heartwarming it’s incredibly drawn out and tiresome. The plot in general is pretty easy to predict in places. Yet.. it’s not a bad episode> The skeleton is pretty worn and standard, but the meat on the bones is based in an intresting character study of eda and her interactions with someone we see breiefly on a scroll: Raine Whispers, the new head of the bard coven who ironically has stage fright.. and who Eda has a history with.. more on that in a minute.

So Eda does what you’d expect when faced with her kids going back to their birth parents so soon after her sister left just as the two were finally getting along after decades of conflict: She gets hammered. Yeah if Apple Blood wasn’t obviously some form of liquor before, the fact Eda has some in a bar while moping to the bartender makes it incredibly clear. Though hilariously, it’s in a juice box. And if your wondering as I was if Liquor Juice Boxes were a real thing, you are correct. I found MANY vareites just doing a quick google, and while most don’t use the tiny straw like the apple blood box does, a few indeed do. Sadly I don’t think disney will be doing a hard cider apple blood tie in. Some things you just.. CAN’T get on etsy you know?

Eda’s bartender is more concered with the fact she never pays her tab which shoudlnt’ remotely be a surprise to anyone whose known eda for more than a minute, but Eda ignores that and focuses on the conformotorium guys grabbing covenless witch. Eda goes to confront them and while the one guy with the blue eyes mocks her for being powerless he soon gets reminded that “Powerless” isn’t the same as “helpeless” when she quite literally slaps his fucking head around to the other side.

After righting that he prepares to attack back.. only for it to turn out Eda isn’t the only person saying fuck the man today, as a mysterious group of bards emerge at a statue, all in bat masks as the bards against the system, or the BATS for short, hence the bat gimmick, who quickly make a mockery of the two guards and let the young lady run off. But while showing off how awesome and powerful bard magic can be they also didn’t think to have an exist strategy and are soon surronded by the guards with earmuffs until Eda helps them escape ninja turtle style via the sewers and to the edge of things.

On the edge Eda gets to know the bats and asks to help out and their undrestandably skpetical... so Eda get shteir attention by taking the leaders mask off revealing Raine.

Yeah it couldn’t be more obvious it was Raine if instead of their neat cloak they wore a t-shirt saying “TOTALLY NOT RAINE YOU GUYS FOR SERIOUSLY”. The episode is not subtle in the setup of having them be the rebel leader, but it somehow works: the earlier ceremony both shows Raine off as coven leader, and shows Eda knows them, leaving us to wonder HOW she got so close to someone who would go on to be entrenched in the season she hates, and after their little performance WHY someone working directly for the system is fighting i.

Ea wonders that too and after getting introduced to Raine’s crew, including the fanfictoin lady from the pliot, something I didn’t notice first time around, asks why their doing this, with Raine explaning she actually inspired them to.

As for the how we get a romantic flashback. Yeah turn sout the two are exes, and really fucking cute together, really makes me wonder which primary ship to go for. I mean I love stan but Raine is such a good person and so freaking adorable. And probably won’t sell one of Ed’as kidneys as part of a time share scam. But yeah the two make music together.. literally this is disney after all, and blush and i’ts really fucking adorable, and we see despite them being shy and her being bold they just fit together, with her encouraging them to face their fears.

As for why they switched sides, that part is simple and realistic: Raine willlingly joined the bard coven.. only to find Belos instructions on teaching were less about actually teaching magic and more about trying to force every witch he could to join the coven as part of his big evil scheme, taking away people’s freedom of choice simply to satisfy his own ego. But rather than openly revolt or defect or something Raine had a smarter solution: work their way up slowly, and then take over, using their inside tract to destroy the system from within.

You may also notice i’m only using they and them prounouns, and may not have noticed everyone else doing the same, which is fair. But yes Raine is non-binary, Dana confirmed it shortly before the episode and it’s a simple subtle part of the episode.. but i’ts damn good represntation. Raine being NB isn’t called attention too or made a crucial part of the character.. their just an NB person who happens to be really important to the plot. It’s like any other character introduction, and the reason i’m making a big deal is this just isn’t common and while NB characters on children’s shows have started to finally make their way in, this is the first time since Double Trouble over in She Ra there’s been one in a major children’s show. It’s a rather sizeable step forward for children’s animation. The next course obviously is a NB lead, but given how long it took to get openly bi and gay leads, that might take some time but it’s a step closer. And as the uncle of a nb child myself, I couldn’t be happier about this.

So Eda naturally decides to join up when Raine offers her help> The rest of BATT are not happy about the idea, paticuarlly Amber aka the pink one with freckles, both of which happen to be a thing for me but I shant elaborate further.

But Eda provides something they need: The BATT, got the aconym wrong earlier but this review is far behind enough as is soooo moving on, have drive, determination, and skills.. but they can’t plan for beans. Their best plan was literallY “Protest in the square where the police state we’re protesting has the most power”. Eda provides better plans thanks to years of experince hiding from and fighting the schmucks their railing against, using the maps and schedules Raine’s privy to, and using those to schedule raids on holding area’s and get the wild witches outside the city, as Belos grip is weaker outside of the cities.. which makes sense. If he sent too many troops into the woods to look for them, it’d weaken his grips on the cities and give anyone against him a moment to strike. It’s easier to endocrinate more people into joining his covens willingly than to try and force everyone and slowly loose troops.. troops he needs to do the thing he set up the coven system to do in the first place.

Eda being busy hasn’t gone unoticed as her kids have noticed and King still really wants to tell her something and she still keeps dodging. Really there’s not much else to the scene other than the fact Hooty tries to offer king a shoulder to cry on only for king to hypcorically point out he has no shoulders and Hooty to prove why it took so long for hi mto get the one friend he had by chasing King around in a circle.

So they go for a big raid, stopping a transport of a ton of witches and the combo of Eda’s skilled plan and The BATT’s skilled.. skills makes the operation go of with childish ease and awesome flair. Seriously this sequence is just awesome to look at and was a heck of a lot of fun.

So now everyone, even my formerly skeptical future wife, is on Eda’s side and singing her praises and go to celebrate while she gets some alone time with Raine, showing the two are still throughly into each other, as if the blushing and stuff through the episode gave it away, and the two just ooze chemistry. I didn’t think the show would introduce a love intrest for eda, let alone make them so compelling and intresting both as a partner for her and as a character in their own right but clearly I was wrong and clearly the series needed this. I needed this.

Raine even convinces her to play a bit.. but while she plays beautifully, it decays everything around her and makes raine a combination of worried and curious.

But enough of that it’s RACE DAY. Our heroes are gathered and like a good mom Eda is watching if still sorrowful she’s loosing them. Also we get a LOT of Gus’ dad, something I had been wanting. I love Gary Anthony williams and the only time’s we’ve seen Gary were reporting for five seconds during the season 1 finale and being a dick to his son by grounding him without asking WHY he was expelled. Here he just gets to be a hammy fun reporter while his son is forced to assist with the effects.. which I feel will be important later. Not for the main plot, exclusively for gus: He noted in the last episode it was Perry’s dream Gus be a master illusionist, something Gus is good at but not something he cares about. I just feel that’s the kind of throwaway detail that won’t go away too soon.

We also meet the trophy for the event which looks like it was made of the same horrifying skin the necronomicon came from.. and is where it’s eyes went. Naturally I want one for my room yesterday. So while our heroes vroom vroom on a broom, Eda gets a call for enother raid and decides to support her partner by bailing on her children.

But said raid.. is for an abandoned area in the middle of nowhere. But the baghes are busy with a giant turtle what took eustaces hat to decorate a tree, so instead our heroes find a very transparent ambush. Raine.. I love you but for fucks sake, this trap couldn’t be more obvious if it was just a comically oversized box with a string attached to it.. and i’d be unsuprised if all of you fell for it.

So yeah the rest of the group get captured as Belos, SHOCKINGLY given what happened with Lilith in the season one finale, figured out he had a traitor in his midst and sent two of his other mini bosses/coven heads to whip the piss out of them. What actually IS shocking is that.. no one seems to have an idea who the traitor is. Really.. YOU really don’t.

As you can see by the photo the ONLY other person who MIGHT have short hair is creepy healing mask person. And that person is white. Raine is not. Given how he treats his employees who didn’t pop out of his sister’s vagina, I wouldn’t be suprised if Belos knew Raine was a double agent all along, was simply watching them to wait to see when they’d make their move as the end of the episode shows Belos dosen’t needs Raine’s WILLING coperation, and simply didn’t tell Abberwolf and Darius because he either thought it was so obvious he didn’t need to or more likely didn’t simply because he thought it’d be really funny. And fair point it is.

But yes in addition to properly meeting Raine, we get to meet two more of the ten coven heads: Darius, the hot guy in the center who heads the abomination coven and Aberwolf, that cool looking tiny beast woman who heads the beastkeeping coven and imports her sand worms directly from Arrakis.

As for their personalities in a hilaroius twist despite working with what’s essentially a muk in teh shape of a person for a living, Darius is a neat freak, while Abberwolf is both a bit feral and loves giving Darius shit and getting dirt on him just to piss him off. The shit part is metaphorical... but I wouldn’t be suprised if this was a daily occurance at darius’ house.

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But while the two are obejectively hilarous, their also obejctively horrifingly compeitent: Darius shows off just HOW much an abomination master can stretch abomination magic: not only can he summon a powerful one, but he uses it to teleport the rest of bat, who all got caught in the ambush while Eda and Raine BARELY escaped using the invisiblity glyph, hope amanda calls me after she gets out of prison, to the conformatorium. I’d be more worried for them but their all pretty powerful and while a good dad Wrath is a TERRIBLE warden. They’ll be out in hours.

But Raine and Eda are up shits creek so Raine decides to combine their powers and form captain planet.. but since they don’t have the elemental magic they settle for combining bard magic, with Raine banking on Eda’s new anti-magic born from her curse taking out the other two heads, as Raine notes Belos NEEDS all 9 other heads and while replacing one in time is hard but dooable, replacing TWO would be damn near impossible and given the day of unity clearly has a certain sell by date, it’d spoil his plans.

The two hold fast, peforming beautiful music together...

And triggering Eda’s ablility.. which also slowly kills her ... and will envelop Raine too. But the two agree to it as it’ll at least take out Belos plans with them and Raine going out just means Belos is short THREE members.

But Raine discovers one flaw... a photo of Eda, King and Luz that flies out of her hair. It’s a powerful moment as Raine is horrified to realize Eda’s been doing all this despite having kids... and brushes off her saying they don’t need her. Raine knows better: they knows any child ALWAYS need stheir parent if their parent is loving and kind enough and just because their going on their own paths away from her dosne’t mean they don’t NEED her. IT’s a good lesson for the parents in teh audience and i’ts nice that for once one of these cartoons does one for the older members of the audience instead of just the kid, acknowlding we exist.

So Raine sacrifices themself, letting Darius take them so Eda can escape in an utterly heart smashing sequence. Eda runs away teary and comes back in time for Luz and King to break a tie.. for fifth place. yeah turns out this was king during the race

And his need to made them crash. King dosen’t get his big message.. but Eda having finally gotten it into her head children don’t magically stop wanting you in their lives because they go off on their own, decides to help.

So we get our finale and i’ts one of the series best scenes thus far as King recites his message via vlog, live scrolling it for the entirety of the isles: This also results in much needed cameo’s from Willow, who i’ve felt has been horribly neglected this half of the season and was just thinking about this that episode, which may mean I have the power to sumon her. We also not only see clover adorably perched on her head but that she has her own little pet bed in the corner complete with name.

We also get a nice cameo from Amity and the twins. Gus is absent but he’s busy with his dad and got some silent screentime this ep, so that’s kay.

But we get one new face before we get back to king..... a mysterious stranger next to a caravan who just so happens to be watchin gas king shows a symbol from the cirtadel to the screen, asking his dad to read it to him.... a stranger.. who looks like this...

Yeah.... while it’s unknown if this is one of king’s parents or not, it’s possible but it could be a misdirect, one of king’s species IS not only still out there but now knows he’s alive and is looking for them. While I expected us to follow up on the King’s dad stuff later in teh season I didn’t expect any actual apperances by ANY OF HIS PEOPLE, let alone what could very well be the man, or woman , or nb themself. But yeah i’m fucking excited and i’m glad this series has decent pacing. I said decent, we haven’t seen Amity in full since two episodes ago and probably won’t till eclipse lake.

King also reveals what he was really doing: making Clawthorne his last name, making him and Eda family for life and her his mother in name, she just needs to sign which she does, and everyone has a good cry. It’s really touching and amazing stuff and while it was telegraphed king wasn’t leaving, it’s still a really sweet, amazing gesture that shows while he’s pining for his dad... King knows who raised him and who loved him these 8 years and isn’t gonig to forget her.

Sadly instead of ending on that touching note we end on Abby and Darius torutring Raine... okay Darius is actually torturing the prisoner, Abby is watching the scroll and turns it up just to piss Darius off. Raine naturally escapes, but they even more naturally get cornerored by Kiki riding an abomiaton. Darius, just as naturally dosen’t like the things and calls Alador a hack. Look bud, you turn into a slime monster thing that’s the embodiment of

I can repsect that. But Alador isn’t a hack. He’s many things: an arms dealer, a shitty father, a husband to a person whose the emobidement of every karen ever for all time stuffed into one aborhent human being, and kind of not there.. but this killer robutt captured the person you couldn’t keep for five seconds because you were bickering with your commonlaw wife, and Alador’s presumibly MASS PRODUCED THEM.

We also find out something horrifying: as it turns out Belos DOSEN’T need the coperation of his coven heads and the entry tatoos.. are also restraining bolts that can create horrifying thorny cocoons so he’s just gonig to have kiki store Raine tell them need them.

Final Thoughts:

This episode.. was a bit of a step down from the last few. It’s not a BAD episode: it has great character work for Eda, Raine is an instant faviororite, Darius and Abberwolf are fun new antagonists, Amanda is my commonlaw wife now and the ending is really good. But the plot itself is pretty standard and predicable: a character falls in with an old love intrest whose doing something and said old friend ends up captured or dead or whatever. It’s not a bad story nor was it badly executed here, it just felt a bit more mediocre than the string of all time classics we’ve been getting the rest of the season. But it is a VERY good sign when the worst I can say about an episode is that it was merley pretty good instead of a masterpiece. Next week: It’s Hooty’s time to shine! Hoot hoot!

If you like hear me say things with my mouth and want to talk more about my reviews, cartoons or other random stuff i’m into my discord is now FREE TO ALL. So check it out here

https://discord.gg/6uqxyWbz

#The Owl House #eda's requiem #eda clawthorne #king clawthorne #luz nozeda #Raine Flowers #Darius #Eberwolf #BATT #nonbinary #willow park #gus porter #amity blight #kikimora

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pyramidofimagines · 4 years

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10 Yu-Gi-Oh Character Most likely to Least likely cheat.

Alright! Here like I said in you match-up this was coming soon once I had written it up and I have finally done it. I hope you enjoy it. Of course, it is not all character and there would probably be spread out between them all. Also, I only did this with DM characters.

From who is most likely to least:

Yami Marik

Yami Marik is one of my most favourite characters out of Yugioh and one of the only characters I created a playlist with the rollercoaster of emotions I have had with this character. However, he would be the one on the top of this list. Mostly because this dude doesn’t have the capability to love as he was born through the darkness and hate in Marik’s heart. So being in a relationship, to begin with, wouldn’t actually be a relationship to him and he wouldn’t actually care for you so the most likely to cheat.

2. Duke Devlin

Next one is Duke Devlin and it took me a moment to decide where he would be on this list but I decided here because I do see him as a play/fuck boy at times and I was going in my head whether or not I headcanon to be something different than just those, but it still stuck that way with me and I believe he is one to willingly cheat on someone he is dating and be with more people at once.

3. Mai Valentine

This happened in a spur of the moment when writing the reasons down that I placed her in number three then four where I originally had her, but I believe that you could swap it around with four, depending on how you see each explanation. However, she would still be below Duke and the reason I had her in here is mostly due to her past. I am sure if she was to finally open up with someone she was dating then I believe she wouldn’t cheat, but she is also full of insecurities due to her past and is used to using men, so I could see the girl cheating in the past or with anyone she has yet to fully open up to as a sort a defence mechanism for her as well and she could always fall back into I believe.

4. Yami Bakura

Next one is Yami Bakura. This dude moved from two to three to four and the reason for it is because for Yami Bakura is I see love and sexual relationships being separated for him. I believe that he is capable of loving someone even though at the same time I see that as rare. Though if he did love someone he would care for them in his own way and they would get more ‘privileges’ You would be higher up then how he sees most people. That, however, I don’t think would stop him from having sexual relationships with other people. To him that is just pleasure and doesn’t mean he loves the person any less and I see that if that was brought up before the relationship then I believe it is alright because it would be out in the open, but it isn’t then the person could view t as cheating, but I don’t necessarily believe Yami Bakura would. I hope that made sense.

5. Joey Wheeler

Joey Wheeler is the next one this is where we get to the character I believe would be loyal in a relationship. However for Joey for some reason I believe would somehow end up cheating by accident without really knowing and not mean to have done it.

6. Marik Ishtar

Six Marik Ishtar, like I said it is now down to the people I see who would have loyalty in a relationship and to start that off is Marik. While I can see him flirting with people for fun, I don’t believe he would mean anything by it and would always reassure and turn it down once he is in a relationship. I believe as long as the person he is dating is loyal to him, he would be loyal to them. I would also see that if it was more of a sexual relationship as well then a romantic one as well.

7. Yami Yugi/Atem

Next one is Yami Yugi. With these ones I feel like I don’t really have to explain much as to why I placed them lower in the list. I see that Yami Yugi would be very loyal to the person he loves, even when it is implied that he wasn’t the best type of person for a couple of years of being Pharaoh. If I go with how the Pharaoh was in the Toei animation, which still at this point the only sub of Yugioh I have watched, which showed a darker side to him. He was shown to have loyalty and fairness and that wouldn’t change in a relationship as well.

8. Yugi Muto

Yugi he would be less likely to cheat then the Pharoah, even though I don’t think either of them would cheat, but that is what pushed him to be number eight. First and foremost if Yugi was to date he would want to be friends with them first and Yugi is well known to care and be very loyal to his friends and it will still be there in a relationship.

9. Ryou Bakura

I don’t believe Ryou Bakura would have the will to cheat, he is my precious cinnamon roll and he wouldn’t do anything to harm the person he loves especially cheating.

10. Seto Kaiba

Last but not least… well, actually least likely to cheat anyway would be Kaiba and this would stem from the fact that I do not believe Kaiba would date someone unless he loved them and they were close enough to respect Kaiba boundaries, which I see him having, but also be someone that would get to know the old Kaiba which I believe is still deep within him somewhere. Kaiba wouldn’t be stupid enough to ruin a relationship with someone who has seen the other side of him.

And that was the list! I hope you enjoyed it and that it was alright!

~Pharoah Ankh~

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kuriboo · 4 years

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so here we are, y’all. i’ve finally reached the end of the zexal anime, and, uh, it sure was a ride. a ride from start to finish. i’m gonna write out some final thoughts, if i end up forgetting something i might make another post of this, but, don’t count on it. but, before anything, i do intend to read the zexal manga at some point as well, and when i do, you might see me post some funny or interesting screenshots in this tag too? probably not a lot, i don’t know, i’ve never read the zexal manga either. just be aware that the zexal liveblog might not actually be over.

i know people like to talk in terms of zexal i and zexal ii, but hulu doesn’t split up zexal like that, it’s actually in three seasons? i think i generally know what people are referring to with zexal i and zexal ii(?), but i’m genuinely not sure and the terms feel super weird to me anyway, but just to be safe, i’ll refer to things as the first half and the second half. the first half ends with the duel against dr faker and yuma vs kite, part 2 picks up with...whatever the hell happened after the yuma vs kite duel, which certainly wasn’t a continuation of kite’s character arc, but we won’t worry about that.

with that, uh, let’s go high-five the sky

before starting zexal: i’d pretty much watched all the other yugioh series, and was keeping up with vrains as much as i could as it aired. i saw one episode once, before i started watching the whole thing, that aired on some channel we normally don’t get but got a like free preview weekend of it or something. the episode i saw was the episode where yuma meets the guy who makes the statues, i think. whatever it was, the impression i got from what i saw was: this yugioh protagonist is really bad at card games, whines a lot, and his voice kinda grates on me, and also this protagonist is younger than i was at the time, which tended to lead to more annoying behavior. this kid didn’t want to shut up, man. couldn’t sit through the whole thing

so, this was how i rated zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind that this is a rating of series, and not yugioh protagonists, and noting that the members of the A tier are not in any sort of order and all members have equal ratings:

(sevens is unrated because it’s just barely started.)

(there’s not really much of anything that could top gx, tbh, because gx got me through the hardest time, the hardest year, of my life, and i don’t know where i’d be without it. gx helped save 17 year old me from myself)

now, i’ve finished zexal. i’ve watched every single episode of zexal. it’s important to note that i watched the dub of duel monsters, the dubs of gx and 5ds along with the sub of their non-dubbed final seasons, the dub of zexal, the sub of arc v alongside a stretch of dubbed episodes towards the end, and the sub of vrains along with the dub of the first 20 episodes. i’m aware zexal’s sub was better than the dub, but i generally prefer dubs when possible and also i’m largely comparing it against every other yugioh dub. it’s not an unfair comparison.

so, here is how i now rate zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind the members of the A tier aren’t in any sort of order:

you may have noticed this is the same as the previous rating. that’s correct. zexal was my least favorite yugioh series before i began watching it, and now that i’ve finished, it’s still my least favorite yugioh series. i know for a lot of people, zexal was their favorite yugioh series, but i simply can’t vibe with that. i’m sorry. i’m also aware the dub of zexal is a lot worse than the original. that doesn’t change the fact that i’m mostly rating dubs against each other here (haven’t seen enough of the arc v dub to account for that, but every other series i’m strongly thinking about the dubs). also, i’ll still give zexal credit for that. i’ll excuse some of its bad points as bad dub writing. some.

this chart, though, doesn’t paint a complete picture of how my opinion of zexal has changed. because it has. i like zexal a lot more now than i did before i started really watching it.

we’ll address good points first, so if anyone wants to bail for the bad points to avoid any sort of hurt feelings or anything like that, they can while still reading good stuff. again, i know a lot of yugioh fans’ favorite yugioh series is zexal, and my opinions are directly opposed to that, and again, i’m sorry.

there was some pretty cool new cards in this one, particularly in the numbers side of things. shark drake was cool. i liked all of the arclights’ numbers; honestly, how could i not love dyson sphere or number 69? i’ve forgotten a lot of it by now but there was some cool stuff especially in the first part.

the two best characters in this series, in terms of both writing and personality, were easily astral and shark. astral’s probably my number one, shark’s probably my number two.

astral was definitely great. his observations he kept making about humanity based on yuma was definitely one of the funnier things in the series, and the last duel of the series ending with astral’s last observation was poetic. he talked smack about yuma a lot, and a lot of the time it was pretty well deserved, and that was very cathartic and very good humor. his whole arc where he learns to trust yuma in part 1 and they truly become partners, then yuma meets vector who convinces yuma to keep pretty big secrets from astral, then astral realizes yuma’s been keeping these big secrets from him which is something astral never thought would happen by that point, and astral almost loses himself in that darkness of feeling betrayed and angry and sad, that was all really really good. yuma and astral not not immediately going back to loyal trusting partners and needing time before astral could truly trust yuma again also felt natural and real and i enjoyed it a lot. i like astral’s hairstyle, i like his dub censored ass, i like his whole ghost-like vibe. i don’t appreciate that astral is a nudist, even among the other residents of astral world who all wear actual clothes. i kind of wish astral would wear clothes but i would still want his ass to be censored because it’s hilarious. there is a lot i like about astral. i also just think he’s neat. my easy favorite. cannot go wrong with snarky glowy alien boy.

shark surprised me. i didn’t like him for a fair amount of part 1. he hurt yuma’s feelings a lot and i hated that. but when he started accepting yuma’s repeated attempts at friendship and turned around, i liked him a lot. he’s got purple hair, he plays a guitar (i think electric guitar? might’ve been electric bass), and his development was super interesting. i figured he had some kind of shitty home life that yuma would help him cope with using the power of friendship, but it was quite a bit more than that. he got disqualified from a tournament he desperately wanted to win because of a trick his opponent pulled, eventually evened out and became a pretty cool chill dude, and then it turned out he was like the head emperor of an alien planet that astral had set out to destroy?? he was the leader of a group of people and then blamed himself for their destruction?? he felt torn between his guilt/duty to his people and the new friendships he’d made with yuma and astral?? and he ended up deciding to go back to his alien emperor ways even though it pitted him against his friends which was hard but he had to make it up for the people he’d lost before?? but then he learned don thousand had been manipulating for a long long time and then faced against don thousand at yuma’s side een though he chose to turn his back on that friendship?? he didn’t let some fanfic choose his life for him??? he had shark drake??? there’s a lot of cool shit about shark and he’s got a lot of interesting shit going for him. i love a character that gets me to analyze what’s going on in their mind as they do certain things or make certain choices. i also love me a character who ends up getting/remembering magical powers. sorry shark astral’s in first but i still think shark’s neat too.

byron arclight!!! byron arclight! he’s not on the same level as astral and shark, but mAN i love byron arclight. he was constantly roasting everyone when he appeared and had some of the funniest dialogue in the entire series. anyone he looked at he’d be like “look aliens made me physically look like a child, my sons are taller and look older than me now, i couldn’t possibly give a shit about whatever your deal is.” he got super strong magic powers and used them to kidnap a small child. he became evil and told his sons to be evil with him because he was mad at dr faker, but they all kinda sucked at being evil and decided to be good guys instead by part 2. it’s honestly a shame the arclights didn’t appear in the series, especially part 2 (and especially byron, i’m p sure he appeared the least of the arclights) because i like them all actually. that episode where trey erased yuma’s like most important memories... dyson sphere... quattro telling off shark for dueling poorly while shark was sufferering the effects of POISON... what absolute legends. also byron had number 69.

yuma’s pretty cool, ended up being a more compelling character than i thought he would be. he’s a sweet kid, he’s annoyed initially by astral’s presence but he still helps astral with his quest to gather all the numbers anyway and he likes astral the more they hang out. that episode where yuma loses his memories because of trey really showed yuma’s pre-series development pretty well. yuma talks a lot and shouts the same few catchphrases a lot and it can get annoying, but there’s a lot more to yuma then that. at his core, he’s actually a pretty scared and lonely kid who doesn’t believe in himself, he looks at his current situation and goes “there’s no way i can win this duel there’s no point i might as well quit”. he’s not inherently upbeat and positive and self-confident like he usually appears. “feel the flow” is his source of strength, it’s what gets him going, gets him to believe in himself and inspires bravery in him. he’s actually one of the strongest people in the show for it, to be honest. his friends are so important to him, he cares about them so much and would do anything for them, even when his friends aren’t acting so friendly to him. even when his friends want conflicting things he tries his best to appease both sides. he becomes a voice of reason a lot in part 2, honestly. he kept voicing my thoughts and things i said throughout the season, which at times was really cathartic honestly. he kept challenging the status quo. why do we HAVE to do this, why can’t we find a compromise for THAT. he’s a good kid. i’m adopting him.

kite in part 1 is a cool Strong Opposition To The Number Hunt guy. he needs a glasses prescription but refuses to do anything about it and dies on the moon for it apparently, which i think is pretty funny of him. since he’s not astral he has to number hunt differently and the way he does it hurts people, but he’s only doing it because if he has all the numbers, then there might be a way to help his little brother who is suffering some big shit. his life literally revolves around his little brother who wants kite to just live his life for himself and be happy and have fun, to which kite replies “i don’t know how to do any of that”. relatable. eventually he realizes his dad is a dick. and beats him up until his dad says okay i’ll be good now. i won’t throw trash at astral world anymore i promise. kite’s hear to kick ass and take names and he runs out of names before he runs out of ass. but he gets new names by the time he runs out of ass so it’s okay. kite does some pretty fun stuff in part 1 and actually gives astral a run for his money which doesn’t happen often in part 1 so that’s pretty fun. also. his name is kite and his brother’s name is heart. dr faker is the worst at names but i’d expect that from someone who’s name is faker. it’s pretty funny, honestly

dumon is great. he’s a nice guy who is always trying to help out his friends. him first meeting shark and them pretty much despising each other and then realizing hmm maybe that other guy isn’t as obnoxious as i thought all before shark even realizes he’s nasch and nasch and dumon are like best friends? top-tier, def funny. after like that first meeting though dumon always came off as a nice guy. i like dumon. also, his dub voice actor voices dub yusaku and i was assigned yusaku by the government so i really appreciate that. he does a good job as yusaku. and honestly a good job at dumon, too. dumon is one of the best voices in the whole show. he’s great. i just think he’s neat

rio!!!! once rio wakes up, she’s great. you can tell like within an episode that she and shark are the kind of siblings that constantly snark at each other but would do literall anything for each other. shark tried to do anything he could to help her before she woke up, and rio stuck by his side no matter what in the barians vs astral conflict. the foreshadowing in that episode where she pretended she was knocked out like the rest of yuma’s friends but she really wasn’t!! within like a week of waking up she reveals shark can’t sleep in the dark and i think that he hates onions. she’s the picture of confidence, and it seems to come more naturally to her than yuma’s forced and learned confidence. she believes in herself for sure, she’s a great duelist and she knows it, she’s got that ice aesthetic that i love, she’s cute... i’m gonna go adopt shark and rio right now. she’s also fiercely protective of her friends. but she’s not afraid to tease them either! and she will do it! she’s unrepentantly herself and i love it.

vector is funny. vector had some great lines in part 2. “ray shadows” was always predictably not what he seemed at first glance but that’s not a bad thing. just because i knew “ray shadows” was bad didn’t make the reveal of him being vector any less satisfying, honestly. that whole sequence of what happened when vector revealed himself was one of my favorite parts of the second half. vector constantly leading yuma into “the ray way” (usually a poor way), then after reealing himself talking about doing things the ray way, absolutely poetic. that reveal causing a huge shift in yuma and astral’s relationship, beautiful. did you just say the b word??? he also had funny lines. most major villains in zexal (byron and vector) were pretty funny honestly. neither of them were the ultimate antagonist which is fine, but probably the best humor in the series to me came from the major villains. it made them less intimidating, maybe, but it made them a lot more enjoyable to watch.

number 96 looked like a dark version of astral, which is essentially what he was, but like, he literally looked like astral. but you know what? while astral’s ass was censored, number 96′s wasn’t censored in the slightest. to this day i don’t understand why but this is so funny to me. 4k media really said astral wasn’t valid but number 96 was.

there’s a lot of good stuff in zexal. and i enjoyed it! at the end of the day, that’s what i care about the most. doesn’t matter as much if something’s good or bad as much as if i’m enjoying it. and i enjoyed quite a bit of zexal.

i did say it was my least favorite yugioh anime currently, however. which means there must be parts of this anime i didn’t like. so let’s get into the aspects of zexal i didn’t like. feel free to bail now if you’re not interested in that. i’m not interested in hurting any feelings or tarnishing anyone’s love for zexal.

yikes

for what it’s worth, i like the first half a lot more than the second half. most of the problems i have with the first half are also present within the second half, but the second half has a lot of unique things i don’t like.

i know i said something doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable. anyone can enjoy bad things. i enjoy plenty of bad things! look, i watch sword art online!! i’m no stranger to the concept. but a lot of things i didn’t like about zexal were just...too glaring for me to enjoy anway.

let’s start with cards.

i think xyz summoning should’ve been pronounced as x-y-z and not x-eez. i hated it from episode one and i am still holding to that.

i don’t like tori’s whole fairy cheerleader archetype. i don’t like the way they all look. these things were in arc v, too, and given to a slightly better character but i didn’t like these things in arc v and i don’t like these now. arc v gave me something to look forward to when i needed it most, i don’t say many bad things about it. but i hate these things in both series they were featured in. i think that says a lot. it’s the combo of the hair and the eyes. their hair is way too big. their eyes tend to look bad. it’s just not a great look.

the series started off with a very simple set of rules for number cards: number cards come from astral, and there are 100 of them (and only number cards can only destroy other number cards, which is less important here). the first half of zexal stuck to that prett well. the second half of zexal just laughed at the idea of rules and said i’mma break them. characters are suddenly given number cards that go over the number 100. all these characters are barians. and these cards didn’t come from astral. what the heck! you’re breaking rules left and right! and then don thousand comes out with his stupid imaginary number, and then two duels later yuma comes out with his own new number, future number zero. you’re breaking all the rules. you’re breaking all my trust in everything. you’ve stopped pretending there’s any sense of rules entirely and you’ve started making things up as you go. i don’t like that!! especially imaginary number and future number zero had basically no explanation as to where these things come from, how do these characters have these cards? it’s one thing when yuma comes out with a new gagaga card or something, that’s acceptable and makes plenty of sense, but the new number cards don’t. also, don thousand, yuma doesn’t know enough math to know what an imaginary number even is.

astral’s whole deck angers me. astral is one of the most important characters of the series, and you couldn’t bother to give him any non-xyz monsters. his whole deck is spells and traps. you gave tori, who only duels once and isn’t very good at it, her own whole archetype, but you couldn’t bother to think of a single monster to give astral. and even then, the only xyz monsters astral uses are utopia forms, (not including shark drake and galaxy-eyes, who were only brought out to serve as material for a utopia monster. this is the laziest deck in the whole series, and you gave it to a major protagonist. like, the second most important protagonist in the whole series. i get he only duels without yuma once, but dude. i hate this.

i also really don’t like that the only number yuma and astral use most of the time is utopia. i know utopia was the first one they had together and it’s popular and shit. but there are other numbers! other numbers yuma gains! that i would like to see him use! but instead the show just...keeps giving him new forms for utopia? for some reason? at least on one occasion one of yuma’s new forms has like the same exact ability as another number yuma has at the time. it’s infuriating. to me, at least. plenty of other characters only really use one number most of the time the duel, but most other characters only really have that one number and maybe another form of it or maybe two other forms. yuma doesn’t have that excuse. i’m not saying i never want him to use utopia ever. i just like variety. if you’re introducing the idea of collecting a lot of things, i wanna see those things used.

i hate don thousand’s dueling gimmicks most of all. he gets access to the numeron code and uses it to cheat in his duels, even though kite has it and zexal really gave the impression before this point that you needed to obtain the numeron code to use it, but don thousand’s just like, i fused earth and barian world and somehow i can use the numeron code now. ??????? no fucking sense. on top of that, his cards are super unbalanced. i could not stand watching this duel.

i don’t like the literally no excuse given of other characters besides yuma, the arclights maybe, and the barians maybe, the literally no excuse given for other characters suddenly being able to see astral. being able to see astral required either special powers or special circumstances but then at the end of part 1 going in to part 2 characters were just like “i can see astral now!!!” and that was the end of this and this was the stupidest laziest thing ever. dunno if this was a dub-only thing, maybe the sub explained it, but it really bothered me and still does.

i don’t think chaos was explained very well, at least in the dub, and i looked it up later on and know pretty much what it is now but when you introduce new concepts and ideas, please explain them to me or else i feel like there’s literally no rules to the universe and characters are just making things up as they go.

a lot of the time in the second half, astral is written really weirdly and, not as good. especially post-vector reveal. i’m not talking about any stubbornness on astral’s part because that’s who he is. part 2 starts going in and after a while of it already going, astral just comes in and explains things to yuma that astral definitely didn’t know before. i know astral starts out with almost no memories and regains them all throughout the series but i don’t think any of this like came right after astral regained some memory. the numeron code seems to come out of nowhere, and oh, by the way, this thing can rewrite the entire rules of the universe. it’s a race to see who gets the numeron code first! except, uh, kite ends up winning it i think but that ends up literally not mattering because don thousand and astral both finds ways to use it without even having it. so there wasn’t much of a point of a lot of the duels before the don thousand duel, huh. that’s a lot of time wasted. and apparently astral can use the numeron code after regaining all 100 numbers, but. i don’t remember when astral first introduced that fact and when he got all 100 numbers. but it only is relevant after the duel against nasch and astral only makes any attempt to use the numeron code then. i don’t even know how he got the numeron code after that duel anyway. kite had it and he died on the moon. don thousand could use it without actually having it but then he was defeated. was astral always able to use it without actually having it like don thousand? why didn’t he does this before, then? everything related to the numeron code is vague and explained poorly and every time the numeron code comes up someone makes up some new bullshit thing related to the numeron code and i hate it. i hate the stupid numeron code.

back on track with astral. there’s other stuff besides the numeron code he seemed to know about without any real explanation. i do not remember a lot of them. besides the numeron code. i think i repressed the rest of out of annoyance. i think the worst astral was written was right before his duel with yuma. i get that astral intended to use the duel to help yuma and not hurt him. but he could’ve accomplished this without being an entire jackass. yuma’s mourning the loss of friends that he’s also blaming himself for. and then astral decides to resolve that by telling yuma that astral’s gonna go kill a bunch more people and yuma can’t stop him? that’s uh, not helping anything astral. you had other options to get yuma to duel (while yuma was in a state of not wanting to duel ever again) rather than telling yuma more people are about to die. the point of the whole duel was to remind yuma how to have fun in duels. but uh. when you put a bunch of lives at risk like that after a bunch of people just died, that’s not a great way to introduce fun. yuma promised astral to duel against him before astral left earlier on in the series! you had other options! astral acts like he doesn’t have other options but he literally does! there’s stupid stuff like this astral does earlier in the second half but i have forgotten the details. i get astral’s an alien who’s pretty socially awkward and doesn’t get earth people super well, but b the end of the series he certainly should understand them a little better, or at least, he should understand yuma pretty well, after hanging out with yuma literally all the time. it’s stupid! astral’s better than all this! there’s no way this is the fault of dub writing! unless 4k media made entirely new animation for multiple episodes. like. of the entire episode.

there were multiple times in the second half i didn’t understand character motivations in certain events at all and had to really come up with my own weird headcanons to make sense of it. this is probably largely a result of dub writing.

i wish the arclights were more relevant in the second half. most of all they did was watch things happen. they’re cool and powerful give them something to do.

kite felt extremely pointless in the second half of zexal. he was given a clear character direction to go after the first half and basically abandoned it the second the second half started. he had this pointless rivalry with mizar that only ever felt relevant when they dueled each other on the moon to get the numeron code. kite realizes he needs glasses. he wins the duel. and then he fucking dies somehow. and everyone else gets access to the numeron code. it’s all really stupid and makes no sense. i wouldn’t care about him not being as narratively important as yuma, shark and astral. kite’s not from astral world, kite’s not from barian world, and he doesn’t have any partnership with anyone from either world. at most, he thinks astral’s neat now. but they keep dragging along this stupid rivalry between mizar and kite that literally amounted to “my galaxy-eyes dragon is better than your galaxy-eyes dragon”, these two idiots dueled about it multiple times, and it was just pointless. it ate up too much time. i could feel myself aging. the second half of zexal had enough filler episodes that made me want to tear my hair out without this stuff.

i hate mizar so much. he’s probably my second least favorite character in the series. all mizar EVER does is duel kite over who has a cooler galaxy-eyes dragon, which isn’t even a question because kite’s is cooler and he had it long before mizar ever showed up which at most makes mizar a copier idiot. the most relevant thing mizar does is duel kite on the moon for the numeron code, but i’ve been over that. you could take mizar out without changing much. he’s by far the least interesting barian emperor. mizar is more annoying than kite ever was, and is more annoying than the other barian emperors ever were. and yet mizar lives longer than pretty much every barian emperor except nasch. he got the honor of being written out of existence by don thousand himself. radical. cool. get him out of my sight. i can’t stand him.

there’s a point where there’s a number shown on baby vector. i really wanted to know what was up with that and how it was relevant. this was never explained at all. i’m gonna assume this was don thousand altering vector’s memories or something and move on and never address it again because this show just did and said so many things without explaining any of it whatsoever. this stuff needs established rules and explanations. otherwise it just feels like everythings made up on the fly, it’s all completely random shit with not much planning behind it, that the writers don’t care...it feels insulting. i had this same issue with the infinity stones in the marvel cinematic universe. this is not something i just don’t like because it happened in zexal. i like knowing things.

so if mizar’s my second least favorite, who’s my least favorite character overall? i’ll tell you who

tori fucking meadows.

tori. geez. has there ever been a worse character? yes, mineta from my hero academia exists. but what exactly is tori’s crime? what has she done to make me dislike her so much. well, nothing. ‘nothing?’ yes. she didn’t do anything. but at the same time, she didn’t do anything. my problem with her is she literally does nothing, she barely has any sort of relevance to anything, and she’s annoying. i’m very serious. there’s only two things she’s ever done: she got possessed by a barian emperor to duel against yuma once, and there was that time she challenged yuma to a fashion contest, which was a little entertaining. those are the only things she’s ever done. and yet, somehow, she finds her way into every single episode. it is rare for an episode to go by without her. well, if she’s in so many episodes, surely she must be doing something of importance? nah. her only purpose is to cheer yuma on when he’s discouraged and to get distressed when yuma looks like he’s in a bad spot. this is not a joke. this is not an exaggeration. there are entire episodes where her only dialogue is “(sad voice) Yuma...! Astral...!” i constantly forget she’s there and then the show reminds me she’s there and i get mad because she doesn’t do anything. it’s either be sad about duel going well for yuma, or tori going “yuma you can do it” and yuma going “YEAH YOU’RE RIGHT THANKS TORI”. yeah, she doesn’t even give good motivational speeches, she just says the laziest most generic thing possible, and yuma just cheers himself up anyway because that’s usually what he does anyway. there’s not point to her being there. oh, and she got to be the damsel of distress once to convince yuma to duel. that’s great. lovely. that’s definitely not shady/shifty as hell. all girls are only good for fueling boys’ pain and suffering, right.

but lemme ask this. let’s replace tori with a very pretty lamp for the entire series. how much of the show would change? and honestly? it’d mostly be just like, bits and pieces of three episodes. she’s literally just taking up space. she doesn’t need to duel to be relevant and do meaningful things. maybe she could do more to help yuma convince astral that blowing up barian world is a bad idea, maybe she’s able to come up with the right words where yuma isn’t. maybe she catches on that something’s wrong with shark before shark switches sides, she doesn’t have to convince him not to and i’d rather she didn’t but she can be an uninvolved person to listen and tell shark it’s not an easy choice for sure but she supports him whatever he does and she’s sure whatever he chooses will be the right choice for him. maybe she could get astral some fashionable clothes. i don’t know! she could actually do something! i’m not asking much here i just want her to be something besides a generic love interest (gross) or a generic supporter with generic advice (annoying).

a lot of yuma’s friend group have similar similar issues, but at least they have parts to play. bronk’s probably the best written of the bunch in part 1 before he dissolves into randomly in love with rio taking over his entire life (gross). cathy honestly is better than average too. rio is exempt from this paragraph because she doesn’t spend too much time in the friend group before bailing to her past life which is valid. yuma starts out with only bronk and tori for friends but he gains a lot of friends during the number hunt. most of these friends were possessed by numbers and yuma befriended them afterwards because ultimately his goal is to have fun and make friends by dueling. but they all stick around and don’t not hang out with him and don’t do much after yuma helps them. yuma has way too many friends that he drags around with him everywhere, and then some combination of the arclights, shark, kite, vector, and rio is often there as well. It’s way too many people and no wonder most of them never do anything because often all the things that could be done are taken. Most of these kids need to stop following Yuma everywhere. For the most part, they’re all annoying, too. I really only care for Bronk and Cathy.

i get it. the protagonist always has friends that are ride or die and help them out no matter what. i get it. but there was never this many constantly around, often times they’d switch around each other if anything, and they always all were either relevant to the plot or played good important roles in helping the protagonist, and they always had development. i think the most development any of yuma’s friend group (ignoring brinks negative development) had was cathy’s hatred of dogs getting a bit less intense. flip’s literally a shitty dude who cheats and yuma told him “hey maybe be less shitty next time” a couple of times and flip said “sure” each time but then never put any effort into being better and just kept being shitty towards other people. caswell just...reiterates what’s happening half the time ans starts literally every sentence with “in the end”. all they’re good for is filler and zexal has really bad filler. they’re not good for anything. they should’ve showed up less at least after the heartland tournament arc if not sooner. i get that the whole thing is to show that yuma wants to make friends through duels but this is unnecesasary and eats up time that could be better spent on other characters who actually do things and who actually are relevant and develop and stuff. the protagonist’s friend group was never this annoying before zexal and it never was after zexal either. when they all got sent to barian world and stopped showing up for like ten episodes i almost finally new peace if those ten episodes weren’t like some of the worst content zexal had to offer.

there’s a lot of pointless boring uneventful unnecessary hetero shit all over the show, too. obviously, the whole deal with yuma and tori, while yuma really has no interest in romance at all and tori can’t take a fucking hint and then somehow the last episode decides to make them start dating for some reason. bronk falls for rio (understandable) and then in a filler episode asks for shark’s permission to date her (gross), shark misunderstands what bronk’s asking and is like “if you wanna deal with me or rio you gotta beat yuma in a duel first”, bronk gets it in his head that means yuma likes rio and duels yuma over rio (gross) and this is all supposed to be a funny whole series of events but it’s not funny and it’s kinda gross actually. orbital and lillybot!! yikes!! i don’t like orbital anyway. lillybot is amazing and great. the show decides to assign lillybot female (tori just says lillybot’s a girl and we’re supposed to take tori’s word for it i guess) so obviously the assigned male robot and the assigned female robot have to date, right! they MUST like each other because he was a boy robot, she was a girl robot, can i make it any more obvious. it’s annoying and stupid. they have kids!!! they have kids for some reason!!! why do they have kids!!!!! zexal never interact with me about romance again.

the girls in this show really get the shit end of the stick, huh. i feel really bad for them. obviously we have tori. who was there the whole time but really didn’t do anything except be generically sad or generically positive. cathy’s a little better than that. she has a bit more personality going for her. she likes cats, she makes cat puns, she duels a dog, she did get possessed by a number... she’s got a few things going for her, but she doesn’t do much either. she doesn’t do anything worth noting in the tournament in heartland, she barely does anything of note related to the barian emperors or don thousand. so that’s not much better. rio probably got the best treatment of any of the girls in zexal. she is a major player in the second half of zexal, being one of the barian emperors. she’s got a very strong personality and did plenty of important things. she helped her and her brother deal with the barian emperors before realizing she was one herself, she reclaimed her title of barian emperor and tried to kick vector’s ass. rio and shark brought a lot of life to each other. she revealed her brother’s need to sleep with a nightlight and she was allowed to be good at dueling! but also, she spend the entire first half of the show in a coma. she wasn’t allowed to have any part in the show before astral and the barian emperors did their thing. so in a way, rio also got the worst treatment, too. discounting rio, though, i think the girl who got the worst of it was actually kari.

i know, i know. kari’s an investigator, a journalist! she’s always after a scoop, she’s always looking after yuma, and she deals with old friends/enemies. she’s not just some generic friend like tori, she’s not in a coma like rio! kari’s great! and i love her! but this isn’t just about girls not getting to do things that matter or girls not getting to have personalities. this goes in a bit different direction than that. she wanted to go out and explore with her dad, just like yuma did, but her parents always brushed her aside and made her do more “girly” things because “girls can’t do what yuma and your dad are doing”! she didn’t get a wole lot of agency in her own life. her parents all but told her that yuma was more important than her, that he had this big destiny related to dueling and that all she was good for was watching out for yuma and making sure he was okay because she’s his older sister. and then both her parents disappeared! and she was just left with that! she grew to hate dueling, to push yuma away from it because their parents basically told her yuma would be in danger because of dueling. which is a totally understandable reaction to your parents telling you that out of seemingly nowhere! except the show doesn’t treat it that way. the show puts her in the wrong for not liking dueling! because everyone has to like dueling kari!! how dare you not like card games. how dare you have any interest in anything else. i’m surprised she’s not more bitter towards her parents for this whole fiasco. she just gets slammed into a caretaker role because girls can only be love interests or caretakers! (tori, cathy, and rio were all set up as love interests at least one time or another, while yuma would rather eat another hot dog than deal with that) but honestly, she does her best to do what her parents told her: take care of yuma during his big dangerous dueling destiny. she watches out for him, she tries to steer him clear of the thing that’s supposed to be dangerous for him. and as a journalist she has to be constantly up to date on current events and happenings, so if something happens that might endanger yuma with his big dangerous dueling destiny, kari’ll probably be on of the first people to know about it in all of heartland. that’s not to say that’s not the only reason she took up the profession. she definitely seems passionate about what she does, she takes it seriously, i’m sure she does actually like being a journalist, but it does help with yuma, too. her parents basically forced her life to go exactly one way. and that’s not shown in a bad light against her parents! if anything, the show basically acts like it’s kari’s fault for not being happy about it every second. all this while yuma gets to be whoever he wants to be and do what he wants to do their whole childhood, he gets a lot more freedom than kari for sure. yuma got the childhood kari wanted and she’s not allowed to grieve what she could’ve had. because it’s not just “kari’s parents forced her into a very specific role for her life and gave her no choice in any of it”. that can actually be a really cool thing to explore. i love chazz princeton! kari has plenty in common with chazz! but i don’t like this setup like this. chazz got to be right about being bitter about what his brothers did to him, about breaking away from them and living life the way he wanted to. but making kari’s parents the right ones in this whole situation is just kinda gross and disgusting. if you’re gonna frame it like that don’t bother. cannot stand the “your parents are always right” sort of shit.

speaking of? goddamn i hate kazuma. i hate yuma and kari’s dad. i would say he’s the worst dad in all of yugioh, but he didn’t start an interdimensional war, so we’ll say he’s the second worst dad in all of yugioh. ...if i tie dr kogami with leo, but either way, leo, dr kogami, and kazuma are the top 3.

how can kazuma be in the top 3?? with leo and dr kogami?? leo and dr kogami are evil villains!! kazuma’s not a bad guy! he helped give yuma more self-confidence! he wanted peace between astral world and barian world!

first of all, if you skipped the paragraph related to kari, go back and read it. it’s required reading for the “why kazuma sucks” portion of our program tonight. okay good, you read it. here’s more reasons why kazuma’s a pretty sucky dad.

this here is a bullshit man.

kazuma had good intentions, i think. he wanted to be a good dad but intentions don’t really mean a damn thing when you look at the results.

pre-zexal, kazuma tsukumo knew about yuma’s destiny and told kari about it. how did he know this? how did he figure this out? that’s a good question. i have no idea why he knows about yuma’s destiny, or how he knows about it. the wiki just says he “showed great intelligence and foresight”, whatever that means. my best guess is that honestly? once kazuma saw what was happening in astral world, he created yuma’s destiny himself. he gave the key to yuma, and then he fucked with astral’s shit so that astral would meet yuma. yeah, kazuma looked at everything going on and was like “i’ll put it on my 12 year old son to save three worlds at the same time! what could go wrong”, and told kari about it beforehand and was like “lol kari can’t do it she’s a girl so i’ll just decide her entire life for her a different way”

uh, clearly yuma was not emotionally capable of dealing with the shit kazuma pulled him into. yuma was ready to never duel again because dueling killed his friends. and then kazuma talks to astral about the whole thing and is weirdly smug about the whole thing related to yuma’s lost friends and lost love for dueling. so like...was that part of your plan or not? do you give a shit about your son’s feelings regarding your whole plan for his life or not?

after yuma falls into a portal in the hell dimension he ends up being a prisoner on astral world. which was definitely not explained well in the dub. but he and his wife just hang out freely and openly in remote parts of astral world so he sure as shit doesn’t look like a prisoner. and while he’s there he certainly looks like there’s no place he’d rather be. wait, his wife? how did she get in astral world? that’s a good fucking question and i sure would love to know. i guess she’s not allowed to exist outside her relationship with kazuma.

after kazuma is stuck in astral world, everyone thinks he’s dead for a while, but then when everyone finds out he was alive, he’s treated as this all-knowing projection/recorded hologram who is always right about everything. he always has all the answers and if we don’t know what to do about something then kazuma definitely knows! and after he appears to die he can sometimes appear to people somehow, how he can do that is never explained well at least in the dub, and there are arbitrary conditions to it also never explained in the dub. he can appear in the emperor’s key. he only really seems to do this once to have a weird conversation with astral, and then he also...was able to help vetrix make a barrier during yuma and nasch’s duel, somehow? i mean, i get tron’s whole thing, but kazuma, not so much? if he can appear to astral and vetrix why does he never try to connect with yuma? i’m guessing he probably can’t appear to yuma directly but he never tries to leave a message with astral either. he has these arbitrary weird abilities never explained well (in the dub, at least) and it feels like he’s playing calvinball to make himself seem like a hero or something.

honestly, everthing about yuma’s dad being seemingl dead but still alive, creating his son’s destiny and being this vague benevolent being who is always right and is never allowed to be seen in a bad light related to the consequences to his kids for his meddling, it all seems familiar....

that’s right! it all comes back to sonic!! once again i am literally unable to talk about anything without bringing up sonic, i always bring everything back to sonic!!!

i explained this all a lot better a year ago so i will let myself speak i guess

obviously kazuma isn’t as bad of a person as locke the echidna, not nearly as bad, but there’s parallels, anyway.

so if you agree that yuma is the old comics knuckles of yugioh, if you look at the bad dads section of this article (in case you think i wrote it for some reason, which i didn’t, thankskenpenders did) you can understand why locke is a horrible dad, and looking at the similarties pointed out between locke and kazuma (again, locke is a much worse father than kazuma) you can understand more why i hate kazuma.

so, yeah. i can go on and on about all the things i don’t like zexal. the writing is sometimes sexist and lazy, there’s way too many characters hanging out with the protagonist and most of them have nothing to offer. sometimes things just don’t get explained, or are barely explained. it’s a big ol’ game of calvinball sometimes. and i am aware and accept that some of this is the fault of the dub writers. but there’s also a lot of good things i like about zexal! astral, shark, and yuma were all written really well! there were some really cool monsters in this show! there were some moments of good jokes! the show had good messages and a lot of characters had complex motivations you can sympathize with even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing. this show was very good at being yugioh. and it’s a pretty good show in my book. i enjoyed watching it! it just doesn’t happen to be my favorite yugioh. or like. anything but my least faorite yugioh. but that’s okay. really, the most important thing with watching a show isn’t how well it’s written, how good the visuals are, or anything like that, the most important thing is whether you enjoyed it. and i enjoyed it!

i enjoyed watching yugioh zexal.

if you followed me through my journey watching the anime, thank you. i appreciate it.

this isn’t the end of my journey through zexal. i intend to read the manga too, so when i do get to that, if i end up wanting to post any screenshots or anthing i’ll be using the same tag. that’s sure to be an interesting journey as well.

but anyway. if you read this entire post, thank you. this is over 8,000 words long, damn.

#zexal liveblog #long post 235

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thebibliomancer · 4 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #207: Beyond a Shadow...

May, 1981

“After countless centuries HE LIVES AGAIN! THE SHADOW LORD COMETH!”

He cometh riding upon a tornado like its a mighty sand worm. What a guy, this Shadow Lord.

Honestly seeing the Avengers tumbling about in a tornado cracks me up every time. Especially Wonder Man who looks nonchalant about it aside from being ass over head.

So I don’t think we’ve really talked about it but this period of Avengers is kind of between main writers.

Since issue 200 and its four writers, we’ve had David Michelinie and Roger Stern on the two-part adaptation of that Ultron novel, David Michelinie for that weird story with the Crawlers in the sewers; Jim Shooter, David Michelinie, and Bob Budiansky for the Yellow Claw two-parter, Bill Mantlo for the everything is on fire story and now Bob Budiansky and Danny Fingeroth for this issue and the next. We start getting a consistent writer again starting in #211.

I wonder what was going on behind the scenes around this time.

Anyway, onward.

So we start the issue with who I assume is the Shadow Lord. But he’s not riding a tornado, like Pecos Bill. He’s standing on an invisible ocean structure of some kind. Apparently a mysterious invisible ocean structure of some kind that hasn’t been seen for almost two millennia.

And yet, someone has kindly painted the title of the issue in English on the mysterious invisible ocean structure of some kind.

Some guy, maybe the Shadow Lord: “The dreaded time has at last arrived, the moment I prayed would never come... the moment I knew would surely come. He is soon to return, and only the power entrusted to me is capable of stopping him. And even that power may not prove sufficient.”

“With every passing second, my city and myself pass ever more fully into the Earth’s plane of existence. Would that the cause of my return here from the barren vastnesses of the Shadow World was as joyous as the glow of this new day’s sun.”

“But the grim responsibility of an entire race is my unwelcome inheritance. It is a duty I cannot shirk. Alas, I must take what comfort I can in knowing that no matter what the result of the coming debacle, I will at least be free to rejoin Ayshera, she whom my heart holds most dear... though whether our reunion will be in celebration of victory -- or in darkest mourning for the ashes of this planet -- none willy truly know until the final battle.”

Some Guy sure is helpfully monologuing his entire life story here. And even so he manages to be vague, inside his own mind, about the nature of the threat he faces. Way to preserve the mystery, Guy.

Also, he’s from the Shadow World so he may be a Yugioh.

Anyway, as one might expect, a city appearing in the middle of the ocean out of nowhere is of alarm so US aircraft carrier Poseidon shows up and starts yelling at Some Guy.

Some Guy decides that they sound mad but he doesn’t have time for lengthy explanations so instead he gestures and the winds and waves start whipping up.

Welp! Seems like the US Poseidon is going on an Adventure!

Meanwhile, Mt. Vesuvius!

Yup. Its that kind of story, the kind partially set at Vesuvius.

Some archeologists are digging in the foothills of the mountain in what has been a fruitless several weeks of archeology but one of the archeologists finds a hand shaped object which may be a hand.

They mistake it for a statue at first but realize its actually a perfectly preserved lava mummified corpse.

And while they’re busy congratulating each other about how wealthy and famous this discovery will make them, they fail to notice the hand moving its finger shaped fingers.

And elsewhere again, the best damn thing.

A cowboy shouts “SLAP LEATHER, YA GALOOT!” and then gets shot by a cannon.

This isn’t the Wild West of the America, this is a spaghetti western film set and the director is very upset at Black Bart’s shitty death acting. How hard is it to get hit by a cannon and then to fall down and pretend to die like you just got hit by a cannon?

You wouldn’t think there’s a wrong way to get shot by a cannon but you’d be wrong.

Simon Williams, Wonder Man: “I’m sorry, Mr. Bertolini. It’s just that, being Wonder Man, it’s hard for me to pretend those cannonballs are hurting me when I can hardly feel them.”

Mr. Bertolini: “True, signore Wonder Man, but I hired you because I thought you could-a act!”

Oh yeah, Mr. Bertolini talks like Mario. So that’s another tally for Marvel’s respect of other countries and cultures.

Aside from this being the seventh take on a ‘guy gets hit by a cannonball, beefs it’ scene, cannonballs are expensive. The cannonball that bounced off Wonder Man’s midsection looks fine but maybe you can’t just reuse them.

The filming breaks for lunch and Wonder Man wanders over to where his moral support is.

His moral support, of course, being Beast.

And he is moral supporting but he’s also multitasking with some women because even in Italy, women are just fascinated by blue fur. Furries are universal.

Wonder Man doesn’t feel supported though and this lousy spaghetti western film is a good opportunity for him.

If you remember, the last project we saw him get was as a cheetah print leotard wearing muscle man on a kids show and he got fired for making the host Uncle Elmer look ridiculous.

(Revealed to Simon’s chagrin in #194, lost to mishap in #201)

Being in an actual movie, even a spaghetti western, is the boost his career needs.

(I think we need to confront the actual possibility that Wonder Man is not a very good actor. But he might be a good stunt man if he can learn to act like things hurt)

Wonder Man’s publicist Rachel Palmer shows up as well and wow. Rachel has never appeared before and given the fillery nature of these chaotic no consistent writer times may not appear beyond this story. But you instantly get the sense of their working relationship.

And they have good banter too.

Wonder Man: “Wait. There she is -- Rachel Palmer -- the apple of my eye, the light of my life, the bane of my existence!”

Rachel: “If you delivered your lines that well in front of the cameras, Simon, you might actually keep this job -- which’ll make it just a little easier to hype you as a star back in the States.”

Wonder Man: “Your encouraging words are a constant source of inspiration, Rachel. But I’d appreciate it if you’d confine them to your press releases.”

Rachel: “You’ve got me all wrong, Simon. I hope this whole thing turns out well for you. Really.”

Wonder Man: “And for yourself. After all, if you make me a big name, you can ride along on my coat-tails and become a media hotshot -- instead of being stuck as a flak for Grade D Westerns.”

Rachel: “No, Simon. I--”

Wonder Man: “Forget it, lady. I’m a big boy. I know that all’s fair in love -- and show biz.”

And then he walks off towards his trailer, satisfied at getting the last word with someone whose job it is to make him look good. Beast says that he thinks Wonder Man was too hard on her and that Rachel probably digs Wonder Man.

Wonder Man: “Maybe you’re right. But I still can’t get over feeling that Rachel’s motivated by sheer self-interest and everything else places a distant second.”

(I’m pretty sure she does dig Wonder Man because unbeknowst to Wonder Man and Beast, she follows them to the trailer, wanting to convince Wonder Man that she’s not as self-serving as he thinks and also to invite him to a romantic dinner)

Anyway, Wonder Man’s social life isn’t important. At all. And not right now. Because when he and Beast go into Wonder Man’s trailer and discover the Avengers’ emergency signal briefcase is BEEP BEEPing.

It’s Cap and there’s an emergency situation that demands immediate investigation.

A brand new island city has just popped up in the middle of the Mediterranean slash off the coast of Majorca from out of nowhere and the government wants the Avengers to investigate.

Presumably the US government.

Because if I know anything about mysterious island cities appearing from nowhere - and I know exactly one thing - by jingo, they start wars!

Beast is enjoying his vacation so asks why the US Sixth Fleet doesn’t handle it instead. They’re actually paid to do things while on an ocean. But Iron Man just says that the fleet has had problems.

And with a little reading comprehension we can guess what problems. Because we’ve seen it. Its not a mystery.

Iron Man has a Stark plane sent to pick Beast and Wonder Man up and fly them to Majorca. Or somewhere thereabouts. I don’t know if Majorca has or had an airport.

Wonder Man bemoans that he’ll never be a movie star if he keeps leaving the set to go have exciting comic book superhero adventures.

Which is a little like complaining about being too handsome. Ya jerk.

And remember how Rachel Palmer was peeping on them? No? Scroll up a little and look at the above panels again. Back? And remember how Rachel Palmer was peeping on them?

Her media senses are tingling and telling her that she should definitely go check out the city that appeared in the middle of the ocean. She’s much intrepid for not a reporter.

Meanwhile, some slice of life filler fluff that doesn’t matter but that I find delightful.

And if this liveblog isn’t about sharing things that I find delightful then what is it about? Exhaustively recounting plots to comic books from decades ago? That’s just a side benefit!

The call to action back at Avengers Mansion comes right when Wanda is having Vision move a couch.

Vision: “Wanda, while it may be true that I am capable of moving this couch about all day, it seems a gross misuse of my android abilities to do so.”

Wanda: “Maybe if we just move those shelves then you just put it down there. We’re Avengers, not interior decorators.

This is the content I eagerly crave.

So back in not America, Beast and Wonder Man complain about the plane ride but passing over the ocean they see what trouble the Sixth Fleet was having.

Some Guy, Possibly Shadow Lord managed to strand the Poseidon aircraft carrier fully on a deserted island.

And I was wrong about the plane taking them to Majorca. Its apparently taking them to Poseidon because it lands on the ship’s airstrip so the two Avengers can consult the stranded sailors about what the heck is going on.

Captain Paul Garrison tells them that they were investigating the mysterious new island/city (not mentioning that they were also yelling at it) when a tidal wave suddenly swelled up and carried the Poseidon several miles and left it on this island.

And apparently the same thing happened to any other plane and ship that attempted to approach the island. Thwarted by winds and waves.

Damn you, nature!

Anyway, its all rather mysterious but Wonder Man figures

“Well, we were sent here to investigate. So... let’s investigate.”

And Wonder Man rockets off to investigate the city. While giving Beast a piggyback ride.

Which. Amazing image. Bless this issue for its bounty of amazing images.

Bear in mind that the captain said that the aircraft carrier was carried several miles. Wonder Man’s belt rockets have impressive duration considering he can’t be carrying much fuel on his person.

When they reach the city, they find a localized hurricane hovering right above it. But Wonder Man just flies down through the eye of the storm to get to the city.

Some Guy Shadow Lord is surprised because he had been expecting big boats and planes. Not a guy with rocket pants and a blue gorilla riding on his back.

But he’s able to shoo them away just as easily as any big thing, with a wave of his hand summoning a wind that carries Wonder Man and passenger Beast away from the city.

Meanwhile, Rachel Palmer is also here. She spent all her money renting a plane and then a boat but she’s going to get to that mysterious city and get an exclusive inside story!

So is she a journalist? Or what? She’s Lois Laneing but as far as we’ve heard her job is to convince people they want to see Wonder Man do stuff in movies.

Wonder Man spots her and tries to fly to her rescue but two water spouts spurt up to ruin this rescue plan.

The first one launches Rachel’s boat into the air and smashes it to pieces. The second blasts Wonder Man out of the sky preventing him from saving Rachel from falling to her death.

But unseen by either of the Avengers, a strong breeze safely lowers Rachel to the ground of the city.

Because what is an Avengers comic without men developing weird and intense feelings for a nearby woman.

Some Guy: “How beautiful she is, how like my own Ayshera. And, also like Ayshera, she is courageous... and more than a little headstrong.”

Cool. I hope this doesn’t get weird. Or that we’re not asked to sympathize with a guy whose only ‘sympathetic’ trait is a possessive attraction to a woman. Looking at you, Living Laser. And, I guess, Graviton.

Anyway, Wonder Man doesn’t see Rachel getting rescued by an airbender so he works himself into a lather.

Wonder Man: “That sinks it! It’s one thing to attack naval ships and planes... one thing to attack Avengers... But when he kills an innocent woman who could do him no harm -- that guy’s gonna answer to WONDER MAN!”

Honestly, I think you’re selling Rachel short. I’m sure she could do harm if she put her mind to it. Like, what if she covered him in bees. That would suck.

Anyway, Wonder Man rages through the city’s protective winds and then gets SAFUUSH!’d between two walls of solid water.

He’s left sputtering and disoriented in the ocean. At least until some hooks hook down from the Quinjet, hook Wonder Man, and then hook him up into the ship.

I didn’t know that the Quinjet had hooks for grabbing people out of the ocean but I am thrilled.

Ideally, the Avengers would use their newfound ability to vaudeville hook people into orbit more often. I can think of so many instances where it would be useful, or at least hilarious.

Anyway, Wonder Man apprises the other Avengers into the situation.

Meanwhile, not dead Rachel Palmer wakes up and finds the Shadow Lord brood slouching in a chair and watching her while she was unconscious.

She is alarmed that he’s just sitting there staring but he basically goes ‘DON’T WORRY I READ YOUR MIND TO LEARN YOUR NAME AND LANGUAGE’ and then decides to explain his entire backstory.

Shadow Lord: “The city in which we stand is the Shadow Realm and I... I am called the Shadow Lord!”

DAMMIT I KNEW HE WAS A YUGIOH!

Anyway.

THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO! Give or take! An ancient tribe decided to move to an island to isolate themselves from “primitive, superstitious neighbors who feared [their] more advanced society.”

Off to a good start with this guy.

Free of the mundane concerns of living in a world that hated and feared them, they were able to peacefully ALL BECOME WIZARDS WHO COULD CONTROL THE FORCES OF NATURE.

Maybe the X-Men are onto something.

So the Shadow Lord’s people learned to control, winds, waves, earth, and maybe fire so what I’m saying is that it was an entire island of Avatars.

Boom, sequel idea. Give me millions of dollars, Nickelodeon.

“Though veiled in mystery, rumors of our existence spread throughout the world. We were feared and shunned by the other peoples of the Earth -- which allowed us to continue our studies undisturbed.”

“Those who mistrusted anything they could not comprehend... they called us witches and sorcerers. Those who knew and understood us called us... the Earth Lords!”

“For centuries our sole purposes were to augment our knowledge of the Earth’s forces and to maintain the natural balance between these forces. Otherwise, we had no interest in the day-to-day affairs of the outside world.”

Maybe I was wrong about them being Yugioh. Maybe they’re the Time Lords from the Doctor Who.

Anyway, the Earth Lords were happy sitting on their island being Avatars but over the eons they sensed a disturbance in the Force, for I must reference all the things.

"Over the eons, we became aware of a seemingly immortal, human force of awesome destruction, one who could potentially plunge mankind into an irreversible slide to its doom.”

“Singlehandedly he could destroy towns. With an army beside him -- countries. Time and again, he did. It was when he finally joined the legions of Rome at the peak of the Empire’s power... that we first feared the balance of nature was in danger of being destroyed. Rome could forever take over the world.”

The Earth Lords tried on several occasions to destroy this menace. We don’t get to know what constituted these efforts and that’s disappointing because of what the final successful attempt was.

By 79 AD, they knew he was on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius so they caused it to erupt, just to bury this one guy under hundreds of tons of rock and ash and lava.

Mission accomplished.

Except for the little thing where the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius also wiped out Pompeii and Herculaneum and other cities people know significantly less about, killing over 20,000 people.

As things go, that’s pretty dire amount of incidental deaths to kill one person. And the Earth Lords realize that this was a pretty major fuck up.

So they decided that they couldn’t be trusted with their powers and that they would disperse into the outside world to live and die as people do and have their powers dissipate over the years.

But before they did that, they discovered that the seemingly immortal guy they hit in the face with a volcano was somehow still alive somehow. Just trapped. Under hundreds of tons of rock and ash and lava that cooled into rock.

They killed thousands and didn’t even permanently kill the dude they were trying to kill? That’s pretty incompetent. They really can’t be trusted with their power.

Since he eventually might get out and resume being a dick, the Earth Lords drew lots and chose one of their number, the Some Guy later known as the Shadow Lord from the Shadow Realm, to forever watch over the city alone and await the day that the immortal guy would again walk the land.

And to help him solo the dude that took an entire city of people and a volcano to deal with, the Earth Lords concentrated all of their powers into this one Shadow Lord guy and taught him how to send himself and the city into a twilight plane of nothingness which is back to being called the Shadow World.

So this might also be Twilight Princess.

For two thousand years the Shadow Lord in the Shadow Realm in the Shadow World observed Earth and waited. And now, it seems that the seemingly immortal dude is back.

Rachel: “But I don’t understand. How can one man threaten a whole world -- and live for thousands of years in solid rock?”

Shadow Lord: “This is no mere man, my dear... this is the Berserker!”

And speak of the devil and we scene transition to him because we scene transition to Pompeii.

The lava mummified human figure that seemed to move before has stopped beating about with finger twitches and has gotten up to rampage around and backhand archeologists.

Don’t feel bad though. They were in it for the money and fame, those fiends.

Back at the city of Shadow Realm, the Avengers suddenly show up as a full team and basically enter swinging. Iron Man even blasts a wall for no reason.

Rachel tries to tell the Avengers that Shadow Lord means no harm but the Avengers can’t hear her over the sounds of Wonder Man loudly reassuring Rachel that they’re here to rescue her.

Iron Man exploding a wall for no reason probably also didn’t help.

So Rachel instead tries to tell Shadow Lord that the Avengers are a force for good. While he can hear her, he chooses to ignore her.

Using his powers of being the Avatar, he tries to pull a rocks fall but nobody dies. Rocks falling is something the Avengers deal with panache and also lasers and punches.

Some panache. Beast’s skycycle gets hit by a rock and he ends up leaping onto one of the spires of the city to avoid crash. And then, like a cat who climbs a tree except its a building in this context, Beast has a hard time figuring out how to get down from there.

While the larger Avengers punch and laser boulders and jump onto spires, Wasp just flies right in and shoots Shadow Lord in the eyebrow.

Amazing. Another good use of Wasp powers, being able to get in close while the opponent thinks the team is distracted at a distance.

Shadow Lord is none too pleased to be shot in the eyebrow by a tiny insect-sized flying woman and decides that a particularly karmic punishment is required.

Shadow Lord: “An insect-sized flyling woman! What sorcery is this? But if an insect you be, then it is only fitting I ensnare you in a cocoon of living wind... a cocoon which will grow and envelop your so-called fellow Avengers!”

And as Rachel still pleads with Shadow Lord to knock it off, he summons a giant tornado that suck in all of the Avengers (save Beast stuck up on his spire).

Shadow Lord even has the tornado carry him along, the better to continue mocking the Avengers as he carries them to their doom.

Shadow Lord: “You hopeless children! Did you actually think to defeat me, to deter me from my purpose? I who who command the earth and wind themselves to do my bidding?”

Yeah, dude. Definitely not sounding like a supervillain now. Cannot fathom why the Avengers are assuming you are one.

Iron Man manages to escape the tornado by firing his boot-jets at maximum, sending him flying free with a SHA-BOOSH! but also carrying him far away because momentum.

Shadow Lord then creates a whirlpool in the ocean and has his tornado carry the Avengers towards it. The whirlpool goes to the bottom of the ocean. Which then cracks open to reveal bubbling magma.

That’s right. The Shadow Lord is going to shoot them out of a tornado, into a whirlpool and into magma beneath the ocean floor.

Its. At least more precise than hitting them with a volcano, I’ll give him that. Definitely feels like overkill to go from rocks to tornado-whirlpool-magma execution but its definitely more precise.

Somewhat more precise.

Because when Iron Man manages to slow himself down to turn back he notices that a yacht is being swamped by the waves Shadow Lord is churning up.

And because of heroism, he takes the time to scoop the yacht out of the ocean and rest it safely on an island.

Geez. There’s a lot of boats being beached in this story.

Shadow Lord actually sees this. And a thought starts penetrating his thick skull that maybe he should have listened to Rachel.

Shadow Lord: “The armored one paused in his attack on me to save those people -- innocent people... which is more than we were able to do 2,000 years ago. Perhaps, as Rachel says, they are not agents of evil...”

He decides that he’ll stop throwing them out of a tornado into a whirlpool into magma but he doesn’t get the chance to put that train of thought on the tracks.

Beast waves Iron Man over. From his perch on the spire he’s noticed that the building he’s on is cracking from the strain of all the power Shadow Lord is throwing around even though he’s not been throwing it at that building.

So Beast deduces that the city is key to Shadow Lord’s power in some way and should have the shit beaten out of it.

And as Iron Man starts punching some wall, Shadow Lord doubles over in pain and the tornado he was about to dissipate dissipates.

The other Avengers get free and decide hey, follow the leader.

Jocasta: “The battle has truly just begun. Malevolent power such as this must not be allowed to exist. We must follow Iron Man’s lead and destroy the city -- totally!”

So unnoticed by the Avengers as they level the city into a pile of rubble, Shadow Lord staggers and swoons at Rachel’s feet.

But even dying, he still has some exposition bottled up.

To be fair, he’s been isolated for 2,000 years with no one to talk to.

He explains that the powers of an entire population of Avatars was way too great to be contained in one squishy mortal body so the powers were instead imbued in the city itself.

And with the city destroyed, it can no longer serve as a source of power and also can’t keep him alive anymore.

He’s honestly not too broken up over it. Since the Avengers are valiant and worthy, they can pick up his unfinished business while he goes and dies and gets to reunite with his girlfriend who died sometime during those 2,000 years.

Shadow Lord: “But please understand... I am as much to blame for today’s events as anyone... I bear you no malice... we misjudged each other. I have done my best... no more can be expected of a man... perhaps you will succeed... where I have failed. So do not mourn my passing... for me, death is but the long-awaited door that opens to my beloved... Ayshera.”

And the Avengers realize belatedly ‘we done goofed.’

“A sad -- and confused -- group of heroes grimly watches the passing of the Shadow Lord... and only then does the cruel truth reveal itself to them: what they had thought to be one of their greatest triumphs is instead... one of their most bitter defeats.”

Oh, and as I expect they’ll soon find out, the Berserker has been kicking the Italian army’s ass near Pompeii so that’s probably escalating into a bit of a situation and they just accidentally killed the guy who could have helped with that. Although in fairness, he deliberately ignored Rachel when she told him that the Avengers were heroes.

Like he said, he fucked up too.

Still, while its a bit of a Marvel tradition to have mighty misunderstanding fights, I don’t think they tend to result in people dying. One for the history books.

Next time: the Berserker.

Follow @essential-avengers. Also like and reblog. And send me Avengers triumphs that are way more impressive than beating up a city.

#Avengers #Essential Avengers #Wonder Man #Beast #SHADOW LORD #essential marvel liveblogging #Iron Man #Wasp #Captain America #Jocasta #Vision #Scarlet Witch #huh its been a while since they've gotten to do much #from the volcano thing and the tornado whirlpool depths of the earth thing #i think that the Earth Lords just had no grasp on subtlety at all #go big or go big

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icequeen-shiva · 5 years

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alright, you know what

about two weeks ago maybe by now, i made a post about how i’ve recently hit 200 followers and i’d like to do a q&a again, and even with a reblog from someone more ~*popular*~ than me, and multiple reblogs once a day for a few days by myself, i didn’t get a single fucking question. not one. earlier today i posted two pictures of myself where i felt pretty (i’ve since deleted them) and nobody i actually know of liked it and i got asked by a stranger who doesn’t even follow me if i had any nsfw pictures. i don’t get asks anymore, i don’t get shit. and that tells me that, you may be following me, but you aren’t connecting with me. and i feel that. i get on tumblr and i don’t feel like i’m friends with fucking anybody. and i did that. i know i did that. 9/10 times i let my fear of rejection and embarrassing myself overcome my desire to talk to people, so i don’t do it, or i let it fizzle out and we go our own ways and we don’t become friends. 1/10 times i actually function as a human being and make a connection or at least something that sticks a little.

so here, below the cut, is a comprehensive (loosely) list of things that i like, in no particular order at all, besides tickling, because apparently both sides of this need a little help connecting on any front.

scooby-doo

beetlejuice

the addams family

the sims

the mcu

classic disney animations; my favorites are dumbo, the great mouse detective, the rescuers, sleeping beauty, and oliver and company (it’s old enough that i consider it in the classic category)

~modern disney animations too; my favorites are treasure fucking planet, coco, and... i’m a sap, beauty and the beast. rise of the guardians too even though it isn’t disney.

musicals; i can’t pick a favorite just fucking ask me, but i don’t know a lot of newer ones honestly

empire records

the greatest showman still

cats (i mean the animals but i also like the show even though it is Weird As Hell)

my cat in particular

alice in wonderland

stranger things

space jam

tsum tsums

elvira, mistress of the dark

dice

kiki’s delivery service and specifically jiji things

winnie the pooh i don’t even fucking care i LOVE HIM AND ALL OF HIS FRIENDS

silly hats

playdoh

interesting earrings

exploring libraries or big bookstores

true crime mysteries; my favorite youtuber for this is georgia marie, bless her. i also watch bella fiori and kendall rae

fictional mysteries too

i have a kind of fascination with jack the ripper and with the lizzie borden case

shipwrecks! i don’t know why but shipwrecks fascinate me! why did they go down? all the stories that went with them!

i once read a novel that was told as a series of letters, or journal entries, by people on the titanic, including the iceberg and it was THE absolute saddest book i have ever read in my life. like, obviously i knew what was coming, but i got attached to the characters, the letters made them alive and it was just like... NO. NO I DON’T WANT THEM TO DIE. I KNOW THEY’RE GOING TO BUT THEY CAN’T. and it was awful. i had to put it down and cry.

cryptozoology

the bermuda triangle theories (i’m not saying i believe sOmEtHiNg’S gOiNg On but i think some of the theories are interesting)

ghosts

the nancy drew computer games

monopoly

i still play a lot of my snes games; my go-to time killer and head-clearer honestly is kirby’s avalanche. i also play a lot of super mario rpg legend of the seven stars, super mario world, kirby’s dreamland 3, and donkey kong 2 and 3

final fantasy x in which i’m guaranteed to call almost (i can’t stress that enough) every character at some point “my child”

hyrule warriors, i know it’s not a tRuE zelda game but it’s fucking fun

same with fire emblem warriors

red dead redemption

kingdom hearts

the uncharted series

splatoon but i don’t have it wahhhhh

mind you i am not very Good at videogames, i just like to play them anyway

game grumps

ninja sex party

jacksepticeye

markiplier

monty python

crocheting

tea

harry potter

classic rock. pretty big on queen lately. i like tom petty and the heartbreakers. i like joan jett and the blackhearts.

i just... like rock. across the board. i like the offspring. i like some rage against the machine songs. acdc on the radio makes me happy. def leppard on the radio makes me happy. beartooth, starset, powerman 5000, as long as it’s got a good beat and good stuff going on behind the vocals then i’m gonna be happy. i’m way more into the guitars and the bass and everything going on instrumentally than i am vocally, honestly. the whole big guitar solo to van halen’s “you really got me” and then that bassline that comes in, that bassline is sexy. it’s so simple but i LIKE it.

anyway music as a whole gets me right in the heart and can lift me up when i am at my literal worst point

it’s hard for me to name a favorite or specific bands that i like because there’s so many and i’m not really picky about it.

pop vinyls

good ol’ vines

buffalo wings

mac and cheese

grilled cheese

dr. pepper

i drink a l o t of dr. pepper

pretending i know how to do makeup well

history; i watch a lot of expedition unknown and mysteries at the museum, and sometimes i’ll watch a free documentary on youtube if it catches my attention. last weekend i explained the donner party to my boyfriend. just.. on a whim. because i’d just watched a thing on it and he said he didn’t really know what it was. i’m that person.

OH I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS BACK AROUND TRUE CRIME BUT I READ A BOOK ABOUT H.H. HOLMES AND HIS MURDER CASTLE AND THE CHICAGO WORLD’S FAIR. it was by erik larson, i believe. larsen? i could google this. devil in the white city. there’s been talks to make it a movie. it’s a good read though i will admit i skipped a lot of the fair parts because i was there for the murder.

i also read a book about the lusitania by the same author and i was like ohhh my goooood what. it got a little boring sometimes, i had to push myself to keep going, but i would read dead wake again.

csi: miami reruns are the greatest thing don’t @ me

dark purple and black aesthetics

just like... witchy aesthetics. those colors and black cats

if you haven’t noticed by any selfies i’ve posted, i do have my lip pierced and i love finding new lip jewelry. i have a new opal stud in and i love its look

leather jackets

combat boots; i have a galaxy print pair and a pair with classic marvel comics stuff printed on the inside and you can fold down the sides to show it. they’re my faves.

owls

drunk history

the first 5 seasons of supernatural and i still have a soft spot for the winchesters and castiel

i’m slowly making my way through watching the librarians

i’m also making my way slowly through watching the magicians

(american) football

nature walks

going to the zoo

going to the aquarium

like really take me to either of the above and i will lose my shit

road trips

savannah, georgia

the smokey mountains

last august i drove by myself from ohio to boone, north carolina for a friend’s wedding and that wedding was smack on a mountain top and it was the coolest thing i think i’ve ever done

roller coasters BUT NOT EXTREME ONES baby steps ok

log rides tho, i don’t know why, i always love the water rides

ren faires!

cosplay, even though i’m not exactly active in it myself (but i want to be; one of my offline friends is an actually-getting-kind-of-internet-famous mei from overwatch cosplayer)

cards against humanity

foosball

pool but i suck at it

speaking of pools i love swimming ... but i suck at it, i just like boppin’ along in a pool

cookouts

summer

there is nothing like being out in the middle of nowhere in summer when the evening starts to fall and the sky is dark, dark blue and there’s a sea of shimmering lightning bugs out over a field. it’s beautiful. it’s peaceful.

there’s nothing like sitting outside on a calm spring night and listening to the spring peepers (they’re frogs) either.

if you couldn’t tell, i live in the middle of nowhere. i have to find enjoyment in the little things.

campfires

dancing around said campfire, you cannot have a campfire without good music. this is when a lot of my classic rock education came to pass.

elephants

my favorite books are the abhorsen trilogy by garth nix, tied with the serpent’s shadow by mercedes lackey

i am trying to get into comic books by way of the youtube channel comicstorian. they break comic books down for you and read them aloud with the images, altered slightly to avoid copyright strikes (and that’s all made very clear, it’s not done sketchily), and it’s been really easy for someone like me who doesn’t just have a comics store close (and i would otherwise continue on as i have been, forgetting to ever look for them on the internet). i listened to injustice 1 and 2, and they covered the game. i’m actively following scooby apocalypse, and there was some teen titans stuff i went all the way through up until now. i don’t think it’s finished yet from what i remember.

i love museums

candles

i actually kind of collect tea sets

i also have a collection of sand art bottles AND IF I’M EVER AT A FESTIVAL OR A FAIR WHERE THERE IS A SAND ART STAND YOU CAN BET I AM GOING TO MAKE ONE

yugioh duels; i’m definitely just a novice and it’s just a fun pastime my friends got me into when they found their giant binders of cards again

i’m not actually that big on pokemon, i don’t know a lot of them but it’s still fun and i know some. but i did love pokemon go when my friends still played it (don’t really have time anymore, and it kept crashing way too badly on one of their phones anymore anytime they tried to join a raid and it just wasn’t fun as a group then)

i don’t have any but i like the ~look of crystals and would like to have some, not for my own aesthetic but i just... like having pretty things!

listening to the rain

how the air smells (at least where i live) after a long rain and everything is just cleansed

depression has stopped me from writing for a long time but, in my heart, writing has always been something that has touched me ever since i knew how to do it and could put my stories down on paper instead of having to just talk about them... so i’m going to include that here

root beer floats

hotdogs

hard dip ice cream (if you don’t know what hard dip means... as my boyfriend didn’t... it means ice cream that you have to use a scoop with, not soft serve)

soft serve’s good too tho don’t get me wrong

strawberry milkshakes

this isn’t even stuff that anyone would need to know on this site to befriend me at this point, nobody’s gonna message me like HEY I READ YOU LIKE STRAWBERRY MILKSHAKES ME FUCKING TOO

you’re cool if you do that lmao

so bad they’re good creature features from the 50s and 60s

the old godzilla movies

i like the moon more than the stars, but i like them too

flower crowns

bouncy balls

original skittles

this has gone on way too long, nobody is reading this, your mom’s a hoe, goodnight

no she’s not, i’m sorry, if you got this far then i hope your mom is a nice person

#about me #THERE'S A LONGASS LIST OF THINGS I LIKE IN HERE SO IF YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND THEN THERE'S A PLACE TO START #OK THEN

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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S5 Ep13: How to Get Away With Cheating in the Card Olympics

It’s been a little while since Pegasus made a card that screwed us years after it was developed...and so it’s time for it to happen again. Good ol Pegasus, screwing us all and not even knowing he’s doing it.

First off, it took me until this episode to realize that Leon and Zigfried are German and Leon is playing a Grimm Brother’s deck. I guess I didn’t notice before now because Leon was hiding his identity. But now that I know his deck is because he’s just German it’s like...well OK. That’s kind of cute. Better than that time they had the American play a deck filled with guns.

And that actually...fully explains why they are all dressed old timey. I didn’t pick up on it until just now...they’re referencing old ass fairy tales. But wtv, I still like my reaching theories of why Zigfried dresses like...that.

PS, my twitter just notified me that lots of people are getting a ‘Hime Haircut’, which is exactly the doo that Zigfried wears this season with the cropped side bangs. And like...are we sure? I see Kpop wearing it and Tik Tok kids wearing wigs but...I have yet to see a Hime in the wild. Course I haven’t gone outside in like a year so...maybe tens of thousands of people really did do a Hime Haircut during the Quarantine.

But, damn it, I decided to look at some photos, and a bunch of them looked pretty bad, but a couple looked pretty dope, and now I’m a little bit tempted to get a Hime...but I feel like it took a decade to get out of my bangs phase and like...Do I need two layers of bangs? I have naturally straight hair, I could do this, this haircut was made for me, but...

I just don’t know if I should get a haircut that looks like I’m an anime cosplayer when I can’t back it up. Nope. Cannot get this haircut. I know this haircut was made for teenagers or artists in their 30′s, and literally no one else, but no, this will be a mistake just like the side bangs I gave myself in 2006.

(looks over at scissors)

(read more under the cut)

(get it? Cut?)

Leon recalls that his brother very nicely gave him a card, and he’s so excited to finally do any activity involving his crazy ass family, that he just blindly does it.

This entire episode is about Yami not doing a hellscape when he witnesses cheating, and like...it is S5...it’s been a little while since anyone’s done a real good cheat on him, and he opened the door to darkness, and they got devoured by their own Tamagachi. It’s been a while.

And like the curse of Episode 13 was just a theory I had--but this particular Episode 13 is probably the most tame of all the 13′s (and yet, the most un-tame of this arc, which is a pretty chill arc, overall)

Yet...while this episode still fits in with their universe because the Kaiba’s are very proud so they can’t admit their duel disk has a flaw and therefore can’t forfeit the game, it kind of stretches the imagination a bit for the sake of the plot. Straight up we have a LOT of characters in this arc and they all just stood there and watched it happened.

It could have been also because this is like...televised...that no one wants to start throwing this little boy off the nearest blimp. I just wish that was addressed in the episode, other than “listen...Kaiba must allow this card to be played...or all his Duel Disks are lies.”

His Duel Disk almost caused the end of planet Earth a few weeks back, so I think it’s fine. I think this is a negligible problem to have when your disk shoots projectiles out of each end and has sharp folding edges in the shape of a blade--almost attempting to slice your face off every time you wave that thing around.

Yes, he’s trying to restore his reputation after the whole Dartz thing...but this is like...not that bad in the scale of things that have happened in the past several seasons. Maybe it’s just the last straw that broke the camels back here? One thing too far--’your disk played a broke card, Kaiba, I am pulling my investments and I refuse to go to your theme parks. I was here when you blew up that island. I was here when your company was literally bought out by the illluminati...but if that duel disk can’t play cards correctly--we’re done here.’ And TBH...that’s a very Yugioh mentality to have.

Like remember that time that Elon musk threw a brick at one of his new weird looking cars and the windshield cracked? But he was like “Oh...that was just a...listen the windshields don’t shatter, you saw nothing.” and still released the car anyway? Was kind of reminded of that.

Now...he didn’t actually go into the Dev room, we’ll go into how the hell he got this card, but first, a visit to the Kaiba Dev room.

OOOOOOooooooooh

That’s so bright!

It reminds me of how in the 90′s, the only real thing I knew to do on my computer was change the colors of the UI, so I just used the ugliest ass UI known to man for my family’s computers. I hope these computers have a mouse that leaves a tail behind and I hope that mouse is in the shape of a flying sparkling dragon.

Anyway, Duke speaks what’s on our minds:

Meanwhile, Pegasus, watching this happen over a glass of wine from inside his bathtub at Castle Pegasus, takes one very long sip while sinking into a pile of bubbles.

Seto at first is like “I literally own this tournament so thanks for losing? I don’t know why you threw it out into the trash but thanks?” But Zigfried pressured him so hard that everyone on Earth would judge his ass, and tried so hard to change the definition of what cheating even is, that Seto relented almost as if to shut Zigfried the hell up.

Zigfried explained that, technically, it’s still reads as a legal card on the disk and isn’t reaaally against the rules. Even though the rules say it’s against the rules--what are rules anyway?

Thankfully we have the King of “I dictate what the rules are AKA the rules of the universe, which I would show you, I just don’t feel like it right now, and I’m a little worried about opening that Pandora’s box, but I clearly know the rules of this card game, as stated on this Home Depot plaque that Seto gave me after I won the last tourney.”

Leon gets pretty upset about this--not so much screwing Seto Kaiba, but over the fact his brother stole his only chance at trying to beat Yugi Muto fair and square. So, trying to retain what little card honor he has left, Leon tries to self sabotage so everyone can just go the hell home.

OK so...do you think he put a floppy disk into the paper card? Like straight up how did he do that? Feel free to post your theories because like...how do you hack a paper card? Like do we even have a canon explanation of what these cards are or what they are made out of and how they theoretically work?

Anyway, now that they’ve spent a good portion of this episode discussing if this card should or should not be played, and the ethics and philosophy surrounding that, we find out that none of this matters because Zigfried was actually just stalling.

(He hacked the card so it had a virus like straight up how did he DO that without making a new card?)

Huh.

Y’all, what if I could just delete Google?

Can you imagine?

Like I know this is a kid’s show so it follows kid’s show logic and I will absolutely allow this ridiculous master plan and I will not question it, but think with me for a sec:

What if you could just delete Disney?

Damn. That’s some Y2K scare tactics propaganda right there. That’s some good YA dystopian fiction stuff.

Yo is Zigfried the good guy? He’s not, but if this were a YA novel he would be, right? Good on him.

I...do not know how the logic in Zigfried’s brain works, but if someone deleted all the files in my collaborators company and showed up at my front door and was like “I heard you were looking for a new collaborator?” I’d stick him face first into a blank paper card.

Which is, logically, the next step to Zigfried’s plan that no one has bothered to tell him yet. You just don’t mess with Pegasus, especially after all the stuff he went though with getting murdered by Mai, and Dartz showing up, he’d be so pissed right now. He might not be technically magical anymore--but it’s clear after last season that he’s still magical enough. This is a man who’s let out into the wild maybe a couple of scary cards--but hell knows how many are buried in his huge ass castle just waiting to do a murder.

This is just Zigfried hassling a hornet and the hornets nest is like...right there.

And so next episode we are going to...destroy the card? Hell, next episode might be entirely a card game and I might only have 2 caps.

Anyway, just letting you know that I typed this last night, and then had dreams that I got a Hime Haircut and hella loved it, woke up at 5:30 AM thinking about that haircut, and have since been just...

...I mean I shouldn’t do it...I cannot give myself unironic Von Schroeder hair...

...

...but what if it’s dope though?

(and here’s the link to read these from the beginning in chrono order from S1. Wish I categorized in seasons but alas I did not have that forsight back when I thought there were only 3 seasons of Yugioh total. I have since learned.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#yugioh #YGO #yu gi oh #episode recap #photo recap #S5 #Ep13 #Yugi Muto #leon von schroeder #zigfried von schroeder #seto kaiba #grandpa muto #mokuba kaiba #and literally everyone else who stood there and just watched it happen #Just thinking about how one hacks a card and I feel like that's totally possible but how though?

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scratchface · 6 years

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A guide to making Yusaku not avoid you

aka Part 3 of the Yusaku character analysis

So, breakdawn-avenue asked, triggering this whole massive series: “have you ever received an ask about Yusaku’s character development? like the one you got for Revolver / Ryoken’s development? because I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Yusaku, who was kind of pushing people away in season 1 (looking at Blue Angel and Go Onizuka, finds Naoki seemingly annoying as frigg), to not get in his way (of revenge), now accepts Takeru (all of a sudden, seemingly) allying with him to go after Haru’s group (and retrieve Jin’s conscious)”

We’ve covered Yusaku’s isolation and how he’s pretty much holding out for his special person, and we’ve covered who Yusaku is and why he’s like this. Now we’re finally ready to answer the question: why does Yusaku accept Takeru, when he’s never wanted to deal with the others?

Well, Takeru did everything right, where the others goofed up. In actuality, for Yusaku, it was probably a no-brainer, and here’s why!

We already established Yusaku’s evolving approval and disapproval to involving others in his business, starting with his need to do things on his own to the accepting that others want to fight, to watching others fail, and the ultimate discarding of his hesitation and the no doubt uncomfortable knowledge that when if he’s asked to chose between his mission and a person’s life, he should chose the mission every time. All the more reason to push others away.

But enter Takeru, who gets accepted as a partner relatively easily.

There are three keys to Yusaku’s favor. I call these the impression, the interview, and the resume.

1. The first impression a person makes on Yusaku.

The show establishes from the get-go how important first impressions are to Yusaku; within 5 minutes of meeting Naoki, Yusaku has analyzed him completely. The final conclusion is important: Yusaku deems that Naoki is not a bad guy. Considering Yusaku’s history and the dangerous life he leads, it’s highly likely Yusaku does this to everyone he meets in order to judge if they are a threat.

Aoi, Go, Ema, and Akira make some very poor first impressions:

Aoi, running away from Hanoi, establishing herself as someone that needs rescue. Then, both desperate for the spotlight, Aoi and Go challenge Yusaku and makes asses of themselves.

Imagine you’re a cyber-vigilante, just had a major victory over a dangerous enemy threatening the entire game, and at the end of the battle wrestler and an idol jump in you face screaming “Fight me!!!”. Unsurprisingly, Yusaku is not amused. Aoi then fails the IRL first impression as well, establishing that she’s not going to be useful as a source of info on SOL. And useful is absolutely what Yusaku is looking for.

Then Go and Aoi try to set themselves up as rivals for Playmaker. To Yusaku, Aoi and Go = antagonistic right from the start. Then Yusaku first meets Ema when she sets up a trap for him and gives him over to Akira to be tortured, which establishes her as untrustworthy and Akira as unreasonable. Ema and Akira = antagonistic.

There’s a pattern here. All the minor characters of season 1 established themselves as antagonistic to Yusaku from the get go, and while Yusaku easily forgives anyone not associated with the Hanoi, that doesn’t mean he forgets. From the start, these characters are already too unreliable and aggressive towards him to be considered trustworthy. Let’s say it takes a shit ton of rapport to be Yusaku’s friend, like maybe encouraging him for six months and saving his life and giving him the strength to survive. These guys all start with, like, negative rapport.

And these first impressions set their roles for season 2, as well. If you look where everyone stood early in season 1 and compare them to season 2, you find their allegiances are all nearly identical: Yusaku is on his own side, and the other’s are on SOL’s, either by hire or through their loyalty to Akira.

Now, contrast Takeru’s introduction scene to the other’s.

The first impression? Takeru nailed it. At a time when Yusaku really needed a hand, Takeru popped up and offered to take the heat off his back and allowed him to refocus on the mission at hand with zero catch. Not only was what Takeru did helpful, it was helpful in a way that is personally significant to Yusaku. Yusaku has shown in the past that the way to earn his gratitude is to not try and complete his mission for him (like Akira tried to), but to support him in a way that allows him to complete the mission easier (like Go, when he fought Revolver and revealed Mirror Force). That’s exactly what Takeru’s first impression comes down to, and leads us to the second key.

2. Don’t get in-between Yusaku and the mission, aka the interview

Once again, all the other characters failed this, really bad. They have continually interfered with, hampered, and questioned Yusaku’s mission. This is absolutely a guaranteed way to piss Yusaku off, and makes them unappealing as allies.

They also continue to be antagonistic, even on the occasions they are trying to help. After their less than stellar introduction, Go and Aoi start messing with the mission by challenging Yusaku and working with SOL and (unwillingly) Hanoi. Aoi is particularly insistent that she will “be the one to beat Playmaker!”; for Aoi, that’s just a matter of her pride and getting attention, but dueling is very different for Yusaku. For Yusaku, a loss would probably be completely debilitating and endanger his ability to complete his mission, his last resort in a lifetime of misery. This mindset doesn’t exactly endear Aoi to Yusaku.

In fact, Yusaku has little to no reason to even like these people (except, maybe Go), let alone trust them.

But the only one’s Yusaku hates are Hanoi. Yusaku wants to keep a “friendly” relationship with them all (which means they stay out of his way), but they all make that very difficult. Remember when the Tower of Hanoi becomes a thing, and how everyone thought, finally, they’re a team? But that team-up was a disaster: I have a whole post about how Aoi and Go hindered Yusaku. Not only were they unhelpful, but they got killed, and in doing so, justified Yusaku’s choice to work alone.

Yusaku blatantly pointed out that he didn’t want to involved others in their quest lest they get themselves killed. And that’s exactly what happened. That’s part of the reason why Aoi’s offense at being rejected is so ridiculous: if anything, their previous interactions have given Yusaku less reason to work with Aoi and Akira, not more.

Now, again consider Takeru.

Takeru’s IRL first impression is just as strong, compared to say, Aoi’s. He presents himself openly and almost professionally, focusing on the matter of the Ignis, the Incident, and the destruction of the Cyberse. Right from the start, he establishes that he’s an ally and then backs it up. Then, he and Flame give Yusaku plenty of information about himself and his motivations, leading to eventually asking for help. This is, like, the textbook technique for building rapport with someone you just met and want to work with you.

And they respect that Yusaku has different priorities. After establishing that their goals coincide, Takeru’s focus on the mission no doubt appealed to Yusaku.

He shows he can prioritize and is invested in the task, which is something Yusaku clearly shows he admires about Kusanagi and therefore looks for in his partnerships.

Takeru’s not a burden, he never gets in the way, and he’s been on board from the moment they met. All of Yusaku’s current goals seemingly coincide with his. Takeru introduced himself as someone who wants to help, and can help.

3. The history, aka the resume

To connect with Yusaku, you have to get over than goddamn abyss. That means you have to understand and know his pain, have felt the pain yourself.You have to be the one reaching out to Yusaku too, because Yusaku does not initiate connection. After all, we know it was not Yusaku that initiated his partnership with Kusanagi. If someone wants in, they have to both make the offer and back it up with real skills, such as Kusanagi.

To be fair, Takeru might cheat the abyss, considering he’s also a victim. But when Yusaku and Takeru first make eye contact, we can hear a connection. Then Takeru mentions “confronting his life” which is something Yusaku understands. For Yusaku, the whole series has been about confronting his past and his destiny.

These two can relate to each other in ways other’s don’t. Takeru clearly sees a lot of himself in Yusaku, saying “Like Playmaker, dueling was my life” and stuff like that. And when speaking with Blue Girl and Ghost Girl, Takeru feels comfortable speaking on behalf of Yusaku as well, without needing to confirm how he feels about SOL and the offer of help. These two feel like they can understand each other due to their shared trauma and suffering.

And knowing Takeru’s pain, Yusaku can’t turn him away like the others. Takeru has just as much right to be involved as he does.

So Takeru was the one that suggested they work together, directly. He made the right impression, he brought the right resume, he aced the interview. Takeru got the “job” in a very logical way, just by building rapport with Yusaku and proving his dedication and his value to the mission. For Yusaku, it really was an easy decision to make. But does he trust Takeru? I would argue that he doesn’t yet.

Now, we’ve done Yusaku’s character and lack of friends in three parts. There’s just a few more questions.

Why did some of us think Yusaku would ever work with Go and Aoi and the others anyway, and why was that wrong?

Because, often in YuGiOh, dueling makes friends, and Vrains uses this expectation to mislead. It’s been a theme from as early as the first season, and has been pretty consistent since: Duel Monsters in a fun game, people enjoy dueling each other, they end up being friends. But Yusaku doesn’t like dueling, and he only wants to do it to fight Hanoi. And this is where Vrains plays with the audience’s expectations, starting with Go’s duel with Playmaker. Go forces Yusaku to duel him, something Yusaku is clearly not pleased about. But then Go goes out of his way to make the duel interesting for both the audience and his opponent, and earns a little of Yusaku’s respect, enough that Yusaku decides to see the duel through after all. From here we think the show will follow the same pattern as the others, because this seems like the start of Yusaku making friends and allies through dueling.

Outside of Vrains, the set up of the Duel Club further convinces the audience of this. We think, through his mission to investigate SOL through Akira and Aoi and how it takes him to the Duel Club, that this will be how Yusaku makes friends IRL. Aoi even comes to talk to him.

And then Vrains reminds us that Yusaku doesn’t give a shit about any of that, and that friends is absolutely not the goal here: Yusaku is only focused on the mission.

Is Yusaku lonely? Yes and no. It’s complicated. Yusaku doesn’t want friends, he wants a specific friend.

Ever since Ryoken crossed the abyss ten years ago, he’s been number 1 in Yusaku’s life. Yusaku has been dreaming of his voice for ten years, searching for a person he never even saw, and relies of his memory to get through his life. The special person is Yusaku’s answer to his problems of needing help, of being lonely, of having a friend.

Nobody else in the series even competes. Considering the messy, nasty interactions Yusaku has had with them all, it’s no surprise not even the Tower of Hanoi could forge a friendship between them. And even if the other characters hadn’t failed the key steps, they probably still wouldn’t get far with Yusaku, because Yusaku has been reserving all that for one person.

Will Takeru be able to change that?

#vrains #yugioh vrains #yusaku fujiki #fujiki yusaku #vrainalysis #ygo

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chromsai · 6 years

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DM Review

So now that I’ve reached the end of my rewatch, I feel it’s appropriate to give it a quick review before I move onto GX. I don’t really plan on dragging this on too badly since I feel I expressed my thoughts over the show well enough throughout the liveblog anyway, but I do, however, want to break it down a bit, so in order to give it a proper rating, I feel it’s best (and easiest) to give each “season” of the show its on individual rating, and then go from there. So let’s do that...

Duelist Kingdom (episodes 1-40 + 41-49)

Well ignoring the fact that the rules are incredibly broken throughout (which can be forgiven since the rules for the actual game still hadn’t been fully established yet), the ridiculous premise is very much enticing enough to make me want to keep watching Yugi climb his way through the tournament to save his grandpa from Pegasus (who is, imo, still the most enjoyable villain of the whole show) and become the King of Games. Even though from episode one, we’re just thrown into the world and have to follow along with these characters that we know nothing about, the season makes up for it as it does take its time throughout to tell us each character’s background and story and why they’re involved. The world building this arc is, funnily enough, not that important, which is something that shows can very rarely get away with. We get just enough to understand why this tournament is important to the world of these characters, and that’s fine. Though the outcome of each duel is terribly predictable, it’s not in a bad way since what matters is the journey, not the destination. When I started, I thought this was going to be a hard arc for me to get through due to the nonexistence of the rules of Duel Monsters, but oddly enough it was exactly the opposite for me. It’s not such a grandiose plot, this season, but it kept up the intrigue throughout. On an overall note, DM’s main cast are (mostly) lovable so that of course always helps keep its charm.

The episodes in between Duelist Kingdom and the next arc are basically filler... meant for the purpose of introducing some recurring side characters. They’re fairly... um... ignorable, imo. Wouldn’t necessarily say they’re terrible but... most of them don’t really keep your attention for too long.

Overall rating for this arc: 3.5/5

Battle City (episodes 50-97, 122-144)

This arc does tournament arc tension and development for its characters pretty well, namely, actually, for Jounouchi. He got a good start in Duelist Kingdom, however he definitely starts shining this arc. Anyway, like 85% of this arc is legitimately enjoyable. There is a lot of dumb logic happening throughout, courtesy mostly of this arc’s villain Marik and his rare hunters, but I’d say it’s for a good cause (as in creating at memorable conflict and personal dire stakes to the game). This arc also does a great, no, a superb, job at demonstrating exactly why Seto Kaiba is such a memorable rival and character. World building is much improved in this arc, but also isn’t overwhelming where the cast is too large that we can’t even keep track or we just don’t care about certain characters (though... *coughbakuracough*). We also get to see some more good inner turmoil well up within Yami Yugi regarding dragging his friends into such a dangerous tournament, which in turn works very well along with his friends’ (again, mainly Jounouchi) support of him. The final duels in this arc are, despite their slow as hell pace, exactly the kind of shit you ended up watching Yugioh for anyway so it almost makes you forget any small little flaws you had to deal with on the way. Though, one of those flaws... was exactly the pacing. Why. Why do duels have to be that long? No... I don’t think I needed to hear that same monologue one more time. Lastly, is this arc also predictable? Definitely yes. But again, it’s in the journey. Not the destination.

Overall rating for this arc: 4/5

Noah’s Virtual World (episodes 98-121)

This is, more than any of the other arcs, the one that I was *not* looking forward to when I first began rewatching since I remember that I didn’t enjoy this as a child. Well it’s a good thing I seem to have grown up. This arc... is not exactly written well, and thus thoroughly flawed (mostly in its logic and general premise and whatnot), but what matters, once again, is the content we get in between all the idiocy. The most enjoyable parts of this arc comes, no doubt, in the form of Kaiba family backstory. We knew a fair bit about Kaiba beforehand, but this arc definitely adds a good well of information regarding his motivations growing up, why he is the way he is now (side note: lmao holy shit), and what kind of business man he really is. The backstory found in this arc for Kaiba is well worth slugging through it. Actually, even if you get frustrated with the dumbness of it all (especially the incompetence of its villains, The Big Five), it’s still overall a pretty fun watch.

Overall rating for this arc: 3.5/5

Doma (episodes 145-184)

Sighs. This is the worst arc. Just. Straight up. I don’t wanna beat around the bush.

I wish I could just keep it at just that but I want to emphasize that this isn’t just a “weak” story arc in the overall grand scheme of things, it’s bad. It is terribly noticeable that the writing direction was handled by someone else than whoever was writing-directing it up until before this point because the show stops being fun to watch. The entirety of Duel Monsters is riddled with bullshit logic, but this arc really takes up to an unforgivable eleven. The villains of this arc are literally fools whose tragic backstories are very obviously shoehorned in at the last second in order to draw out sympathy. The stakes of the game are so high, you don’t really feel compelled to root for our protagonists because you know that everything they’ve “lost” will be restored anyway. Not even the big bad of this arc faces any consequences. To top it all off, Mai, DM’s strongest female duelist, is reduced to demeaning levels of melodramatic character arc writing.

Noah’s Virtual World arc was indeed filler, but it was passable to good filler. This arc is just bad filler.

Overall rating for this arc: 1/5 this shit was a drag to get thru. I enjoyed it as a kid but I’ve grown tf up.

KC Grand Prix & Memory World (episodes 185-224)

I’ll probably get through this a bit quicker...

The KC Grand Prix arc was short... but not exactly sweet, though I will say it gave us a few classic lines here and there. Overall, it’s mostly forgettable and not exactly important for the story. It’s, once again, more filler, this time meant to convince Kaiba to let Yugi & co. hitch a ride back to Japan after the nonsense that occurred in America the last arc.

As for with the all important Memory World arc which leads us to the grand finale ceremonial duel between Yugi & Atem: It’s a nice story but the pacing is scrambled. That being said, however, I’ll forgive it mostly because it was a very interesting watch (not exactly fun, per se) and gives us answers to many questions we’ve been holding onto since the beginning of the show. Not to say it doesn’t raise some questions (that it doesn’t answer as well), but the other reason I’ll forgive it mostly is because Takahashi-san rushed to finish the manga on time for the anime whilst being severely ill. For as obviously rushed as it is, it still gives a good bit of depth that is just satisfying enough for us to run with that it feels mostly complete.

The ceremonial finale duel, tho? The set up was rushed as well, but the duel itself was beyond iconic. Pretty good ending, I’d say.

Overall rating for this arc: 3/5

Final Overall Rating: 3.1/5 (yes, I did the math, check it if you must).

Final Thoughts: This show mostly shines on through nostalgia and its characters’ undeniable charm. However, its overall quality gets dragged down from its unnecessary filler, pacing, and flawed logic. For a shounen about card games, it certainly set a standard and a foundation, and I think that’s a good thing that future series can build off of and nod back to. It’s certainly one for the books, but with a big asterisk attached to some of its story arcs.

#sai watches dm #dm review #woooo

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entamewitchlulu · 6 years

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year of yugioh part 1: original manga

starting back where it all began, it’s the original manga and serialization of Yu-Gi-Oh by Kazuki Takahashi

First serialized in Shonen Jump in 1996 and first collected into volume 1 in 1997, the story was much different from the Yu-Gi-Oh that most people are aware of today. It followed protagonist Yugi Mutou, a young boy who solves a mysterious ancient Egyptian puzzle that seems to contact a dark power, which possesses him and challenges his bullies and enemies to dangerous shadow games.

With Duel Monsters, the series’ now main draw only appearing twice during the first 7 volumes, it’s definitely a much different ball game. Instead, the story follows a sort of “game of the week” structure, with each new chapter featuring a new kind of game, or a new antagonist for which Dark Yugi will come up with a unique game to challenge them to.

But anyway!! most of you probably already know that if you’re following me! So let’s skip the summary and talk about what I thought of my re-read!

First, the art style. It’s so different from the final product! I can more clearly see these people having real hair, everything is much floppier and rounder. I don’t necessarily think it’s better or worse than where the art style ended up going, but I think it has its own unique charm that I still enjoy! Everything looks a little more realistic (Yugi’s hair aside, of course, haha), and faces are less “anime” if that makes any sense. Extra smol Yugi is also a plus!

As far as the story goes, I really think this was a great way to start off. There’s a lot of important character moments and growth that the duelist anime glances over very quickly, things that heavily set up for how important these people are to each other. And even in filler chapters where there’s little to further character development, they’re still fun! The creativity of new games every week is something that I legitimately miss.

If there’s something about the early manga I don’t really miss, though, it’s the fanservice. To be completely fair, there isn’t really much, especially compared to anime nowadays. But there’s two panty shots in the first volume, and Anzu especially has to deal with a lot of harassment. On the plus side, she usually gets to punch the offenders out and is usually presented to be in the right for doing so.

Also, one thing that I am glad never left the early manga: Johji. I know he’s like 4 years old but please let him perish.

So to leave off: if you haven’t read the manga already, should you?

Well if you:

really liked yugioh (now, or as a kid, etc)

want to know more about the extended, original lore of the series that the anime skipped over

like cute friendship interactions and solid character development

are into horror elements or death game time scenarios

then this would probably be the series for you!

There are seven volumes total, all of which can be found for fairly cheap on Amazon. You can also read the first three chapters for free on Viz Media, or you may be able to check out or order copies from your local library. (there are, of course, other free ways to read the manga online, but i do highly recommend supporting it legally if you can...the online scans tend to be kinda bad anyway).

#year of yugioh #yugioh dm #yugioh manga #lulu talks #tbu

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writer-and-artist27 · 7 years

Note

3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 22, 23, 24, and 25 for the get to know your author ask?

Ahhhh! An ask! Thank you, anon. :) Anyways, let’s do this!

3.) What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else?

Considering my working on both Civilian Pianist and The Sea and Stars, I’ll have to say it depends. For CP, I tend to write from front of book to back in terms of the order, with chronological stuff coming with it, but with interludes and so on, I’ve had to delve into the timeline for the sake of consistency. I usually collaborate with Josh and Leo in that regard when it comes to keeping things on track.

For S&S though? I try to do the same, just with sprinkles of many conversations with Lang and by extension, Beta, on keeping the CYB elements true to some extent (big ones being Kei and a lot of the CYB characters). Sometimes, this leads to me writing favorite scenes first, but then they go into storage for me to figure out for later. Most of the time, it’s still chronological first.

4.) Favorite character you’ve written

I’m actually going to exclude Tomoko from this question considering she is me to an extent. But for actual original characters barring influence like that, Hisako and Judai have been my favorites, with Hisako basically being able to say a lot of things that Tomoko just doesn’t say or won’t, and Judai being that funny, protective-yet-lenient dad I thought he might’ve been had Canon GX gone that way. A runner-up for this category is actually CP Kakashi though, since writing his floundering throughout the entire process of figuring out his feelings for Tomoko have been amusing. :d

8) Favorite genre to write

Emotional fluff. That’s all I can use to describe it. There’s a reason why a lot of early CP had so much hug-inducing fluff, and aside from me getting used to writing for Naruto in general, I enjoy writing those moments of lighthearted joy that Tomoko has when seeing friends (which in a way has shown up again and again in S&S whenever she hugs Kei). It’s only with CP going into arcs such as the Chunin Exams and everything leading up to Kannabi that adding in the emotion really got me going because of how emotionally open I myself can be.

11) What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

Hm… that’s hard to say since there are still moments where I go to early CP and think, “Holy crap, I wrote that?!” in an incredulous voice before rereading again and realizing, “Hey, this is kinda cute.” But for the aspect I’ve improved in the most, I would like to think I did a lot in the fight scene and rising-action/tension categories. Early CP had so much fluff, it was easy to accidentally lose people in it. But when getting into the hard-hitters, well, they hit hard with my most recent work, so I’m proud to look back at those chapters and pat myself on the back for making them.

12) Your weaknesses as an author

Ah. This question. Well, I can only think of two:

Falling back on others a little too often when my writing muse comes to a screeching halt (I mean, Lang’s seen a lot of my stuff when I’ve floundered to the point where I’m surprised she still likes reading my stuff, and there have been many moments where I held myself back from calling Josh and Leo for the sake of trying to figure something out on my own)

Missing commas and em dashes (basically “—”). This is yet another reason why early CP is kinda on the love-hate category for me, because past me missed so many commas. Argh.

13) Your strengths as an author

Just one I can think of:

Delving into the emotions of the character I’m writing in. Even if I struggle with understanding the character in some way (e.g. Kei since she is Lang’s OC, not mine, so she’s harder to write for), getting into their minds and showing the emotion that can come from them is my specialty somehow. Whether it’s because I’m so emotionally open in real life, or just me trying to understand the motivations of the people around me, it shows in CP and S&S really well to where I’m proud (and also kinda mortified) when reviewers comment saying that they’ve cried. Definitely have come a long way from last year, even if I still flounder from embarrassment at seeing my early stuff.

15) Why did you start writing?

I can only really think of a few reasons. Hope you don’t mind the long text post. *scratches head* Then again, you’ve come this far, and I’m grateful. :)

To convey an idea I really wanted to write that no one had really done so far. I’ve said before that CP started with the question of “What if Kakashi had a best friend?”, and that still stands. Adding in how there are very few Civilian OCs that I’ve seen in the Naruto fandom, along with the low coverage of civilians in Naruto in general, that was one factor.

Lang inspired me. Simple as that. Catch Your Breath literally caught my heart when I discovered it in the summer of 2015 (at least, I think it was 2015, I can’t fully remember), and when seeing Kei, I wanted to try writing something along the lines of that too. Not to mention, it’s because of Lang that I got back into Naruto, and I can’t thank her enough.

Silver Queen’s Dreaming of Sunshine made me see beyond fanfiction again. Shikako caught my heart just as much as Kei.

I wanted to reflect on the growth I’ve done so far as a person. There’s a reason aside from angst as to why I had Vy die at age 18 to the point of it affecting Tomoko in her new life, since so much has happened since then. I’m still attending college, figuring things out little by little, but Tomoko is essentially that self-reflection that I never got to do until now. And seeing how I could’ve been while also exploring the current me in writing has been very much worth it.

I wanted to see what it was like. Posting on Fanfiction and all. Cross-posting on other sites (including AO3) was never really my thing, and my old FFN profile was just sitting on the website, dusty and all after a few select reviews for an old fanfic a friend was doing, so I just dusted it off and got to work.

18) Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they?

Yes, there were. No doubt about that. For fanfic stuff…

Catch Your Breath. Still my main inspiration to this day.

Dreaming of Sunshine, especially since it started the whole SI-OC genre in general.

Deja vu no Jutsu, for the worldbuilding and the limits that a writer can surpass (since Vixen Tail wrote a lot to take in, and it’s hard when your brain’s not hardwired for binging), and

Inoue Shiori by Hermionechan90. This was actually the first ever Civilian OC fic for Naruto I ever read, and after seeing Shiori’s accomplishments and her realm in the shinobi world, it got me thinking.

As for books…

Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series. For the mystery and attention to historical detail.

Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling’s The Cuckoo’s Calling and following books in the Cormoran Strike series, for being a mystery series that I found myself loving.

22) Are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

Sex scenes or anything related to smut, period. First, because I’m a demisexual person and the idea of Tomoko doing that kind of stuff equals “WHAT.”

(Not helped by how Hisako is my spiritual avatar in the sense of protecting the girl, just because she’s so precious to me and the idea of her doing that equals O^O).

And secondly… well, those CP fans who have seen Chapter 21 and my later “Announcement” chapter will easily understand why. For others, let’s just say I’m not as protected from society’s stuff as it might seem. I’ve seen some uncomfy stuff too, and it’s hard.

23) Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

I feel like this is a weird answer, but strangely, my interactions with the older members of my family factor into this. The reason why I personally feel Judai and Hikari are so powerful in CP’s narrative (and not just because they’re honoring my original fanfiction roots in trying to write for Yugioh GX or their being our main heroine’s parents) is because my real Mom and Dad are personally involved in my life. I try to keep them updated every day I can, they help me whenever they can, and it’s been a mutually beneficial and loving relationship. I’ve seen my parents falter and worry, as Judai and Hikari have in-story, while also having a first-hand idea of how even adults in a child’s life can make mistakes (considering how things in life can be - my parents coming from Vietnam more so). So, having them in my life really helped in fleshing out the adult figures in Tomoko’s life, Judai and Hikari included.

24) Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

I would like to say ‘yes’ to this, but for once, I don’t think I can. I’ve had to research things to the point of knowing the subject matter better (e.g. wartimes in Naruto, looks into the psychological state that Tomoko might have, etc), but I still had outside help in the form of Josh, Leo, and by extension, Lang, Beta, and Abalisk. So I can’t call myself an expert. But considering how a lot of my stories have been rooted in emotion, I think I’m in fair territory.

25) Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

Oooh. Well, I don’t want to say too much, but an entire snippet for you, anon! This is all thanks to you~ :D

The following scene was actually something I wrote while I was on my summer road trip, thinking it would be for the aftermath of S&S Chapter 13 (where the Drunk Guy incident happened, just with a better ending in the final version), but after some convos with Lang, Beta, and Leo, this specific scene ended up being scrapped (especially since Tomoko was saved much earlier than in CP, with the culprit not even being able to touch her). That doesn’t mean I still don’t like it - no - I just feel bad that I wasn’t able to include this!

Being set up to rest in my room for most of the day felt almost suffocating. Even if I knew it was for my own good.

Apparently trying to cook pancakes on my own after a long night seemed to not be the best idea I had in mind. Even if it sounded good at the time.

I gave everyone I knew such a bad scare last night, I had thought making them breakfast would be a good way to cheer them up. Instead, everyone was clamoring towards me, bustling me back into bed without even letting me finish cooking.

If I wasn’t physically a child already, this said more than enough.

Trying to sleep was difficult though. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of the endless stream of thoughts going through my head about what had happened and what I should be doing now or the state of my throat (which Kei did try to tend to again this morning before putting me back into my futon), but my eyes just couldn’t close. Sure, I could blink, but actually falling asleep didn’t seem like an option.

So instead, I was left staring up at the ceiling, counting the number of tiles up there while occasionally testing my voice with some light singing. Needless to say, it didn’t go so well.

“Haaa… haagh.”

I could’ve been a wheezing teapot if I didn’t know any better.

At least a notebook and pencil was left in reaching distance for me to use if I wanted to talk. My throat seemed to not be happy with me if I tried anyways.

I was already reaching 30 tiles when the door opened. Without even sitting up, I knew it was Kei from the casual sleepwear and messy black bedhead alone, walking in with a tray of food.

“You doing alright there, Tomo?” she said, voice quiet but still recognizable.

With my voice gone, I could only really nod and put on the best smile I could offer.

It was a broken smile, but a smile nonetheless.

But judging by Kei’s face, she didn’t believe the smile or me. Instead, she locked the door behind her, walked over to set the food to my right side and then hung her head. She wasn’t looking at me, but I could tell she was disturbed about something.

Then, she looked up at me with resolute eyes. “… I think I’ll ask Minato-sensei if I can take a break from missions.”

My heart froze.

Whether or not my panic showed on my face, Kei seemed to notice it enough and shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, Tomo. This is the time of the Third Shinobi World War, and I should get some more experience out there before Kannabi happens.”

I nodded my head as fast as I could, not even caring that my hair was slapping my face while doing so.

“But Tomo, you didn’t see it.” Kei took a breath, and I didn’t miss how her hands clenched the sides of my blanket. “You didn’t feel your own chakra when it happened.”

Now I was feeling confused. In my funk, I sat up and reached over to grab the notebook, flipping to the first blank page to scribble. It took a few moments, but by the time I looked up at her again, Kei was inclining her head at me in confusion once I turned the notebook over in her direction.

What do you mean, Kei? What does my chakra have to do with this?

“Tomo…” Kei then sighed, reaching over to poke my head. “Tomo, Tomo, Tomo.” With each repetition of my new nickname, she poked my forehead, and I found myself getting a bit irritated. “I’m a sensor, remember? And even if you’re okay now, you didn’t feel your chakra when you got attacked yesterday. You… You didn’t know how close you were to… well.” She paused, looking up at me again and I couldn’t miss the amount of emotion rolling through her eyes. “I almost lost you yesterday, Tomo.”

Oh. I opened my mouth, then closed it. The throbbing in my throat was becoming more obvious.

What am I supposed to say right now?

“I-I can’t…” Kei clenched her fists again as she looked down. “That can’t happen again. Until everything boils down, I want to be there for you if any bastards target you again.”

I could only find myself mouthing Kei’s name before closing my mouth again.

What was I supposed to say?

I glanced down at my own hands before the lightbulb went off. Then, I turned to another page in the notebook, scribbling again. Near me, I could hear Kei’s confused grunt at my actions. I was honestly hoping what I was writing was enough to reassure her.

Kei needed to hear my opinion at least. Even if I couldn’t physically voice it.

When I finally turned the page over in her direction, I tried to hide my own gulp.

I’ll be okay. I’m not fully alright now, but I’ll be okay. You don’t have to worry about me, Kei. You should focus on your training and your work so that this doesn’t happen again.

I’ll be alright.

Once Kei finished scanning my message, she looked up at me with softened eyes before reaching over. The last thing I was expecting was for her to push my notebook down into my lap before pulling me into a hug. “Tomo, you’re not fine at all. And it’s okay for you to rely on friends sometimes, y’know.”

I opened my mouth again, only to close it.

A hand started to run through my hair. “You’re my friend, Tomo, so let me be here for you. Please.”

#ask meme #writing #thank you anon!#tag for me #long post #civilian pianist #the sea and stars #ask

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Ducktales Reviews: Let’s Get Dangerous!

The Duck Knight Strikes Again as our Darkwing Double Feature concludes! Scrooge, the Kids and Launchpad visit the fair city of St. Canard. While Huey tries to work out how the seemingly world changing project Scrooge is financing for researcher Taurus Bulba .. um.. works, Launchpad and Dewey visit Drake, whose struggling to find any crime to actually fight, but soon finds himself tangled up in the case of a plucky young orphan, her missing grandfather and Bulba’s dark secrets and soon Darkwing and his new family find themselves the only three people standing between the world and it’s untimely end. Let’s Get Dangerous with a full review with recap and spoilers under the cut.

It’s time! I’ve been obviously, being a fan of both darkwing duck, if only finally watching it in full now, and superhero stories in general, and this show having told some REALLY good ones over the past 3 seasons including darkwing’s previous episode “The Duck Knight Returns!”, which I sadly didn’t get to in time before this episode. But this is a worthly replacement to conclude our double feature so it all works out. But yeah a big one hour special that changes the course of the season, brings Goslyn in, and brings in Darkwing’s old rogue’s gallery? Sign me up. And it’s also VERY clear that Disney has plans for a revivial/spinoff for darkwing. Besides this episode setting it up and Frank being very clear he has plenty of ideas for this big duckverse as a whole and is a massive fan of the series, there’s the fact Disney conspciously posted a trailer, 4 preview cilps (Though to their credit none really give the game away entirely and all but one take place in the first act, and the one that didn’t is so they could show off Stephanie Beatriz as Goslyn, which is fair enough). And if that werent’ enough, the killing stroke is that the episode is FREE TO WATCH on Disney Now, and likely on Youtube sometime soon given they usually do that when the make an episode readily avaliable as done with most series premires and, for some weird reason, the season 3 premire of big hero six. But wheras that’s probably just to drum up hype for an aging-ish series, this feels like a delberate move to drum up hype for the episode among both fans of the ducktales reboot and the old darkwing fanbase. The only way they could’ve been more transparent is if they put a giant sign at the end of the episode that says SPINOFF COMING SOON.. MAYBE.. DID YOU LIKE THIS? TWITTER US IF YOU LIKE THIS.. THAT’S THE RIGHT TERM RIGHT?.

That being said I can’t blame them as Darkwing’s a beloved property, superheros are big right now thanks in large part to disney themselves with the MCU, and the fandom reactied with overwhelming praise to “The Duck Knight Returns!”, which is one of season 2′s best episodes even if the cliam that scrooge never went to the movies nor saw one on cable after 1938 is implausable at best and really dumb and I hate it at worst. I mean I get he wouldn’t love rising prises, but I seriously doubt Della wouldn’t have dragged him to one at some point or that someone wouldn’t of tried to get him to invest in theirs long before boorswan. It just dosen’t fit the character and it was dumb.. it’s also unrelated to this episode but I had pent up rage from preparing to review that episode and I might as well get it out of the way now. Point is this episode has a lot riding on it and had all the hype. So did it live up to it? Let’s take a look.

We open in St. Canard, former wretched hive of scum and villiany and soon to be home to the second John Oliver Memorial Sewage Plant. Launchpad’s narrating and nearly getting everyone killed in a car accident as Scrooge argues with Bradford over the project Scrooge is on his way to see.. with the boys in two naturally. And since eveyrone else is missing and I had fun with it last time i’m assuming Webby is with Violet helping Lena with her burdgoening superhero career and trying to ask her out, Beakly is tending to the house , Della and Penny are working out and trying not to admit there’s clear sexual tension and Donald is once again in the Pantry because he never learns. HE NEVER LEARNS.

Anyways we learn their going to visit Tarus Bulba, in this continuity a famous and well loved scientist who I’m sure defintely won’t turn out to still be evil... yeshewillletsmoveon. Huey and Louie are excited about it because of Huey’s well established love of science and Louie smelling the money in a big inavation with Scrooge likely smelling both. As for Launchpad and Dewey their going to check in on Drake, whose living here now: Launchpad because he’s his best budy and possibly future boyfriend and Dewey because he needs more hits for his channel as he’s finally taken Dewey Dew Night to the masses. Bout time. Now he just needs a streaming deal. Make it happen Disney, D+ needs some animated series of it’s own. They also do a naturally terrible job of keeping the fact h’es a superhero a secret. We also breifly see drake doing a superhero dive before also comically tripping up and getting injured off screen. Cue.. Darkwing Colored ducktales logo as we don’t have time for the theme this week! And given this episode is an hour long that’s saying something. Anyways Scrooge and the boys sans dewey head to meet Bulba whose a charming, gregarious man who quickly hugs the boys, puts them on his shoulders and snaps a selfie with the group. And he’s also familiar with the boys: Huey for wining the junior woodchuck science award and Louie for Louie Inc which ended before it’s time.. on public record. He’s a fan of both. And even given later reveals this seems genuine which I did not expect it to end up being anything resembling that. But we’ll get more into Bulba’s character when the time is right for now he shows off his invention: The Ramrod! While it shares the same name as Doctor Waddlemeyer’s device from the original, and as we’ll soon learn he made this one too, instead of a gravity device it instead can make ANYTHING you ask for, with Taruus wisely using Haggis to demonstrate. Huey however can’t help but wonder how it does what it does as surely what it makes has to come from somewhere though Louie tries to shut him up as he dosen’t want him to look a gifthorse in the mouth. I mean Horace gets self concious about it. Meanwhile Launchpad and Dewey meet up with Drake at the reboot version of Darkwing Tower, where he’s set up nicely: Multiple costumes, gadgets, including arrows with his face on them, and the ratcatcher in all it’s glory. Seriously I do love motorcycles even if I’m terrified of riding one. It’s part of why yugioh 5d’s holds a special place in my heart despite card games on motorcylces being patently nuts.. but it’s in the best way possible. As for how Drake got this sweet setup turns out Launchpad introduced him to Fenton who designed all his gadgets and presumibly his HQ as well as his snarky crime detecting and st.canard monitoring computer, W.A.N.D.A. Naturally he also is unaware he’s gizmoduck and freely shit talks gizmoduck again, though apparently Fenton does too. Granted Fenton could just be doing it to awkardly agree but it’s just as likely fenton uses it as an excuse to vent about his superhero alter ego, as we’ve seen that while Fenton loves being Gizmoduck he also resents it at time for keepiing him from doing science and getting glory just for punching people. But I love this dynamic, as Fenton’s just too nice for the old “they both hate each other and want the glory” dynamic to work, so Fenton untetionally pissing DW off as Gizmo but secretly supporting him as Darkwing is great and I can’t wait to see where this goes. Before we get back to the main plot, and there is a LOT of it to get to, I just wanted to point out that Dewey seems an awful lot like drake.. i’m not saying he’s the boys father and Della simply didn’t knoow who it was mama mia style nor did she, in her more selfish form of 11 years ago want to know.. but that’s exactly what i’m saying. THanks to whoever sent me that theory, it got more fire this week. Back on the actual plot turns out Darkwing dosen’t really have any foes to fight as while St. Canard has a reputation as a crime hole, Zan Owlson has taken over as mayor and cleaned it up. I assume in part because Glomgold seems to have no idea where she went and thus hasn’t done some elaborate scheme to show how much better off he is/kill scrooge mcduck. I mean let’s face it it always involves killing scrooge mcduck. His charitable contributions involve killing scrooge mcduck, his team ups with scrooge involve killing scrooge mcduck, his breakfast cereal came with a free knife and a map to scrooge’s house. Though I do defintely want to see Darkwing vs glomgold. I mean he’s not DW”s normal type of supervillian but still, tell me you wouldn’t see that.. and if your serious there’s the door.

Anyways despite having no crime to fight and trying to bluff past it despite WANDA trying her best not to help his case, DW goes out on patrol with his boys anyway.. and procedes to just pose for several hours before trying to stop what turns out to be two guys moving furniture and being force to admit he’s not in a great place. He just wanted to fight crime and inspire people the same way Jim inspiried him.. before he you know went insane, tried to murder Drake and everyone on a film set then seemingly died but is now presumibly still in duckberg’s sewers.. or just as likely hiding in glomgold’s house hider in the house style.

And yes that’s a real movie in which a real gary busey lives in the walls of someone’s house. And funner fact it’s on amazon prime and I was unaware of this or I would’ve watched it sooner and will be as soon as this reivew’s finished. Possibly while this review is going on I dunno. Point is your lives are richer and we might have another possible spinoff/gay love story for Disney. Just saying Disney.

Point is Drake is breaking down, but thankfully he landed in the right alleway as a small figure is breaking into the mcduck industirie’s st.canard branch, i.e. where Bulba is. Also I gotta admit while McDuck industries having a branch in St. Canard wasn’t a huge stretch, it was set up all the way in the pilot meaning Frank had the backdoor to set up an episode here since day one, along with every other major location really. Nicely done.

Darkwing follows her and confronts her, stopping the seeming intruder from stealing the key to the ramrod device and finding out she’s a.. little girl? It’s goslyn everybody!

.... I .. why was this under clap. I mean it’s a very good message with a very nice garfiled head but i jus... what.

Okay that’s better. Thank you Genie and thank you ghost of robin williams.. I miss you man. She escapes, though sans key and security storms in, with Drake looking guilty. After some banter with Scrooge who fails to recognize him which would be funny if it wasn’t utterly nonsencial. And utterly nonseical can be funny it just comes off less as “haha scrooge still dosen’t remeber him” and more “Wait you seriously don’t remember the guy who was crucial to one of your plans during the moonvasion and who got beat up on your behalf.. I expect better from you. “ Scrooge just dosen’t seem like the type to forget someone helping him in such a big way. He can be stubborn, stingy and selfish, but he’s not that forgetful.

However Bulba enters, says he knows exactly who he is.. and we cut to a press confrence where Bulba is lauding him for stopping a dangerous intruder. Presumibly he vouched for Darkwing since he knew about Goslyn and it was an easy way to cover up her involvment and it’s probably not the first time she’s tried this. He’s awarded the key to the city by Mayor Owlson who, while not wanting more costumed vigilatnes, is happy to reward someone doing the right thing. And I .. love this. I was worried she’d be your standard I don’t like superheroes type mayor, the kind gotham keeps getting with predectable results despite you know, the bat family being vital for gotham not becoming more of a hellscape. Instead Mayor Owlson is grateful, respectful and only reasonably dosent want St Canard overun with heroes it dosen’t need.. yet. She may want to use the proper channels but she’s not going to try and run someone out of town or grumble out of them for trying to help her city. She gets it. Meanwhile Huey’s hat explodes with with notes and what not, to Louie’s annoyance, though my boy’s excuse is utterly hilarious “It’s dewey’s hat”... boy still cannot lie. Louie is of course annoyed at him wanting to know how it works and possibly runining his dreams, but Huey is rightly concerned that he has no idea just how the Ramrod works or what powers it or what prinicpals it runs on. And it makes sense: Besides Huey always wanting to know how things work being his deal at this late point in the series there have been quite a few times, both involving huey and not involving him where something seeming to be too good to be true in fact was and had some dark secret behind it. Counting them off:

The House of the Lucky Gander: A seemingly swanky casino with the best water show ever turned out to be mostly an illusion created by a luck vampire.

The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks: Beloved tech icon Mark turned out to be the con artist we all know and love as well as the jackass we also know and tolerate.

Beware the BUDDY System: Beaks new driving robot turned out to be stolen bulb tech that Beaks hadn’t bothered to fix properly. I know Huey wasn’t there for that one but still.

Day of the Only Child: Again Huey wasn’t involved but probably heard about it later but since Louie WAS, he should know better. Louie befriends rich kid Doofus Drake only to end up nearly kidnapped because he’s creepy as shit.

Who Is Gizmoduck?!: While Huey wasn’t the target here, he and Fenton are close friends at this point and he was direclty involved. Beaks trying to sponsor Fenton turned out to be a scheme to steal the Gizmoduck Armor.

The Town Where Everyone Was Nice: A seemingly central american town having a friendly festival turns out to be a carnverous plant monster that wanted to eat them.

The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!: Fenton’s seemingly nice date turned out to be an industrial spy for .. Mark Beaks. Seriously he seems to love this type of scheme. Mark Beaks alone is reason for Huey not to take Bulba at face value.

A Night On Kilmotor Hill: The kids being able to go into their dreams ends in Magica stalking and nearly taking back Lena.

Quack Pack: A wacky sitcom wish nearly gets everyone eaten by horrifying versions of humans.

The Lost Harp of Mrivana: While the Mirmaids werne’t responsible for the dark secret this time, their society was built on the philosphy of a man who turns into a giant sea monster and nearly lead them all to the same fate.

The Trickining: A lost horde of candy ends up being a trap by a bunch of monsters to steal candy that nearly got them all eaten and hurt Huey’s feelings.

The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades: A two-fer as the resort their at steals youtha nd the fountain of youth they went to find turns out to need to drain it from someone first.

And Louie was present for 9 of these! And the only one around for one of them! That’s what makes this frustrating: Huey and Dewey have grown, but Louie instead of learning from his mistakes, blindly trusts something too good to be true despite the fact he has a running tally of when that’s happened! I get he’s lazy and dosen’t want this to turn out to be too good to betrue, but he’s too smart for him not to see the red flags or see that Huey’s not “ruining this for them” but has been through this enough, mostly with mark beaks or people around him, to see a pattern. It’s frustrating when Louie was given a whole season arc, and didn’t seem to have any of it stick despite you know nearly murdering his family and nearly getting murdered by a zombie. The show is better than that and knows it’s better than that and it’s one of the weaker points of the episode.

Back to the stronger stuff though, it’s time for the moment you’ve been waiting for IT’S DEWEY DEW-NITE WITH DARKWING DUCK! I figured after the preview clips this was the one Frank had been hinting at all season and it’s finally here! Dewey, now fully on team darkwing, interviews the terror that flaps in the night.. and has a picture of him just coming out of the shower for some reason.. okay are Launchpad and Drake already together and no one told us? Whatever the case, Darkwing’s first big interview is interupted by Gosalyn. As for how she found them, she followed a combination of the resedue from his smoke bombs and Dewey’s livestream that’s been going on this whole time. As his attempts to hide Drake’s identnity and really this entire show up to this point has shown subtley is not Dewey’s strong suit.

Gos, after snooping around a bit and even letting out a “Keen Gear!” for old time’s sake, and finding Drake’s lunch box and first darkness poster, reveals she came for help since she figures DW owes her one for last night.. or earlier tonight. The timescale in this special is really hard to figure out and only gets worse. Gosalyn fills in her side of the story and why she broke into two places in the span of 24 hours. Turns out the Ramrod was in part created by Gosalyn’s grandpa, who was working under Bulba on the project. But one day Dr. Waddlemeyer found out the Ramrod was critically unstable and went to warn Bulba.. and never came back. Gosalyn wants to find him, and wants to DW to punch Bulba into telling her where he is. DW.. naturally does not and raises valid concerns: He’s an upstanding citzen whose offered his full support, has done nothing wrong in the public eye, and is nothing but nice to everyone and Gosalyn.. is a kid whose clearly in mourning, broke into two places, and has no evidence to back her up. He wants to help but he simply can’t and Gosalyn prepares to storm off herself. However in a VERY nice moment, Dewey goes to her and offers to help, as obviously missing parents are a big button for him and he appricated the fact he had someone when he needed to look into his own missing parent and wants to be Gosalyn’s webby.. his exact touching words. It’s a nice call back that really ties Dewey into this story well: He has a solid motive besides crimefighting stuff to help here. Granted Gosalyn’s confused as she hasn’t met webby, yet, and Dewey’s puns don’t help, but as Dewey explains his Dewey puns to her and his name, Launchpad talks to Drake and encourages him to help her. Drake is in fact reluctant like Gosalyn thought for his image but also because as mentioned Bulba seems to belive in him And that’s. understandable. Since starting out, he’s had no crime to fight, no villians to vanquish and only one person acknowledge his work and existance and that person is standing right there. Bulba is the first person besides Launchpad to not only enourage his Darkwing Duties, but to honor that and got him cleared of possible tresspassing charges, a key to the city and an interview on the hottest show on the internet. This risks all of it. But Launchpad makes a good point.. that he needs to help those who can’t help themselves and while he dosen’t have to fight bulba, he can at least look into him. A look at his dented lunchbox reminds Drake that his best friend/future husband is right, and that he became darkwing to protect people like he used to be.. to help the helpless.. and Gosalyn is helpless right now.. plenty capable, but someone who clearly can’t do this alone. So the four take off in the ratcatcher.

The four sneak into Bulba’s office and root around, but end up having to hide when Taurus comes in, with DW hiding in his massive filing cabinet that resembles Darkwing’s own from the original series, that was retired since by now computers have made that kind of thing obsolete. Still it’s a nice nod. Turns out Huey is confronting Bulba as he genuinely dosen’t know how it works and Bulba is annoyed at all his questions. Really Terry there’s an easy way to fix that.

But instead Scrooge comes in and while Terry TRIES to use him to brush off Huey.. Scrooge dosen’t bite and has learned to take Huey’s inquires seriously. And it’s something I didn’t notice about the series but love dearly now i’ve realized it with this bit: The Adults almost always take the kids concerns into considration and when they are brushed off it’s more due to personal issues, like scrooge’s pride, than because their kids. And given just how many hundred series have had the adults just brush off the kids issues like nothing, it’s REALLY refreshing that even reckless adults like Launchpad usually listen and that the kids competence isn’t entirely ignored just because of age.

Bulba brushes them off by giving them the map to the ramrod.. speficially extensive notes on it that they have to carry out as a team. He then adresses Darkwing as he somehow knew he was there but again, is more than happy to help him with any investigation.. and it just so happens evidence Gosalyn was at least telling the truth on some level flies out of Bulba’s files as it shows a picture of him happily playing with Gosalyn and Dr. Waddlemeyer.

Darkwing asks if he knows them and surprisingly Bulba is completely upfront about it or at least his version of events: Waddlemeyer was his best friend his close partner until one night he ran in raving about a problem with the ramrod and in trying to fix it, it backfired and then he was gone. Gos takes this well.. and tackles Bulba while calling him a liar and pockets the key toossing it to dewey as the two soon run from a pissed off Bulba. While Launchpad tackles Bulba away from the kids, Gosalyn TRIES to trigger the ramrod only for Darkwing to stop her. “I’m Sorry Kid but this isn’t going to bring your grandfather back” it’s then the entire episode is turned on it’s head. While, unfortunatley, the trailer gave away other dimensions would be involved, it didn’t however set this up “He’s not dead, he’s in another dimension!”

Yeah while it makes perfect sense in hindsight I dind’t see him being ALIVE ever being a thing, so well played frank. Back with the rest of the family, Huey, Louie and Scrooge are diving around a stack of papers and Louie is sitll being a little shit, and not in the fun way in the “well not everything’s a missing mystery blah blah blah”... when you .. you learned tolerance for your brother two episodes ago. Thankfully this ends here..mostly because Huey ends up being right as Louie mentioning the misssing mysterys gives Huey his eurkea moment. Turns out the Ramrod uses one of them, Solego’s Circuit. Solego, based on the chaos god from the disney afternoon crossover something I missed on first watch, was in this universe a mad thinker who belived in the old theory that fiction is just a mirror to another universe and everything is real and found a way to open portals to other worlds. Problem was his methods were unstable, and could destroy the world, and likely the universe, if used repeadtly. Wuh-Oh

Back at the Ramrod, Bulba has launchpad on him, while Darkwing aand Gosalyn discuss things and come to the obvious conclusion: If Dr. Waddlemeyer was caught in a ramrod explosion then he’s likely out there somewhere and Darkwing clearly wants to help. Bulba TRIES playing diplomat again and mentoning that even if he’s out there the trillions of dimensions out in the multiverse mean he may be nigh impossible to find.. and the ramrod’s too unstable for that. This however finally backfires on him as Bulba had previously said it was perfectly stable, and has now fully confirmed gosalyn’s side of the story.. and since it is stable, if he’s not lying that is, then that means they can find Dr. Waddlemeyer and get the full truth. Naturally at this point Bulba finally stops playing nice and knocks both over and triggers the ramrod which is now very clearly unstable from use and prepares to throw both into another dimension, also confirming that what happened to her grandfather was no accident. Thankfully Dewey arrives in the nick of time with a well place smokebomb and bulba gets hit with lightning from the machine giving him a scar and cleaving one of his horns. While Gos is able to escape thanks to launchpad it dosen’t last long and Bulba confronts her.. but soon makes the classic mistake of saying no one can save you now. Cue Darkwing with the classic terror that flaps in the night speech. And unlike the original darkwing’s fights with Bulba, this fight is entirely in darkwing’s favor, as in a thrilling fight Darkwing beats the crap out of them then escapes Bulba’s fist , the only blow the man gets in this time. While Bulba still is a legit threat, he can’t match Drake’s speed or misdirection skills. However when trying to get the key, which Bulba grabbed earlier in the scene, Goslayn falls and Darkwing goes to save her. And while our heroes celebrate for a second with launchpad joining them.. Bulba has escaped AND still has the ramrod key. Uh-Oh

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Bulba is of course activating the ramrod with SCrooge and the boys telling him to stop.. it’s too dangerous... but Bulba decides to get dangerous and pissed at darkwing, unleahses the fearsome four! Cue act break. We’ll be right back. Let’s have an intermission shall we.

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Okay break’s over. St. Canard isn’t doing great as the fearsome four have locked down the city, with Gizmoduck barely holding his own against bushroot and unable to get past, and thus meaning implicitly no one else from duckberg can either and with scrooge and the boys missing, Mayor Owlson calls on darkwing to save them, again giving her more points in my book as she rightly figures the guy dressed up as the hero from the tv show and playing him for reasl is the best person to face four villians from a 90′s tv show suddenly out and about and holding her city hostage.

But Drake is spiraling a bit as these are super villians with super powers. This dosen’t quite work for me as A) He’s a super fan and thus should know their weaknesses and B) What.. what did he expect. Even the vast majority of Batman’s Rogues Gallery is super powered. But it’s a quick speed bump, understandable as Drake probably didn’t grasp the very real reality of fighting super crime. We also get to see all 4 classic DW Badguys int heir glory, and beating up bonkers, who apparently exists in this universe which is more suprising than it should be. HOwever Darkwing, ends up accidently coming up with a plan: capture one of them, get them to let them into bulba’s heavily foretfied lab turned lair, and use the ramrod to send them home and find dr. waddlemeyer. Easy. Well okay not so much as the two argue over Gosalyn coming along but Launchpad’s experince has taught him kids are the best adventuerers at all and they just need to be an adventure family. Gosalyn’s dewey, Darkwing’s launchpad and Launchpad’s the uncle.. not quite the right congifuration but his heart’s in the right place.. even if Gos refuses a family since she still has one.. even if you know she can always add the two of them in. Eh semantics point is WANDA found Quackerjack and Goslyn rightly points out they can handle just one villian. So they head out. Also during the scene Fenton tried to contact them but Darkwing semeingly brushed him off.. we’ll get to that later. As the camera closes in on Scrooge and the boys being seen as missing we find the boys at least as Bulba throws them in jail. Scrooge is still missing, though we’ll find out where he is soon enough. Bulba returns to his office to find Bradford. Unsuprisingly finding the circuit wasn’t an accident and Bulba was working out the circuit for F.O.W.L. this whole time. However Bradford also isn’t remotley happy about how big and bombastic things are getting. After all his modeus operandi is stealthy and quite not you know hyjacking an entire city with an unstable super science device and 4 villians from an old cartoon show. Bulba points out hey he wanted the world, this is the way to do it and when Bradford continues to push back against him Bulba rants: he’s just like scrooge or the waddlemeyers or darkwing no vision. Bradford may not see fowl as supervillians, which no dude you are just because you don’t operate in the open dosen’t make you not supervillians. one of you wears a hood for fucks sake. Supervillians don’t have to wear costumes just ask the kingpin.. or his lookalike bulba who has his newfound minons take out bradford and throws him in with the kids. Yeah maybe.. don’t downtalk the well intentioned madman. This is why you haven’t taken the world yet. But with both his bosses gone Bulba feels they need a big splash and takes Liquidator’s suggestion of killing darkwing duck, and sends everyone’s faviorite dog shaped liquid pitchman to bring him to Bulba. Side note I watched a few episodes to see if the series gets darkwing’s villians down.. what changed. and .. yeah it ended up being irrlevant as while the four do get to show their stuff and liquidator, my faviorite so far and sadly the most underused, relaly gets time to shine, they aren’t really that diffrent. Except for bushroot who weirdly only uses godzilla noises now. Thanks I hate it. Otherwise though it’s pretty accurate to the series and hopefully wtih a reboot we’ll get full on reboot versions of all four.

Meanwhile Team Darkwing stakes out quackerjack, with Darkwing still unsure of what to do, and Launchpad having brought snacks like a good uncle. Yeah while he did immitate scrooge for a second it’s clear he’s taking after donald. Awwwwwww. The two then procede to think over one of quackerjacks episodes and while gos goes to find him, they sing the theme song. Great. They do end up finding him.. and as in the episode it’s inside a giant mech.. that probably wasn’t cgi in the show.. or maybe it was but god it’d be awesomely horendous.. somebody make that. They narrowly escape him.. but run into liquidator instead. Wuh-Oh. Meanwhile, literally as these bits are intercut but it was just easier to do it this way, Bradford is thrown in his cell and the kids are curious why he’s here, with Huey assuming he’s getting money and the kids breaking out with Bradford forced to follow, though caling Heron for an evac. Dewey actually has a plan: Since he knows Darkwing an Gosalyn won’t stop till they get to the ramrod, they simply need to find the ramrod and wait for them to show up and offer a way out, though Bushroot bars the way. Thankfully Dewey knows who he is as Launchpad naturally made him watch a LOT of darkwing duck but hey it came in handy and gives him something to bond with his birth dad over so that’s a bonus.

The three make their way through, with Dewey singing the darkwing theme song.. and naturally being the one to trip the vines. our heroes make it out alive but bradford is pisseeeeedddddddddd. And in his rage accidently says maybe a bit too much after dewey incorrectly assumes he’s never felt this alive in years.

“I’ve never been closer to death thanks to your foolhardy adventuring! If you didn’t meddle with forces you didn’t understand Magica De Spell wouldn’t have broken the bin, the moon never would’ve invaded earth and all of reality wouldn’t be in jeopardy! SOMEONE HAS TO PUT AN END TO THIS!” Yeah this speech .. is damn good hence me quoting it in full and Mark Evan Jackson really sells it. While granted we knew this was what started FOWL trying to elimiate the ducks, that’s how we found out FOWL existed still after all at the end of last season, here it becomes clear that despite Bradford saying it’s just buisness and seemingly being business minded.. this is PERSONAL. He genuinely seems to hate the ducks and their adventuers and the damage they cause and seems to blame them and soley them for everything that goes wrong.

And I was going to say “Well he’s not entirley wrong” as their adventures have had consequences.. but as I looked through the episodes.. I realized I was wrong. Out of 60 episodes so far, the ducks actions have only threanted duckberg or Scrooge’s buisness a handful and most of those are Louie. They are :

Louie misusing little bulb in the great dime chase wrecking parts of the bin

The beanstalk incident from Jaw$, which Scrooge was called out on in the public.

Gizmoducks messy bank robbery prevention in who is gizmoduck, easily outweighed by everything since.

Destroying an underwater research station in the depths of cousin fethry which was in part due to natural wildlife.

Scrooge’s flu and stubborness tanking stocks in “The 87 cent solution” not to mention destroying property. While yes Scrooge was being played by glomgold his own stubborness and the kids refusal to call beakly lead to it playing out longer than it should have.

Ruined an expensive movie production (Which is partly Jim’s fault, but scrooge still didn’t get intolved at any point or have anyone more experinced oversee boreswan or even ever contact jim about a cameo. )

Louie nearly destroying time itself in timephoon.

Della giving the moonlanders the blueprints for the spear

And as you can tell almost all of them aside from louie’s two incdients involve some form of extenuating circumstances. While Chaos has insued it’s never been intentional and always been cleaned up. Even the invasion, as close a call as that was, was solved BY the family and their allies.. and glomgold, but hey sometimes you need an x factor. Most of the duck’s actions have only backfired on themselves of people nowhere near duckberg or scrooge’s intrests and most villians gunning for them would regardless if scrooge was active or not: Glomgold hates scrooge for entirely personal reasons, Magica was locked up for good reason and while she got out due to the family’s rift, she would’ve done what she did with the bin regardless, the beagles just want their land back even if Scrooge rightfully owns it, Beaks maniuplated fenton to get the armor and now goes after him out of jealousy, and Lunaris was already going after earth Della just sped it up and did so in good faith entirely unaware he was a invader. These nuts would be gunning for scrooge anyway, and while some of it’s due to his life as an adventuerer, said life was started before Bradford was born. Scrooge isn’t responsible for guys coming after him any more than batman, or spide-rman. Sure a hero being around gives them reason to keep trying but it also means there’s someone to STOP them. And more importantly, as I always intended to prove, their adventures have done more good than harm: Beisdes the obvious mending and extending of their family, with Donald and Scrooge patching things up and Beakly, Launchpad and especially webby being warmly welcomed in and Della finally finding a way home, not to mention their various allies, over the last 60 episodes our heroes have, and yes another list and a long one so buckle up. In chrnological order:

Brought clean, limitless water to duckberg, if through scrooge’s water company.

Defeated a luck vampire that was kidnapping innocent people (Okay Gladstone’s probably mildly incident but even he didn’t deserve that) and likely left him unable to continue his scheme.

Freed a lost and enslaved Egyptian civlization from a tyrant and brought them quite literally into light.. and gave them burritos.

Defeated Zeus.. not really a huge change for humanity but given what a dick he is I’m counting it.

Through Gyro’s invetion of the gizmotech armor and Fenton’s use of it, gave duckberg a superhero whose since cleaned up crime, keeps the city safe while scrooge isn’t around and is beloved by the city.

Stopped a known super spy.. who works for Bradford but still.

Defeated Magica, saved the entire city, and depowered her all in one day and all together.

Found an entirely new and giant species of plankton and gave their cousin a purpose

Destroyed an evil plant monster that had likely eaten dozens before that.

Helped a man find his family’s treasured lamp

Opened a museum wing to share Scrooge’s various treasures with the world.

Hundreds of years ago stopped a robber baron from bleeding a town dry.

Donald selflessly possibly sacrificing himself in a dangerous rocket to try and get home to warn earth and his family of the coming invasion.

Taught Lena how to love herself, got her to turn against magica, and then with Violet’s help Webby helped her return to life, and find a home where she’s actually loved and wanted and finally happy and free.

Stopped beaks rampage.. granted it was with stolen gizmotech, but he still stole it int he first place.

Gave the Drakes an adopted son who genuinely loves them and sucessfuly gave them finacial freedom from their cruel, sociopathic biological son.

Stopped an army of scrooge’s greatest foes from stealing his company.

Formed a resistance against the moonlander invasion, stopping it eventually with glomgold and the cousins help.

After that stopping Lunaris backup plan to destroy the earth itself along with his own people.

As a result of all of this, despite the invasion, introducing a new population of happy, repentant for their invasion of the world aliens into duckberg who have been loyal and hardworking.

If unknowingly stopping Fowl’s own agent from killing everyone in duckberg.

Saving a lost society of mermaids and helping them start over

Sucessfully saving a charity gala from hyjackers.

Helping Daisy start the career she wants.

Saving BOYD from being hyjacked by dr akita

Saving all of Tokyok from Akita’s plans for boyd.

Finally letting BOYD be his own boy and break free from his past.

Defeating team Ragnarok and saving the earth from the end of days.

Defeating the phantom blot while unlocking Lena’s powers, both saving an innocent child from death and giving duckberg protection from Magica once and for all.

Helping penny adjust to earth giving Duckberg another defender besides Gizmoduck and the clan mcduck.

Stopping ponce de leon from draining the youth from anyone else and restoring all his victims.

So yeah five times the number of bad things they’ve done or money they’ve lost. For all the chaos it causes the ducks have changed so many lives and not just their own for the better. And I think that’s the problem: Bradford only sees thing in the terms of possesion in money, and helping people gets him NONE of that. To him all of this is just more risks to the world and his control of it. To him Scrooge has near complete control of duckberg, thousands of buisnesses, the potetial to grip the world.. and he uses it to seemingly endanger it and better lives instead of his own. I mean he has enriched his own but still. Bradford simply CAN’T see past himself or his own saftey and greed to see any benifit for anyone else. ONly himself and with scrooge gone the world is his, the world is safe, and the world is better. In other words.. he’s who scrooge ALMOST became, minus the effort to get things himself. A bitter old man who cares only about himself and his possesions and wants nothing else. We’ve seen it here and we’ve seen it in the life and times: Without his family scrooge grows cold and alone.. and without anyone to really care about Bradford is what he’d become. He’sd also forced to eat his transmitter after blaming his outburst on his lack of medication. Wah Wah.

Back at Darkwing Tower, after what feels like 80 years, our heroes squabble a bit as Gosalyn wants to run off after another villian to get to her grandpa while Darkwing wants them to get some rest while he takes care of some buisness> Gosalyn balks at this, all but shouts YOUR NOT MY REAL DAD! and then runs off to the overlook of hte tower. While Darkwing takes a call with Fenton at long last, Launchpad goes to comfort the girl. She admits straight up she was a bit hard on the guy she’s just desperate to find him. And it turns out darkwing as over hte last.. few nights? Wait....

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I’m genuinely confused as the time skip at the end of act one indicated a day at most yet i’ts apparently been several and drake’s been loosing sleep over it? And even WITH the lockdown the rest of the duck family hasn’t barged in? I mean yes the four are keeping the gates shut but even with fenton trying, I highly doubt della has the patience to wait while her kids and baiscally dad are in serious danger, and they still have the cloudslayer/sunchaser and while yes bushroots pplans could stretch up it’s as simple as della flying up and then landing somewhere. I don’t think mayor owlson would complain TOO much about property damage and while scrooge would grumble he’d pay for it. Point is the timescale here is confusingingly worded. At most i’d say a day has passed and darkwing hasn’t slept since last night, as that makes more sense than “Whelp I guess our famiy’s been missing for days nothing weird about that. As I said the timescale for this episode is really weird and one of it’s few problems, the other being, now we’ve met them might as well get out of the way, how throwaway darkwing’s foes feel. They all, minus mega volt, get a moment to shine but they all feel like interchangable goons. Like any of them could’ve done any of their scens just swap out the gimmick. I do get this episode has a LOTTTTTT going on at once, so I get any character bits with them probably got shoved out and odds are we’ll get “real world” throughly updated versions next time, it just feels weird to make such a big deal and bring the fearsome foursome in and not either give them a bigger roll or have them stick around for the future, though as I said frank will probably remake them from the ground up for the reboot with new origins and what not, and some might intentional take after them like drake did with tv darkwing, so fair enough, just felt it was a bit of a waste but I understand it given the sheer amount of stuff to fit into a 45 minute special.

Back on the actual plot though Darkwing’s been up all night conversing with Fenton trying to find dr. waddlemeyer. And Fenton sadly has no good news: Not only does the Ramrod have only one shot left in it before it breaks reality, but even if that gives them one shot to find Dr. Waddlemeyer.. there are trilions of universes out there. The odds of finding it before reality goes bye bye are slim to none. But Darkwing refuses to give up as he refuses to let Gosalyn down. It shows that despite his earlier fear.. Drake is a damn good person and wants to make up for not beliving in gosalyn, to help her anyway he can no matter what it takes. Gosalyn realizes she’s been kind of a dick and helps darkwing and herself get some sleep, and in a reversal of the scene from Darkly Dawns the duck, hums little girl blue to him. Awwww.. my heart.. it’s too full!.

Back at the tower, the boys and bradford find the ramrod and bradford grumbles as he finds where scrooge is: trapped in the ORIGINAL ducktales reality, though using the remastered proportions and blue eyes. It’s a good gag especially since Bulba specifically trapped him in this scene.

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Beautiful. Bradford wonders how the hell he’s going to cover this up.. and Huey overhears him, having already been suspcious because while good at running a massive shadowy conspiracy, he didn’t you know, tell heron to keep it down on the transponder as the boys were around and her continuned interputions and his outburst earlier made Huey suspcious. Before Bradford can cover he starts coughing (With Dewey’s pricless injection of “Oh no we killed him!”) and coughs up the transmitter.. with Heron inconvently pointing out he’s fowl high command. He’s the bad guy.. from the kids point of view at least. But Bradford just chucks them into the 87 dimension where they stare blankly at scroog’es rampage. So now it’s all down to team darkwing. Speaking of which their all asleep but Wanda wakes darkwing up and in another ddtd parallel, he leaves to take care of this himself, if without Gosalyn waking up this time. His reason is simple though: The ramrod has fired up and this is their only shot at getting her grandpa back. So Darkwing strolls in.. and once Bulba and the fearsome four marvel at his directness, Bulba sends them to knock his brains out and drag him in. Thankfully Gosalyn and Launchpad wakeup and while Gosalyn is mad for a second, she sees him getting drug in and finally realizes just charging in isn’t going to do it. .and since Launchpad knows DW like the back of his hand, he gets them in by dressing them up as Jumbalya Jake and the Bugmaster. I’ve heard of both though why the hell Frank chose Jumbalya jake over .. ANYONE else, is beyond me. Bugmaster is fairly popular, Jumbalya Jake.. is basically a less intresting fuzzy lumpkins. Regradsleess it works and our heroes make their way inside.

Bulba is preparing to his big hyjack the airways villian speech, contacting the leaders of the world.. and killing darkwing, whose none to happy about it to show their serious with an ultimatium: either let him use the ramrod to change the world for hte better or else. And this seems a good as time as any to talk about Bulba.. whose utterly EXCELLENT in the reboot. And I loved the original but instead of just being a super comptietn villian bulba is instead a well meaning one. While he embraces the supervillian lifestyle and flunkies and flamboyance, he’s also just trying to remake the world, to make it BETTER than it was beofre, to end hunger, no traffic acidents. It dosen’t make him a good person, much like magneto or disney’s own toffee, the ends do not jusify the means and he’s likely going to destroy reality in the process, and it’s clear his own arrogance is at much at play as his desire to do goo dand anyone with valid concerns is just a doubting asshole. He’s a compelling villian and James Monroe englehart REALLY fucking brings it, creating a villian with style, a mission and competence galor. He’s really damn good and easily tops the original which is not easy at all, but props to frank for doing it.

But before he can get started, Gosalyn throws the smoke bombs down all around and does Darkwing’s terror that flaps in the night bit for him, and the distractoin allows DW to escape and kick bulba in the face. A HELL of a fight insues. That’s one of the best things this series does is fight corpegraphy as while battles aren’t in EVERY episode, whent hey do happen their spectacular as Darkwing and Launchpad take on the fearsome four in one hell of a beautiful sequence. Darkwing and Launchpad plan to take the four on while Gosalyn gets to the ramrod. Gosalyn understandably questions how an actor and a launchpad are going to take on four villians with the two piping in that bushroot really isn’t na villian which .. I mean he KINDA is but the symapthetic kind that would probably give it up eventually but fair enough. I still like that nod even if this version is less adorakable traumatized plant and more...

Still Goslyn realises their power! THeir nerds! And with the power of fanboyness, and taking a few hits and refrencing the just us justice ducks episode I haven’t seen yet, their triumphant. Singed but triumphant.

Meanwhile Gos continues to try and find her grampapapapapapapappapappaaaaaaaa while Bulba engages Darkwing and Launchpad. Jokes on him their already engaged to each other! She fails to find him but does find the ducks, who wonder what quackaroonie means and why their heads were round.

As the Ramrod rips a massive hole in time and space that threatens to suck everyone in. While Dewey encourages Gosalyn to keep going Huey tells her to stop... which.. Huey you lost your parent too, end of the world or not you can phrase it better. Otherwise top notch youv’e been the best this episode. And in one of the best scnees of the episode Gosalyn realizes what she has to do and despite Bulba tempting her with another relality she ddosen’t even consider it.. she shoots the ramrod with her crosbow, destroying it, with the final portal taking the fearsome four .. somewhere. I dunno? Cleavland..antis? I’m sure their fine. Bulba is knocked out though, and Gosalyn slowly weeps while her new dad consoles her. It’s a touching scene.

Thattt’s soon interupted with one last bit of unfished buisness as Huey suddenly realizes OH CRAP BRADFORD”S MISSING. They find him heading off in a marked FOWL helicopter, which Bradford points out the stupidity of but with Scrooge now having concrete visual evidence his head investor is running one of the oldest and deadliest spy agencies in the world, and their gunning for him decides to give a big of a gloat and tells Scrooge his adventure fantasy is ending while Scrooge remarks their world got a lot more dangerous. And yeah.. while I doubt Bradford will still brook over the top villiany, he now no longer has to hide his agents from scrooge or dance his operation around him and likely has enough embezlled funds to keep fowl going long enough to take out scrooge. And yeah before we get to the end, thank god as while I love this review it’s been one of the longest writing experiments of my life., let’s talk about the FOWL overarching Plot and the interlocked missing mysteries subplot. The progress up till now has.. not really been great. Understandable but wheras season 2 had way too much plot this season took until thsi episode for the plot to really kick in. It’s been aggrivating and both fowl agents after you only crash twice .. really had nothing to do with them in their missions, with both only really using their resources. However.. as slow as it’s been, I will give credit in two places: 1, htis was likely done to get plots out of the way that were lighter and less tied into things, with only two exceptions in the next 6 episodes judging from the just released synposis for novemeber. And 2) the fowl episodes that WERE there set things up brillinatly. You Only Crash Twice set up heron’s lack of stealth and overt villianly, so her calling bradford a ton and bringing a marked helicopter did’t come out of nowhere, while last week’s episode hinted at the fact that FOWL somehow has acess to their own copy of finch’s diary or an equivleant. While we don’t know all the details. This episode also got the plot into overdrive by fleshing out bradford anymore, adding into his lack of liiking cartoon supervilliany by giving him a well and true hatred for scroooge and co. It’s not just the risk, he truly hates their lifestyle and LOATHES all of them and wants them gone.. and now he’s getting his chance. Overall it hasn’t been a bad plot and I get why it’s mostly in the back, but it still could’ve used some build up. But they worked well with what they had. I will also say the focus on Huey is ramping up with the last batch of episodes, so this really has turned out to be his season afterall. Good. So we wrap our story back at Darkwing Tower as Gosalyn bemoans the fact her grandpa is gone. But Drake, for the first time this episode in his civies, softly encourages her to, much like him at her age, get back up again. She got blown up, buffeted around and lost a lot. but they WILL find him. Afterall Drake has a scientest friend who knwos another scientest, and until then.. she can be his crime fighting partner/implicit daughter. So Gosalyn, after so much rejection of it finally accepts her new family while Launchpad runs in to join them with dewey’s blessing. He’s not leaving the show ind, he’s just going to spend days in duckberg, nights in saint canard and sleep on the drive over, to Drake’s pitch perfect “What the actual shit bud” face. Gosalyn is happy, ,and Wanda has a crime for them to chase and our hapy family , back after way too long, heads off into the night to get dangerous. Wheew.

Final Thoughts: God damn this was a long one. I mean it was an hour long but god damn I had a lot to say. But it was a good one. Minor flaws aside, a second watch showed off the pacing, great jokes, amazing emotoinal core, perfomances and plot progression. Unlike the Duck Knight returns the episode wisely ballances darkwing with the boys and scrooge, and interweaves them beautiful as well as finding a credible way for them to find out about FOWL. The game has changed. I also saved the best for last as Stephanie Beatriz was fucking amazing as Gosalyn. While i’ve always loved her, she’s nice, bi and utterly fantastic on brooklyn nine nine why wouldn’t I?, and was excited I was both suprised by how diffrnet her gos voice is from her regular one, though shouldn’t have been as her rosa voice is also vastly diffrent.. seriously stephanie do more voice work your great at it, and Gos was rebooted well, sanding a bit of her hellion streak off while still feeling like the character and instead of just ignoring her grandpa’s death after one episode, making it inot a major part of her character arc here and likely in the future. It’s damn good stuff. The special really overall gets the spirit fo darkwing while making something, new , fresh and bold out of it and easily holds it’s own among the other specials. Nothing much else to say that hasn’t been said, this special was utterly amazing, go watch it.

Now with that done if you like my weekly ducktales reviews, you can follow me for more, comment to tell me how i’m doing and i’m proud to announce.. follow me on my brand spanking new patreon! 2 dollar patrons get a poll once I have enough to do one of those, a discord once I get any, and 10 dollar backers get to pick a review for me a month! If you have the dough, please check it out and if not tha’ts okay. Until next time get dangerous but in the safest way possible, don’t forget to vote trump out and happy halloween! Play us out Jeff Pescetto!

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