#apparently the hiatus is hiatusing

[genericpuff]

Mpl is a mess indeed. The author keeps repeatedly goes into hiatus. There was no S2 summary, leaving us very confused. It just feels like the author has no interest in it anymore.

Yeah, it's a shame, I know the creator has gone through a LOT the past year, apparently during the midseason hiatus they lost a family member and IIRC they're struggling with the physical demands of keeping up with the deadlines, so I can fully empathize with the notion that lilydusk just sort of lost control of their own story along the way. When it comes to long-term projects like this, the condition you start it in won't necessarily be the same condition you end it in and that can reflect through your work. I do think it's clear that the creator might be kind of 'done' with MPL but still trying to finish it for the audience, which I can respect, but it shows when someone's burnt out and still forcing themselves to keep up with it and that can result in a lower quality story which won't make the audience happy, either. It seems like a really shitty situation to be in.

That's just my two cents though, I have no clue what's going on with lilydusk's side of things and from what they've said, it seems like they're going through a lot that's making it hard to focus on the comic.

I do really like MPL as a concept, but I think due to the amount of hiatuses that have happened due to the struggling of the creator, MPL has sort of "lost the plot" so now it's really hard to keep up with, it feels very disjointed in its ideas and execution. I feel like lilydusk just needs to take a seat and actually look at their plot, the story they're trying to tell, and map out a game plan to get there, because right now it feels like they're just sort of going from episode to episode with no clear direction.

S1 was definitely when it was at its strongest, I miss the Poppy / Tora dynamic as the central plotline </3

#midnight poppy land #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[shychick-52]

I don't watch Big City Greens myself, but I'm really happy for those in the fandom that you're getting a fourth season (and a movie). That is so rare with Disney shows, since Disney Television Animation apparently has an unofficial "Three seasons and you're done" rule, unless the show is really popular.

I have to admit, I'm shocked. I had no idea BCG was this popular!

At the same time, I can't help but be super jealous; I wish DuckTales had gotten a 4th season. But between all the hiatuses DT went on in its time (I can at least understand the Covid-induced hiatus in season 3, tho it still didn't help with ratings) and the show flip-flopping between Disney Channel and Disney XD (and Disney XD is where shows go to die) and it's stupid schedule, it's no wonder it lost ratings. Disney handled DuckTales very poorly.

#big city greens #ducktales #ducktales 2017

[fallloverfic]

Where to read ENNEAD by Mojito, the boy's love manhwa

"The once peaceful land of Egypt has been stained with blood under the tyrannical rule of Seth, the god of war. Horus, son of the god Isis but not yet one himself, rises to challenge the throne and put an end to the chaos and destruction. Although the confrontation between Seth and Horus began with hatred, in time it becomes blurred by obsession and desire... The ancient mythology of Egypt comes to life as you've never seen it before in this compelling fantasy BL." - Tappytoon summary There are a lot of places to read ENNEAD, the Korean boy's love comic about gods in ancient Egypt, particularly Seth and Horus! But it can be a little confusing, so I'll put some of the big ones in a list, including how to read in English, Korean, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Thai (and here's a carrd version). If you're seeing this reblogged somewhere, check the original to see if there's been any updates, because I'll try to keep this up to date.

There are two versions of ENNEAD available most places it is available: an uncensored/mature/19+ version and a censored/16+/15+ version. The numbers refer to ages.

There is benefit to reading both! Mojito often modifies the censored scenes to show more of different scenes, and some of it explores character thoughts in ways you don't get in the mature version.

Episodes with version differences:

Season 1: Episodes 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 42, 43, 44

Season 2: Episodes 19, 45, 46, 47, 71

ENNEAD is currently two seasons long with an ongoing season 2, and a planned season 3. Mojito sporadically posts on twitter in Korean, sometimes sharing updates, writing/drawing commentary, and extras.

ENNEAD updates in Korean every 10 days, on the 9th, 19th, and 29th (barring holidays and hiatuses), and on the last day of February when it's updating in February, around 22:00 KST. It updates in English, French, and German every 10 days, on the 10th, 20th, and 30th (barring holidays and hiatuses), and on the last day of February when it's updating in February. When the English is updating near-simultaneously, it puts out its latest episode around 00:00 ET. The English translation is 6 episodes behind the Korean and currently on hiatus, but will return with S02E80 on 30 April 2024, while the French and German are 6 episodes behind the Korean and are currently on hiatus, but will with S02E80 on 10 June 2024.

Korean Audio Drama

On 5 November 2023, ACO announced a Korean audio drama of season 1 (Episodes 1-73). It was available for purchase in physical and is now available to purchase digitally by episode. You need to make an account on either site to purchase it there, and the individual episode site seems to require ID verification before purchase. More information here.

Print Releases

ENNEAD season 1 is available in print in Korean and Taiwanese, which you can purchase through Harumio and Koonbooks (along with other merch). Apparently the physical editions are a little cheaper if you look for third party sellers. Mojito announced on March 18th, 2023, that season 2 would be getting a physical release after season 2 was fully released online, though Mojito didn't specify in what language.

Seven Seas began release of an English physical edition starting in November 2023. "Seven Seas [is releasing] two versions of the series, which were originally drawn for different audiences: a paperback version rated Older Teen, and a deluxe hardcover version rated Mature. (Each version is standalone but has alternate depictions of some adult material.)" We don't know how long this release will be, but season 1 in Korean is 6 volumes, and the English is at least 5. The English will seemingly use the Korean book covers, which also seemingly indicates a 6-volume release.

There are also ongoing physical releases in German, Italian, and Japanese.

Current physical release schedule:

21 November 2023: English volume 1 physical release

24 January 2024: Italian volume 1 physical release

15 February 2024: Italian volume 2 physical release

19 March 2024: English volume 2 physical release, German volume 1 physical release

28 March 2024: Italian volume 3 physical release

24 April 2024: Japanese volumes 1-2 physical release

20 May 2024: Japanese volume 3 physical release

21 May 2024: German volume 2 physical release

19 June 2024: Japanese volume 4 physical release

23 July 2024: English volume 3 physical release

12 November 2024: English 4 physical release

English, French, German

Tappytoon is the only place to legally read ENNEAD in English online. There is currently no downloadable ebook copy in English. Tappytoon is available on browser and the app (for your phone and/or tablet). Tappytoon recently added the mature version to the app, but if you have any issues reading it, both are available and purchasable on the browser version, which you can read on your phone/tablet through your browser if you'd like. Any funds you add and any episodes you buy through the app will be there if you switch to browser. It also has a French translation and a German translation, both of which seem to be censored.

Each version, age-wise, is marked specifically: mature says "Mature" (twice), and has a red M, while the censored/16+ version is marked as 16+, and is missing the "Mature" markers.

Uncensored/mature version^^^ (Again, this should be available on the app now, but if you have any issues accessing it, it has been and still is fully accessible via a browser).

Censored/16+ version^^^

Obtaining episodes: The first three episodes are free to read and keep forever. The rest are paywalled, but there are two ways to read it free, legally, through Tappytoon:

Both versions of ENNEAD are part of Tappytoon's Time Till Free program, where you log in each day and read one episode for free. It means only one episode a day, but you don't have to do anything else. The newest 73 episodes must be purchased with points (the site currency), though. As of March 21st, 2024, this would mean you can get the entirety of season 1 for free, and 6 episodes of season 2.

If you download the app for Tappytoon (usable on phone or tablet), you can watch advertisements to earn points to buy episodes. It's around 30 ads for enough points to buy one episode. If you earn points this way, you can still use them for the mature version if you open it on browser (the points stay in your account), and the episodes will remain in your account even if you can't see the mature versions on the app.

3. You can just buy points. Most credit cards and PayPal should work.

4. Points do not expire, and Tappytoon does deals to get points for cheap every now and then.

Korean

ENNEAD is available in a number of places to legally read in the original Korean. The Korean is ahead of the English translation currently by 6 episodes, and the English is on hiatus until it returns with S02E80 on 30 April 2024, so if you read the Korean, you will be ahead. If you're not using Chrome, I would recommend installing an extension on your browser that translates pages (Firefox has a number of them, just Google "Firefox translation extension"), which will make this part easier if you can't read Korean.

Witchcomics

Witchcomics carries both the censored and uncensored Korean version (uncensored has the red 19 symbol on the top right). It also has a phone app. You will need to verify your age with adult identification to access the uncensored version, and you can use international ID and payment methods for Witchcomics. Simply create an account and go to the customer care page, where they'll explain the process.

Witchcomics also typically provides a preview on their twitter a number of hours (usually no more than 24, sometimes under 10) before the new episode is released. And while Ridibooks uses the current series poster as a filler for episode "previews", Witchcomics puts a mini episode preview up for each episode on the buy/rent page itself (similar to Tappytoon).

Witchcomics is also the site that gives Mojito the biggest percentage of each episode's earnings, so if you're making a decision on where to best support Mojito, it's one of the better options, and Mojito has commented repeatedly she prefers people buy through Witchcomics.

Ridibooks

Ridibooks carries both the censored and uncensored Korean version. To find the uncensored version, type 엔네아드 in the search bar. The uncensored version has a 19 in a circle on the cover. There is also a version with a red cover, which is the complete season 1.

Ridibooks requires you to verify your age by submitting identification in order to read the uncensored/mature version. This guide is very helpful in signing up, getting 19+ access, and paying for episodes. Ridibooks accepts both international ID and international payments to access and read episodes for both the uncensored and censored versions of the story.

Naver

Naver carries both versions of the series in Korean. The uncensored version has the red 19 to the left of its name.

Kakao

Kakao carries both versions of the series in Korean. The censored version has a tiny gray 15 on the upper right corner, and the uncensored version has a 19 in the middle.

Bomtoon

Bomtoon carries both versions of the series in Korean. You need age verification to view the uncensored version, which requires submitting an adult ID to Bomtoon. The censored version is viewable without age verification.

Chinese

The simplified Chinese translation is available on bilibili, though it is censored. There is no uncensored Chinese translation. The Chinese translation is currently on hiatus.

German

Besides the Tappytoon online release, Panini Manga is releasing a physical version of the series. Volume 1 is out! Volume 2 will release on 21 May 2024.

Italian

Planet Manga, a division of Panini Comics, announced on June 6, 2023 that they would be releasing an official Italian translation of ENNEAD! Volume 1 released on 24 January 2024, and volume 2 released on 15 February 2024. Volume 3 released on 28 March 2024.

Japanese

The uncensored ENNEAD has also been translated into Japanese and is available on b-boy, renta, CMOA, Mecha Comic, and Piccoma. A translation of the censored release will begin on 20 May 2024.

The physical release of the Japanese translation began on 24 April 2024, with volumes 1-2; volume 3 will release on 20 May 2024, volume 4 will release 19 June 2024, and there are listings with unknown release dates for volumes 5-6. There are various bonuses depending on where you order from.

Thai

wecomics carries the Thai translation. It seems to require a log-in ID to access.

Merch

At this point there have been a few non-book merch waves and collaborations (with Mofun, ACO, BNOW, Gratte, and Goodsbee), mostly available through proxies. This includes posters, cards, a cup, pins, keychains, popcaps, standees, and jewelry. Remember to check when comparing prices how much goods are priced + how much it will cost to ship to you. Seoul Comics doesn't sell any of its merch for some reason (e.g., the blanket, tarot cards, magnets, crystal ball, and incense burner), it's just given away rarely in lotteries.

Proxies:

Harumio

Koonbooks

Nemo IT

Please support ENNEAD legally if at all possible. Manhwa artists have a habit of stopping translations or releases entirely when they learn about pirating, and Mojito has spoken out against pirating a number of times.

#ENNEAD #엔네아드 #九柱神 #エネアド #Ennead by Mojito #Ennead manhwa #How to read ENNEAD #Ennead guide #boy's love manhwa #boys love manhwa

[enriquemzn262]

Have you guys ever checked back on the webcomics you used to follow? Back in the day I had a ton I was actively following, when I was in deep denial about my weebness, and the other day I decided to look back on some of them.

Raccoon Girl: It’s still active, I actually ended up going back into it, a fun little comic about a bunch of idiots trying to be superheroes, lead by the titular RG. It’s been doing a slow but steady shift from just funny moments into a more serious story, with the art improving alongside the shift.

Miss Melee: It stayed on hiatus for almost 2 years, but it recently came back, a kickass story about a mom superhero and how her personal life starts to get mixed with her superhero one, in the form of her daughter.

Poppy Opposum: A once fun adventure comic about a mom living in a magic world where her possum race is heavily discriminated against. The world building proved too much for the author, and after a short sting at turning it into a sort of light novel to try and tackle the overly complex setting, he finally gave up and dropped it for good.

(He was always kind of a dick too)

The Meek: A once promising adventure story with three different perspectives, all apparently meant to come together eventually. Author was more focused on selling the shit out of the few chapters produced rather than actually working on the story, so it quickly stagnated with literal years between updated, today currently standing at 3 since the last update.

Skadi: One hell of a fun ride about a barbarian princess in a quest to eat from every animal, and the only webcomic in this list that actually had a proper ending. Sadly the webpage where it was hosted no longer works, so it seems to be lost media.

Endtown: A weird but interesting anthology comic about former humans living in a post-apocalyptic world. The current arc has been ongoing for years, and, at least for me, proved so convoluted I dropped it altogether. May return to it one day if said arc actually ends.

Paranatural: A coming of age story about kids fighting supernatural beings. It used to be really fun but then it suddenly began to focus less on the main cast in favor of these bully characters I never liked, and that plus a constant string of hiatuses made me drop it. It’s still being actively worked on, but now as a light novel. Author always seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Prequel Adventure: From the height of popularity of Homestuck came this interactive comic about the unluckiest cat lady that ever lived in the world of Morrowind(?). Used to be really creative, but the author’s refusal at ever breaking away from “now let’s make our hero fuck up again for no good reason” finally got to me so I dropped it. It seems to still be active, albeit at a very slow pace.

Fanboys Online: The only videogames webcomic I’ll ever admit to follow back in the day (the other one I’ll take to the grave), what started as another painfully unfunny (in hindsight) gamer humor webcomic slowly evolved into a witty character study on the three protagonists it had, not to mention the art kept improving as it went on. One day the author quit cold turkey, and now it seems every page that once hosted it is now gone.

Man, looking back, I honestly had a preference for webcomics with female leads.

#rant #webcomic #webcomics #art

[flightfoot]

You know, I'm really expecting some major shifts to occur within the ML fandom between seasons 5 and 6. Both because the current story arc will have ended and we'll be in a new era of the show, and more importantly perhaps, because the movie will come out.

Regardless of how good the movie is, I think it's likely to bring a lot of people who watched the show as kids, but fell off during one of the hiatuses (particularly the hiatus between seasons 1 and 2) back to the show, and will probably prompt new people to check it out.

I'm hoping that it brings in more Lovesquare fans and a fandom more akin to what it was apparently like during season 1, that'd be nice.

#miraculous ladybug

[corneliafm]

☆ –– incoming rule update......nice!  hey y'all your friendly neighborhood taylor here with an important update to our rules regarding activity under the cut. i apologize for how long this post is but i can't be tamed apparently. please like this post once you've read it so i know everyone is aware of the new changes.

as most of you know, i have strived to keep things pretty chill around here concerning activity. i, myself, am extremely busy and nothing has killed my muses in previous groups faster than forced/harsh activity requirement. which is why, when i created corneliafm, i wanted a more relaxed environment regarding an interest check instead of a more formal activity check that most groups have. i also kept the muse limit at maximum right away because i have a problem where i have this need to play all the pretty faces and i love creating characters.

but, starting sunday, october 1st, there will be a few rule changes regarding activity levels (and a new possible co-admin to help me out with the main).

you may pick up to three characters at the start, with more following with good, consistent activity. this avoids people (like me) picking up characters and never doing anything with them. if you already have above three currently, you can keep them, just keep in mind you must keep up activity on ALL your characters.

after acceptances, you will have 48 hours to post an intro and introduce yourself in the ooc discord (the second part is optional).

i will be switching to a more formal/standardized activity check where you must make at least 2 in character posts on all your characters per week in order to stay off an activity check. if you are consistently on an activity check, we may deny additional characters. for new characters, an intro and one post is sufficant.

"but wait, taylor," you ask, "what if i have something that stops me from being active?" i completely understand if something comes up and you cannot be active, that brings us to our next topic: hiatuses.

if at any time, you need a hiatus for whatever reason, please reach out on the main (or the mun update channel on discord) and let me know what's going on (or even just a "hey i won't be on for x amount of days". if you are on hiatus, you may not pick up any additional characters.

#cornelia.update

[yohangsw]

hi babes, it’s me, ya girl charlie bringing you a second muse because i apparently have no self control to speak of. this time i am bringing you the lovely kim yohan. he’s 25 and is currently the main vocal and lead dancer for a group which has been on hiatus for a good long while and is probably going to disband soon after nine years. recently finished with military service and with his mother’s ailing helath, he’s found himself back on gwasuwon while his career is most likely thrown off the side of a cliff and burned with nothing he can do about it. 

as usual i will put a little more in depth stuff under the cut and if you would like to plot then please give this a like and i will come to you!

is an only child and was born on gwasuwon. his father is a surgeon on the island and his was a vet until recently when she had to take a break due to poor health. so most island residents probably know his family. 

decided that he wanted to perform. his parents tried to push him into medicine or anything else, but of course he didn’t listen. they eventually gave in and started taking him to auditions on the mainland. 

finally passed an audition and signed when he was twelve years old. four years later he was offered debut and eagerly took it. 

he’s the main vocal and lead dancer and took the stage name of han.( i have not come up with a name for the group so *awkward dances*)

his group was pretty big at debut, but with scandals kicking up after a couple of years and lots of extended hiatuses due to military service and other issues, the fanbase is basically non existent these days and comebacks rarely happen. and their company doesn’t seem to want to do anything to change that so it looks like disbandment is on the horizon. 

his parents are very proud. i mean very. when he debuted they literally told every single person they ever spoke to that their son was an idol. so it wouldn’t be surprising if any long-term residence of the island know him because his parents would not shut up about it. 

was marketed as the golden boy of the group and yohan does like to still keep up appearances. he is very nice and polite to everyone and always all sunshine and rainbows. 

incredibly not happy and frustrated about his current situation. he wants to keep performing and wants to stand on stage with his other members again but can’t. it all feels completely unfair but he doesn’t know what to do about it. 

just loves singing and making people happy. he knows he was born for it. even if he’s not on stage he is known for singing along to random songs on the radio in public in the middle of the supermarket. and he will never turn down karaoke night. never ever. he’d die before refusing to sing karaoke. 

when he’s feeling particularly down about things he busks and takes random requests from passers by. 

he’s only been back on the island for a couple of months at this point after his recent release from his mandatory service. 

#gsw:intro #it's also midnight so i am going to bed #so i will respond to everything tomorrow after a full fun day of work #rip

[ilhoonftw]

i wasnt around for earlier groups so idk but i think you see idols become more replaceable(?) because of how fast companies drop idols now, even if it's a good reason or the idols wanted to leave, i feel like it happaned a lot less before, they would put idols and groups on indefinite hiatuses instead and keep fans guessing. so many fourth gen groups already had lineup changes while barely being around

sorry anon i forgot to answer (had a terrible day)

basically to me it also has to do with how due to kpop becoming more popular overseas plus the rise of "stan" twitter the fans have easier access to information. i wouldn't say it happens that more often, to me it's rather we hear about it / are able to figure out something is off. in early 2010s you had so many groups release just two singles/titles and disappear with 0 information, the companies just gave up and most of the idols involved wouldn't have the chance to re-debut. out of 2013 debuts alone how many groups are still around? the hiatus stuff you mentioned earlier was imho due to lack of communication, like the companies didn't felt like they had to tell anyone it's over. while now groups have official sns accounts and any lack of updates is seen as a warning sign so they gotta have to say what's up. i mean with cclown i remember very well how it went down, or the maaany line up changes nine muses endured. i would say this stuff was always going on, idols in the eyes of their companies' executives were always seen as disposable tools. just now in the post produce 101 world it's just as more apparent as it is jarring. like look at mnet, they gladly disbanded ioi bc they were never interested in keeping them successful. it's easier to keep debuting new acts and drop them before the successful ones decide to re-negotiate their unfair contracts 🤷‍♂️ it made more sense for them to pump out new groups, they didn't care how oversaturated the market already was

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who 2022 Centenary Special Review: The Power of the Doctor

Air date: 23 October 2022

Way back in April, there was an apparent leak stating that the title of this episode would be called The Lives of the Doctor. That turned out to be a hoax fabricated by some people from the Doctor Who Discord server, but the name we have now is close enough to be similar, even though we already went through an “X of the Doctor” phase in 2013 for the 50th anniversary.

Well everyone, we have finally made it. After over 4 years (of which 2 years and 8 months consisted of EXTREMELY prolonged hiatuses), Jodie Whittaker’s final episode as the Thirteenth Doctor has finally aired. After that, we’re getting another EXTREMELY prolonged hiatus of 13 months until the 60th anniversary.

Before I make my final verdict on Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the Doctor and by extension, the Chibnall era of Doctor Who, let’s jump into the final episode and see whether any loose ends will be tied up.

Here is my spoiler-free thought for this episode and the final one for the Chibnall era: “Oof, Yaz favouritism overload.” Nah, it’s the final episode, we can do better. “Sometimes, rumours can come true and sometimes, things don’t always turn out the way you predicted.”

MAJOR spoilers continue after the break.

Year-long hubbub

This section was written before this episode was aired just to see whether this prediction comes true.

People might be wondering why they didn’t see Ncuti Gatwa debut as the Doctor and I can speculate a few reasons as to why. The filming for this special took place from 23 August to 15 October 2021. The news of Russell T Davies returning as the new showrunner was announced on 25 September 2021 and the crew were only notified of this the day before. Ncuti Gatwa was cast as the Doctor in February 2022 and the announcement was made on 8 May 2022. With these timeframes, it would have been impossible for Ncuti to have made an appearance in the Centenary Special, unless some strings were pulled to allow for this.

Also, I totally predicted back in the review for Legend of the Sea Devils that this episode would premiere on 23 October (as part of the BBC’s centenary week of programming that started on 22 October). I honestly wonder what it would have been like had the Centenary Special not been commissioned; would this episode have taken the place of the Easter Special (albeit a bit shorter), or would the Doctor have successfully sacrificed herself to stop the Sea Devils without Ji-Hun to take her place? I guess we’ll never know.

TV Zone revealed the air date for this episode on 2 October before the BBC released the trailer for the episode a week after. It’s really telling of the care factor that went into the promotion of the series (amongst other things regarding production) when an unofficial source revealed the air date of the episode before the BBC did. Maybe the air date was kind of predictable given that it is the BBC Centenary (and, as I stated previously, the Chibnall era seems to like putting episodes on Sundays), but fans should have gotten confirmation at least four to six weeks before the air date. For the record, the title was revealed in Doctor Who Magazine 582, released 15 September, over five weeks before the air date. Apparently the marketing got messed up due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the official title reveal got pushed to 21 September.

Grab onto the waves of time space

Somewhere in space, a train- oh great, they’re finally doing a DenLiner. Nah, not really, it’s a space train, not a time train, plus, if I had to pick between the TARDIS and the DenLiner, I’d pick the TARDIS. That’s the reason why Den-O got replaced with an original Rider in my personal project. Anyway...

Somewhere in space, a train belonging to the Torajii Transport Network makes an emergency transmission after it has been hijacked by Cybermen- no, Cyber-Time Lords- no, CyberMasters. The Doctor receives the transmission and heads down with Yaz and Dan. During this, they are confronted by the CyberMasters and one of them shoots a hole in Dan’s helmet, causing him to float away, though Yaz manages to hold onto him as the Doctor deactivates the electromagnetic roof, causing the CyberMasters to float away.

The Doctor, Yaz and Dan head into the train. While Dan uses the sonic screwdriver to take control of the train, Yaz helps one of the personnel with a wound while the Doctor goes to confront the CyberMasters, who manage to teleport away with some cargo the ship was carrying, namely- The Timeless Child? Nah, not really, we’ll come back to them, but that’s the first thought I had when I saw them.

After this, the Doctor takes Dan back to Liverpool in time for his date (presumably with Diane), but as he leaves, he stops and turns to tell the Doctor that she doesn’t have to come back for him, deciding that he doesn’t want to push his luck any further after the accident he had earlier. I honestly thought he’d stopped upon hearing that there was a child to be rescued, but I can understand why he would decide to leave. The Doctor and Yaz see Dan off before they head back into the TARDIS. You know, I’m pretty sure the Doctor picked Dan’s house up after it was shrunk by Karvanista’s trap, so you’d think she’d be able to find a way to restore it, but oh well.

That’s the last we see of Dan for this entire special. You know, you’ve got to admire his dedication for Diane, a woman who considers being ghosted worse than being kidnapped amidst a crisis threatening the universe. Also, remember what Jack Harkness said to Yaz in Revolution of the Daleks? “Being with the Doctor, you don’t get to choose when it stops. Whether you leave her, or she leaves you.” I think Dan’s departure is an exception in that he actually got to choose when he left the Doctor. He could have not said anything and the Doctor would pick him up again 24 hours later, though given what’s about to happen next, I suppose he made the right decision.

Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen

At an art gallery in 2022 London (not really the National Gallery, Somerset House maybe?), Ace learns that a painting has been taken down for restoration work after it was restored only two months prior. Yeah, I bet it was those climate protesters, who oh so conveniently came back when the pandemic was all but over and most of the world got vaccinated. Anyway, Ace contacts Tegan Jovanka over video chat and tells her that 15 paintings over the world have been taken down with no explanation. Tegan, who is in Romania, tells Ace that three seismologists she was looking for (among others) have disappeared while investigating a nearby earthquake near a volcanic chain. On top of that, Tegan discovered a package upon arriving at her cabin; inside was a Russian doll toy box with a card saying that it was from the Doctor and a doll, specifically the doll of the shrunken Lone Cyberman, Ashad.

In 1916, the Master, in disguise as Father Grigori Rasputin (who could ever have known) is called urgently to the Winter Palace from Siberia. As he compels the Tsar and his family to take some time away, the TARDIS lands on an extra planet in the shadow of Earth, where all the organic life has been converted into metal - let’s call it a Cyberplanet. They discover an extra TARDIS there, which is later revealed to a Type 75 belonging to the Master. Upon discovering another energy source on the surface, the Doctor and Yaz investigate and discover that the child has been tethered to the Cyberplanet alongside the Master’s TARDIS. The Doctor undoes the consciousness shield and discovers that the child is merely a visual filter for the quaranx, a rare source of sentient energy capable of powering planets and civilisations, now being used by the CyberMasters to power mass Cyber conversion.

As more CyberMasters appear and shoot at the Doctor and Yaz, they run back into the TARDIS to find a message from Kate Stewart calling them to UNIT. Upon arriving at UNIT HQ, the Doctor meets Tegan and Ace after so many years. Kate shows them all the situation; it is revealed that the paintings were taken down because they were defaced with the Master’s face. The Master has also left a message inviting the Doctor to the International Seismology Memorial Conference in Naples near Mount Vesuvius. Before she and Yaz leave, the Doctor greets Tegan and Ace with a touch on the shoulder, inadvertently shocking them with static electricity.

The Doctor and Yaz head to the conference to confront the Master, who has compressed all the seismologists with his TCE. The Master warns the Doctor to leave Earth or her existence will be erased forever, but UNIT troops come in and arrest the Master. The Doctor has one of the soldiers give Yaz a gun as they intend to take the Master back to UNIT HQ in the TARDIS.

Meanwhile, Vinder comes through a wormhole in search of the missing quaranx and crashes on the Cyberplanet, resulting in him being stranded as a result of the damage to his ship sustained by travelling through the wormhole. He decides to use the device the Doctor gave him to contact her.

After the Doctor drops the Master off at UNIT HQ, she leaves Tegan and Ace with Kate to guard the Master while she goes in search of a jaded Dalek who contacted her with an offer to destroy his kind and a warning that a Dalek invasion of Earth is imminent. Yaz gets a static shock from the Doctor during their conversation before they land inside a volcano in Bolivia. The Doctor and Yaz go their separate ways; the Doctor meets the jaded Dalek to extract the information he is offering her while Yaz discovers more Daleks attempting to harness the volcano’s power. Yaz makes it back to the TARDIS as three more Daleks find the Doctor; the jaded Dalek is exterminated while the other Daleks use its shell to capture the Doctor, leaving Yaz to set off in the TARDIS alone just as she receives Vinder’s call.

Back at UNIT HQ, Tegan and Ace notices that the Lone Cyberman doll is on the ground. As the Master confronts them through the camera system in his bunker, the doll expands to its normal size, revealing that he was the one who sent it to Tegan. The doll opens up and out come a group of Cybermen, including Ashad, who was apparently cloned. Tegan and Ace try to shoot the Cybermen with gold bullets but it fails, resulting in them having to run upstairs. Ashad kills all the soldiers in the bunker and releases the Master from his imprisonment. The Master recovers his TCE and teleports away.

In the Winter Palace, the Master brings the Doctor before him, the Daleks and the Cybermen, where we see the Master dancing to Boney M’s Rasputin in something that could only rival the Master dancing to the Rogue Traders’ Voodoo Child or the Scissor Sisters’ I Can’t Decide during the Series 3 finale two-parter. Meh, if I was the Master in that episode I’d be singing along as well plus including some ad-libbed dance moves from tokusatsu to zhuzh it up. The Master then makes contact with the TARDIS and has Yaz watch as he uses the Cyberplanet to force the Doctor to regenerate into him; or to put it a better way, I think he forced the Doctor to regenerate so he could hijack the regeneration and take over her body. Yaz lands the TARDIS in the Winter Palace and the Master, now in the Doctor’s body, proceeds to commandeer it. Landing on an asteroid (presumably), the Master heads outside to see the Earth and what I think could be the Cyberplanet (but judging how the other planet doesn’t even remotely resemble it, I think it could actually be Mondas) firing missiles at each other. The Master, intending to tarnish the Doctor’s name, tells a news camera drone that he (meaning the Doctor) caused this, but that is all he could do as Yaz pushes him out of the TARDIS and sets off.

All we need is “DRIVE”

The Doctor finds herself within her own consciousness at the Edge of Existence, where she meets a man sitting next to a telephone pole, namely the First Doctor, played by David Bradley, with his last appearance being in Peter Capaldi’s final episode, Twice Upon a Time, in 2017. During the sequence, the man is also shown becoming the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Fifth Doctors- wait, Fifth? Peter Davison? Didn’t he get cancelled back in 2017 for claiming that Jodie Whittaker’s casting meant that the Doctor would no longer be a role model for boys? Eh, I suppose people forgot about it even though he really meant no ill will towards the decision or the people involved in it. (For the record, I think that the Doctor has been a role model for ALL genders, as they say these days, and women have seen the Doctor as a role model even before Jodie Whittaker’s casting, just as some men may still see the Doctor as a role model now.)

The Doctors claim that the Thirteenth Doctor refuses to pass through the Edge of Existence, though they acknowledge that the Master has taken over her body and that they can’t let him permanently hijack their existence. The Thirteenth Doctor realises that there is always a way before she finds herself alone.

Back in the TARDIS, Yaz sees an AI hologram of the Doctor, activated through a nano-implant which was inserted into her, Ace and Tegan when they got static shocks from the Doctor. Yaz then goes to pick up Vinder from the Cyberplanet before telling the Doctor hologram about her forced regeneration, at which point she switches between faces as she tries to adapt to the new information.

At UNIT HQ, Kate locks down the building while Ace and Tegan prepare to jump off the roof, but Tegan decides to go back down and help Kate. As Ashad and the Cybermen proceed to convert the UNIT soldiers, Tegan meets back with Kate, who tells her to head to the basement and find the manual override for the structural termination system. Tegan heads off while Kate distracts the Cybermen by giving them an offer. Ace jumps off the roof and lands in the TARDIS just as Cybermen are shooting at her parachute. Yaz drops Ace off inside the volcano in Bolivia before she has Vinder hide as she goes to pick up the Master from the asteroid. Tegan’s hologram activates, but her emotional memory causes the hologram to become that of the Fifth Doctor, who gives her some reassuring words before she opens a panel into the lift shaft. Inside the volcano, Ace’s hologram activates and she reconciles with the Seventh Doctor after apparently having a falling-out offscreen. Ace sets off after this and runs into Graham, who is having trouble with his psychic paper, though I could pass it off as being ineffective on previous companions of the Doctor.

The Master takes the TARDIS back to the Winter Palace, where he orders the Daleks to activate volcanoes around the world. With help from a hologram of Ruth (the Fugitive Doctor) and Vinder, the CyberMasters are defeated and Yaz forces the Master back into the machine before harnessing the CyberMasters’ regeneration to degenerate the Doctor’s body back into her previous self and return the Master back to his body. The Ruth hologram disappears and the Doctor, Yaz and Vinder return to the TARDIS.

Ashad and the Cybermen find Kate, who allows herself to be taken for conversion. Tegan climbs down the lift shaft, but Ashad hears her and the Cybermen shoot through it, forcing her to let go and drop to the basement. Tegan manages to stop Kate from being converted, while at the same time causing Ashad and the Cybermen to be shocked. Meanwhile, Ace and Graham manage to blow up a Dalek and the disruptor pulse system before they escape in the TARDIS, the Doctor having flown in to pick them up. The bombs detonate, taking the volcano and the Daleks with it. Tegan and Kate escape from the building as it is destroyed (a building that size you’d think would cause more destruction) and the Doctor picks them up as well.

Come on and feel the Nexus Future

As the Master stumbles out of the Winter Palace, the Doctor heads back to the Cyberplanet and puts Graham, Yaz, Tegan, Ace and Kate around the TARDIS before heading out and fixing Vinder’s ship. She then goes into the Master’s TARDIS and links it with her TARDIS, transporting it to 2022 while Vinder leaves through the wormhole. The Doctor then uses the Cyber conversion systems to freeze the lava into steel, quelling the eruptions.

The Doctor heads out and tells the quaranx to disintegrate the Cyberplanet before freeing itself. She is about to head back to her TARDIS when the Master, whose body began failing from the previous ordeal, teleports back to his TARDIS, using the TCE to aim the quaranx’s energy at her before collapsing. Yaz picks up the Doctor and takes her back into the TARDIS before leaving as the Cyberplanet fully disintegrates and the quaranx goes free.

The Doctor regains consciousness after Yaz took everyone else home (or rather, Croydon, but don’t worry, with transport being so advanced in London these days, plus Ubers being a thing, I’m sure they managed to get home easily). As the Cloister Bell rings, Yaz and the Doctor discover that the latter is regenerating. The two of them enjoy a final view of Earth over some ice cream before the Doctor decides that she must be alone and drops Yaz off, presumably in Sheffield, and leaving without a goodbye. And they never got to kiss lol.

Yaz encounters Graham and Dan, a month having passed since Dan’s return, and they take her to a Doctor’s Companions Anonymous meetup, where they are joined by Tegan, Ace, Kate and additionally, Jo Jones, Melanie Bush and Ian Chesterton.

The Doctor takes the TARDIS atop a cliff, and after some final words, she regenerates (with her clothes as well?) into... David Tennant? I mean, we know he’s coming back for the 60th, but this is honestly just fan-wanky and admittedly, this is something I’d expect from fan theories. Well, now we know that RTD isn’t rebooting the franchise, but continuing it, albeit sweeping the Timeless Child revelation under the rug. Also, this was kind of expected given what I mentioned earlier about the next Doctor not being cast yet at the time of filming.

Random expectations

So over the past year, I’ve seen rumours about this special here and there and I want to address some random things.

Yaz was apparently going to be shown back with the police, which would be a serious regression of her character because she barely went back to the force ever since she started travelling with the Doctor. It was for the best that Yaz quit the police given these circumstances.

I’d read somewhere that the Doctor was going to have to wipe Yaz’s mind (along with Tegan’s and Ace’s) because her travels were affecting the stability of the timeline (hence the static shocks in the episode) and in doing so, it would give the Thasmin stans the kiss they were looking for. Frankly, if this was the case, it would be an insult to her character (and possibly Tegan’s and Ace’s) because it completely negates her journey and what little character development she got (and on top of that, destroying more Doctor Who canon established by other people over 30 years ago). This would be like when the Doctor wiped Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan’s minds back in Spyfall Part Two, but a hundred times worse. The only time a memory wipe was justified was with Donna Noble in Series 4.

Given what little information we got about the 60th Anniversary, some people (including myself) presumed that it would be a reboot and that this episode would end on the Doctor’s regeneration with a fade to black. In fact, given that the production didn’t know about RTD taking over as showrunner until a month into filming the episode, I think that it would have been the case had it not happened. Honestly, I’m kind of glad that they at least got David Tennant back for it because it’d end up being a situation where others would have to address a missing regeneration somewhere down the line.

Also, if the teaser we got at the end of the episode was any indication, the RTD2 era is going to continue with the Univisium 2:1 ratio instead of going back to 16:9 widescreen. Not a big problem in the end, but still.

So, the BBC has confirmed that David Tennant is now the Fourteenth Doctor (in addition to being the Tenth Doctor) and that Ncuti Gatwa will be playing the Fifteenth Doctor. Three specials are due to air in November 2023 before Ncuti’s first episode is expected to premiere “over the festive period” in 2023 (please there be a Christmas Special, please). With this, I would also like to announce that I intend to continue reviewing new Doctor Who episodes in the RTD2 era and hopefully beyond, even if only for the content. I’ll explain this in my final wrap-up post for the Chibnall era, but RTD’s return has given me a renewed hope in a series that has seen better days. Anyway, that’s beyond the scope of this review series for now. Let’s quickly wrap up the review.

UPDATE - 19 November 2022: So news about the production of the regeneration scene has come out since broadcast and I'd like to discuss it. David Tennant’s portion of the regeneration scene was filmed on 13 May 2022, seven months after filming on the whole special wrapped. It was filmed in a greenscreen studio with the help of a stand-in and the scene was directed by Rachel Talalay, who was also directing one of the 60th Anniversary Specials as well.

RTD has explained the reason why the Doctor’s clothes regenerated with them as well, saying that he was certain that it had to happen because the notion of drag can be delicate and David Tennant wearing the Thirteenth Doctor’s clothes would be a mockery of the culture. Also, he was worried that the media would focus on it and that it would be weaponised by people. On one hand I can understand this, as the scene was a big moment for the franchise and David Tennant wearing the Thirteenth Doctor’s clothes, while natural, can look a little silly, plus there was precedent for this during the first regeneration in 1966, which was presumably written off as a production error. On the other hand, however, the Master was shown in the Doctor’s outfit when he took over her body and barely anyone kicked up a stink about it. Also, all arguments aside, crossdressing isn’t necessarily drag culture, meaning that RTD did this because he was afraid of the scene being shown as “drag blackface”. It’s not like they couldn’t show David Tennant wearing the Thirteenth Doctor’s clothes and then reveal his new outfit soon after. I hope RTD has an in-universe explanation for this, or it’ll just get left unexplained and I’ll be disappointed.

Also, if I haven’t pointed this out already, the whole regeneration sequence was filmed in a greenscreen studio, with the scenery being filmed at Durdle Door in Dorset using drones. The owners of the estate where Durdle Door sits have complained to the BBC for being dishonest about the filming of the scene, saying that it would attract people to the dangerous landmark and possibly jump into the water, like any normal person would even consider it in the first place until the media highlighted it.

Other general thoughts

Like many others, I was surprised to see all the previous Doctors returning for this special. If it weren’t for Ruth’s introduction and the Timeless Child arc, I’d have the Eighth Doctor in place of Ruth for that scene in the Winter Palace. He honestly deserves more screentime if the BBC won’t give him a mini-series.

They changed the font used for the locations again. It’s not that jarring, I’ll give it that, but the thing that’s even more jarring is that they couldn’t be consistent with their fonts for four years.

Ryan is mentioned to be in Patagonia after the Doctor picks up Graham. Such a shame he couldn’t return for at least one more appearance.

When the Doctor sees the Dalek appear in her TARDIS, she tells it that it is “the first Dalek to ever mean that”. Has she forgotten Rusty already?

“The Master’s Dalek Plan” is also the name of a Big Finish audio featuring Derek Jacobi as the Time War Master.

I feel like Sacha Dhawan could have gotten the opening titles credit instead of John Bishop given how Dan leaves the TARDIS soon after.

The Master gives himself a gold star and a sticker upon seeing the destruction between Earth and the other planet (probably Mondas). If I had to really count it, I’ll just assume it’s 15 points. Such a shame the Doctor stopped giving out points.

In the Doctor’s Companions Anonymous scene, there is an extra chair with an iPad on it, as someone on Twitter pointed out. In the replies, someone thought that it was meant to be for Ryan, while another thought that it could be for Polly Wright. Fun fact, Anneke Wills, who played Polly, was invited to reprise her role for this scene but she declined as she wanted to tend to her garden instead. Also, Chris Chibnall mentioned to the Mirror that Tom Baker was also invited for a cameo but he presumably declined due to his age. Amusingly, some people mentioned that the iPad belonged to Dan and amusingly, in the quote tweets, I found a link to a Twitter for Dan’s iPad. Whoever runs that page made the next Evil Dan, I swear.

Earlier in October, Bonnie Langford, who played Mel, was announced to be reprising her role, but we didn’t expect to see her in this episode. I assume that she would be returning in the RTD2 era and I hope that’s still the case.

The way that Tegan and Ace were reintroduced in this episode is quite weird. They state that it has been 30-40 years since they last saw the Doctor, though this disregards all the times they met the Doctor again since their departures, whether it be through Big Finish audios or prose. This is particularly the case for Ace as it is assumed she continued travelling with the Doctor after the classic series ended in 1989, though the 2020 book, At Childhood’s End, written by Sophie Aldred who played Ace (and also shows Ace meeting the Thirteenth Doctor and her fam), acknowledges all her adventures as being possible futures. That story also apparently explains the origin of Ace’s falling-out with the Doctor, though the Seventh Doctor Big Finish audio Dark Universe, also released in 2020, could come in at a close second. I won’t blame Chibnall that much for not doing his research, but if I were writing the episode, I would have read the wiki and found a way to acknowledge the adventures in the extended universe(s).

Fun fact unrelated to this episode but related to the classic series: Tegan, an Australian companion, was introduced as a way to make Doctor Who more attractive to the ABC in an attempt to get them to invest in Doctor Who, though they were not interested in a co-production deal in the end. She was also introduced as a replacement for Romana when the actresses for Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) and Leela (Louise Jameson) were unable to reprise their roles. Oh, an additional fun fact; I knew someone in primary school and high school who was named after Tegan and her younger sister was named after Nyssa.

Summary and verdict

Well, I’ve got to hand it to Chibnall. Admittedly, he promised an epic episode and we got an epic episode, though that can be said for a lot of finales. This feels like one of his better episodes even with the memberberry nostalgia baiting or the fanwanky ending, but I’m not forgetting what he did to this series so easily. It feels on par with an anniversary special, but it’s basically just The Day of the Doctor on another scale so it would kind of feel shallow if this was the actual 60th Anniversary episode. This could have premiered on 23 November for the 59th Anniversary and it would still have the same effect.

Dan left the TARDIS 10 minutes into the episode and the leaving companions near the end felt a bit rushed, but Graham’s reappearance in the last half-hour and the Doctor’s Companions Anonymous meeting really make up for it. Yaz got some time to shine, even without having much in the way of character development. Ruth makes an appearance as well which is good, but we get no resolution to the Timeless Child arc or Ruth’s place in the Doctor’s timeline after Chibnall pussied out of the double-down at the end of Flux. Kate gets the screentime and involvement she deserved after lacking it in Flux, plus the returning companions and Doctors were a really nice touch.

I came into this episode with the expectation that I would have to give it a negative score, but it got subverted because it didn’t mention the Timeless Child at all. It’s almost like you don’t have to disrespect nearly 60 years of canon to tell a good story. I just wish we got this quality of writing over the last five years instead of what we got.

Rating: 7/10 Series 13 cumulative total (with Legend of the Sea Devils): 11/80 (14%) Series 13 cumulative total (with The Power of the Doctor): 18/90 (20%) Hypothetical total: 47/90 (52%) Conservative total: 27/90 (30%)

I wanted to give Chibnall credit for all the memberberries, but I don’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt given how I said I’d be reviewing this series more critically last year.

And so, we have finally reached the end after 4 long years. There won’t be any new episodes until the 60th Anniversary Specials in November 2023, but I’ve still got Doctor Who-related things lined up for this blog, such as Kisekae Insights and Doctor Who 10 for 10 (which has had to be pushed back to next year because I’ve been so busy this year finishing off Kamen Rider Zi-O for my personal project). In the meantime, I have one final post in the works to round off the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews series, so stay tuned one last time as I bookend this series with a recap of my reviews and my closing thoughts on the Chibnall era of Doctor Who.

#doctor who #doctor who series 13 #doctor who flux #thirteenth doctor #doctor who series 13 review #doctor who flux review #thirteenth doctor review

[zumpietoo]

Haha I had a feeling once it was clear BH weren’t happening (at least in the way they want), they would try to pin it on Cole. Well can she please explain if Cole is the Bully why does Cole seem to avoid them and their homes/events for the most part (with sometimes in the past KJ has been an exception). Yet many of the cast seem to show up where Cole and his friends hang out. If he was such a bully why would they do that. As you, petals and previous anons have said, try to at least make your bs be consistent and make sense. Further, there is no evidence of Cole bullying Lili other than your fake insiders but we do have Lili pulling on his shirt while he looks hella uncomfortable and as you said her throwing something at him hard on camera. Where is your evidences jmas ?

Oh yeah.....and LBR, it was always moar of KokeJ glomming onto Cole than the other way around, so yeah....funny how everybody is desperate to chill with the evvolll bully. Also love the back to Luke was a saint, narrative.....cuz, yes, it's sad he died, but nooo....

(Now to completely hijack this shit)

Meanwhile, their allusions to Lipstick Alley (even moar hilarious as a credible source, 5 bitter lesbians sulking cuz Cole gets moar pussy than they do....while still preferring PP with dudes over chicks....cuz, LBR, just usual self inserting PPstans) sent me searching for some info there....Andddddd.....

I continue to loooovvvvveee how reality and time keep proving them all wrong:

Apparently in fall 2020 Cole was "put on notice to shape up or ship out" by Plaiderdale.....they "didn't know if this meant clean up/get sober, stop fucking around with endless wimmins or lose weight, but it was def totes true!!!".

This was also, apparently, merely a twitter rumor and, ofc, complete bullshit.

I was also FASCINATED to learn I was then sending rumors to DM, way before I sent the one about GymD cheating (no, I didn't, just saying)...including how Cole and PP were always splitting up during hiatus, but would then reconcile once the show resumed, cuz Pee Arr...AND that other, moar knowledgeable "insiders" had contradicted this, but DM refused to publish it....

Ummm.....dudes, while, yes, we now all KNOW they were, apparently, endlessly splitting up (as confirming by RAS, himself), I am the last person to have everrrrr stated it was remotely "for Pee Arr"....plus, yes, clearly, they did only last as long as they did, because secluded/on the same show/etc (as Cole himself alluded to recently), in no way was it pretend or following any sort of schedule. And we know they spent time together during hiatuses...(unlike the rest of the cast).

AND this was before I even followed DM....and only earlier this AM, I asked how one submits shit there in the first place....

I am also, apparently, "insane/crazy" entirely because I prefer Cole to PP....which, dude..

A) in no way does preferring one celeb, for whatever reason make one "insane"

B) Honestly, again, why TF would you prefer PP, who gleefully shares her assholery, substance abuse, promiscuity (which is entirely her business, buuuutt....if you criticize Cole for imaginary shit, you gotta drag her for real) and nutbar antics, as well as shilling her cult and generally being a fairly shitty person over Cole, who's a perfectly decent guy? Because he's "an abuser"----which is the unsubstantiated/wholely debunked defamation by a bitter, fully admitted as mentally ill ex? Or is because he dumped that loon and the next loon, when he finally found the strength to do so?

I mean, really, at most/worst, you could say he haD terrible taste in partners, gravitating towards, literally, nu versions of his hot mess mommeee....which he seems to have admitted (at least to himself) and worked on, ultimately breaking the pattern....

Which is to be lauded....

C) I'm also NOT the one making up shit (both IRL and on the show) and then pretending I "got it from an insider", only to be fully disproven, over and over again....I've long been moar towards doing the detective work, myself...anyway....In fact, shouldn't the "crazy" peeps be the ones who keep being outed as full bore liars?

[krpsaid]

The members who approached us about this said they found it both uncomfortable and unfair that you were skirting around the activity checks/activity standards set in the roleplay, and of course we had to follow up on these complaints by seeking further clarification from you. // Not op but I am in wisteria and have witnessed this issue, if speaking a just FEW TIMES over the course of a week during a semi hiatus is making people uncomfortable, especially during a week that you DO NOT have a formal activity check, you should put it in your rules that you absolutely should not be active under no circumstance during that time period instead of forcibly removing hiatuses with apparently no prior warning, because you didn’t seek clarification, you simply removed it. I can absolutely see why people are saying you’re going to become your own downfall.

#anonymous

[generalb]

I just experienced the worst pain. An ao3 story that hasn’t updated no months just got an new chapter……….about the author going on hiatus!!!!!!!!! Apparently they’re “burnt out on this one” you know, the one they haven’t touched in ages. Like I’m fine with this by all means I’m an experienced CoryxKenshin fan I’m used to hiatuses. But how you gonna start a hiatus IN the current hiatus?

#ao3 fanfic #ao3 woes #woes #fanfiction woes #ao3 hiatus

[wickymicky]

Fire Saturday isnt bad, i’ll listen to it more

#their budget seems to have went waaaaaayyyyy down which is understandable given their situation #luckily they avoided having a full year hiatus... but only by a month #full year hiatuses are all the rage these days. apparently :( #my least favorite trend #weki meki cignature nature elris (who may have disbanded? its unclear) dreamnote (just ended finally) bvndit and almost secret number #and probably a bunch more i forgot or couldnt fit in one tag #but yeah anyway #its not bad #the new members seem good #one of them was on pd48 (and so was jinny) but i dont remember her #its been a while

[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 30

Did your main characters change as you wrote them? Was that the plan or did they surprise you?

for @the-wip-project 

As a 60% pantser, yes to all of the above. I usually try to leave room for characters to develop, because I don’t always have a firm idea of how I want them to change over the course of the story. 

There’s usually a basic concept, but sometimes I love the challenge of trying to subvert expectations, particularly when it comes to traditional ‘heroic’ arcs.

Sure, there’s some weirdness here with some of my fic characters, bc I’m coming back to things that have been on multi-year hiatuses, so you’d think they’ve matured - or my writing has fundamentally changed. I’m not entirely sure yet. I can certainly see ways my writing has developed and perhaps improved in structure and technicality, but the people - fictional as they may be - seem to step out of stasis and be as fresh as ever... mostly. If there have been changes over hiatus, I think it’s to do with my viewpoints and how my choices intersect with the changes to character portrayal.

Something that’s been apparent to me is that Merien is a more political Tabris than she used to be... probably because the author suffered through four years of the t*ump era and/or the ongoing circus of bojo haram in the meantime.**

Some things that I used to shy from in fiction I probably grapple with more readily now, and some things I used to handwave as passable character flaws (*cough*Tobias Hawke and his casual ableism/biphobia/misogyny, bc I love him but he’s kind of a prick*cough*totally not based on an amalgam of people I’ve known*cough*) I now scale back, not from a fear of cancel culture but bc society as it now is just has no need of extra casual -isms. It costs nothing not to normalise something negative and all that. I know that was always true, but lemme have my growth.

I feel like I’m lucky to have this opportunity to redux and revisit older work as I finish it, as it’s not just nostalgic but also pretty instructive, and has got me thinking about creative process as well. 

Too often, I’ve been rigid in what a character’s role is, because I’ve written a lot of pretty rigid genre fiction. Like, this is exactly the role and no more. It’s only in my own work “for fun” I’ve given things more free rein and not been on super tight deadlines etc. 

...And it’s showed. When I wrote commercial cishet romance, at least one publisher I worked for had a very strict and extremely traditional house style. I wasn’t allowed to write women who were too gnc... hell, once I had to revise a character’s hair color from brown to blonde bc she was ‘too plain’(!) and the male character wasn’t allowed to a) be under 6′ tall or b) have any ‘physical imperfection’ (I’d given him a knee injury from sportsball bc he was a big soft jock but also clumsy. ...he wasn’t allowed to be clumsy either. Sigh.)

They were cardboard people, wholly neutered. 

Perfection is so dull to me. I want to read and write characters who feel like real people, who are neurotic messes some of the time, and spend too long pulling themselves together, or make bad choices or stupid decisions because of very relatable reasons. 

Some of the best feedback I’ve ever got on my writing has been people saying ‘wow, I was screaming at those characters’ - not the writing, not my choices, but the characters’ choices. If you can trip that balance, you’ve made something that feels real. 

In fic writing, I’m enjoying kicking back and letting my MCs’ autonomy and development surprise me a bit more. That certainly didn’t go to plan before with Merien, who ended up basically having an entire Walpurgisnacht for about 2/3 of vol 4 of FoD (including borderline fucking up her LI because of internalised Things and a wholly irrational desire to prove herself to the Dalish)... that needs paring back and fixing a little, because it drags too hard, but in my defence my life was imploding at the time, hence then falling into hiatus. 

On a more level playing field, though, I love the things I learn and I’m excited to see the directions things might take.

_________________________________________

**Note for clarity: yes, I’m in Europe ~ohwaitnotanymorefuckbrexit~ but my partner’s American and I had the joy of being over there in 2016 and ‘18-19, aside from t*ump affecting us all globally. Real things that happened: so many lawn signs. people taking angry creepshots of us and complaining. One dude was so mad he accidentally backed his car into a wall in a walmart parking lot, which was every bit as hilarious as it sounds. unclear where the anger originated: partner being mixed race/enby, me being a greenhaired weirdo, or both, but jfc. you guys have a beautiful country; we just need to get the morons dealt with. /endrant

#100daysofwriting #writeblurble #personal

[sparring-spirals]

Apparently "I cant sleep" translates to "I should backtrack through my posts to add "found family" as its own tag", so some fun observations I got from that.

- Y'all, the M9 cranked up the Found Family vibes REALLY HARD during Rumblecusp. Like, its kind of astounding. They were always veering in the general direction, but, wow. I think cast came back from hiatus like "I haven't been able to see you all in person for ages and I'll be DAMNED if I don't express my love through the game."

- Trekking through my "#mighty nein" tag (which is how I was trying to find posts to tag) is like a speedrun of their grandest bullshit. Very enjoyable. "they lost the ship bc turtle ate it" "they are harassing people" "they invented water skiiing" "they all slept in a tree and then fell out" "they flew into mouth of dreadmoor??????". Excellent. Love these idiots.

-Posts about the M9 regarding each other as family primarily spike after a- Very wholesome, heartwarming things, and b- Extremely tragic, awful things. What a roller coaster to go through.

- I forgot that I had been drifting in and out on hiatuses for a time, until episode 92. Like. Episode 92 was the first episode I sat down and watched live since about, idk, 84? 82? I came back and then just got SMACKED with the Thoreau confrontation. What a time. And then 93 was The Cupcake and 94 was the Artagan reveal..... those were a wild 3 weeks.

- I think I didn't start tagging episodes consistently until about episode 69, which- haha nice. But also, damn. Makes the stuff from earlier significantly trickier to navigate. Someday I'll go back and try to sort that out. Maybe.

- Seriously, its almost inconcievable that around like- episode 70ish! There was still so much discussion about the way the Nein refused to prod too much at each others secrets, still didn't want to open up. I feel like the loss- and then re-finding of Yasha- (and everything in between, Fjord's reveal included) were hugely significant for all of their arcs.

- I really, really need to watch episodes 86-91 at some point.

#the mighty nein #spar speaks #critical role #meta #? #i was going back and forth on maintagging this because this is mostly. me content #but i think the m9 insights are enough to justify. right?? #character meta #found family #kind of

[popculturebuffet]

Top 13 Venture Bros Episodes!

In honor of it’s recent passing I take a look at the best episodes of easily one of the best adult animated, or animated period, shows ever and one of my faviorites. Join me as I look back on Grand Galactic High  Inquistors, Venturestiens, ninja filled first dates, Noir, super science garage sales and much more under the cut, and GO TEAM VENTURE!

As I said in the teaser.. the Venture Bros is one of my favorite shows of all time. Starting way back in 2003, the show created by Jackson “Christopher Mculloch” Publick and from mid season 1 onwards cowritten, plotted and what have you by his best friend and creative soulmate Doc Hammer, the show enjoyed a healthy 17 year run on adult swim, making it the longest standing show and despite the years of hiatuses between episodes it’s most popular till Rick and Morty came around. The show endured through changing trends in animation, network shifts and scabies until it’s recently announced, though apparently having happened months ago, cancellation.  I watched the show from the start, sneaking it as a boy and by my teen years watching it every week online through Adult Swim’s website and lapping up every episode, becoming a huge fan in the process and continuing my huge love of the series through the rest of it’s life, breifly forgetting to watch season 6 but getting back to it weekly for the 7th, and currently unless adult swim does indeed find a way to bring it back, final season. This show has been a part of my life since it started, and a part of me for slightly less long: it informed my sense of humor, probably informed my comics taste in ragtag groups consiting of lesser known characters, and informed me david bowie existed for which my life will ever be better.  It was a part of me and while I gave it a breif memorial earlier I felt after my long content hiatus due to my moven to another room, and for the 1 of you reading this who reads my amphibia weekly coverage it’ll be back shortly, that honoring a show that gave me so much and made me who I am, in a good way I know i’m kind of a mess so that statment could be seen as a threat in some states, by diving into my faviorite episodes of it and the ones I honeslty consider i’ts finest half hours.. or hours in two cases but we’ll get to that. 

For now it’s time to have your ro-bo pour you a red mocho cooler, slap on your vintage batman mask, and eat some pennies quizboys, this is my top 13 venture bros episodes. Pitter Patter!

13. It Happening One Night (Season 6, Episode 6) 

Season 6 had a huge burst of fresh energy and ideas: Doc and Jackson moved the show to New York for a number of reasons: To shake things up, because they lived there and thus could inject the energy of a city they loved in and because one of the series biggets inspriations is marvel comics, as seen by the sheer number of marvel parodies and homages in comparison to dc or other superhero outlets, so having New York be the big hub for superhero and villian activity in the ventureverse was a no brainer. This also moved the ventures from an isolated corner of the Ventureverse on their old compound, which burned down in the gargantua 2 special, right into the heart of it, bringing in tons of new characters to the already large cast. Not only that but it thrust our heroes and villian protaganists both into new and intresting situations: Doctor Venture was suddenly rich and running his own think tank with white and billy. Dean was going to college, Hank found a love intrest in Serena, more on that obviously in a second, Brock returned to the team proper as bodyguard once more, while the Monarch grappled with both his father being a hero and his wife being promoted and their marraige hitting choppy waters. It had great new characters like warina and serena, brought fan faviorite brown widow in if not as much as i’d like frankly, but there’s always room for nathan fillion, and freshened things up a bit.  Granted one of Venture Bros biggest strengths was it didn’t have the rigid status quo, or entire lack of any continuity a lot of animated shows at the time and even now have, that things changed and evolved and the universe was dense as it was wonderful. But here instead of just moving the pieces around the board and maybe slapping on some new coats of pait, they threw the board up and put the pieces on an enitrley new one. However all this experimentation did nick the show a little: while it was a step up from the rather standard outside of Dean’s plot Season 5 (which not concendtially is the only season not represented here), it also felt like the plots were a bit looser and some characters like Dermott and Dr. Orpheous, one of whom had a huge untouched subplot and the other who was a beloved fan faviorite and fixture of the show since season 1, got left out all together. It was a decent season it just felt lacking at times, and the Monarch and Shielda’s relationship disolving wasn’t at all fun to watch and thankfully got resolved next season. And that was the other problem: Due to wanting to give their big epic finale the room it needed and only having 8 episodes to work with due to the special, they had to move it to next season which meant it just sorta.. ended with most things left unresolved till season 7. Thankfully for me I didn’t get around to watching this season till close to 7, but for everyone else they had to wait YEARS for a proper resolution. It was  a mixed bag of a season, the mass changes leading to growing pains, but it had it’s moments. And naturally our one season 6 representivie here is it’s finest. 

It Happening One Night juggles two diffrent but equally awesome plots. In the first Hank goes on his first date with Serena, their new next door neighbor and daughter of big villain in town, new councilman and combination of kingpin and tobias whale, Wide Whale. Serena was one of the best additions to the series, voiced by a game Cristini Miloti, she’s a no nonsense girl with a sharp tounge, an annoyance with her father and his number 2 rocko’s overprotectivness of her and gills and meshes well with hank: Her no nonsense and more down to earth attitude compliments his up int he clouds weirdness and lack of reality really well and the two were cute together. Were... while they’d do.. things I did not like.. with her character next season, for this one she’s great and a fine addition and it was nice to give one of the boys a proper love interest, while also having her be her own person. Sure all her plots centered around hank.. but she still felt like a fully realized addition to the cast and given this was over a decade in with so many great members it wasn’t an easy task.  The date is paticuarlly hank as he has a carraige (his air car) ready, has dean chauffer them, has Billy and White show up as street toughs to challenge him to a dance off and dinner is at a ninja themed restraunt Dean’s friend Jared, aka brown widow, works at. It’s really adorable and charming stuff, and the two genuinely bond, and Hank gets some good character stuff. He genuinely worries Serena is only intrested to piss off her dad.. but fins she likes him for who he is: his charm, his lack of fear, and the fact he went so far for a romantic gesture he had his friends dress up as street toughs, or the hank venture idea of one anyway, and get into a dance off just to impress. her. it’s really good stuff. The Ninja themed restraunt is also both hilarious and apparently a very real thing the creators actually toned down. I’m unsuprised by all of this. The two also dodge their bodyguards, Brock and Rocco and share a romantic kiss underwater leading to the above. It’s a really good plot and the easy reason why I put it on here and defintely a review cantidate.  The other plot however is just pure comedy and invention. While the Monarch works on his plan to use his dad’s blue morpho guise to take out the other arches on his way to venture, Venture is plauged by the utterly bizzare and utterly delightful Doom Factory: A combination of Andy Warhol and his hangers on and the legion of doom... yes this actually happened. While I know nothing of Warhol and thus a lot of it flew over my head, it’s made up for by the sheer joyous lunacy of having the art school version of the legion of doom arch rusty by invading his house, throwing a party and taking various pictures of him in his underwear. The one mistep of the episode is them getting blown up at the end despite being great, but their one apperance was a treat, and it was such a great and bizzarely speific parody I couldn’t help but love it. It was a good night indeed. 

12. Tag Sale, You’re It! (Season 1, Episode 6 (10 in airing order) Season 1 of The Venture Bros is a bit rocky. It’s not unusual for season 1′s but it’s understandable, espcesially now i’ve read Go Team Venture!: The Art of the Venture Bros, the art book for the series as well as a full on making of for seasons 1-6, and know the team was under immense crunch to get the season done and is likely the reason every season after had a few years between them. But yeah at the start the series was more of a broad comedy, with the characters being the simiplest versions of their characters, the boys in paticular only having “jock and nerd” as things that defined them as seperate people early on and it took a bit for things to come together. However things really started to crystalize into what the show would truly be with two episodes. One we’ll get to later but the other is this one: Tag Sale Your It.  Tag Sale started one of my faviorite recurring themes for the series: Venture Compound Episodes. Basically their episodes where a huge pile of the shows cast get together at the venture compound for whatever reason and chaos, great jokes and great worldbuilding inveitbly insues. It’s good stuff. And it’s usually centerted around a great concept.  In this case all the villians and heroes of the world are gathering at the Venture Compound for of all things, a Garage Sale. Or Tag Sale as it’s called in the title or Yard Sale as Venutre himself calls it. In order to make a quick buck and get rid of some of his dad’s excess scientific wonders, Rusty’s sellling them off to whatever weirdo wants em. it’s an utterly hilarious concept, with Brock complaning about the security risk and the fact Doc is entirely convinced this won’t go horribly wrong despite the fact he has a bargin bin for death rays, one of my faviorite gags of the episode. But there’s still plenty of sense here too: There’s what i’m presuming are OSI agents on standbye, who also screen the various villians to have them check their weapons. 

The episode also opens the cast up considerably introducing Phantom Limb, and fleshing out Billy and Pete, as well as being the episode where two of the casts standouts came into their own as 21 and 24 go off on their own misadventur where 21 uses the monarchs money to buy what turns out ot bea non working lightsaber and tries to fight brock in one of the best scenes of the episode.  Speaking of the Monarch, . The Monarch himself is there to cause miscihief, as usual, as well as have his minons buy him some stuff because he’s not going to miss a bargin, and finds himself struggling to get his hate boner up in a neat subplot, eventually acheiving it even if it gets him stuck to the celing However the other two subplots really shine. Orpheous in a micro plot, and after yelling at Dr. Venture for trying to sell the weed wacker he borrowed from Oprheous, tries to get his own nemisis, a thread that would continue at the end of the season and into the next, having a ghost slap the monarch ot try and get him to become Orpheous arch and telling various villians he’s blasting who they can blame if they want to swear vegnance. It’s short but really funny.  The other however is my faviorite and the plot that really set up hank’s bizzarely and uniquely him personality, which would be expanded on more as the show went on. Annoyed that their dad is selling their old things and getting the money, Hank decides to get him and Dean a piece of the action and sets up his own grinder and lemonade stand, Hank Co, starting the sparkling runner of his bizzare personal buisness, and while the lemonade stand is standard kids stuff, the added oddly specific addition of grinders is what makes it hank as is his oddly agreesive managment style. Dean ends up working for him alongside HELPEr, while Dean awkwardly talks up Orpheous daughter triana. More on that whole thing in a later entry, with Triana joining in. It’s just a fun side bit that ends hilariously as, when the sale cascades into an orgy of violence as it was always destined to, the rest of the team book it while Hank definatly refuses to get knocked down before a shoe hits him. 

IT’s a damn fun time that sets up the backbone of the show’s universe. Nuff Said. 

11. Pinstripes and Poltergeists (Season 4, Episode 8)  Season 4 is easily my faviorite season hands down, and in my opinion the best, in part helped by the fact it’s the longest and thus had the most time to work on it. Like season 6, if on a smaller scale, it threw up the table. While Season 2 and 3 had status quo changes, the Monarch being on his own without the guild or dr girlfriend and then the newly married couple being forced to arch eleswhere this one had probably the biggets shakeups: Brock Sampson left team venture, and was MIA for all but two episodes of the first half, Sgt. Hatred took over as boydguard a move that wasn’t one of there best as while Hatred could be funny at times.. replacing one of the show’s most beloved and most iconic characters with a reformed pedophile who fans already didn’t like all that much in season 3 wasn’t one of Jackson and Doc’s smarter moves let’s be honest. Again he has his moments, but he just wasn’t as compelling or well fleshed out as the rest of hte main cast, helper included.  The other big swing, one admitted in the making of art book that was an intentional risk, was killing off 24, half of the beloved buddy duo of 21  and 24. However this one paid off way better, as 21, while still a husky dork who loves his crappy job, reinvented himself in the wake of hte tragedy, turning a lot of his blubber into muscle (And I say that as a chub myself, so relax), and becoming the badass drill seargent of the cocoon.  But both big changes expertly dovetailed into this episode which explains where brock was after the premiere. The ball gets rolling when the Monarch goes to see Monstroso, a great addition to the series and the sum of all evil lawyer jokes, a lawyer in a pinstripe suit and small devil hood who makes deals with other supervillians, in this case to buy up part of the venture compound to take it from Rusty.   Naturally making a deal with a lawyer super villian who dresses like the devil, every bit of that sentence a red flag, goes poorly. As Shiela points out in one of the series best lines as she berates her husband’s terrible decision making “Monstro’s a lawyer that’s also a super villian. That’s like a shark with a rocket launcher strapped to his head, and the monstroso plans to take the monarch’s stuff as well. It falls to 21 to stop him and 21 is on the venture compound to find our missiing sampson and get answers on who killed his best friend, whose also following him around possibly as a ghost/hallucination.  Speaking of Brock, when exploring a shack on the edge of the property to use it for stuff, Rusty finds instead the base for SPHINX, consiting of Hunter Gathers (Who I hope gets to retransition someday), gay icon Shore Leave, and Brock Himself. Turns out Brocks literally been right there, SPHINX Just needed to stay secret and the pain of not being able to see the boys has seriously hurt brock. And naturally this deal will impact spinix, so they send brock to deal with it.  This leads to the best part of the episode as the above episode gets a callback as 21 challenges brock to a fight.. and to show how far he’s come, instead of becoming a bloody pile on the lawn, fights EVENELY with brock freaking sampson. After it’s confirmed brock has nothing to do with it and 21 and him have wiggle room to operate, the two go after monstroso who next we see needs heart surgery so mission acomplished. This episode is light on jokes, apart from a great one where rusty tells the boys everything before mindwiping them, but good on character stuffs as we find out where Brocks been, meet some good new supporting cast and see just how far 21′s come, and close out the first half of a stellar season iwth a great scene of Brock eating cereal, finally allowed to be part of his family again.

10. Viva Los Muertos! (Season 2, Episode 11)  Season 2 was easily where the show hit it’s stride. While Season 1 is going through growing pains Season 2 has all the setup, half planned ideas and what not mostly out of the way to just focus on building up the world, and characters as well as playing around with things and having the first instance of the show’s refusal to have a set status quo by having the Monarch’s breakup iwth Shiela stick until the end of the season. More on that later. However some experimentation still happened as something that would likely NEVER happen from this point on happened.  See the Venture Bros is very much Jackson and Doc’s baby. While Jackson created it, Doc because just as important and the two share one giant geeky brain. WHile they may argue on some things, the two still agree on most stuff and thus the project has their unified vision of this weirdly specific superhero universe that’s mainly focused on what would be prehriay characters leftover from a one time genre experiment and supervillians. While the staff on the show clearly enjoyed working on it far as I can tell an dare celebrated in the making of when credit’s do, the writing and worldbuilding is on two guy’s shoulders, an absolute rarity in animation let alone of a project with this gorgeous and detailed animation. But for three episodes the two did let someone in.. it’s just someone who not only got exactly what htey were going for but was their friend and mentor who helped nurture their talents on the tick. Ben Edlund. If you haven’t heard of Ben first off shame on you and second, he’s the creator of the Tick, writing the original comics series and having a major hand in all three series, all of which are unsuprisingly stellar, and having brought jackson and doc on board for 2/3 of them, likely only not bringing them to the Amazon one because by this point they’d far outgrown being writters on someone elses show.  He also created supernatural and left long before it became a tire fire so there’s that. I need to watch that sometime. Point is he’s a big deal and helped write two episodes and wrote this one Solo. And this one is easily the best of the three and given it’s on this list one of the series best.  The episode has Doc have another great idea in the Zack Morris with mad scientest abilities veign he always have: Take the parts of one of hte monarch’s dead henchman, as brock tends to leave piles around, into a “Venturestein’ and sell it to the goverment. While the simple man bonds with the boys, he cowers in fear of brock, who is forced to grapple with his violent nature and deeds and goes to Orpheous spirtial gathering fors some perspective. It’s a nice subplot that has some character development before a spirit vision of hunter gathers convinces him he can’t get caught up in killing people when it’s hwat he goods at. Brock meets him halfway, deciding he can’t feel entirely guilty but he can help the guy and gets Venturestein some “prostitoots!” he’s been wanting since apparnelty the henchman he was made out of really liked htem.  The concept of venturestein himself is neat, from the idea of reusing old henchman to him using the boys learning beds to learn about the third world and be indocrinated for third world labor, as was Doc’s orginal plan.  The other plot which dovetalls into venture steins is another great one as The Groovy Gang, the show’s answer to mystery inc arrives. And in a great idea by Edlund.. their all based on various serial killers, with leader ted being baised on ted bundy and being unerviing as he speaks cherfully while threanting the rest of hte gang, the shaggy stand in being a stand in for the son of sam and the only one that can hear groovy talk who rather than be an adorable dog, talks like a nightmarish german man, the daphne standin is clearly kidnapped and the velma one valries acts like valrie solanis. It’s creepy stuff but it’s also funny because theys till include hannah barbara sound effects, including when Venturestein in a ptsd fueld rage kills ted, not-shaggy and groovy> It’s a horrible but great scene and a great concept that just works. They also tie in the boys being clones by having it revealed one of their deaths was caused by Sonny, finalylr emembered his name, and Ted wanting to kill them. The boys end up finding their clones too, but Doc spins them a yarn to get by and is kept from kiling them. Not much to say, outside of brocks bit this isn’t huge on character but the sheer balls of the scooby doo parody and the sheer amount of jokes and creativity here make Edlund’s sole solo outing a true highlight. 

9. The Inamorata Consequence (Season 7, Episode 5) 

The likely final compound episode and a welcome return after season 6 lacked theme entirely, and as I established earlier the compound isn’t required it’s just where most of these take place.  Season 7 was a good note to go out on. While I still want closure, after the forgetable Season 5 and the  fresh but messy Season 6, 7 was almost pure goodness, with most of the episodes being standouts and the premire trilogy wrapping up the dangling threads from season 6 being a highlight, if not enough to make this list but it was a tight list as is. It had it’s flaws: The “Serena Cheats on Hank with Dean thing” was not only horribly underdeveloped but basically wrote off one of their best new characters. Her and hank breaking up and her dating dean is fine, relationships end and stuff, it was just done poorly. Even if Hank found out because a scary man in a bear costume literally carried him to a convience store and then to Dean which was great as was the button on that plot of, after Dean and Serena naturally react to the guy “Oh good you see him too. “ The Unicorn in Captivity is also a series low point despite having mark freaking hamil guest star, for a number of reasons i’ll probably get into one of these days either on a worst of list for this show or it’s own review. But those blemishes don’t overide a great season that makes up for Oprehous and Dermott’s absensces by bringing both back for an episode, has some true classics, some great character stuff and in general is just really good and it was hard to cut a lot of it from this list, but two made it. And it was nice to see the show go out on top if nothing else. 

So onto this episode which has a brilliant complex: Every exty years the Guild and the OSI meet to hash out the details of their mututal treaty with a Venture prociding and with Jonas now well and truly dead, and missing before that, it falls on Rusty. and since it was made before the compound burned down, our heroes returned to the charred remains of their home to hash things out.  The episode then nicely settles into 3 really excellent plots. The first is the obvious, the peace treaty which has the Council of 13, who in a delebrate move by the creators went from a bunch of faceless nobodies who were killed off to characters we all knew, versus our standard stable of OSI recureerers as the two bicker over terms and we find out one of the conflict settlers is a pool fight, done without a pool since that’s gone now. It’s just pure comedy goodness, but it ends with the rare unequivoocable VICTORY for Rusty. Fed up with both sides acting like children, and even calling them such, as well as both threatning war, he gives one hell of a speech to both to shut them up and for once in his life does BETTER than his father. 

It’s easily James Urbanik’s finest hour as the character and one of the series best moments which, 17 years in, is a high achievement.  The other two plots aren’t too shabby themselves. The second is an overlap as Hank gets lured away from the confrence by an old friend: IT’S DERMOTT! The dynamic duo rides again and their old dynamic of two dumbasses, one a normal teen but entirely full of himself the other being a cloudcuckoolander with little self awarness but more empathy and sometimes sense, is one I really missed and it shines here. Dermott’s joined the OSI, with Rusty giving him a recomendation as long as he didn’t tell anyone else he was his son, or at least it’s implied as much, finally buttoning up that bit while leaving it open for hank to find out later, and a bit that also was never resolved and hopefully will be by a follow up, especially since Dean revealed in the series finale he found out from his dad a while back while rusty was hammered. They follow kimberly mcmanus and one of the strangers, the guilds soldiers who are engaging in a clandestine affair.. which also reveals that the stranger is the peril partnerships mole in the guild, a nice twist. The two have fun chemistry and it’s great ot see them again just like it’s great to see hank and dermott pal around again with the highlight being hanks utterly bizzare and utterly hank fantasy sequence.  Rounding out the three is a more emotional tale as Dean sneaks off to see an old friend, Ben the genetisct who worked with his father and grandfather at various points and revealed to dean he was a clone. Ben is gone, either due to Doc and Jackson not wanting to use him, or because JK simmons was unvaliable and unlike dr. impossible and steven colbert, they didn’t want to recast. But we do get a great substitute as we meet H.E.L.P.er 2, a household model voiced by Rhys Darby who Ben left behind on his trip.  As it turns out Jonas tried mass marketing H.E.L.P.er units (With the equally unsurprisingly sexist tag line of “Get a H.E.L.P.er to Help Her!”), but a  baby choked on a stray bolt and a the ensuing backlash lead to mass burnings and most being destroyed and the one we meat being a nervous wreck that Ben took in. Dean naturally sees himself in the scared bot and while he fails to get his new friend to be able to leave, H2 is too nervous about possibly being destroyed and given the uncaring nature of the venture world sometimes yeah probably a good point, he does bond with dean.. and reveal that Rusty himself is a clone by accident. IT’s a nice twist that makes perfect since: While we don’t know if Rusty knows the tech was used on him most of his stuff , with few exceptions is old equipment of his dad’s. It’s not a stretch that his greatest invention was actually Jonas’. It also leads to a nice moment as dean hugs his dad, understanding him a bit better. It’s a funny, well done episode that lets doc and sons really shine. Truly a great way fo ra great theme to go out.

8. The Buddy System (Season 3, Episode 5) Time for a sentimental favorite. See while I watched bits of seasons 1 and 2 when they aired, and more of 2 then I realized, I didn’t get really hooked on the show till season 3.. and this was the episode that did it. The ones before are far from bad, Shadowman 9 was a contender for this list after all, this is just the one that really got me into the show, showing off it’s varied supporting cast, bringing in one or two more, and really getting me into dean.. and Dean and Triana shipping but I can get into that, again, more on that later. Given this and Fallen Arches were early faviorites it’s no suprise compound episodes became my faviorites and this one is easily the second best of em, with one more coming up topping it handily.  But enough showing my hand, let’s talk about Season 3. Season 3 is a slight mixed bag, as some episodes don’t land, but overall is a really good season, it’s just sandwitched between the shows too best. But it did have good ideas, great world building and a hell of a cliffhanger. Some decisions, like Sgt. Hatred, weren’t the best, but overall a solid season, just like 3 it only managed to squeak out one entry, though TONS of possible cantidates.  This episode has a great premise from the get go: Rusty, for once, has a decent idea. Yes it still results in a child dying and being replaced by a clone, but this is rusty. If something didn’t go terribly wrong on some level it wouldn’t be him. But the idea is simple: Since the cartoon based on his nightmarish childhood, which made him a minor celebrity and is why billy likes Rusty so much and looks up to him despite being.. Rusty, is a hit with the kids again, Rusty launches a day camp on the grounds, using his boys as counslers and having his various friends and aquantinces set up booths. From Orpheous and the order of the triad doing an anti drug presentation to the sea captain talking about the benefits of being a scooby doo villian, to Action Johnny, the series version of Johnny Quest renamed to avoid copyrights but very obviously Johnny Quest, whose strung out on drugs and can’t go a few minutes without going into a breakdown about his father or past. All good stuff. It actuallyg oes pretty well till rusty makes the mistake of going into an old thing of his d ad’s without checking and a gorilla monster attacks and gets the one child left behind, thankfully off screen, but it leads to the darkly hilarious bit of him rushing a clone out for his parents to avoid a justified law suit. 

Meanwhile the boys and brock deal with a new figure in their lives: Dermott Fictel. As the creators put it they basically desgined him as that one kid everyone knows who talks shit, thinks he’s way more capable than he is, and way more knowledgble than he is and is kinda dopey. I had one of those, i’m sure you did too, and that’s probably part of why I really liked Dermott as I knew a guy just like him. Hank naturally, not having had any friends other than dean and H.E.L.P.er, bonds with the prick and the two become best friends right away. Dean however hates the little asshole for both constantly shit talking him and just being obnoxious. Brock soon joins the hate train as Dermott invades his karate demonstration to talk about how much of a badass he thinks he is and learned from the internet. Brock soon finds himself asking the age old question. 

But since his code avoids women and children, he tries to find ways around it but Orpheous obviously isn’t having it. His other option is to go to the Monarch’s minons the Pupa Twins, aka the Moppets, Shiela’s old minons who the monarch’s basically stuck with and no one really liked in or out of universe. Their just assholes who treat 21 and 24 and the monarch himself like crap and are thankfully downplayed in Season 4, and only appear in Season 5 to die off and close up a plot thread. But credit where it’s due they did get one good bit, creepy as it may be and it’s this. 

With the Monarch not allowed to arch venture at the time due to plot stuff, the monarch’s mostly spying and sending the pupa twins in as spies which as you can see dosen’t really go well. Everything converges on the finale, as Rusty, again being rusty even when he’s mildly ahead child aside he still screws up, brings in Johnny’s old enemy Dr. Z, who like dermott is important but it’d take till the end of Season 5 for that. Johnny breaks down, Venture’s current nemisis arrives and finds there was a scheduling error and hten we get the crowning moment of the episode that makes it all come together magically: Dean gets to sit with Triana, whose actually being receptive to his crush for once, but also has to put up with Dermott..  who being Dermott, especially early dermott is an obnoxious jackass who makes creepy coments abotu Trianna and eventually sets Dean off

Dermott doesn’t even get two seconds into telling Triana to wait naked for him, because of course he does before dean utterly destroys him. This being Dean, it’s with tears and snot running and coming off like an angry 8 year old, but he still deserves points for utterly decimating the asshole after a full day of taking his self indulgant bullcrap and having the guy be creepy to his crush. And to be fair Triana was dealing with him fine, but still Dean beat up someone twice his size and while lacking any actual fighting skill with at least enough bulk to beat him up and gave the fucker a black eye. Until season 7 with him just paying off the monarch to save his teacher from making a huge mistake, and to show how fed up he was, this was easily Dean’s best moment. Just a great capper to a great episode. Also Dermott turns out to be, possibly brocks son but.. more on that later. 

7. Mid-Life Chrysalis (Season 1, Episode 3 (8 in Airing Order)  As I said earlier Season 1 was a bit rough, though as all of you probably know most 1st seasons are, especially in animation. It takes time to iron out what really works for a show and get it going right. Bojack Horseman, while still excellent, took the first few episodes to really become what it was born to be, Steven Universe season 1a lacks the deep characterization of the main cast that and has loosey goosey animation,  Ducktales had trouble character ballancing and ballancing adventure with deconstruction of adventure.. every show has growing pains.  And while season 1 does have too much of the show basically trying to scream

Like some adult cartoons do, and not even it’s contepraries like sealab and harvey birdman did as much, both excellent excellent shows by the way. But even with my criticsims of it: Flat characters, a try hard tone, clumsy worldbulding in places.. it’s still a good show even this early and even as early as episode 3, with the first two being good.. but this one being an utter classic. It dosen’t QUITE have the emotoinal or character depth of later episodes but damn if it isn’t one of the funniest things the crew ever wrote. 

Mid-Life’s two main plots are simple and start from the cold open: The Ventures get pulled over while on the way to an adventure by the air force, and Doc and Brock both encounter problems: Rusty being Rusty, his is petty and self loathing based as he gets called old or something like that by one of the air force people. Brock’s is a bit more serious: In a funny bit Brock LITERALLY has a legal lisence to kill, but given the burarcaey of the venture world, it’s expired.  So we get our two main plots out of that: Rusty wants to prove he’s not old and still got it by dragging a sad Brock to a strip club. Brock is miserable as the owner mocks him, and he can’t kill him so there’s that and his attempt to have a quickie with a stripper fails because it’s just not the same without his murder boner apparently. Look as I said the show was a wee bit immature early on.. it never stopped being mind you it just became more goofily immature than screaming i’m an adult. Brock leaves in a huff which leaves Rusty open for the oldest trick in the book as the Monarch sends Shiela in in disguise to seduce him, go back to his place, and then stick him with a syringe full of science that turns him into a caterpillar because this is the monarch. Subtly is not even a suite of his let alone his strong suite. Though this also being the Monarch we only get a bit where he watches as the two make out, which is creepy as that sounds until a minon randomly turns out the lights and apolgoizes. He was getting juice. The episode also nicely parodies the trope of a female spy or whatever turning for the hero because of his dick as The Monarch assumes that happen when Shiela has doubts about the scheme, that he “turend her with his oily sex” which is an objectively horrible and paranoid statment but also incredibly hilarious.  Thus the plots split and we get two really hilarious one: On Brocks end he with the boys encouragment, decides to retake his secret agent exam. And both boys really come into their own with this one: Dean’s adorably nerdy and sweet sides come out as he both encourages his second dad and helps him on the written portions, while hanks gung ho hankness emerges in full as he helps train brock, having him drink eggs that he probably spat in and in one of the best bits of the episode going a bit too far with the drill sgt routine till Brock helpfully points out he’ll legally be able to kill after this. The solution is also great as Brock not only avoids using his fire arm during one of the tests, instead uttelry decismating the target cutouts with just his kinfe and whatever he can rig up, and just scribbling icarus from the led zepplin albums on his test.. only for his proctor to pass him anyway as his dad and osi boss general treister, who we meet later, described brock as a living legend, and he did not dissapoint. And we get a great closer, after the main plto finsihes, where Brock shows the strip club asshole his fresh lisence before maiming him.. though even better, he DOSEN’T kill the guy as the asshole does show up again later, just missing an eye now. 

Back on our main plot we get plenty of hilarious and messed up stuff as the boys barely react to their dad’s horrible state, their numb at this point, and doc gives out the classic line and easily the best of the episode “I pissed in god’s eye, and he blinked”. Doc tries to cure himself and fails both due to caterpillar hands and due to helper eating the chemicals, and tries to get helper to help him reinact the end of the fly. All good stuff. It’s just a good, solid comedy episode that both solidifies the character and makes you laugh near constantly. 

6. The Terminus Mandate (Season 7, Episode 8) One of the best parts of the post Garantua shakeup of the show was the new council. After years of the council of 13 just being guys behind silouttes, mantle and dragoon nonwishtanding, Jackson and Doc replaced most of them with familiar charcters and gave a ton of them chances to shine while bringing in new ones like wide whale and easily their best later creation Red Death, more on him in a minute. It gave us a nice workplace dynamic and really made the guild pop more than ever. And this episode showcases this marvelously by giving the new council the spotlight.  In this one the Council find that there’s an old mandate that means they must stop active arching in order to retain their spots, something they all agree to and thus leads to an episode of each of the council having one last ride as each are given an envelope of who their last arch is. And each is hilaroius, some even heartfelt, creative and fleshes out some of them. Going down the list, leaving out Shiela and Red death who has a more involved subplot for hers and has some other buisness entirely we’ll get to: Phantom Limb: Has, in a great gag, a literal dick measuring contest with Hunter Gathers. Just a simple effective gag.  Radical Left: Is merged with his old arch enemy Right Wing so they simply play clue.  Wide Whale: Has the least funny or enteratining but still entresting as he and his old arch are now friends and the guy even plays cards with Rocco, so rather than poision the well he just sends Rocco to rough him up a bit for old times sake, then take him to dinner.  Dr. Z: Reminces with Action Johnny, the two considering each other family at this point and the two have a really nice moment with Johnny in rehab finally getting help that’s actually really touching and really nice to see.. though we also get an utterly fantastic bit where they recreate an actual scene from Johnny Quest but with Z lampshading how stupid everyone’s being. 

And finally we get Mantle and Dragoon, who spend the night binging tv and eating a ton, my mood and general schedule, afraid to open their envelope only to celebrate when they do and find their arches are all dead.  Red Death meanwhile has buisness to take care of. Since I dind’t include Red Means stop on here I’d just like to talk about how much I love the guy. Voiced by clancy brown death is an old school legend in the guild whose great at arching, has a great gimmick.,. but can switch from horribly threatning monster to aflrable nice and loving family man, having a younger wife and a daughter whose utterly adorable and shares his face. He even wanted the guild spot simply so he could basically retire, get the nice pension plan and salary that comes with the guild without the rigors of regular arching having long settled things with his own arch by murdering him> he’s an utterly inspired edition and the crew, and fans, loved him enough he became a recurrer this season. 

And his bit is both awesome and utterly terrifying: earlier the guild tried to parlay with rivals the peril partnership in order to stop the bleeding on their end, but their represntive, Blind Rage, a hilariously broey version of Daredevil, instead mocks and direspects them and is in general a pissant. So rather than do an arch, since he’s done with that anyway, Death evens the score in one of the shows best scenes, which like the rusty one above is an acomplishment years in and is an utterly terrifying and awesome villian scene. 

Clancy Brown is a fucking master at this. and it showss.  As for Shiela her bit ends up tying into the Venture Family’s plot for the evening: Rusty courts a black widow, Teresa Diade because getting laid outweighs the possibility of death and we get a a great bit of dean pretending to be her as the family preps him. Naturally he bungles it because he takes too much anti venom, but Teresa turns out to be a former superhero, probably what actually happened to her husbands, and Shielias arch during her breif solo career. Though instead of an arching, though she try, Shiela instead breaks down over the stress of this, over possibly giving up arching with her husband for her career, and the two share a nice moment. I mean she still takes Diade’s wallet because she’s a villian after all but it’s a nice one and an emotoinal moment. She takes the job as revealed later of course, because even of this probably hurts the Monarch’s feelings a bit he wants what’s best for her. Because they have a damn good marriage again. overally a really inventive, hilarious episode and one fo the show’s finest hurrahs as it approached an untimley end.

5. Everybody Comes to Hanks (Season 4, Episode 12) 

Season 4 as I said was my faviorite and one of it’s highlights was the duo of Bright Lights Dean City, which BARELY didn’t make this list, and Everbody Comes to Hanks. The two episodes followed the same period of time from the perspectives of each brother: Dean has an internship in new york city and Rusty’s bumming along, though being a dick he wants hank to have a job by the time he gets back.  Hank, in a classic hank move, expands Hank Co from an ocasional name for his buisnesses to a full on department store with a restraunt and detective agency because of course he has those. It honestly reminds me of me: Even as a teen I was the kind of goofus who’d do this sort of elaborate stuff. But at the same time it shows hank’s best trait and the one that most people underestimate: his ingniuity and imagination. Sure the guy’s off in his own world, as am I, and it’s his charm, but when push comes to shove he can bust out a wacky scheme, save his family from danger or as seen earlier this list pull out a 3 point romantic gesture. The guy may be kinda dumb, int he best way, but he’s got the natural talent for the superhero/supervillian game and clearly wants to be his own bizzare version of batman, which I hope he gets to be and I prefer over the theroy he’ll be a villian. Sure it makes SOME sense.. but frankly hank’s good heart and love of theatrics and lack of care about the jackasses meancing his dad make him a way better superhero. 

Anyways naturally said detective agency leads to both a noir homage, complete with lack of color and a case: Dermott, who at this point’s a bit more symapthetic, wants to know if brock’s really his dad or not and hires his best bud to do it. Hank also gets a partner in one fo the show’s best recurrers, the Alchemist, ba dah!, Orpheous’ best friend, teammate, sarcasm machine and out and proud magic guy voiced perfectly by Dana Snyder. He’s a good counterpart to Orpheous, sarcastic down to earth and fun loving to the more serious and full of himself Orhpeous and since Triana moving out in our next entry, has been Orpheous’ roomate and bored since he’s now in the middle of nowhere, so he’s eager to jump into Hank’s nonsense.  What follows is a compelling detective story as Hank finds out Brock never slept with Dermott’s mom, and tries to find the real one.. and ends up stumbling upon the solution upon hooking up with Dermott’s older sister Nikki... which quickly goes sideways as he finds out not only is she twice his age, and even without that he’s still a minor and this is still creepy.. but she’s Dermott’s mom.. and RUSTY’S his father, with Dermott’s mom who raised him being his grandma. It’s a hell of a reveal that throws up the table both on Dermott’s relationship with Hank and the chraracter as a whole and has a great flashback where we find out how something this effed up happened and it’s incredibly well acted. It’s good stuff.  Hank uses SPHYNX”s mindwipe machine on himself, since getting laid or not, which being hank he dosen’t see the problems with how it happened as long as he dosen’t know, sends a total recall esque message to himself on his watch so he knwos he got laid, jut not the horirble, horrible details. And I like that , unlike say Phineas and Ferb Across the Second dimension’s bullshit reset ending, this dosen’t erase the impact of things. Not hank loosing his virgnity that’s meaningless I mean Dermott. He’s still there, it jsut left at ticking time bomb of when that reveal’s going to go off, and added an intresting new dynamic that I hope if the show continues somehow gets explored. A masterful, fun and suprisingly disturbing episode, everybody should come to hanks. Also as one last post note i’d be remiss if I forgot the great bit of Hatred saying they only serve eggs at hanks cafe. 

4. The Better Man (Season 4, Episode 7) 

Now we get to Dr. Orpheous, who unsuprisingly is a faviorite of mine. While I wasn’t a big Dr. Strange fan till reading the old lee and ditko stuff, I was always a fan of Orpheous, a hammy divorced dad who will give fighting the hordes of hell the same gravitas as getting junk mail, putting some punks souls in a homies figurine, and venture stealing his weedwacker. He’s a truly loveable character, a silver age pompus style hero in a world he dosen’t quite fit, with more power and competence than most venture bros protaganists, but still having things thta hold him back: while he’s good at his job his own drive and self importance drove away his ex wife and leaves him with not much in his life other than his daughter.  And for the first time in the series he’s forced to face his wife leaving him for another man when said man shows up : The Outrider, a seemingly cooler mystic hero whose better at both being a husband and being a sorecer and stops some creature The Order of the Triad fights after their arch torrid sumons him. Orpheous stews over this a bit and after failing to make hisown doorway to hell t  one up his non-arch nemisis, visits another classic character for the series: the Master. Voiced by Voice Acting Maestro John Benjamin, pre his biggest roles with archer and bob’s burgers but post his breakout with home movies. The Master is a no nonsense mystic entity who loves taking the piss out of orpheous and loves his student even if Orpheous agrviates him. He also has a neat visual habit of showing up in a diffrent shapeshifted form each time to teach his pupil a lesson.. and to do weird sex stuff because he can multi task and we see Trainai’s mom for the first time, though with the master just using the form to taunt Orpheous on his personal failings as usual but has a good point.  Soon however the group returns to the portal from hell and find Torrid and Outrider.. and torid explodes and sends the rider to hell, forcing Orpheous and co to rescue him, with Orpheous finding out via a clue from the master that the outrider embeded an artifact in his head to travel between worlds, the one thing orpheous could never master, as a shortcut.. and said thing gets al and orpheous stuck with the outrider. There we see the contrast: Orpheous is indeed the better sorcerer.. but the outrider’s the better husband and while if his wife cheated on him that’s fucking terrible, it’s clear he didn’t STEAL Tatiana so much as she left Orpheous for someone that geniuinely appricated her. The hatched it buried and it’s godo character work.  Speaking of which we get to Jefferson Twilight, a blade parody who hunts Blackulas (his words and leads to a great moment in his debut where a supervillian tries to find a more pc term for it but Jefferson poitns out since he primarly hutns oversea “African americian” dosen’t really work), and the guy on the team reguarly compalning about having no magic ability.. but who finds he CAN move between worlds and astral project, to his delight and Al’s annoyance. It’s an adorable and well won moment as he finaly finds SOMETHING magic he can do.  The other plot, which dovetails nicely into Orpheous concerns Dean’s longstanding crush on Triana, another pin to pull from earlier this list. I shipped them when I was younger but this episode, and one coming up on this list, pointed out how it jsut didn’t work: Dean’s naivite combined with his lack of making a move just didn’t mesh with her. IT’s something the creators agreed on realizing they just had no use for Triana, but both hating the cliche of a character just vanishing and thus giving her a proper sendoff instead.  Dean tries to move on after another unsucessful attempt to talk her up, with Hank and Dermott playing his wingmen, unsucessfully but Dean actually hits it off with a girl.. a girl we never see again but still and Dermott actually offers sound advice for once.. which given events before and after this prompts Dean to quip “better check the temprature in hell”. He just says to take things slow and just call the girl, maybe ask her out, don’t overblow it again or try too hard. It’s good stuff and like our last entry deepens the character a bit by showing that he’s not always a dumbass. Just  mostly. On Triana’s end she enters her dad’s closet, again having done so before and as shown in previous episodes Orpheous always mindwiped her, and it turns out it’s not the first time as the Master sees great talent, but sees she needs to be taught by her mother and step dad, where she can find other witches and learn at her own pace.. maybe befriend an older witch and a demon, find her own personl lesbian. We’ll see how it goes. He TRIES scaring her out fo a future with dean, but fails because.. she had no intrest in dean whatsoever and there was nothing to scare her away from. The Master is confident this will lead to nothing.. but as we see in the stinger.. this isn’t the case.  Byron for once grew, and rather than wipe his daughter’s brain to keep the last family he has outside of his buddies close, as he likely did before out of fear of loosing her... lets her go. He grows letting his daughter grow up and take the long path he did and hopefully better than either of her parents, while Dean “let’s her down gently’. Triana was a godo character, a downt o earht presence in theboys life and wiry, but it was time for her to fly and it’s a good note to send her off on and overall pure magic. 

3. All This and Gargantua 2! (Special between Seasons 5 and 6) 

ONto another charcter’s sendoff we have JJ, Doc’s brother he absorbed in the womb who came back somehow and then became way more sucessful and spent all of seasons 4 and 5 building a space Station. And this episode pays that and MANY other threads off in a giant sized epic that’s one of the series finest moments.  it’s the Gargantua 2′s grand opening, with Doc and the boys going up. Hank goes to gamble and adventure, with Hank bucks obvoiusly, while Doc and Dean are called to Visit JJ.. whose dying, his body shutting down shortly after he finalyg ot life and wanting this satilite to be his final work. but soon the three, along with col treister who we’ll get to in another entry, have ot save the world with JJ touchingly sacirficing himself just as both brothers finally reconciled and Doc finally accepted him. It’s  a powerful subplot.  Said calamity comes in the form or another loose end, the revenge socieyt, Phantom Limb’s splinter group who are attacking and are unknowing pawns in the soverign, who turns out not tbe bowie which is good becaue he dies here and that would’ve been eerie, and his mad plans to try and outwit the investors, msyterous beings. Yeah i’m going to have to try and summarize a lot here as htis is a big, continuity drive spectacle and it works well if wonkily. TO mak ea long story short our heroes fight on a satlite, and dr. henry killinger, marry poppins meets kissinger with a magical murder bag, fights his brethern and reforges the guild with the various villians tryign to stop the soverign or leftover from the society. The special is one big bit of fanserice that ties up loose ends and launches a bold new era. I don’t have as much to say as other entires but it’s this high up because few episodes match it in sheer importance, scale, humor and timing, it’s just harder to dig into because again, it’s an hour long special with lots of stuff from the series up to that point. it’s what makes it work but it’s harder to dig into in this short a space. Maybe someday soon. either way i’ts a garganguan achivment that feels like a huge pot of payoff after 5 seasons of effort and is utterly worth the ride. 

2. Showdown at Cremation Creek, Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2) Yes this is a two parter. Yes i’m giving it one spot but it’s my list and this is basically a special like the two entires it’s sandwitched between just sliced in half. So pitter patter, let’s talk about this one. 

Showdown was the finale to the stellar season 2, a step up from season 1 that refined the good raw matieral there into something truly stupdencous and it all comes to a head here in a wonderful epic in the might venture maner in that it manages to feel epic while still being hiilarious, characer driven and self parodying.  After a season apart the Monarch and Shielia have reonciled and are having an affair behind Phantom Limb’s back.. though given LImb is a sexist piece of shit who dosen’t value Shielia as a parter or part of his orignization while the Monarch has come around to doing so and did even with his crazy jealousy, it’s forgivable. Shelia wants more form him and the Monarch takes hte painful step of agreeing to stop arching venture. This dosen’t last obviously, but still. HOwever it does lead to pure hilarity when his henchman for the bachelor party, after the monarch went home, kidnapping the ventures, having gottne brock while he was drunk and distracted. Still with fatalities but still.. it’d be the best day of their lives anyo ther day. But to avoid pissing off his fiance who likely woudln’t belivie the truth, he makes up a story of inviting them to a wedding as an olive branch and does so> The whole situation also leads to my faviorite venture line: 24: Holy shit I thought we dreamnt that part! Anyways our gang are soon split up, Brock attends awkardly, Dr. Venture tries to hit on the bride over mid life chriaslys earlier, and we get the dawn of one of the show’s best buddy duos: 21 and Hank. The two being huge nerds quickly bond, and 21 helps hank sneak into the wedding as “Igor Badguyovich via an old henchman uniform, cleverly one of the ones from the pilot. Dean ends up getting stuck in the engine room and ends up spending the two parter hallucinating and going on a patichse version of never ending story while also letting loose his hatred of his boy advenutering lifestyle. It’s prue fun and good stuff.  David Bowie, or someone impersnating him, aka the soverign arrives along with Klaus Nomo and Iggy Pop for the wedding as an old frirend of shelias giving her away. But soon things go as bad as a superhero wedding does, becuase supervillians apparently aren’t immune to that as Phantom Limb attacks, deciding to throw a cou because he can’t kill the guy his ex actually likes or get promtoed and with bowie’s enorage as his moles attacks and tries to take shiela by force. The result is great as brock moblizies the minons, and unbenwonst to him, hank to fight, dean has his epic adventure and rusty and monarch try to do.. something. It’s all great stuff while Bowie fights limb in an epic battle we sadly barely see but what we do is glorious. It’s all good stuff. An donly one episode tops it in scope, humor and spectacle and in my heart. 

1. Operation P.R.O.M. (Season 4, Episode 16)  The show’s best season goes out with it’s best episode. I could close it out there but given i’ve rambled about every other episode why stop now? It’s Homeschool Prom Night! Doc’s gathered their various allies, the order of the triad, pete and billy , shoreleave and brock, along with Hatred who has replaced his hatred tats with a big v.. excpet the d over his junk which is unfortunate. 21 joins in genuinley and because he’s having a crisis while monarch and sheila crash with hatred’s ex as a baragning chip to see wha’ts up and end up joining in. 

The boys are as sucessful getting their own dates as you’d expect: no one will return Hank’s calls but since he runs into best buddy Dermott on the way brings him along as long as their band can play, which is easily the highlight of the episode as their glorious and terrible garage band Shallow Gravy makes it’s debut. Figures I can’t put video in right as the article’s almost done.. but back on point.. Dean brings Triana who has a boyfriend now who resembles Edward Cullen, because tha’ts aged really well, which bugs the crap out of him even though he moved on and casues him to act like a pissant and get a corsage thrown in his face as he should. Dean ends up following Dermott and Hank’s advice to go try and “win her back” with a big romantic gesture... which listneing to dermott on a romantic gesture should be grounds for being delcared legally braindead.. it goes terribly with the big plan instead burning a t on her lawn, and the ghost robes making Dean look like the kkk. The outrider tells him to be happy after beating him up over the mixup, a mixup that REALLLLY hasn’t aged well, and Dean tells him to fuck off. End of their time but it’s good stuff and caps a great season of hank. And while I don’t LIKE dean’s behavior here, it’s nice to see him not act like a good person for a second, and to be as human and faliable as the rest of htem, even if it means beeing deeply unlikable and his next relationship which sadly just.. never got picked up again, would go better. And the one after that.. not getting into that mess. What the hell guys. It’s really good stuff. 

Naturally given all these cast members ther’es a lot else going on: Rusty hires prostitues for the evening because of course he does and fails with his because of course he does.. and because it turns out his name is a sex act which leads toi a long and inspried bit of bleeping as everyone has their own version and we see tons of recurrers way in to Rusty’s horror. Rusty being inscensed tires using an aprohdeiasc , specially spanish fly taken from an actual fly, one of my faviorite bits mostly for this bit after billy gapes in horro at the giant monster fly.  Doc: Don’t scream you’ll just piss it off and it screams acid when it’s pissed off. And I alredy dids that when I ripped it’s wings off.  His scheme is of course utterly terrible but it’s Rusty, and i’m unsuprised and he dosen’t benifit from it as we’ll get into. Al and Shore Leave bond while 21, in a pogniant subplot, realizes he’s had enough and quits his job and through Orpheous realizes his firend isn’t a ghost, but a guilt induced hallucinaiton and lets him go, joining the team implicitly. It’s really good character stuff.  Finally we have the espionge portion. WHile Shore leave is at the party Gathers leaves Brock, once he’s finished chauffering the boys, to watch Monstroso, who they recently captured and gathers wants to use as a barganing chip. But gathers soon finds previously introduced Agents Doe and Cardholder wanting to topple agency head Hunter Gathers, one of my faviorite recurring characters mostly due to being performed by the increidble Toby Huss, a batshit general whose basically nick fury with a kentucky accent and no real filter or fucks to give and he’s utterly hilarious any time he shows up.  He’s been claming his cancer treatments have turned him into a Hulk, and why yes that is their exact terminology. Turns out agents doe and cardholder have been playing along with this seeming delusion to try and outst treister.. and take the OSI over for the guild, being the traitors Gathers suspected were there. However in a brilliant turn, this sub plots resolves as all should: on the bridge of hteir hellicarrier, with Treister draped only in the american flag with a post it note saying fix it on his chest. He reveals that while the cancer is real, the “hulkking” out was just playing them: he knew they were the double agents, and was using Gather’s to ferit them out. However that’s not the only reason: Treister knows his odds of beating cancer are slim so he’s come up with a resonable solution: Shoot himself up into space, as seen in the image for this entry, and see if aliens can cure it. They don’t but space radiation does as he returns later and not only that while he’s lost in the special, after brilliantly ACTUALLY having become a hulk, Doc and Jackson revealed in the making of book they had plans to possibly have him come back as their version of GALACTUS at one point, only holding back on it because their not sure if they want to go full cosmic or not. We’ll see if the show comes back in longform but god I hope so. If not i’m sure as hell doing it. But Treister hands the wheel over to gathers literally and metaphorically, passsing the reigns of the ship and the OSI over to him so Gathers can run it right, and then well.. shoots himself up into space, ending up as the last image of the hour long masterwork. But befroe that theres one last plot that leads into what I consider to be the show’s best scene. Brock finds out the hard way that the other Sphinx agent on duty is actually his ex molotov cocktease, who skirts monstroso away because she’s fallen for him, to brock’s rage. While Brock catches up to them, Mol reveales she has a trump card: The prostitues venture hired are actually her mercinary crew the blackhearts, and if she dosen’t give the signal everyone dies.. and being an utter dick Mol lets the car brock’s holding up off a cliff drop with her and monstroso inside.. though they come back eventually because universe that’s basically a comic book. So we get THIS SEQUENCE THAT’S IN CAPS BECAUSE THEY STOPPED LETTING ME PUT VIDEOS IN THIS ONE FOR SOME REASON AND IT’S ALMOST DONE. It’s easily the show’s best as Pulp’s amazing “Like a Friend” plays as brock rushes to save everyone, finds everyone having a good time thanks to rusty’s spanish fly, and Shore Leave and Al doing the v-day sailor kiss which is amazing, and then all the blackhearts turn into fly monsters because Rusty. It’s a great, tense gorgeously animated sequence that ends showing just how far brock’s come: From an angry asshole who hates everyone to these guys genuine friend.. and still a badass. overall just a great, spectacular finale and the best of one fo the best animated shows period. And with that the list concludes. This took me 2 days worth of adruous work so I hope you enjoyed it. Follow me for more including regular coverage of Amphibia, Ducktales starting back up later this month.. and as of tommorow possibly the loud house! Expect more venture bros including reviewcaps coming soon and if you want to comission your own reviewcap for 5 bucks, just hit up my personal messages or ask box, or just hit it up iwth a casual suggestion i’m bound to listen. Either way until next time, Go Team Venture. And I can think of only one way to properly close this. Play us off sea captain.

#the venture bros #rusty venture #brock sampson #dean venture #hank venture #the monarch #dr mrs the monarch #henchman 21 #serena ong #dermott fictell #byron orpheous