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digitaldoeslmk · 6 months

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By The Book AU Timeline

[this will be edited as things progress and the au gets more fleshed out]

less of a timeline and more the a brainstorm chart for the plotbeats i have so far

Prince > Little Sage > Pilgrim > Immortal

ACT 1, PRINCE: 2 years, S1 plus some of S2

ep0 special, MK becomes Monkie Kid

Fated Feast (tm) and dealing with it

MK learning how to use his powers

pretty much all the episodes of S1

Beijing Opera sideplot

first New Years is a Lion Dancing competition special

Macaque introduces himself

Spider Queens get exorcised, LBD reveal

Nezha and Muzha introduction

some more filler episodes of Monkie gang dealing with small easy stuff

MK gets invited to meet Guanyin

MK learning the Dao and Dharma, starts cultivation

Macaque causes trouble (basically Shadow Play ep but not), Wukong finds out

spicynoodles start becoming a thing late in the arc

S1 finale special, except it's LBD and some henchmen

Celestial Realm sightseeing moment, introduction to several immortals and gods

ACT 2, LITTLE SAGE: about half a year, part of S2 and a lot of changes

Red Son's investigation gets serious, Nezha is helping

Wukong gets more present to teach MK

most of what's left of S2, with some changes

Yingge and Longnü intro

Tang starts helping MK and Mei with magic

Mei starts training her dragon powers in FFM

Guanyin meets the Monkien gang, reveal of Tang's past reincarnations

MK gets deeper on training with his monkey form and powers

"recollections of red and blue" is set in this arc

DBK and PIF start making amends with Red Son

qpr chimera fully established, Red Son and MK get serious enough to tell their parents about it

more LBD shenanigans

S2 season finale, except not

LBD tries to trap him in a pagoda, everyone joins the fray, MK escapes because Macaque underestimates him, Wukong gets kebabed, Megapolis is lost and the gang flees for their lives

ACT 3, PILGRIM: about half a year, S3 in spirit but almost every plot gets scrapped cus its just filler anyway

they aren't on a ""journey to the west"", they are gathering allies and tools to use against LBD and Macaque

plan is, burn the motherfuckers with the Samadhi fire with the help of the four dragon king's armies to spread the fire with rain, and use some artifacts to then control the fire and put it out

drastic measure but it do be drastic times

LBD used the skeleton key to open the gates of the Diyu, so the world is slowly getting overrun by runaway spirits, as well as channeling the waters from it to freeze the land

apparently Macaque wants to consume every living thing he's trapped to fuel something, and nobody is sure what

anyway it's crisis politics time, nobody is having fun, everything sucks

time to check in with the past pilgrims for advice and some tricks they know, Monkie gang power up time

the dragon king of the north and his family are missing, time to find them

Shen Gongbao intro, he's involved but they figure it out

it's also time to draft some immortals, we love owing favors to people in this house amiright??

Mayor starts to think the henchman career isn't for him, time to dip

he fucks a plan cus he uses a pill of immortality to heal himself but oops the gang needed that

Mayor spills the beans on Macaque's plan, MK gets impulsive and runs off to face LBD

S3 special time except not

MK exchanges himself for the girl LBD got possessed, which builds the group time to wrap up lose ends

final battle time, hoards of the underworld versus whatever immortals got convinced to help despite going against the Jade Emperor's decree

MK sends a clone with his staff before he loses control back to the gang

Mei in dragon form fighting possessed MK, so that Red Son and Nezha can take a shot at MK to exorcise LBD out of him, Erlang and Muzha helping to hold Macaque back

MK gets shot with the Samadhi Fire, to explosive results

MK vs Macaque kaiju monkey battle time

Macaque gets nuked, LBD gets carbonized, Mayor dies saving people from the city before the fires get to them

everything is put back where it belongs, but there's a lot of loose ends to wrap up, ends in a bittersweet note

ACT 4, IMMORTAL: two years, S4 solely in name, basically a full overhaul lmao

oh man oh man shits gonna hit the fan lmao

the city is saved and the bad guys are gone; time for Consequences

Jade Emperor isnt very happy with the amount of unauthorized actions taken just now

MK goes to fucking trial for the crime of saving the world, it goes as well as one would think

luckily Guanyin comes in clutch and gets his sentence lightened to "community service"

there is an absurd amount of undead still walking around, which means MK has to get on that

also yknow. the devastating amount of damage in the mortal AND celestial realm

MK is given an assignment in the heavenly bureocracy, to help keep him in check and accountable to stuff. is great innit.

another part of his job is, dealing with Wukong's past sworn brotherhood cus they've been uppity since Macaque's attack and threatening to break the human-demon truce

Qi "two dads nuclear family" Xiaotian learns to deal with distant extended family relations with very specific social cues. again, goes as well as expected

under all that, Red Son still hasn't been able to get the missing memories situation fixed

also turns out even Wukong doesn't remember who MK was but he used to know. he doesn't anymore. and he doesn't know what happened. Red Son did not like learning that.

the celebration of Ulhambana in the Celestial Realm is approaching, and Red Son thinks he can get himself and MK invited to it so they can yknow, ask Buddha wtf is going on

so yknow, time to earn the trust of the Celestial Realm again, in a year. that's doable right? ahahah

and because he doesn't have enough on his plate, MK traded off a lot of his merits in exchange for LBD and Mayor speedrunning their time in hell so they can be reborn under his care

MK becomes An Uncle, what could possibly go wrong!

oh, jumpscare, Macaque is still around but Different

#lmk au #by the book au

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dragongirldg · 9 months

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For everyone wanting buy red vs blue optimally (as I haven’t)

There is a box set for seasons 1-5. (The blood gulch chronicles)

A box set for seasons 6-8. (Recollection)

A box set for (the first) 10 seasons.

9 and 10 is project freelancer saga.

A box set for seasons 11-13. (The chorus Trilogy)

Season 14 is the anthology.

The Shisno Paradox is the name of a season and the trilogy.

15-17 is the Shisno trilogy.

Season 15’s summary talks about a news reporter.

Season 16 is called The Shisno Paradox.

Season 17 is called Singularity and talks about Donut in the summary.

Season 18 is called RVB: Zero, that’s the one that doesn’t have anything to do with the rvb cast.

Season 19 hasn’t come out as of this post.

Wish I knew all this when I was buying the DVDs and stuff because I could have done a better job at buying them efficiently. Whatever man.

I’m still confused on the Shisno Paradox trilogy and I couldn’t figure out what Combo meant.

I could have saved on the Chorus trilogy if I knew there was a dvd set for before getting individual ones.

Heck there was a set for 12 + 13 that I wish I’d seen before ordering them individually.

Amazon sucks and I suck and it all sucks.

Fxck me I guess, I’m an idiot.

In total there are 19 seasons. (Again season 19 hasn’t come out as of this post)

#red vs blue #rvb #dvd #blu ray

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memoriescut · 7 months

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WHERE IS PUDDING? - a comprehensive timeline of what our favourite messy princess has been up to! ( valid for my revised canon, hence it works with both animanga & live action )

born as the 35th daughter / 75th child of big mom. linlin has travelled everywhere to get herself an husband from the three-eye tribe with the sole purpose of having a child who will be able to hear the voice of all things

big mom has been patient about it throughout pudding's childhood, but with times changing she needs a faster way. doting and caring doesn't work, so she retorts to more violent means. also don't be fooled, linlin is actively grooming pudding into turning an homicidal person. the only thing that kept pudding from snapping at a way younger age was lola

if big mom is an idle who requests soul sacrifices in her name, pudding is her prophet. her siblings are meant to be in political marriages and further the empire, while pudding's only purpose is to find the road to the one piece - her lifestyle is way different from her siblings'

cut to something along 16 years later. while somewhere in the east blue luffy and co are planning to sail for their adventure. the political engagement between lola and loki is a shitshow ( who would have thought ) ending up with big mom and the giants' relationship getting even more bitter

with lola escaping totto land, big mom has to think quickly. she wants giants in her army, but will not get them through an alliance. she begins funding a research to make giants in labs. germa 66 will become her next allies... but first she needs a plan

a parallel research was funded to find the memo memo no mi devil fruit. pudding is forced to eat it in hope that it would spark something to her unlocked powers, but instead she gets the ability to manipulate memories. beside big mom and her siblings, pudding has been tampering with totto land inhabitants for years by the time the straw hats arrive

her first snap happens around the time lola leaves. she succesfully kills one of her bullies, causing an uproar in whole cake island. the body is disposed of and everybody's memories are changed, with big mom exiling pudding to cacao island and fill in for her older sister - pudding thinks lola would do a better job than her, but at the same time loves the "freedom" that comes with not being with big mom all the time as her true personality can be shown without fear

NB: at some point after her first snap, pudding was forced to wear a mask that would conceal her third eye. the inhabitans of totto land have no recollection of her being an hybrid

two years go by - the plan is essentially pudding marrying any of the germa 66 princes, kill him right after the vows and basically have a red wedding. in the end big mom would have assured herself their power without an actual alliance. pudding was told she would have married ichiji and was totally on board with the plan of killing the vinsmokes, but was actually surprised when sanji showed up

NB: pudding meets "alone" with sanji twice before the wedding and both times they actually talked about their childhood and opened up to each other. her struggle is not evil vs good but rather than the abused kid in her recognises the abused kid in him, and it plants doubts on whether she could also get a better life by escaping the way he did as a kid. to put it simply, she doesn't want to kill him

cue the straw hats arriving in cacao island. pudding genuinely wants to help them because she thinks they could be her ticket to leave her homeland. she actually gets caught up in wedding preparatives, and is not aware of the fact that big mom is spying on her to check that her loyalty is where it should be

the night before the wedding, pudding pledge her alliance to bege and chiffon with the promise that they will take her with them once they leave. the double agent's plan was actually to change memories accordingly - most important making big mom believe that the vinsmokes were dead, have both families fight to death and whoever wanted to leave had an open window right at that time

pudding and sanji's conversation right before the wedding is what sets her to spare him. she's aware he knows about the red wedding, but refrains from telling the actual plan. her not being able to shoot him is basically all an act to buy some time and cause chaos

they still prepare a new cake in the end to match with the memories pudding has implanted in big mom's brain, and once again pudding is doubtful - this time about her actual escape. leaving would cause her mother to get aggressive again and possibly hurt the inhabitants, reasons why in the end pudding remains in totto land. before parting ways with sanji, she deliberately erases any traces of possible feelings he might have had for her

NB: pudding doesn't love sanji, but she does have a soft spot for him as he opened her eyes about the years of abuse her mother put her through and that there's a way out. if he'll ever need aid in anything she will provide no question asked, however acting as a shadow rather than make it a big deal. it's not love, she just owes him a debt until they're even

a year and some passes, and while our heroes are in wano country, pudding's life has gone back to being minister of chocolate albeit the ongoing fight between families. she's eventually kidnapped on her way to a tea party by blackbeard's pirates. [ this is the current manga arc, info will probably change once i have the full plot in hands ] while her third eye has opened, pudding hasn't trained enough to read phoneglyph. for now the voice of all things is more of a costant buzz in her ears that she can't quite make up and further spikes her mood swings

#dev.#i will add this on my carrd too eventually but figured it could be helpful #since many blogs i follow are opla based anyway hjhj #i will add more points but this was already so time consuming. yay key points tho

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hartxstarr-art · 1 year

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Half Life

Summary: He has nothing now. Friendships, and lovers, and goals, and dreams—he wonders if he ever had anything at all. The syndicate falls, and so does Spike. Faye feels quite the same.

Content Warnings: Angst and hurt/comfort. Not everything is fine.

Notes: Also on ao3. 700 word count. Post canon. Christmas.

Drinking martinis by myself on a sunday. Drinking martinis again on a monday.

“Half Life” by Trocadero. As a Red vs. Blue fan, I don’t necessarily view this song in a romantic sense. It’s about family, it’s about friendship, it’s about comrades in arms; it’s about losing someone you love, and missing someone you love, and thinking about someone you love—in this case: a sister about her brother.

Faye and Spike, after they find him broken and battered.

---

She knew now, as it came back to her in waves, that she grew up privileged. It never got below freezing in her hometown, so her father had them go someplace where it snowed for the season, during her holiday breaks; a ski resort or a log cabin, across seas, continents, chasing the snow and a cup of cocoa. They would play in the frost, get warm by the fire, and eat heartily; stews, and roasts, and candied fruits.

Spike never celebrated any holidays. He never had any vacations. He told her this on one of the rare days he felt up to talking, laying on the couch, no longer wrapped up as tightly. He stares up into the ceiling, and Faye thinks he isn’t looking at anything at all. Can’t. Not yet.

She got everyone something, a few weeks back—when everyone was still here, that is. A fancy-looking keyboard for Ed, a squeaky toy for Ein, a new toolkit for Jet, cologne for Spike. Not cheap stuff. She didn’t know why she did it at the time, but she knows now. Too bad it’s too late for that.

Jet always got him something, Spike said. Every year. A lighter, a wallet, a utility knife; in that order. Sturdy, practical. Very Jet. He hung up lights, wore funny sweaters, made Spike’s favorite meals. She thought she saw a ghost of a smile, at the recollection of the past three years.

She felt her heart sink.

It’s mid December, now. She doubts Jet will do anything this year. Not after that. Not after the limp still in his step and the constant furrow between Spike’s brows. Not after the quiet and the loss. She knows he knows this, too.

She wishes it didn’t feel so much like a ghost town aboard the ship. No more clicking of keys or barking. No music or whistling. Just the shifting of Bebop, it’s rumbling and rattling, the soft hum of energy. It’s stifling—no talking, no movement; like time has stood still, frozen, the tightness of the throat, near the top. Itchy.

Jet goes into the bonsai room. Spike has used up his word count for the day, laying his head upon his pillow and closes his eyes. He isn’t sleeping. Faye sits still for a moment. Debates. Heads to the storage. She finds the lights, rummages for the tape, gives up, takes the remaining box of adhesive bandages, and gets to work. It’s sloppy, and uneven, but by the end of the evening, she has the sitting room lit up in a colorful array.

She wipes sweat with the back of her hand and notices Spike lift his head, finally. He blinks. “Oh,” he says, which is one more word for the day—and it’s such a simple sound, but she found achievement in it, welling in her chest, her hands at her hips, as she surveys her work with renewed vigor.

She gestures, “Merry Christmas!”

He swallows. Chews the inside of his cheek. Puts his head back down, lifts it again—cranes his neck, looks at the lights. Faye watches them flicker in his eyes.

Finally: “It’s a bit too early, isn’t it?”

She huffs. “It’s the eighteenth.”

“Of November?”

“It’s December.”

“Oh.” He lays his head again. He’s silent for a long time. And then—“It’s been a month.” Simple. A statement. The passing of time.

“Yeah,” it comes out like a croak. She tries to compose herself. Stops, fails, feels the tears start falling. “Yeah.”

She cries, and Spike closes his eyes again. His mouth goes into a thin line before he gets to his feet, unsteady, aching, determined, and when he reaches for her she collapses into him, landing them backwards into the couch. She holds him, and it hurts, but she holds him, and she’s never held Spike before but he lets her now. Lets her finally notice the faintly protruding ribs and skinny limbs; and she searches her memory to see if he’s always been like that, always this small, this broken, and she cries even more when she remembers.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, slowly, thoughtfully. “It looks nice.” A beat, after she sniffles. “Thank you.” And she starts over again.

#my writing #cowboy bebop #cowboy bebop fic #faye valentine #spike spiegel #jet black #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #cowboy bebop fanfic #cowboy bebop fanfiction

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the-hydrogen-hydroxide · 2 years

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ok i am finally writing my review of RvB seasons 1-17 (plus all the mini-series that i chose to watch)

I’ll review them in terms of the arcs that they followed, not in terms of individual seasons.

TL;DR: It was great. Please please watch RvB at least until the end of season 8 (don’t worry, the seasons are way shorter than typical TV seasons). The best the series gets is after that point (seasons 10 and 13 in particular), but if you don’t like the show by the end of The Recollection, then it’s probably not for you.

Interested people who I promised I’d tag once i finished this: @math-and-musicals @elitheradguy

Spoilers ahead! Keep reading at your own risk.

-The Blood Gulch Chronicles (Seasons 1-5): 6/10. The focus is entirely on comedy, with plot only serving as a springboard for that comedy. It works! Most of the jokes are really funny, and what little plot they have doesn’t take itself too seriously. The characters are great, but there are some serious growing pains in the early seasons (Caboose in particular feels like a completely different character). A lot of the jokes really have not aged well, but the offensive jokes are pretty easy to ignore because the timeless ones are far more frequent. This arc is probably the weakest in the series, mostly because they haven’t quite figured out some of their characters, but that just means there’s nowhere to go but up!

-Out of Mind (Mini-series): 6/10. Very little comedy here, which is disappointing because it focuses a lot on Agent York, who typically has a really funny dynamic with his AI and the other Freelancers. But the story with Tex is pretty interesting, recontextualizing some of her actions near the end of Blood Gulch Chronicles. I would actually recommend watching this after finishing season 10, because Tex’s and York’s actions in that season are integral to truly understanding their relationship here.

-Recovery One (Mini-series): 8/10. This mini-series is absolutely fantastic. Not only does it introduce Agent Washington, my favorite character in the entire series, it also gives us some info on Project Freelancer drama that will take another five full seasons to resolve. The Freelancer drama is an amazingly-written slow burn that they reveal just enough information about to keep the viewers interested, but never so much that it becomes predictable. This mini-series also introduces The Meta, the primary antagonist for the upcoming trilogy, in a way that makes it very threatening. Watch it right after season 5.

-Relocated (Mini-series): 7/10. Don’t have much to say about Relocated, because it bleeds so much into season 7 in my memory, but I remember that it’s funny. Watch it in between seasons 6 and 7.

-The Recollection (seasons 6-8): 8/10. What’s there to say? This arc is the platonic ideal of Red vs Blue. It’s got your everyday great comedy, but it starts throwing crazy story at you like nobody’s business. The twists in this arc, especially the one at the end of season 6 (RvB fans, you know what I’m talking about) are insane. Plus, this arc is the point when Monty Oum began working on animating some of the fight scenes, so starting now, the big fights are absolutely fantastic.

-The Project Freelancer Saga (seasons 9-10): 9/10. Season 10 is my favorite season in the entire series. Season 9 is less good, but it sets up some really important story. I really wasn’t a fan of everything that happened inside the Epsilon memory unit, but the Freelancer flashbacks were top-tier and all of season 10 was a hit. Plus, it introduces Agent Carolina, who is one of the most consistently-interesting characters in the series.

-The Chorus Trilogy (seasons 11-13): 9/10. This shit is WILD. After the resolution of the Freelancer drama, I was kind of worried where the show would take Wash, Carolina, and Epsilon (some of my favorite characters). Turns out, I should not have been worried. Their characterization is absolutely fantastic throughout this trilogy, but that’s not to say that the reds and blues don’t get great stuff too. Our Blood Gulch crew, especially Tucker, gets great development. Seasons 12 and 13 in particular were great for Tucker, turning him from one of my least favorite characters to one of my favorites. He works perfectly as a foil for Felix and as a representation of the thoughts of the entire Blood Gulch crew at this point in the series. The only thing keeping this trilogy away from a 10/10 was season 11. It was just so slow! It takes until the very end of that season for the plot to kick in, and that was just too long to wait. Other than season 11, however, the pacing is damn near perfect throughout this arc. Finally, the end of season 13 got me super emotional but it was also so good. Probably the best ending they could have given to that character. I know a lot of fans aren’t happy with that ending, but I think it was the best decision to make for the future of the show itself.

-Anthology (season 14): 8/10. This season doesn’t follow the typical plot structure; instead, it is an anthology of smaller stories in the RvB universe. Most of them are really funny. My favorite ones are the story about Felix and Locus earlier in their lives and the story about The Triplets.

-The Shisno Trilogy (seasons 15-17): 8/10. This is a really tricky arc for me to rank, because seasons 15 and 17 are great, but season 16 is...well...probably the single worst in the entire series. It’s not funny, the plot is really not intriguing, and Donut (the character who is supposed to be more three-dimensional in this season) is more annoying than he’s ever been. The only redeeming parts of season 16 were Grif’s pizza quest and the fact that ProZD voices one of the characters. However, I gave this arc as a whole an 8 out of 10 because the other two seasons are great. Season 15 is just incredible, with villains that are original and make a lot of sense, great character development for people like Grif and Sarge, and excellent comedy poking fun at the characters themselves. And then season 17 is short but sweet, with a nice “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” plotline and some interesting twists, plus top-notch Wash characterization. My only complaints about these two seasons are the fact that Carolina never apologizes for her (frankly kind of evil) actions that are brought up in season 15, and that I really don’t like Genkins as the primary antagonist of season 17 at all. He’s kind of just a less interesting version of O’Malley.

Thanks for reading all of my ramblings (or just skipping to the end). All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Red vs Blue. No I will not be watching RvB Zero. If you want to know, my favorite characters are Wash, Simmons, and York. My favorite part in the series was The Reds and Blues v The Meta at the end of season 8, and the saddest part was the end of season 13. My favorite running joke was “The worst ___ ever. Of all time,” but an honorable mention goes to “I ran track in high school.” Fuck you, Chairman, you’re evil and your face looks weird.

#red vs blue #rvb

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bloodgulchblog · 2 years

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I feel like Pandora opening the fucking box here but I have to ask- What the fuck is Red vs. Blue. What is it? I've seen the first season twice I think but have never been able to watch past that. It's funny, sure. The first episode is iconic. But I still don't understand it, you feel? Do things happen in the later seasons? What is the appeal?

Shit, fuck, okay, so...

(This is a long post, and nobody concerned is at all surprised.)

You've seen the first season so I don't have to go over the very basic starting premise, at least. I'll try and avoid glaring spoilers.

ANYWAY.

Red vs Blue was only supposed to last for a couple of episodes, but it got away from them and the first arc (seasons 1-5) ran from '03-'07 and it's like 9.5 hours of content all together. Part way in, it found its legs and started telling a funny story about how this pile of color coded idiots in Blood Gulch got tangled up loosely in some stuff pointing vaguely in the direction of the alien war and saved the day. They go through some portals. They get wildly lost. They think they've traveled in time. There are a lot of stupid jokes that become plot points. They fight a guy who is a lot better at fighting than them. There's a big explosion. It's stupid, extremely 2000s in both good ways and terrible ways, and incredibly dear to my heart, all in equal measure.

After it ended and had been silent for a while, RT decided to continue Red vs Blue but this time it was going to have an actual plot on purpose! From the beginning! For real this time!

The way they did this was by retconning and adding onto the only backstory anyone in the Blood Gulch Chronicles had: Agent Texas was from a top secret military project (Project Freelancer) where she got paired with an aggressive artificial intelligence for space war reasons.

Seasons 6-8 (about 6 hours of content) form an arc that is called The Recollection. It starts a while after Season 5 ends, and introduces the character of Agent Washington (from the same project as Tex, naturally.) Wash is trying to investigate what happened back in Blood Gulch (and specifically where the character Church has ended up) while also contending with a mysterious, aggressive, mute man called the Meta who's been hunting down and killing agents for their AIs.

A lot of shit happens, there's A Twist that idk if you've already heard but it's fun if you haven't. It ends with some strong forgiveness and power of friendship vibes.

After that, seasons 9 and 10 are the Project Freelancer Saga (about 5 hours, can you tell episodes were getting longer) which has big flashbacks to what actually went down during the project. Season 9 is plagued (for me) by having the "current" events mostly be a bunch of stuff that happens as a dream sequence (more or less) for one character and nobody else in it is real. (It's interesting if you care about him, but otherwise it's a lot of sitting through things that don't matter.) 10 gets back to things happening in the present and it has problems from being ten pounds of plot in a five pound bag, but also I love Agent Carolina a lot and much of the plot is about her dragging the gang into a revenge quest to try to get closure so... *raises and lowers one shoulder.* (I have a lot of unpopular opinions because the flashback characters are some of the most popular in this fandom, but I think the flashbacks are one of the weakest parts of the whole show.)

The show ended there for a while, having resolved the Project Freelancer plot and given the characters a theoretical sendoff. Then, seasons 11-13 (The Chorus Trilogy, about 8 hours) were produced by a new showrunner and, quite frankly, it was better than RvB ever deserved. After heroically bringing down what remained of the super shady Project Freelancer, the gang is finally richly rewarded with being able to go home to Earth! Unfortunately, they get stranded on a colony world called Chorus instead and dragged into the civil war currently plaguing the planet. It is the best-handled arc in the whole show, really nicely done, and I very honestly think that Season 11 is the best place to start RvB if you aren't sure whether you want to or not. It stands alone really well, it came at a point where the show had matured a lot, and Season 11 actually does the work of re-introducing the characters and gives you enough information that you don't have to see anything prior in order to understand about them. If you like 11-13, then you can decide if you care enough to go back for the rest of it. If not, you can safely say you saw the best of the show.

The characters have responsibility and have to deal with what it means to have people depending on and looking up to you (especially when you're still mostly the same pile of idiots you've always been.) There's a lot of great shit in here about friendship and being flawed people trying their best. It's still dumb, RvB is always dumb, but it has a good heart.

15 and 16 were by a new guy, and were such badly-received seasons they took the guy who wrote them off the show. 16 is, hands down, the worst. 17 felt like an apology. It was really good, but oh god at what cost?

I figure if you end up caring enough about RvB you'll find out about this period on your own, otherwise summarizing it beyond "there's a lot of bad characterization and unfunny humor and there's a time travel plot, then the apology season was actually great" is wasting your time.

We don't speak of RvB Zero. It was so poorly received that neither does RT, now.

OKAY BUT WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF RED VS BLUE?

Full disclosure: While RvB matured some over time and got less bad about some of its jokes, the humor has aged badly in a lot of places and wasn't okay in the first place (looking @ u, homophobic jokes and the only black character is a guy who sleeps around and probably has a bunch of kids he doesn't support jokes, I cannot blame anyone for being put off especially by the early material) but when it's good it's witty, the breakneck pacing of jokes is great. When RvB is funny, it's really funny.

The characters are all very flawed and remain flawed, but most of them grow and you get to see them as people struggling with situations that are so much bigger and scarier and more important than the world at large has told them they're ever going to be allowed to be. The Blood Gulch crew are not just losers, but a specifically selected pack of losers. But the thing that matters about them is they can, despite their flaws and their frequently shitty personalities and their petty squabbling, band together when it matters. And when some very damaged characters who are supposedly "better" and more important than they are crash and burn and are at their lowest? The Blood Gulch gang goes "hey, you can sit with us" and offers some pretty unconditional acceptance and friendship that is pretty much lifesaving.

RvB isn't deep, the Freelancer plot is full of holes so big you can drive a tank through them, the first showrunner couldn't write female characters, I've mentioned how much of it was in poor taste, and I could go on...

But I bonded with RvB when I was young and a lot of the things in it have meaning to me, it's quotable as hell, and I owe RvB for a lot of enjoyment I had over the years messing around with ideas and characters in it and talking for hours to my friends about it.

#rvb tag #ask #measlyfurball13

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shitpostingkats · 2 years

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Epsilon, Carolina, and Parallel Character Arcs

To me, there are two lines that stick out from the freelancer collection. The culmination of the two characters that play center stage for the entirety of the duology, Epsilon and Carolina. Their stories wrap in two of my absolute favorite, gutpunching, and heartfelt lines of the entire show:

"I forget you."

and

"Your past doesn't define who you are. It just gives you the starting point for who you're going to be."

Epsilon and Carolina's quotes work in parallel to each other; on one hand, Church making the deliberate choice to lose the memory, to stop, for the sake of someone he cares about. He forgets. And Carolina, making the choice to hold that close, to move on, for the sake of herself. She remembers.

What makes this absolutely fascinating is they’re following the same story, healing from the same pain.

Red vs Blue is all about memory. Unabashedly, the show has been very vocal about its primary theme since the day they first decided to have actual writing. But one thing I think doesn't get enough attention is how this is carried over and represented in season 9, the season that flashes between the memory unit and PFL's early days. In Church, the usage is obvious: he's living in a memory, a projection of his old life. Might as well make it a good one. But the other side of the season is also a recollection. It's Carolina's memory. We get to see the good times, before things went wrong, before people died. We get to see the twins working in tandem, the team functioning. Carolina and York banter. Wash is still the goofy rookie. They drive through the city listening to music and crack jokes and show off. Sure, it shows the beginning of some of the tragedy to come, but the freelancer side of the season ends with a scene between Carolina and the director, saying 'this was the warmup. From now on, it will be serious.'

Church and Carolina are both remembering their teams. The people they love. And how their lives got ruined by project freelancer. Those moments, those memories, are going to be the driving force and rage behind their team up, their quest for revenge. The idea that these people, this family, was hurt by one man and his stupid goals, is their shared trauma that leads to them being the driving force of the plot.

Even in season 9, we see Church trying to hold on to his memories. To make sure he has all his facts right, that everything, down to the smallest detail, reflects real life. Eventually, he uses this for closure. He finds Tex, and sees the rage she's carrying in her. Not at what the director did. Honestly, she seems to be mostly over her past as Allison seeing as it, you know, wasn't her. But the same idea, that so many lives were lost, all for the sake of someone that wasn't her. That she didn't get to make her own choices.

Same trauma, different result.

She sees Epsilon, trying so hard to remember, to hold on to everything, and she says "hey." She tells him off. She says ‘Even if these memories matter to you, holding on to them is hurting me.’ So Epsilon lets go. He decides that these memories aren't going to save anyone, they're just going to keep both of them from healing.

Tex was the reason Epsilon was even created. Like he says, "You were the memory. You were the key."

Epsilon is memory. He's the key. And he choses to throw it away, so it can never be unlocked again. It's bittersweet but it isn't fair, her being brought back over and over, her very autonomy violated, for the sake of someone else’s story.

And hey! That's another theme he shares with Carolina!

The idea that the stories we see in television, the ones guided by trauma, aren't always correct, because your pain doesn't mean you can hurt other people. And not in a "oh you want to Kill the person responsible for your trauma and that makes you a Bad Person and you will eventually have a Change of Heart." (Though that does, kinda, happen, buts it’s way more nuanced and well written and makes much more sense for their personal arcs than the stereotypical 'uwu murder is bad' trope.) No, Carolina and Church are never decried for their goals, for wanting to lash out or obsessively remember. They get called out when their ideals, the ones explicitly labeled 'noble' or 'romantic' by popular media, hurt the people who are trying to help them. Church compulsively follows Tex through layers of memories, chasing the girl he's determined to love. In any other story, that would be sweet. Carolina wants the director dead, wants the man who hurt her and her friends killed. In any other story, that would be heroic. But both of them get called out for their behavior.

“Romance happens in movies. In real life, it’s called stalking.”

And, interestingly, by the people who they aren’t hurting. In the memory unit, Tucker, walking restraining order, is the first one to make Church question if what he’s doing is wrong. Carolina is berated for her treatment of the reds and blues by Wash. Wash. Wash, the guy who’s the only one other than Carolina and Epsilon who knows the entirety of what the director did, the guy who’s carrying the traumas of three different people in his head, the guy who should want the director dead more than anyone. But he also has his experiences from the previous seasons. He’s the one who steps up, like Tucker did, and tells her ‘I know books and tv have taught you that this is okay, that you can treat people like side characters in your personal story, but I’ve been down that road. In reality, it just makes you a jerk.’

Trauma does not give you a free pass to be a bad person.

Throughout season 10, our story is now flip flopping between Carolina-and-Epsilon, and the final days of project freelancer. The bad days. Connie’s death and Maine’s degradation and Tex’s betrayal and the final mutiny. And, most importantly to Carolina, her final fight with York.

Though it pains me to do so, I’m going to pull a quote from season 15.

“Sometimes, I think York was my chance at a fresh start. And I threw it down an elevator shaft.”

Carolina is fighting between the two sides of herself, the parts she sees as being “splintered” by the project. The good leader, the team commander, the captain of her little family, versus the ruthless soldier, the headstrong killer, the ‘best of the best’. She spends time tracking down all the old bodies of her teammates, trying to reconcile how much she loved them with the fact that they all betrayed each other. Connie’s helmet, Tex’s crashed ship, and, once again.

York.

When Epsilon shows her the recording of York, she sees her chance at a ‘fresh start’. She sees her old teammate, her almost love, the man who was willing to die to do the right thing. Epsilon tells her “I know what it’s like to spend your whole life chasing ghosts.”

From his perspective, this is crucial advice. The choice to stop remembering, to move on and let go, is what kept the woman he loved being forced to live, over and over again. It's the choice that got him out of the memory unit, that allowed him to overcome his grief and have a semblance of closure.

But to Carolina, the memory of York was the only thing giving her reservations. The memory of ‘do the right thing, no matter the consequences’. The memory of a family, of friends, of jokes in the pelican and a lighter that says Errera and the idea that she got more from the project than years of hell and trauma. The idea that she needs to ‘let go’ is exactly what breaks her.

Again, same history. Same pain. Different ways they come out of it, different ways they heal.

From then on, Carolina is dead set on killing the director. She’s ruthless, vicious, and downright suicidal. Epsilon, who was just beginning to stitch himself together, feeds into it, with newfound whiplash after getting his full memory back. Together, they become a dysfunctional little battle team of loathing, eventually driving away any help they had and dooming their vengeance to failure.

(Of course, they only survive because the very people they abandoned look at eachother and decide ‘They were hurt. They hurt us. But this thing they’re chasing, this trauma, is what brought us together in the first place. And we’re going to hold on to that companionship, the shared history, instead of the actions made by someone mad with grief.’ You know, kinda like the original pfl chose not to do.) (Honestly, people really undervalue the sim troopers in my opinion. They went through almost the exact same thing the PFL team did, just on a broader, less personalized, level. The fact that they look around and, without even knowing it, choose love and sticking together the exact same way Carolinas' previous family didn’t, is hecking underappreciated.)

But I digress. Honestly, I think up until the very end, Carolina planned to kill the director. This wasn't a big lie, she wasn’t on the fence. She really planned to put a bullet in his skull.

I think the reason she didn't, the reason she walks away, is the usual strange trifecta that the series had been running on since season 6: a combination of Alison, the director, and the ai he created because of her loss.

When she enters the room, the first thing she sees, no, hears, is her mother. Her mother, reminding her husband, reminding them both, to never say goodbye. A message from almost literally beyond the grave to not miss her, not mourn her, but just to. Think of her as not being here right now. Carolina wonders if she should have decried her teammates' memories the way that she did.

Next, she sees her father. A man who, in his own words, “has a mind more filled with memory than it is with hope.” Honestly, props to everyone on that scene, because up until then rvb had some really rocky human animation, but that moment, that frame, is so bleeding with tiredness and hopelessness that it hurts every time. She sees a man who is so overcome with mourning, with seeing someone he loved as “gone”, that it killed hundreds of people. I think Carolina decides not to kill him, not because he looks so lost, but because she sees what she will turn into, if she puts a gun to his head.

And finally, my sweet darling Epsilon. God fucking damn you and your funky little robot monologues that tear my heart out of my chest. Epsilon screams at the director, lists his crimes, finally lets all the deaths that have been piling up spill out of him, and there's a very telling line that I adore with the entirety of my soul.

“I’m here to remember what you’ve done. Someone has too.”

Because that's what Epsilon sees himself as. Not a person, not a fragment, just a memory chip to use to hold the director accountable. That's literally how Epsilon is introduced to the cast; the piece of evidence that can testify against project freelancer. He thinks he’s just a receipt.

But Carolina hears this and thinks ‘I can remember them.’ All season, she’s been thinking about the final days, the betrayal and the scheming and the family that ripped itself apart. But she needs to remember the earlier flashbacks, the joking team and the days when things were easy, too. She’s been living this season in a memory, and she didn’t even make it a good one.

Like Church, she chooses to fight for her team, for her memories, and for herself.

“Your past doesn’t define who you are. It just gives you a starting point for who you're going to be.”

So Carolina chooses memory the exact way Epsilon didn’t. She kisses her father on the head and assures him he’ll be remembered not as the director, but as Leonard. She walks out, decides to let herself remember York and Tex and Wash and Connie and the twins.

It’s no surprise that the season ends on an anecdote about Allison. Carolina, the woman who’s remembering her, and Church, the ai who forgot. These two people, who both loved her, albeit, in wildly different ways, swapping a story that isn’t tainted by PFL, just a small cheerful story. They aren’t mourning her, not like the director did. They’re acknowledging that she’s gone, that her death shaped their lives, their shared trauma, and they’re digging through the pieces to find something they want to hold close, something to build themselves on anew.

Your past doesn’t define who you are. Your memories shape who you become. But you get to pick which ones you keep, which ones you hold on to. You get to decide which experiences are your starting point for who you’re going to be.

#red vs blue #rvb #rvb carolina #rvb epsilon #essays #listen I just have a lot of thoughts about the Legitimately Good writing the middle seasons of rvb had and I want to talk about them

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louiseazy · 2 years

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Red vs Blue Swear Count Recollections

Fun Fact: rvb is averaging 100 swears per season so far

with the recollections total at 301

swears words used :

bastard/r-word/pussy were only used once; douche/boner twice; dick 4 times; bitch 12; crap 13; ass 38; damn 43; shit 54; and fuck a whopping 130 times

Ranks:

last place non-swearers Caboose/meta/aliens/chairman/extra reds&blues/command/consular/South/Delta/Shelia

11th is tie between Donut/FLISS/director/Sister with 1

10th is Doc with 2

9th is a tie between Texas/LT Miller with 3

8th is a tie between Washington/"CT" with 9

7th is Lopez with 11

6th is Sarge with 21

5th is Epsilon with 30

4th is Simmons with 36

3rd place is Alpha(Church) with 39

2nd place is Grif with 56

1st place is surprisingly Tucker who was only really in S7 with 78

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dancerzone · 2 years

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Track list - beatmania IIDX 12 HAPPY SKY CS 01. DAWN -THE NEXT ENDEAVOUR- / L.E.D. fw.堀澤麻衣子 02. in the Sky / Ryu☆ 03. 風の谷のDREAM / PINK PONG 04. BLUE MIRAGE / DJ CHUCKY 05. Just a Little Smile / Sota Fujimori 06. IceCube Pf.(RX-Ver.S.P.L.) / 高田雅史 07. Reflection Into the EDEN / 猫叉Master 08. サヨナラ・ヘヴン / 猫叉Master 09. Endless Summer Story / DJ Yoshitaka feat.星野奏子 10. Recollection / Noria -beatmania IIDX 11 IIDX RED CS 11. Toxic / WaveGroup/Shoichiro Hirata 12. You Really Got Me / WaveGroup/Shoichiro Hirata 13. 水上の提督(Short mix from ”幻想水滸伝V”) / 猫叉Master 14. Love Again... / Tatsh feat. Junko Hirata 15. リグレット / 星野奏子 16. INORI / dj TAKA feat.HAL 17. SOLITON BEAM / L.E.D. 18. Go Berzerk / Scott Brown - beatmania IIDX 13 DistorteD 19. BOOM BOOM DISCO NIGHT / Y&Co. 20. Heavenly Sun (IIDX VERSION) / AKIRA YAMAOKA 21. MOON / dj TAKA feat. Erika Mochizuki 22. 虹色 / DJ YOSHITAKA feat. G.S.C license 23. Pretty Punisher / baby weapon feat.asuka.m - beatmania IIDX 11 IIDX RED CS 24. eRAseRmOToRpHAntOM / L.E.D.-G VS GUHROOVY Trivia - All the new DistorteD videos were later added to the arcade releases in beatmania IIDX 14 GOLD. - eRAseRmOToRpHAntOM would later appear in beatmania IIDX 13 DistorteD CS with its new video with it the following year. - As the beatmania IIDX 14 GOLD ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK album - which contains all the CS originals from HAPPY SKY on them - wouldn't be released until July 2nd, 2007, over six and a half months later, VISUAL EMOTIONS 5 was the only way to listen to the HAPPY SKY CS original songs in their OST forms until then. ___________________ Support the Stream! I’m on @buymeacoffee. If you like my work, you can buy me a pizza and share your thoughts 🎉🍕 https://bit.ly/3xv3LoL I started a Ko-fi Page! Ko-fi helps creators get support from fans of their work. Please support or follow my page! https://bit.ly/3NYVlv9 Give me a Tip : paypal.me/robo2001 ================= Refrescamos nuestra imagen, y te invitamos a vivir la experiencia Dancerzone Perú Pagina Oficial en todos nuestros canales virtuales Portal https://bit.ly/3N0lzMd Facebook: https://bit.ly/3N9DeS5 Instagram https://bit.ly/3MVQ0TR Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DancerZone Tumblr https://bit.ly/3zNsTI6 Canal de YouTube: http://goo.gl/4vzD87 Blog Oficial: https://bit.ly/3aZEs4L ¡DESPIERTA TU RITMO INTERIOR! ============================================== Propiedad de ©Konami .Todas las imágenes y contenido mostrado aquí son solo de carácter ilustrativo y son propiedad de sus respectivos autores. Property of ©Konami All images and material used here are only for Illustrative purposes, and are propriety of their respective authors . by DancerZone

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