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Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 6 - The Ultimate Team No More?

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Sayuri Daimon ~ Sarah Damon

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Katsumata ~ Boomer

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Yoshi: “But does he wait? Of course not! Not Mister Reckless!”

Yoshi has some added exasperation at Marcus in the dub and I approve.

Masaru: “Aw, he’s annoyed at himself.”

Agumon: “Yeah, he’s annoyed.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What’s wrong, ya jealous?”

Agumon: “Sorry, but no autographs!”

how does Agumon know what an autograph is

Agumon: “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru: “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

Agumon: “Ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “We’ll just win again, of course! There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Agumon: “Yeah!”

The original brought in Masaru and Agumon calling themselves the strongest combination ever kind of transparently for the purpose of this episode. However, because Marcus and Agumon have already called themselves “the ultimate team” before in the dub, this works better and doesn’t seem quite so obvious.

Dub-Agumon doesn’t have that quirk original-Agumon has of echoing the last word or so – or maybe a whole sentence as in the previous quote – of Masaru’s lines for emphasis. Not necessarily a bad thing, just that the dub Agumon has different quirks.

Lalamon: “This is the worst…”

Yoshino: “That’s my line.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Well, at least they don’t lack confidence.”

Yoshi: “No, they just lack common sense.”

Lalamon doesn’t get to steal Yoshi’s catchphrase, but instead she and Yoshi do some very warranted snarking.

Agumon: “Sarah, you’re a genius chef! Yum!”

Marcus: “Hey! How many times do I have to tell you not to call my mom by her first name!”

In the dub of the earlier episode where original-Agumon started doing this, dub-Agumon actually didn’t happen to use Sarah’s name, so this is the first time he’s done so onscreen. Still, I suppose Marcus’s line implies he’s done it multiple times before now, so this is the dub catching up by implying it’s been happening for a while even if we haven’t seen it.

Agumon: “But Sayuri is Sayuri. Chika is Chika. And Aniki is Aniki.”

Masaru: “That’s not what I mean!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Kristy is Kristy, Sarah is Sarah, and Boss is Boss.”

Marcus: “‘Boss’ is not my name!”

Agumon: “Oh. Well, still.”

Instead of Masaru failing to articulate why it’s weird for his friend to call his mom by her first name, Marcus shifts to an entirely different argument which almost might be implying he doesn’t really want Agumon to call him Boss? That could be considered relevant to this episode, but it’s almost certainly not deliberate.

Masaru: “It’s manners for the follower to hold back!”

Agumon: “Look who’s talking! Giving things to the follower shows off an aniki’s generosity!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Whatever happened to me being the boss here?”

Agumon: “Consider this an employee profit-sharing program.”

????? Agumon how on earth do you know what one of those is. I don’t even know what one of those is. Also, way to make this sound 1000% like a small business even though that never made any amount of sense.

This is basically making the same point as the original that Agumon feels Marcus ought to let him have the last fried egg as part of a boss’s generosity, but man does that get kinda lost in the ridiculous small-business joke.

Sayuri: “Oh my, they really know what they’re talking about…”

Chika: “That’s because they saw it on TV yesterday.”

Sayuri: “Still, it’s amazing that they’re studying while watching TV.”

~~~~~

Sarah: “Oh boy. Well, dinner just got a lot more interesting.”

Kristy: “Why do boys always have to act like boys?”

Sarah: “Oh, believe me, Kristy, one day you’ll be glad they do.”

The original exchange between Sayuri and Chika here was very strange – I think the subbers didn’t quite get what was meant to be going on there, because their take on it doesn’t really make sense – so the dub changing it to something else is quite reasonable. But Sarah being heteronormative at her daughter was really not what they needed to change this to.

(Is this implying that Sarah was/is into guys who are this kind of ridiculous idiot? Actually, uh, knowing about the kind of person Marcus’s dad is, that’d make… a good bit of sense. Oh dear.)

There’s some similar bickering about snoring here, but then also, still in the background:

Marcus: “That’s it! You’re fired!”

Agumon: “You don’t even pay me!”

Can we not with the small business jokes! It makes this whole thing so difficult to take seriously as a meaningful bond between fighting partners, which is kind of what this whole episode is meant to be focusing on. Also, as usual, how does Agumon even know that an “employee” is supposed to get paid; his entire experience with the word should be limited to what he is to Marcus. And Marcus saying “you’re fired” really should be taken as him officially breaking off their partnership, but this isn’t the part where that happens yet. (Though honestly I’m glad that when we do, we won’t be doing the small business jokes there.)

Agumon: “Well, I’m not gonna bail you out any more, Aniki! If I wasn’t there for you today, you would’ve been screwed!”

Masaru: “What?! Don’t be so damn egotistical! You can’t even evolve without my Digisoul!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Fine, don’t count on me to bail you out any more! Face it, you’d be totally lost without me!”

Marcus: “What?! Gimme a break! Without me you couldn’t Digivolve! Without me, this team would be nothing!”

I’m quoting this whole thing even though it’s basically the same as in the original, because this exchange is very important to the entire episode and I’m really glad the dub kept it intact. Boy could they have ruined the whole episode if they messed up this part, but they didn’t.

(I shouldn’t have to bring this up like it’s remotely remarkable, but after the fire-punching fiasco in episode 3, apparently it is.)

Marcus’s “without me this team would be nothing” is a bit harsher and more jerkish than originally, though that’s probably partly because the dub had more lip-flap to fill. It’s making Marcus more of a jerk like usual, but at least in this instance, Masaru being something of a jerk originally was actually the point, so this doesn’t stick out as much as it does sometimes.

The noises Agumon initially makes in reaction to Marcus’s comment here are a lot angrier in the dub, whereas originally it was more like upset floundering at the realisation that that’s true, before he snapped.

Agumon: “Damn it! I can’t do this any more! I’m done being your follower!”

Masaru: “Oh yeah, well, I’m out too! We’re not Aniki and follower any more!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That’s it! I can’t take this! I don’t want you to be my boss!”

Marcus: “That’s just fine by me! I don’t wanna be your boss, either!”

At least the dubbers had the sense to deliberately avoid using the word “employee” here and keep the small-business nonsense out of the part that really matters.

Tohma: “You’re arguing over something so trivial.”

Masaru: “It’s not my fault!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “You’re being immature, even for you.”

Marcus: “Y-Y-*You’re* immature!”

The joke of Marcus proving how immature he is means that instead he’s snapping at Thomas, somewhat shifting away from the issue with Agumon. Meanwhile, Masaru was more subtly and relevantly showing his immaturity by trying to insist that their argument is totally all Agumon’s fault and not even slightly his.

We also lose the interesting implications of Tohma thinking this whole argument is over something trivial.

Masaru: “Fine! I’m more than enough for one or two Digimon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hah. It’ll probably be *easier* without you, just you wait and see!”

Marcus’s extra jab about it being easier without Agumon shifts this more into an insistence that Agumon was somehow holding him back, rather than focusing on the more relevant point that he simply wants to feel like he can do this without help from anyone.

Agumon: “We’ll see about that, Aniki!”

~~~~

Agumon: “Hmph. Good luck, ‘cause you’re gonna need it!”

By wishing Marcus good luck, even if he means it as an insult, dub-Agumon is implying somewhat more of a sentiment of at least not wanting Marcus to get himself hurt doing this, which original-Agumon didn’t realise until later.

(Dub-Agumon doesn’t happen to call him Boss in this line, but he did so in an earlier line, so he is still doing that in the dub, too.)

The point I made in the original post about how these two scenes feel like one connected scene that ends on the note of Masaru going off to prove himself rather than them falling out doesn’t quite apply as much in the dub. Partly it’s because the dub doesn’t have the opening here, which isn’t its fault, but it also uses different BGM in each scene.

Elecmon: “So many toys to play with!” [evil chuckling]

I’m sure you can tell without me quoting the van driver’s line that this is not Elecmon echoing anything that any human said at all. Apparently it’s coming to the human world just because it genuinely personally likes messing with electronic devices. That is not how this is supposed to work, at all. Not even in the dub’s slightly different version of things!

Masaru: “Now there’ll be peace once again in the Daimon family.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Finally I have some peace now that Agumon’s not around.”

Marcus not mentioning his family makes this less about the petty eating and snoring concerns that the argument started off about. But this still does very much carry the tone of him trying to insist to himself that he’s totally happier this way when he very obviously isn’t.

Masaru: “I’ll do it all by myself.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Soon he’ll see! I don’t need *him* around!”

This, though, I don’t really like. The point was never specifically about Masaru proving anything to Agumon, and it wasn’t even specifically about the fact that he needs Agumon in particular. Masaru just wanted to prove, to himself, that he could do this (whatever “this” was) by himself.

Marcus’s intonation here is also quite overly-moody, making this come across a lot more like just a temporary tantrum rather than that this is connected to something that runs deep.

The dub decides to put a commercial break after this scene rather than after the Elecmon scene where the original opening went, even though this scene is short enough that they could probably have just as easily put it before it. I… think I like that choice? The Elecmon scene was always a bit unnecessary, so lingering more closely on the note of Marcus’s moodiness feels better. (Though it specifically lingers on that dub-changed line that I don’t like much, so, eh.)

That said, this next set of scenes cutting between Masaru out on his own stewing in his frustration and the DATS members trying to talk to Agumon in his Digivice does feel like it’s supposed to be one long connected thing in the original. So I dunno.

Megumi: “Look, it’s your favourite! A cheeseburger wrapped in another cheeseburger! With a cheeseburger for dessert!”

Um, that sure is a way to have a cheeseburger. Since she’s holding what looks like a perfectly normal burger, I can only assume she’s lying to try and make it sound more enticing to Agumon. (Also, haven’t you got the memo, Megumi? Agumon’s favourite is Sarah’s fried eggs, obviously.)

Yoshino: “How will they ever make up?”

Tohma: “It’s not something we should interfere with.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You think those guys will ever be partners again?”

Thomas: “I have more important things to do than second guess those two.”

Originally the implication from Tohma was definitely that he imagined they would make up sooner or later and just felt it wasn’t any of his business to try and force it to happen. But Thomas sounds like he’s implying he wouldn’t care if they didn’t ever make up at all. That’d have been reasonable for him before he came to respect Marcus, but not now.

Satsuma: “They must learn why they’re important to each other. If they don’t find that answer, this is as far as they go.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “They need each other. But if they can’t see that, there’s no place for them here.”

Sampson is spelling things out a lot more explicitly for us. And it also sounds like he’s only thinking about this in terms of their suitability as DATS agents. The sense I got from Satsuma was that he was thinking more broadly about their growth as individuals and is concerned about that, DATS agents or not.

Masaru: (That little shithead. He was the one who first said he wanted to be my follower.)

~~~~~

Marcus: (I can’t believe him! He was the one who said he wanted me to be his boss in the first place. Then he gets upset when I act like a boss.)

That last dub-added part misses the point a bit. This is supposed to be about Masaru still having room to feel like he doesn’t need anyone, because Agumon initiated their partnership and looked up to him. This isn’t about Marcus acting in any particular way while being in that “boss” role at all.

(Maybe this could be read as Marcus deflecting from the real point here – but that’s not even necessary, since the real point is him being able to tell himself he doesn’t need Agumon. Masaru was also essentially deflecting from that.)

Masaru: “Damn it!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “This day just keeps gettin’ better and better…”

Marcus has more to say as he almost falls over from his missed baseball swing and leaves. I’m not sure I like his comment here, like he’s just thinking about this as one of those Bad Days where everything goes wrong, as if he was playing baseball as a totally unrelated way to pass the time and then this mishap just added to the Bad Things pile. Really, Masaru’s playing baseball because of the initial problem, as a way to physically let off some steam, and then he probably messes up as a result of that frustration of his, which only serves to amplify it.

Maybe it’s just the tone I don’t like as much – Marcus simply sounds fed up and exasperated, rather than actively frustrated about something that isn’t really the baseball at all.

Lalamon: “You always said you hated being in the Digivice because you were alone.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “You said you hated being in the Digivice because it’s cramped and lonely.”

Ayy, the dub is still consistently sticking with its added emphasis that Agumon doesn’t like cramped spaces. I’m so weirdly pleased at this one bit of extra nuance that they manage to be completely consistent and also not-too-unsubtle about – probably because they’re not usually nearly this good. It’s to the point that I’m starting to have a strong theory that someone on the dub writing team had claustrophobia themselves and was projecting this onto Agumon, making consistently writing it this way personal to them, because they otherwise do not usually care enough to think about and follow through with the implications of minor changes like this.

Agumon: “You two wouldn’t understand.”

Gaomon: “That’s for sure. But that’s why I’m interested.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Just drop it, you guys, you don’t understand!”

Gaomon: “It’s disgraceful. A member of DATS should take pride in his partnership.”

Original-Gaomon was simply curious here, perhaps showing a side of him that’s similar to his master’s very scientific approach to things. Dub-Gaomon is also showing similarity to Thomas in his strong sense of duty (plus pride in his partnership because he’s a dog)… but he is also kind of being more of a dick in the process.

Gaomon: “Fighting with your master��”

~~~~~

Gaomon: “Arguing with your superior…”

Since dub-Gaomon doesn’t call Thomas “Master”, this had to be changed, and this is a perfectly reasonable change, but it does still give Gaomon more of a sense of being an army grunt rather than a loyal dog.

Gaomon: “Interesting. And why do you argue so often, do you think?”

Gaomon’s tone at the end here is also kind of dickish, like he’s implying that it should be obvious why Lalamon and Yoshi argue a lot. Geez, dub-Gaomon, chill.

Lalamon: “Yoshino’s always really lazy! She doesn’t clean up her room, she doesn’t fold her laundry, she has bad sleeping habits and—”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Yoshi’s great, but she’s bossy and messy! And you should see what she does with her toenail clippings—”

“Bossy” is a lot more in line with the Yoshi we already know (at least towards Marcus, who kind of deserves it), though the “messy” part is similar to the original in hinting at a side of her we don’t usually see. But overall – no thanks in large part to the toenail clippings joke – there’s much less of a sense in the dub that Yoshi’s an entirely different person at home and that she doesn’t work nearly as hard in her home life as she does at DATS.

Katsumata: “Da… Daimon!”

Masaru: “Katsumata? You’re still hanging ‘round here?” [he turns to walk away]

~~~~~

Boomer: “Huh? Oh… Marcus!”

Marcus: “Hey, Boomer. Uh, sorry I can’t really talk right now. I’ll see ya.” [he turns to walk away, muttering under his breath] “Doof.”

Masaru’s interaction with Katsumata is obviously somewhat unfriendly from the start, based on both their tones and Masaru’s implication of “I thought I drove you out of this turf”. But Marcus and Boomer are both being… polite to each other? I would have assumed they were friends based on this, until Marcus insulted him under his breath.

Which, since they’re evidently not friends – especially given what’s about to happen – just makes it come across as incredibly off that Marcus even pretended to be polite to him in the first place. Masaru would never do that; he never beats around the bush and would never hide it if he had a problem with someone. That straightforward sincerity he has is a really big part of his character and I am sad to see so much less of it there in Marcus.

Since Marcus was enough of a jerk to pretend to be nice and then insult them under his breath, it then also comes across like Boomer and his cronies surround Marcus for a beatdown mostly because of that, rather than that they’ve had a run-in with him before and want revenge.

Masaru: “What bad luck.”

Katsumata: “Cursing your fate won’t do you any good.”

Masaru: “I was talking about you. I’m extremely pissed off right now!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You *don’t* wanna start a fight with me today.”

Boomer: “Just ‘cause it’s five against one? Hah. We’re callin’ the shots this time around.”

Marcus: “Is that what you think? Back off, Boomer, before I teach you bullies a lesson!”

Boomer: “Yeah, right. Get him, guys!”

On the other hand, Marcus’s “today” does imply that he might have had a fight with this dude sometime before. (Unless he just means “start a fight with me” in the very general sense that people often come to him looking for a fight and not necessarily this guy in particular).

That line is also the only part of this scene that gets across the important sense that Marcus is especially in the mood to give someone a beatdown right now because of everything that’s been going on.

The rest of it… really doesn’t. Bullies? I don’t know if this is trying to say that these guys are known bullies that Marcus has heard of or dealt with before (in which case, why would he bother being nice to them?), or just a comment on the fact that they’re surrounding him five-on-one (though Marcus isn’t entirely innocent in this, since he insulted them first). But either way, this is the dub trying to reassure us that, hey, really, it’s okay that our protagonist beats up these guys, because they’re bullies! They’re bad guys! Marcus is being the good guy here, see!

That is not supposed to be the point of this. Masaru wasn’t beating up unwilling bystanders – he would not do that – and only did this because these dudes were looking for a fight. But this is very much supposed to be Masaru doing something that is kind of not okay, as a result of his frustration with himself set off by his argument with Agumon. That’s the point! It’s good for this to not be a great thing for Masaru to do! Characters – even good characters – are allowed to do bad things. That’s what makes stories more interesting.

Marcus also at least tries to de-escalate the situation by warning Boomer to back off. That makes the resulting beatdown a lot more on Boomer for refusing to listen, and a lot less on Marcus, who is at this point mostly acting in self-defence. Apparently Marcus would have been perfectly happy to walk away from this if they’d had second thoughts and left him alone.

But Masaru never gave them that chance. Once they’d incited aggression first by surrounding him, Masaru took that as a free excuse to start letting loose on these dudes without giving them an opportunity to change their minds. He wanted an excuse to vent his frustration through violence and wasn’t going to back out of it once he’d been given one. Again, that’s the point.

Agumon: (Aniki hurt my pride.)

~~~~~

Agumon: (You really hurt my feelings, Boss…)

This is almost the same, but hurt feelings is a bit more of a general idea that hurt pride. Pride in particular is especially relevant here, since Agumon and Masaru both have a lot of it and that’s a big part of the reason why this is happening.

At least the musical cue as Marcus stands over the beaten dudes is appropriately sinister and painting Marcus as very much not a hero in this situation. The dub soundtrack people have the right idea, even if the dub writers don’t.

Marcus: “See? I don’t need help from anyone.”

Marcus has an added silence-filling line as he walks away, pointing out things that were already implied in the original because who needs subtlety. Also, hey, look, it’s almost like he really did just beat up those guys for his own issuey reasons and not because he was being a good guy defeating the bullies, how about that!

Though I also think this is somewhat missing the point. Yes, a lot of this episode is about Masaru trying to insist he doesn’t need anyone’s help. But this particular part is also here to show that his usual pastime of street fights against other humans isn’t enough for him any more, that he needs something more that fighting Digimon can give him. That’s what’s supposed to be the main thing on his mind as he walks away from this too-easy victory, rather than the more general don’t-need-anyone issue.

This whole part is one of my favourite delightfully-subtle bits of this episode, and the dub watered it down so much.

Old man: “Well, well, my angry young friend.”

Pfft. Not an inappropriate thing to be calling him right now.

Old man: “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. That’s because you understand why you need them.”

~~~~~

Old man: “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. So look for what’s new in your life and figure out why you might need it.”

Unlike last time the old man showed up to be vague and metaphorical, this time the dub actually translates his speech almost entirely word-for-word! Amazing. This is the one bit that’s slightly different – but if anything, the dub’s version makes more sense at a part where the original was a little bit “???”, so, hey, good job. This does also mean that the old man is somewhat more actively giving Marcus advice in the dub than in the original, but that doesn’t really make a difference anyway (because Marcus is still not listening).

Boomer: “What luck. I can’t believe I lost to Marcus again.”

Okay, so the dub is definitely going with the fact that Boomer is someone Marcus laid a beatdown on before today. They really shouldn’t have thrown doubt on that to begin with by having them sound like they’re being polite to each other in that earlier scene.

Katsumata: “Damn it, the stupid light’s taking too long again! Come on, change!”

Elecmon: “Lights, change!”

~~~~~

Boomer: “Why won’t these stoplights change already?! C’mon, c’mon!”

Elecmon: “More toys to play with!”

…So, yep, Elecmon coming here is totally unrelated to anything Boomer is saying or feeling. And therefore it’s nothing to do with Marcus that this is happening. (Which also makes it a hugely convenient coincidence that he happens to be nearby to this Digimon incident when he doesn’t have DATS to tell him where to find it.)

Agumon: “I decided I wouldn’t come out until Aniki apologises.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “I’m staying here until Boss apologises, so blame him if something goes wrong!”

Dub-Agumon is being more of an immature dick here. If something goes wrong that he could have helped with, it’s totally not his fault for choosing to put his personal issues above the importance of the case, sure.

Bystander: “I still can’t believe that no-one was seriously injured!”

Yeah, sure, dub, you just fill a silence with this to reassure the kids. It’s a huge flaming car crash, but it’s fine! Nobody was even really hurt, let alone killed!

Masaru: “It’s okay. You’re not hurt anywhere.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s okay, kid, you aren’t hurt. Thanks to me, of course!”

Marcus, unlike Masaru, feels the need to make things about himself here, somewhat putting the damper on his selfless moment of heroism. Not completely, but he comes across as slightly less genuinely selflessly good as a result.

(It could be read like that comment is a result of the I-can-do-everything-alone issues he’s having this episode, but it feels like now of all times is when he should stop acting that way at all. That was the idea behind this bit in the original. Marcus’s tone for that part is still quite soft, so it also doesn’t sound like it’s part of his overcompensating.)

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Oh no!”

Because “Aniki” is two lip-flaps, they can’t just replace a lone “Aniki!” with a lone “Boss!”, so instead Agumon says this, coincidentally sounding more worried than he did originally.

Yoshi: “Marcus, where’ve you been? Why didn’t you contact us?”

Marcus: “I’ve been busy doing my job!”

Yeah, sure, doing your job definitely includes playing baseball and beating up some random dudes. (Masaru did not try and make any such claim.)

Yoshino: “You don’t have a partner, so just wait here.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Without a partner, you’re useless, so just stay out of the way, Marcus.”

Yikes, Yoshi. Calling him outright useless like this is going to rile him up even more.

With the dub’s insistence on using its evolution music every single time someone evolves, at least these shorter evolution animations mean that the music doesn’t awkwardly loop exactly twice, and instead it plays smoothly through the two animations.

Masaru: “Even if I am [being absurd], I’ll use it to cut through a new path! That’s what a man does!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “An ultimate fighter never quits! Let’s go, you overgrown puppy!”

Even aside from removing the manliness part, they also removed the rest of what was fun about this line. Masaru has a delightful insistence about how he doesn’t care if he’s being absurd, that can be a good thing that’ll help him win! Marcus is just… never quitting, and then trash-talking his opponent. Which is fine, but… simple.

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Oh, Boss!”

More ways for the dub to get around the lip-flap issue with short exclamations like this.

Yoshi: “Chasing something we may not be able to catch, to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved! Marcus must be terrified all alone.”

[cut to Marcus on Garurumon’s back]

Marcus: “Yaaaaa-hooooo!”

Look, I get the joke they’re going for here, but doing so compromises two characters. Why would Yoshi even worry about Marcus being terrified, after she literally just complained that he won’t want to be saved? She knows him, geez.

And then Marcus having great fun riding the Garurumon would normally be perfectly fine – see Drimogemon last episode – but one of the interesting points about this part in the original is that Masaru wasn’t having nearly as much fun with this as he had with Drimogemon before, as a sign that he knows deep down how outmatched he is without Agumon.

Masaru: “Hey, asshole, how far are you gonna go? Stop sometime! Damn, my arms are giving out! Are you trying to see which of us lasts longer?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey, you digital dimwit, give it up! You’re never gonna be able to shake me off you! …Except my arms are starting to get tired. Well, let’s see who gives out first!”

He’s also a lot more openly cocky about being able to hold on, generally, despite that he does admit his arms are getting tired. Masaru’s lines gave more of a subtle sense that he was hoping it would stop so he wouldn’t have to keep holding on, if still not directly admitting that.

Masaru: “Hey. Don’t underestimate me!”

~~~~~

[Garurumon growls]

Marcus: “Woof.” [he lets out a wordless battle cry]

As much as I am kind of amused by Marcus aggressively making fun of his enemy being a big dog, I am sad that this comes in place of that fun original line in which Masaru had decided Garurumon was totally underestimating him, which definitely wasn’t him projecting his own self-doubt onto it.

Masaru: “Damn it, what do I do now?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Oh, that’s right! I’m on my own here!”

Somewhat less of a sense in the dub line that Marcus is starting to wonder how the hell he’s going to win this now.

Marcus: “…Not fun.”

Marcus has this little comment about how it felt to be slammed into a wall, and I enjoy it.

Masaru: “Am I not… strong enough to beat him…? Is it really only a Digimon that can stop a Digimon…?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Man, maybe I’m not strong enough to defeat this guy… Maybe it really *does* take a Digimon to defeat a Digimon…”

Despite his “maybe”s, Marcus generally sounds a lot more sure about this here, like he’s not actually having any real difficulty accepting this now, whereas Masaru was still struggling with it to the point of phrasing it as a question.

Marcus: “But still, there’s no way I’m gonna give up even if this turns out to be my last stand…!”

The dub has some extra lip-flap here, so this is also added in. Which I’m not super sold on. In keeping with a dub difference in episode 1 (wow, consistency), Marcus is apparently openly willing to just throw his life away for no good reason. Plus, the fact that he’s explicitly accepting the possibility he might get killed here means he really has accepted that he can’t do this with a lot more willing certainty than Masaru did.

(At least the dub managed to phrase the concept of him dying in a way that sounds natural despite not directly mentioning death.)

Masaru: (I was wrong… I need…)

~~~~~

Marcus: (What was I thinking? I couldn’t have defeated that guy [Tortamon] by myself, and I can’t beat Garurumon either! I need Agumon, and now I’ll never get to tell him I’m sorry!)

These are both lines that take up the same amount of time, believe it or not. Marcus is way more internally-talkative and generally perfectly articulating the problem he was having and the Lesson He’s Learned. Meanwhile, Masaru was coming to this realisation a lot more slowly and gradually, barely able to articulate it to himself beyond the most simple and important part. The original’s writers were happy to leave some silent gaps in between his thoughts to do the rest of the work more subtly.

The dub’s also really doubling down on the idea that Marcus is very consciously aware that he’s probably about to be killed here. Him lamenting not being able to apologise to Agumon is cute, but I still don’t know if I like him having admitted the about-to-die part to himself in the first place.

Sadly, the dub does not have the extra layer of Marcus’s screams of exertion that are what’s physically coming out of his mouth during this part. Regardless, these are definitely internal thoughts, because they have an echoey sort of effect on them to imply that. (The original doesn’t use that effect for its inner monologue lines at all.)

Masaru: (I need… I need Agumon! I want to fight together with Agumon!)

~~~~~

Marcus: (I get it now. I need you, Agumon! What makes us strong isn’t you or me… it’s both of us working as a team!)

Them working together as a team being the reason they’re strong is a cute (and correct) sentiment, don’t get me wrong, but I still like it less how Marcus is able to perfectly articulate this to himself and has just very straightforwardly Learned His Lesson.

Also, the loss of specifically “I want to fight together with Agumon” loses the possibly-unintentional call-forward in that line, which makes me a little sad.

Marcus: “Right. We’re the ultimate team!”

With the dub’s “ultimate team” being a whole Thing that’s in more than just this episode, it has a more impactful effect to bring it back here that the original can’t do. So that’s a plus for the dub, at least.

Marcus: “Never surrender, GeoGreymon!”

The evolution theme, being an instrumental remix of the dub’s opening theme, happened to have the part of its melody which matches with the dub’s opening lyric of “Never surrender!” just a few seconds before this line. Heh. I wonder if that was deliberate.

Masaru: “There’s no way you can lose to a Digimon like that!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Remember, you’ll never lose as long as we fight together!”

Marcus’s line here is more adorable than Masaru’s, putting the focus on their partnership rather than just implicitly insulting their opponent! (It could be read that Masaru was specifically referencing the fact that Garurumon doesn’t have a partner and that’s why GeoGreymon should win, but if so that’s not all that clear.) I approve.

Masaru: “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon: “*We* did!”

The dub did indeed go for “you” with the translation of Masaru’s subject-ambiguous Japanese line – and then they had Agumon add in a “we”, for maximum adorableness!

Masaru: “We can beat any Digimon if we’re fighting together!”

Agumon: “Yeah! We’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “As long as the two of us work together, no Digimon can stand against us!”

Agumon: “Yeah, we’re still the ultimate team, Boss!”

The dub’s version of this is basically the same right here, but what it unfortunately doesn’t do that the original did is directly echo what the two of them said in the beginning of the episode, but with the speakers swapped. Here’s the earlier bits:

Agumon: “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru: “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Alas, apparently the dubbers didn’t realise that was a deliberate callback and make sure the earlier lines were worded so they’d work with this.

Agumon: “Nah, it’s fine. I’m sorry, too.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “No. I should be apologising to *you*.”

The dub’s version of this contains the awkward implication that Agumon isn’t just giving his own apology but also feels like Marcus didn’t even need to apologise in the first place. Which isn’t right, since both of them were equally at fault here. I don’t know if the dub even meant to imply this, but that’s how Agumon’s phrasing reads.

Masaru: “Crap, it’s Yoshino. Run, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Oh man, I’d rather face another Digimon than Yoshi. Run!”

The original reads like Masaru is trying to run because Yoshino is going to force him to clean up his mess. In the dub, it reads like it’s not so much about the clean-up and more like he’s mostly running because Yoshi is scary when she’s mad, which has a vaguely uncomfortably sexist vibe to it.

(Also, why is he acting like facing another Digimon would be a bad thing? Of course he’d rather fight another Digimon than face Yoshi, regardless of her anger or the clean-up, because fighting Digimon is his favourite thing!)

Overall differences

Well, at least they didn’t ruin the overall point of the episode like they could have by changing the reason Marcus and Agumon fall out. I had wondered if the bizarre misconception I’ve seen of “this episode is bad because they fall out over fried eggs!!!” came from the dub, but no, it very much didn’t. That part is perfectly intact. That said, there’s a lot of other changes going on in this episode that I’m not too fond of, especially because a lot of them mess with the fun nuanced bits.

The ridiculous small-business jokes during their argument further highlight how nonsensical it always was to call Agumon Marcus’s “employee”, and they detract from the meaningful points being made there about their respective roles in the relationship.

Elecmon is entirely lucid and simply coming here because it wants to mess around with traffic lights, which is extremely not how things work, not even in the dub’s version of why these Digimon incidents are happening. It also means this incident isn’t indirectly Marcus’s fault, which was a thing I enjoyed in the original.

The scene where Marcus beats up the dudes is probably my least favourite of the changes. The dub completely fails to grasp that Masaru doing something kinda not okay is the whole point of that scene. Instead it scrambles to insist that their kids’ show protagonist is still a 100% squeaky clean good person actually, because look, he’s only beating up bullies! And yet despite that, Marcus also acts weirdly uncharacteristically polite to this person that he has every reason to openly dislike.

Just like in episode 3, Marcus is a lot more articulate and self-aware about admitting exactly what his problem is and the lesson he’s learned in this episode (though at least in this episode he actually learns it), which continues to be less interesting and nuanced than the way Masaru struggles a lot more to fully accept and understand his issues. There’s also a recurrence of the thing from dub episode 1 in which Marcus is fully, consciously aware of the possibility that he might die, which is not something Masaru ever quite lets himself acknowledge even when he’s inches away from being eaten.

At least a few of the lines in the scene where he and Agumon make up are changed to be a little bit more adorable in the dub than they were originally, so there’s that.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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thesublemon · 4 years

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on reviewing

Watched a documentary on Pauline Kael a couple nights ago. It clarified for me why I always find her reviewing refreshing and frustrating by turns. Refreshing because she doesn’t tend to treat genre or subject matter as something sacred. She will watch many kinds of movies with the same degree of curiosity and judgment. Her instincts about whether a movie is working, or lying, or doing something new are also often very on point.

But she falls prey to the two big things that I think make reviewing a flawed, sometimes maybe even useless endeavor. Especially if the goal is to accurately describe what a work is.

1) An inability, or disinterest, in modeling why artistic choices work or don’t. For instance, at one point in the documentary she complains about artists and critics equating repetition with lyricism, and states that repetition in movies simply annoys her because it feels like belaboring a point that she’s already gotten. But that complaint misses out on an opportunity to explore why people would think that repetition is lyrical, or why an artist would reach for it as a choice. And whether, once you’ve modeled what the goal of repetition actually is, maybe there are good and bad versions. If it were me, I would argue that when repetition is good, it doesn’t actually feel like repetition. It feels like riffing. The artistic impact comes not from reiteration, but from reframing—and if it does feel like reiteration, then it’s probably weak repetition. If I were to make a similar complaint about a movie, I might instead complain that a motif did not add or gain complexity each time it appeared. Or I might complain that an attempt to convey monotony by unchanging repetition did not feel worth it, because I didn’t find the underlying point insightful enough to justify the experience of slog. Whatever my exact argument though, the point is that there would be a curiosity and emphasis on what the artist was trying to accomplish. And a generosity about what they could accomplish. As well as a self-awareness about my own values (like “density” and “coherence”) and the fact that I judge works by those values. Without this sort of meta-level mindset, reviews seem to quickly descend into authoritative subjectivity. Kael was good at viciously panning things, but how can a pan help the artist make better work unless it’s accompanied by some sort of model or rationale? Why would an artist listen to your opinion unless you first prove that you understand what they were trying to do? Without a level that exists outside of the reviewer, a review runs the risk of simply being an exhortation to appeal to that reviewer’s taste.

2) A love of saying things that sound good, regardless of whether they’re actually meaningful. At one point in the documentary, Renata Adler, another writer, attempts a takedown of Kael. But ends up making the exact mistake that Kael does.

RENATA ADLER: [Kael] has, in principle, four things she likes: frissons of horror; physical violence depicted in explicit detail; sex scenes, so long as they have an ingredient of cruelty and involve partners who know each other either casually or under perverse circumstances; and fantasies of invasion by, or subjugation of or by, apes, pods, teens, bodysnatchers, and extraterrestrials.

Compare to Kael’s own style of evisceration. Here’s her on The Sound of Music.

PAULINE KAEL: What is it that makes millions of people buy and like THE SOUND OF MUSIC—a tribute to "freshness" that is so mechanically engineered, so shrewdly calculated that the background music rises, the already soft focus blurs and melts, and, upon the instant, you can hear all those noses blowing in the theatre? […] And the phenomenon at the center of the monetary phenomenon? Julie Andrews, with the clean, scrubbed look and the unyieldingly high spirits; the good sport who makes the best of everything; the girl who's so unquestionably good that she carries this one dimension like a shield. […] Wasn't there perhaps one little Von Trapp who didn't want to sing his head off, or who screamed that he wouldn't act out little glockenspiel routines for Papa's party guests, or who got nervous and threw up if he had to get on a stage?

Having read both pieces, I think both writers identify something true about their subject (Adler even makes remarks similar to what I’ve already said). But are the pieces useful? Or accurate in a more total sort of way? Kael had particular kinds of movies she loved, it’s true, and tended to be bad at self-criticism about whether her preferences actually indicated any sort of objective reality. But Adler’s criticism of Kael is no more interested in modeling than Kael’s reviews are. It isn’t interested in an evenhanded consideration of what Kael gets right and wrong and why. What unites Adler’s takedown of Kael and Kael’s takedown of The Sound of Music is that they want to be takedowns. They want to be stylistically rollicking reads that create the aesthetic experience of nailing something to a wall. But the thing about wanting too badly to make an argument “aesthetic” is that it becomes tempting to gloss over anything that would ruin the aesthetic flow. Adler devotes a long paragraph to identifying all of Kael’s tics, and the wall of text is certainly rhetorically effective at making you feel like Kael is some sort of dirty-minded one trick pony. But at the end of the day, it’s rhetoric. Not really argument. Similarly, Kael is so delighted to be able to use phrases like “glockenspiel routines”, that it gets in the way of saying anything more considered. Which isn’t to imply that I think the writers don’t actually believe what they’re saying. On the contrary, I think they hold their opinions powerfully and sincerely, and are trying to identify something wrong in their culture by singling out and drilling down on the sins of one thing in particular. But nonetheless, by caring so much about being good bits of writing—and they are good bits of writing; there’s something juicy and relentless about Kael that sticks with you—they end up empty on the level of argument.

These two failure modes highlight the central problem of reviewing, I think. Which is that reviews tend to be three things at once: ekphrasis, analysis and evaluation (which implies some sort of rubric of quality, whether personal, cultural, or “objective”). This is partly understandable, given that art is an abstract, experiential thing and therefore difficult to evaluate or analyze without some degree of ekphrastic description. It if was easy to say what a work was doing, the artist wouldn’t have needed to make art of it in the first place. So it makes sense that the process of making a work legible enough to opine on would have to trade in artistry itself. It makes sense that in order to show an audience what a work feels like, a review would have to poetically reproduce that feeling. Similar to the way that the translator of a poem needs to be a good poet themselves in order to make the meaning and experience of a poem accessible to an audience in a different language.

The problem is that ekphrasis, being expressive, is also necessarily subjective, and not primarily concerned with logic. Which on its own, is perfectly fine. I’ve written a ton of ekphrasis on this blog. I’m pretty pro-ekphrasis. When it’s done right, there isn’t much like a bulls-eye poetic description of a work to make you feel like you get it on a level you didn’t before. But when that sort of writing is also trying to say whether or not a work is “good”, the expressiveness frequently gets in the way. It’s easy to state or promote an opinion expressively. It’s harder to defend an opinion that way. In good faith, anyhow. Which results in all of these reviews that succeed in observing true or true-feeling things about art, and do so in a sometimes deliciously readable way, but don’t leave me with the feeling that the writer has any consistent or defensible take on how art works. I can’t help thinking that I much prefer reading writing about art that keeps its purpose siloed. So either a piece that tries to poetically explain how a work affected them, or an academic work that tries to argue for an interpretation, or something more philosophical that puts forth a theory of what makes things good and bad and explain why a work does or doesn’t live up to that. I don’t want this to be the case. I think writing that can blend those three modes together is some of the best possible writing about art. But the average reviewer is not really up to the task, despite the fact that the review is probably the most common and widely-read type of writing about art.

(None of which is to say that I’m free of sin these regards. One of the reasons I try to keep the tone of this blog casual is because I want to be able to be able to play with these different modes of writing about art. And see where and when and how I can get away with blending them. It’s a practice space.)

#posts: art

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alexanderpusheen · 3 years

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what frustrates me the most abt this china narrative is that the US created al qaeda and ISIS, those groups are recruiting and causing terrorism in xinjiang, china has been trying to handle the situation with re-education programs often suggested by westerners, and its still being treated as this major human rights violation. there are actually dozens of countries with several robust anti radicalization programs that are just as strict, like singapore, colombia, yemen, bangladesh, saudi arabia, and indonesia. this paper ive linked to was even funded by the DHS so like...why has detaining someone and basically reverse brainwashing them out of being a terrorist been so acceptable for so long but now its an issue?

if you take issue with chinas program, you have to prove its somehow exceptional to these other programs. since we really dont have any way of knowing what is truth or reality thanks to the enormous disinformation campaign going on, you fucking cant. we dont even know what the programs entail because even googling it gets you exclusively hyperbolic concentration camp accusations.

what i will say is that relations between the han majority and the uyghur minority have been strained since at least the 80s. link is the notoriously conservative and pro US intervention human rights watch, so dont say im using pro commie sources or anything. every time i do any bit of research on this i seem to find an attempt from major news outlets in the early to mid 2000s or late 20-teens to prove this all started or became dramatically worse now, but things have always been tense. and its not really a surprise that things really got bad after the collapse of the soviet union, an event that was geographically close to china and the xinjiang region and also just like, a fucking major global event in general.

what i find to be very odd is just how dramatically the narrative has changed. the diplomat, one of my favorite periodicals, went from taking very nuanced and balanced positions on xinjiang that i almost completely agreed with to being just as aggressive as outlets like the BBC and CNN in the span of five years. they have eleven pages worth of articles on xinjiang, mostly covering the terrorism and beijings response (which i agree is too harsh) and xinjiang muslims’ relationships to the greater muslim world.

an example is how this article talks about the conflict at the time which warns of escalating violence as a result of han chauvinism and beijing being unable to deal with the extremism holistically. it points out how there were uyghurs captured among taliban ranks in afghanistan and how many might have even been working with ISIL.

The threat will not be an existential one to the Chinese state, as most Uighurs would prefer a peaceful accommodation. But even if only 1 percent of Uighurs hold extreme views, there are 10 million in Xinjiang and even for a state security apparatus as formidable as China’s, 100,000 or more angry people present a tough challenge.

i think its totally right that china does not allow people in that area to have cars, woodcutting tools, and amonium nitrate (which is used in bombs) is very strictly regulated. i completely agree that this is not how you combat terrorism. most people do not want war and broadly punishing these people is itself a human rights violation that went unnoticed until now.

however, in that same year, the diplomat also published this article about the infamous turkestan islamic party. members of TIP are like, literal jihadists lmfao.

TIP fighters call on the world’s Muslims to join the jihad against Western countries in internet videos. Perhaps most worringly for China, the TIP believes that Muslims may fight locally using various means instead of coming to Syria and Iraq to conduct a “holy war” against the “infidel” Western regimes.

yeah i definitely want to hear more about what these guys have to say. the article is really good because i think it highly illustrates just how dangerous these people are. theyve killed hundreds of people across china and want to establish a fascist religious state in xinjiang. while the article speaks for itself, i believe the last paragraph really highlights why china is being singled out whereas countries like france and canada are considered allies to muslims for whatever reason:

However, as experience has shown, China takes a passive position in the struggle against global Islamic jihad in Syria and Iraq. Beijing has not sent its troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS and has instead confined itself to diplomatic support for Russia and the United States. The Chinese government uses the attacks of Islamic jihadists to persuade Western countries to support Beijing’s position on Xinjiang and turn a blind eye when the freedom and rights of Uyghurs are harshly suppressed by Chinese security forces. Therefore, China is not perceived by the West as a reliable partner in the fight against terrorism. [emphasis mine]

im just a little surprised to see that a lot of these violent attacks from extremists throughout the years have targeted not just han chinese but also other uyghurs. in the west people do not typically sympathize with terrorists as freedom fighters, even on the left, because we know that no matter how angry or how seemingly justified the violence might seem, terrorism is unacceptable and it grossly misrepresents islam. it is a fascist act because those terrorists often follow an extremely right wing version of islam. also, we know that those who carry out terrorist attacks even outside of the west are middle class and professionals in some way, not poor and marginalized people. the level of nuance afforded to terrorists outside of xinjiang is pretty staggering.

yet in china, there seems to be this excitement than they are killing chinese people, even if some of those chinese are other uyghers or otherwise muslims. those who carry out attacks in xinjiang dont get any nuance or analysis because theyre justified.

ive referenced the diplomat earlier but this article from 2013 says it perfectly: Call Tiananmen Attack What It Was: Terrorism. except terrorism is bad. and the west wants you to support the uyghurs. and make no mistake, they do not want you to support the millions of uyghurs who want to live peacefully, free of any repression, american or chinese. they want you to support the jihadists randomly blowing up chinese and tourists alike because you are meant to sympathize with their plight.

terrorism isnt something to be romantacized or cheered on. it is something someone or someones do when they feel they have no other option. people do not want to kill even those they feel they have every right to because thats a line you cant uncross. murder changes you, justified or not. see the last chapter of wretched of the earth for this.

terrorism is great, however, for destabilizing a region or a country, and xinjiang is resource-rich. establishing a US-friendly regime, no matter how good they are on human rights, is the goal. the US does not care about muslims. they do not care about human rights. china, also, does not really seem to care about muslims or human rights either. but we’ve seen this since vietnam, and the US has learned since vietnam. the vietnamese were sympathetic. they were minding their business.

after vietnam, merely being communist isnt enough to warrant invasion. theyre killing their own people. nevermind that bolsonaro kills his own people and no one wants to invade (yet--biden has mention sanctions wrt us which is scary but again, thats got everything to do with making sure latin america is loyal to the west, not HR offenses). korea, although it was before vietnam, was less publicized and learning from vietnam gave the US a valuable lesson: always blame the victim. and thus, the US blames the victims of its violence. even if its ‘justified’, even if its ‘true,’ as was the case with saddam hussein, invading and occupying was the nightmare no one but the imperialists anticipated. because they dont broadcast what occupying forces do to the occupied. i am old enough to remember abu ghraib. have it seared in my memory forever. you perhaps are also old enough to remember, but also think millions of abu ghraibs and guantanamo bays are always worth it, always justified.

i know people arent going to read this and remind me really rudely that they didnt read it but i want to really emphasize how one of imperialism and colonialisms features is ethnic and racial separatism. how the rwandan genocide couldnt have happened without previous belgian and french rule. how yugoslavia wouldve remained a single country had it not been for NATO. i think its easy to diminish the role of the colonizer in all of this, but it is actually one of its goals: divide and conquer. exacerbate the existing conflicts to the point of genocide.

and if the west succeeds in balkanizing china, you will get more racism rather than less. you will see more violence against muslim minorities rather than less. they will feel less empowered rather than more. china has to learn that they are also to blame in a way that will be catastrophic for over a billion people. han chauvinism and outright racism must be addressed beyond window dressing.

wrapping up, china is in the wrong here. what theyre doing is racist and humiliating a population that has to be empowered. and the one child rule, even for the han majority, is imo fucking evil lol like sorry tankie tumblr im tankie too but i cannot for the life of me accept that as a good thing.... but i also dont buy the accusations of genocide, because even tho a lot of these articles are kind of glossing over it, china is trying to handle the terrorism in the region. imo theyre feeding into it by getting more han in the area, but also having more han but forcing them to take worse jobs would be a show of good will. idk, this situation is extremely complex and frankly, most uyghers do not want secession.

i also take extreme issue with people saying that adrian zenz is somehow reliable. not only is he a nazi crackpot, hes also literally the only source for almost all of what we know about this in the west. that is not how you do journalism. i dont understand how people are saying ‘yeah hes an extremely fascist grifter but also i believe him because hes anti communist and also anti china’. thats also not really the point? the point is that hes also the ONLY SOURCE on almost all of this, which is alarming.

i also find it very startling that in order to keep interest in the story, every few weeks the US has to remind people that the chinese are also doing what the US is doing to women in its own camps. forget that the US is separating minors from parents (since 2008). forget that the US is sterilizing women en masse (since 2017). forget that the US is raping women at the border (since there was a border). forget the US even has camps because now they arent even called that anymore. this is not that ‘you can be angry at two things at once’ but a clearly cynical attempt to get its citizens to forget that the US is detaining, deporting, sterilizing, and raping, and gassing non US nationals.

they are not ‘your own people.’ they are me. the other. i am an immigrant to the US, currently in my country of birth, so i am the other to you, the american. the chinese are doing the evil crime of killing their own. but the americans could never kill their own because they dont consider black americans to be their own. latin american nationals are not their own. bombing millions globally is not their own. thats always justifiable. there is clearly an element of racism in how these crimes are perceived as more or less evil.

the way immigrants and black americans are brutalized in the US is almost naturalized. like its the way things are supposed to be. you can live with that. its upsetting that you have to hear about antiblackness and the like but you know thats just how life is. you dont necessarily call for the US to be sanctioned or bombed by other countries because you believe in the inherent goodness of white america. but countries like china and iran and north korea deserve to be starved and killed for their crimes. and you can never say ‘maybe bombing and starving a country isnt the answer’ because it means you agree with it. you can never say ‘this is clearly propaganda to make me hate another race so much’ because it means youre a genocide denier. im sorry, but again, i remember iraq in 2003, i remember libya in 2011. i dont buy it.

finally, theres been a lot of attacks on asian people in the US lately and if you cannot see the violent way the US talks about china the country and how that influences people to harm asians within the US then idk what else to tell you. people will really believe this shit and say the chinese are all blood thirsty islamaphobes and thus need to be harmed. ‘im not like that! i defend my asian friends from racism!’ thats nice and all but idk how spreading some sinophobic propaganda designed by the US to make you support some kind of violence against one billion chinese people isnt inherently racist. also its unhelpful because sanctions dont really solve problems. but ive spoken too much.

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sammy24682468 · 3 years

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Lesson 6 from arrogance to destruction

"Memory Text: “And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding” (Daniel 2:21, NKJV),

"In Daniel 5, the Word of God gives us a powerful example of human hubris that ends in a stunning and dramatic way. Though one could say that it takes Nebuchadnezzar a long time to learn his lesson, at least he learned it. His grandson, Belshazzar, does not. In using the temple vessels in a palace orgy, Belshazzar desecrates them. Such an act of desecration is tantamount not only to a challenge of God but an attack on God Himself. Thus, Belshazzar fills up the cup of his iniquities, acting in ways similar to the little horn (see Daniel 8), which attacked the foundations of God’s sanctuary. By removing dominion from Belshazzar, God prefigures what He will accomplish against the enemies of His people in the very last days. The events narrated in Daniel 5 took place in 539 b.c., on the night Babylon fell before the Medo-Persian army. Here occurs the transition from gold to silver, predicted in Daniel 2. Once more it becomes evident that God rules in the affairs of the world."

Belshazzar's feast:

"Read Daniel 5:1-4 along with Daniel 1:1, 2. What is Belshazzar doing that is so bad? How does it reveal his true character? Compare his actions with Revelation 17:4-6. What parallels can you find?"

"The king commands that the sacred utensils of the Jerusalem temple be used as drinking vessels. Nebuchadnezzar seizes the vessels from the Jerusalem temple, but he places them in the house of his god, which shows that at least he respects their sacred status. But Belshazzar turns the sacred vessels into drinking utensils in a most profane way."

"While drinking from the sacred vessels, Belshazzar’s lords “praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone” (Dan. 5:4, NKJV). It is worth noticing that six materials are mentioned. The Babylonians used the sexagesimal system (a system based on the number 60) in contrast to the decimal system used today (based on the number 10). Thus, the six categories of gods represent the totality of the Babylonian deities and, therefore, the fullness of the Babylonian religious system. Interestingly enough, the order of the materials follows the order of the components of the dream statue of Nebuchadnezzar, except that wood replaces the clay. As in the dream, stone appears last; although here it designates the material composition of idols, stone also evokes God’s judgment upon worldly empires (see Dan. 2:44, 45), which Babylon symbolizes."

"This feast serves as an apt representation of end-time Babylon as seen in the book of Revelation. Like Belshazzar, the woman in endtime Babylon holds a golden cup and offers polluted drink to the nations. In other words, by means of false doctrines and a distorted worship system, modern Babylon lures the world into evil (Rev. 17:4-6), oblivious to the judgment that will soon fall upon her. One day judgment will come."

An uninvited guest:

"Read Daniel 5:5-8. What happens, and why does the king respond as he does? In what ways does this account parallel Daniel 2, and why is that parallel important? (See Ps. 96:5 and Col. 1:15-17.)"

"As Nebuchadnezzar does in previous crises (Dan. 2:2, 4:7), Belshazzar calls the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers to clarify the mysterious writing. And to make sure that they give their best, the king promises them extravagant honors: (1) purple clothing, a color worn by royalty in ancient times (Esther 8:15); (2) a chain of gold, which was a sign of high social status (Gen. 41:42); and (3) the position of third ruler in the kingdom. This last reward reflects accurately the historical circumstances of Babylon at that time. Because Belshazzar was second ruler as co-regent with his father, Nabonidus, he offers the position of third ruler. But despite the tempting rewards, the sages once again fail to provide an explanation."

"On top of all his sins, then, the king attempts to find wisdom in the wrong place. The Babylonian experts cannot uncover the meaning of the message. It is written in their own language, Aramaic, as we shall see tomorrow, but they cannot make sense of the words. This might remind us of what the Lord speaks through Isaiah: “For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden” (Isa. 29:14, NKJV). After quoting this verse the apostle Paul states: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20, 21, NKJV)."

"Some truths are too important to be left for humans to try to figure out for themselves. That’s why God, instead, reveals these truths to us."

Enter the Queen:

"Read Daniel 5:9-12. What does the queen say about Daniel that the king should have known already? What does it say about him that he seems ignorant even of Daniel’s existence?"

"As the banquet hall is thrown into confusion because of the mysterious message on the wall, the queen comes and provides direction to the befuddled king. She reminds the king about Daniel, whose ability to interpret dreams and solve mysteries has been demonstrated during the time of Nebuchadnezzar. If Belshazzar were as smart as his predecessor, he would have known where to turn to find the meaning of this mysterious writing. The intervention of the queen proves necessary for the king, who at this point seems utterly at a loss as to what to do next. Her words sound like a rebuke to Belshazzar for having overlooked the only person in the kingdom who can interpret the mysterious writing. And she also gives the king an oral résumé of Daniel: the prophet has the Spirit of the Holy God, light and understanding and divine wisdom, excellent spirit, knowledge; he is capable of understanding, interpreting dreams, solving riddles, and explaining enigmas; he was chief of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers in Nebuchadnezzar’s time (Dan. 5:11, 12)."

"At this point, we again wonder why Belshazzar had ignored Daniel. The text does not offer a direct answer to this question, but we presume that at this time Daniel, after serving the king at least until the third year of his reign (Dan. 8:1, 27), is no longer in active service. One factor could be Daniel’s age. He is probably around 80 years old, and the king may have wanted to replace the old leadership with a younger generation. The king also may have decided to ignore Daniel because he did not want to commit himself to Daniel’s God. But whatever the reason or combination of reasons, it remains striking that someone with such a portfolio as Daniel’s could be forgotten so soon."

"Read Romans 1:16-32. In what ways do we see the principle expressed in these texts manifested, not just in this story but also in the world today?"

Weighed and found wanting:

"Read Daniel 5:13-28. What is the reason Daniel gives for the soon-to-come demise of this king?"

"Forced by the circumstances, the king resorts to consulting Daniel, but he seems to do so with reluctance. This may tell more about the attitude of the king toward the God of Daniel than toward Daniel himself."

"In turn, Daniel’s response to the king’s offer of reward says a lot about Daniel’s priorities and character. It also is likely that Daniel, knowing the meaning of the mysterious words, realizes just how worthless the reward really is."

"Daniel then indicts the king on three counts.First, Belshazzar totally has ignored the experience of Nebuchadnez-zar. Otherwise he would have repented and humbled himself like his predecessor."

"Second, Belshazzar has used the temple vessels in order to drink wine and to praise his idols. Here Daniel mentions the six kinds of materials used to make idols in the same order noted previously."

"Third, the king has neglected to glorify God, the One “who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways” (Dan. 5:23, NKJV)."

"Having addressed the failures of the king, Daniel proceeds to the interpretation. Now we learn that the divine graffiti consists of three Aramaic verbs (with the first repeated). Their basic meaning should have been known to the king and his sages—MENE: “counted”; TEKEL: “weighed”; and PERES: “divided.”"

"With the Medo-Persian army at the gates of Babylon, the king and the sages must have suspected some ominous meaning in that writing, but the sages do not dare to say something unpleasant to the king. Only Daniel proves capable of decoding the actual message into a meaningful statement in order to convey its full meaning to Belshazzar: “MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:26-28, NKJV; emphasis supplied)."

The Fall of Babylon:

"Read Daniel 5:29-31 along with Revelation 14:8, 16:19, and 18:2."

"What can we learn about the fall of Belshazzar’s Babylon that points to the fall of end-time Babylon?"

"Whatever his faults, Belshazzar is a man of his word. So, despite the bad news, he is satisfied with the interpretation given by Daniel, which is why he bestows upon the prophet the promised gifts. It appears that by admitting the truth of Daniel’s message, the king implicitly recognizes the reality of Daniel’s God. Interestingly, Daniel now accepts the gifts he has refused before, probably because such gifts can no longer influence his interpretation. Besides, at that point such gifts are meaningless since the empire is about to fall. Thus, probably as a matter of courtesy, the prophet accepts the rewards, knowing all the while that he will be the third ruler of the kingdom for only a few hours."

"Exactly as announced by the prophet, Babylon falls. And it does so quickly; while the king and his courtiers drink, the city falls without a battle. According to the historian Herodotus, the Persians dug a canal to divert the Euphrates River and marched into the city on the riverbed. That same night Belshazzar is slain. His father, King Nabonidus, has left the city already, surrendering himself later to the new rulers. Thus, the greatest empire humanity has ever known to this point comes to an end. Babylon, the head of gold, is no more."

"“Belshazzar had been given many opportunities for knowing and doing the will of God. He had seen his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar banished from the society of men. He had seen the intellect in which the proud monarch gloried taken away by the One who gave it. He had seen the king driven from his kingdom, and made the companion of the beasts of the field. But Belshazzar’s love of amusement and self-glorification effaced the lessons he should never have forgotten; and he committed sins similar to those that brought signal judgments on Nebuchadnezzar. He wasted the opportunities graciously granted him, neglecting to use the opportunities within his reach for becoming acquainted with truth.”—Ellen G. White, Bible Echo, April 25, 1898."

Further thoughts:

"Large feasts were common in the courts of the ancient world. Kings loved to throw parties with extravagance and luxury to show their greatness and confidence. Although we do not know all of the details of this particular feast, we know that it took place when the Medo-Persian army was poised to attack Babylon. But humanly speaking, there was no reason for concern. Babylon had fortified walls, a food supply for many years, and plenty of water, because the Euphrates River flowed through the heart of the city. So, King Belshazzar sees no problem in having a party while the enemy surrounds the city. And he orders a momentous celebration, which soon degenerates into an orgy. What a powerful testimony to the hubris of humanity, especially in contrast to the power of the Lord. Through Daniel, God tells the king that despite the opportunities he has had to learn truth, “the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified” (Dan. 5:23, NKJV)."

"“The history of nations speaks to us today. To every nation and to every individual God has assigned a place in His great plan. Today men and nations are being tested by the plummet in the hand of Him who makes no mistake. All are by their own choice deciding their destiny, and God is overruling all for the accomplishment of His purposes.” —Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 536."

#Ellen G White #bible lessons #biblestudy #biblical #bibletruth

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sweetiepie08 · 4 years

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Rebelz Chapter 5

While analyzing Zim’s PAK for weaknesses, Tak discovers strange coding that sends her on a search for answers. The clues lead her to uncover a conspiracy that governs all of Irken society. When the truth sends her on the run, she has no choice but to return to the one place the Tallest would never willingly go: Urth.

Meanwhile, Dib has noticed odd changes in Zim’s behavior. Has the invader simply grown bored of his mission over the last few years, or is there something more interesting going on?

People who asked to be tagged: @incorrect-invader-zim , @messinwitheddie, @reblogstupids, @cate-r-gunn, @agentpinerulesall

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list feel free to message me. Also, if you’re on the tag list and you changed your name, please just let me know.

(thought I posted this a month ago, but either I forgot or it got eaten by the tumblr void.)

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10.

[-]

Jerry had just smashed Tom’s foot with a hammer when Dib realized he was watching the robot’s cartoons more than he was watching the house. He’d been staring at these screens all day. Tak hadn't shown up at all. Zim did turn up for a few minutes, but that was hours ago and he hadn't come back since. There were no fights, no screams, no explosions, or at least not that Dib could see. The only noteworthy thing that happened was Zim choking on a soda. Was there really nothing going on?

His eyes drifted to the clock. 6:30 already? He'd just wasted most of his day watching old cartoons through a security feed. His stomach rumbled reminding him he hadn't eaten since noon.

Dib looked back at his monitors. Tom chased Jerry around the room. Jerry ducked into his mousehole and Tom rammed his face into the wall. The robot laughed. Dib’s stomach rumbled again. The idea of a break started to sound appealing.

“Hey Gaz,” he called hitting the record button, “You hungry?”

“Yeah,” she called back.

“You want to order a pizza?” He slid off his chair and started out of the room. “I was thinking we could have dinner while we watched that documentary.”

He headed downstairs and found Gaz in the kitchen. She already had the phone in one hand in the Pizza Factory menu in the other. “I'm thinking Peppers and onions,” she said, not dialing the phone.

“How about sausage?

Her face twisted in disgust. “No pork.”

“Okay, fair enough,” he conceded. That shadow hog thing still weighed on his conscience. “Cheddar cheese? Oh, and get garlic bread.”

Gaz nodded and put the phone to her ear.

Dib smiled. It actually felt good to be out of that room. This break would be good for him. He’d get some food in his stomach and watch something he’d been waiting to see. Then he could get back to surveying the base later. Besides, with the camera recording, he wouldn’t miss a thing, if anything even happened. After all, he got nothing all day. What could he miss in a few hours?

[-]

Gir laughed every time the cat on TV let out that loud yelp. He liked the yelling. It reminded him of someone. And it was funny.

As he laughed, another robot walked into the room. Gir looked over. A new friend? Maybe. Did master build it? Nah, he would have said something. Wait, he remembered this thing. This was Tak’s robot. What was it doing here? Oh yeah, they friends now. She gave him a present. They must be over to play.

“Want some nachos?” Gir asked.

Tak’s robot lifted its head and looked curiously at the nachos. What was wrong? Maybe it didn't know what nachos were for.

“You do it like this,” he said stuffing a handful in his mouth.

Tak’s robot just stood there. It still didn't get it. “Here, let me help.” Gir got off the couch, walked over to the other robot, and smushed a handful of nachos in its face.

Tak’s robot wiped the nachos away and shook off the remaining cheese. It’s eyes narrowed and glowed red. Oh it looked mad. Maybe it would start yelling at him. But it didn’t.

Oh wait! He got it now! “Hey, you don't gots no mouth,” Gir said, leaning real close to get a good look at the robot’s face. “That's not right. You need a mouth for nachos.”

This was a problem. If it was going to be his friend, it needed a mouth for snacks. “Oh, I know!” Gir screamed. He ran for the trash can/elevator. He'd seen master go down this way earlier. Master could build a mouth. “This way! This way!” He dove head first down the elevator shaft and Tak’s robot followed him.

[-]

“No, it's not!”

“Yes, it is!”

“No, it's not!”

“Yes, it is!”

“No, it's not!”

“Yes, it is!”

“No, it's not! It's not!” Tak shouted. The can in her hand spilled gignzor on the ground as she gestured wildly. “You cannot tell me! You cannot tell me Foodcourtia is worse than Dirt!”

“It is! It definitely is!” Zim yelled back, punctuating each sentence by slapping the computer control panel.

“It's definitely not!” She slapped the control panel as well. “Dirt is a garbage planet made out of garbage! Everywhere you go, it's garbage! Everywhere you look, it's garbage! You close your eyes and, still, all you can see is garbage!”

“But there's no customers! Zim countered, flinging his empty can across the room. “No one screaming at you all day! No one yelling because their order is late, or cold, or they got the wrong thing! No one saying they want blogrings on the side, but they won't tell you on the side of what. But when you guess, they start yelling! And you're trying every side you can think of, but nothing works! And sometimes they still haunt your thoughts late at night!” He grabbed Tak’s shoulders and shook her. “What side did he want, Tak? What side did he want?!” He kept shaking until she slapped him away.

The sound of a “Whee-hoo” came from the ceiling. It got progressively louder until Gir splat-landed face-first on the floor. Tak’s Sir unit slinked gracefully down and landed beside him.

Gir sprang to his feet. “My friend needs a nacho hole,” he said pointing at the other robot.

“MiMi,” Tak commanded, “Get away from that pile of junk.” The SIR unit nodded and slink to her side.

“Hey!” Zim pointed an accusing finger at her. “You don't get to call my Gir junk!”

“Yeah!” Gir screamed.

Tak smirked. “I built Mimi myself out of spare parts and she’s still more advanced than the standard SIR units issued to the invaders.”

“Well I got a mouth!” Gir shot back.

“Yeah!” Zim shouted. “Hey wait, does your SIR unit talk?”

“No,” Tak sighed. “I couldn't find a functioning vocal chip on Dirt.”

Suddenly, Zim’s computer made an alert sound. “Sir,” computer said, “there is an incoming transmission from the Massive.”

Zim's hands flew to his head. “Oh no, the Tallest can't see me drunk.”

“The Tallest can't see me at all,” Tak added.

“Well, get out of frame, then.”

Tak scooped up Mimi and they ducked under the control panel. Zim tried shaking a bit of his drunkenness off. It didn’t seem to do much, but he answered the call anyway. An Irken in a navigator’s uniform appeared on the screen.

“Um, Invader Zim?” the navigator said, putting a strange emphasis on Zim’s title.

“Yeah,” Heh, he said ‘invader’ funny… Wait a second. “Hey, you're not The Tallest. What is this?”

“The Tallest are very busy at the moment,” the navigator replied. “A traitor has been identified.”

“Traitor? Pfft…” Zim waved his hand. “I don't know anything about a traitor, definitely not one with any conspiracies.” I am nailing this nonchalant performance.

“Uh, you wouldn't.” The navigator said, raising an eyelid. “A notice went out to all Irkens on planet or in the Armada. I've been tasked with informing all those out-of-range to be on the lookout for her.” He paused. “What was that about a conspiracy?”

“Nothing. I said I didn't know anything about a conspiracy, remember?” Totally nailing it.

“Yeah, but why would you bring it up in the first place?”

Shoot. He was asking too many questions. Better get rid of him. “Yes, yes. Anyway, I got your message,” Zim dismissed, reaching to cut off the transmission. “I'll be sure to look out for Tak. Now you can move on to-”

“Wait, I never said the traitor's name.”

His hand froze. Fuck “Uh, yes you did.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No. I didn't.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn't!” The navigator shouted impatiently. “And I can playback this conversation to prove it.”

Zim started to sweat as he contemplated his next move. Before he could say anything, however, Gir dove under the control panel.

“Found you!” Gir squealed.

“What was that?” The navigator asked.

“My SIR unit,” Zim answered. “He lost his… uh… contact lenses!”

“SIR units don't wear contact lenses.”

“Your turn to hide.” Gir said. Zim could hear a scuffle going on.

“No, stop.” Tak whisper-shouted. “Stop pushing me, you metallic hunk of-” Tak flew out from under the control panel and landed on the floor with an “omf.”

No, no, no, no, no! Zim slapped a big fake grin on his face. “As I was saying, I'll be on the lookout for that traitor and I’ll get back to you if I see her. Bye!” Zim cut the transmission and the screen went black. He let out a long breath. “I don't think they suspect a thing.”

Tak got up and brushed herself off. She glared daggers at him and snarled, a retort forming on her lips. Before she could speak, the entire base shook violently, knocking them off their feet.

“What's happening?” Zim struggled to stand up, but another shake sent him back to the floor. The base continued to rumble and, with each new quake, the room shrank in size, along with the tech in it.

“You idiot!” Tak shouted, managing to pull herself up. “It's cubification!”

Zim blinked. “Uhh…”

She scowled and rolled her eyes.” When The Tallest believe an invasion has been compromised beyond salvation, the remotely cubify the base, destroying all evidence and crushing any organic matter left inside.”

“I knew that.” Zim jumped to his feet. “Why are you explaining things I already know?”

“You moron, were going to be squashed!” Tak screamed, grabbing the front of his tunic. “And I refuse to let my cells mix with yours!” She threw him down and called, “Mimi!”

Tak’s loyal SIR unit slid up to her side. Mimi saluted, wrapped her arms around Tak, and flew them both up the elevator shaft.

“Gir!” Zim commanded. “Get us out of here!”

Gir bounced up. His eyes flashed red as he gave a salute. He then ignited the propulsion jets in his feet, flung Zim onto his back, and rocketed them up the elevator shaft.

As they flew to the house level, the walls around them closed in at a steadily rapid rate. It became a tight squeeze toward the top. Zim’s waist became stuck in the trash can lid for a moment before he managed to wiggle out.

By the time he made it to the living room, the ceiling was only a few feet overhead. Tak pulled at the doorknob with all her weight, but it wouldn't budge. She let out a cry of frustration and her laser cutters unfurled from her PAK. The lasers on all four tips joined into one large square of energy which blasted a hole in the wall. However, that hole shrunk just as quickly as the rest of the house.

Tak dove through and MiMi followed. Zim looked around for his service unit who was busy giggling and bouncing off of the encroaching walls. “Gir, quickly!” he commanded, pointing to the hole. Gir launched himself through, squealing. Zim followed after, feeling the ceiling brush the tip of his antenna on his way out.

He landed on his hands and knees on the lawn. Once he gathered himself, he turned to watch as his beautiful base crushed itself into a cube about the size of an Urth child’s alphabet block.

Zim’s mouth hung open. “Six years on this miserable ball of filth,” he murmured, scooting up to the teal cube on his knees. “Now look at you.” He flopped face-first on the yard and made pitiful noises. Gir sat down next to him and patted him on the back.

“Get over it, Zim,” Tak grumbled, activating her human disguise. “At least you still have a ship. Mine’s crushed in there with everything else.”

“Everything?” Zim snapped up. “Wait, where’s Minimoose?”

“NYAH,” Minimoose squeaked as he floated into Zim’s line of vision.”

Zim jumped up and threw his arms around his creation. “Yeah! Minimoose! I knew I shouldn't have to worry about you.”

“Quit hugging the moose, Zim,” Tak snapped. “In case you haven't noticed, we have a real problem here. We're stuck on this dirtball with no shelter, no resources, nowhere to go, and we're out of gingzor.”

“Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” Zim retorted, stomping up to his ship. He reached in, pulled out a spare dog suit, and flung it out Gir. He then began applying his human disguise and he continued. “My base would be fine right now if they didn't catch you hiding out in there.”

“Well they wouldn't have caught me if you could control your sorry excuse for a SIR unit,” Tak shot back.

“Hey!” Zim jumped down from his ship. “Gir is a specialized unit! Operating him takes a deft hand. Simply shouting out commands won't do.”

“why? because then he'd work properly?” Tak smirked.

Zim let out an exaggerated gasp. “How dare?! I just lied my butt off for you and you repay me by insulting my Gir?”

“Oh yes,” she scoffed, “thank you so much for blurting out my name before they even told you who the traitor was. You are a true master of deception.”

Zim put on a smug, mocking grin. “You're welcome.”

Tak growled and kicked nearby rock into the street. After letting out an huff, she turned back to him. “Well, you've been on this planet longer than any other advanced species. Where is a good place to lay low?”

Zim thought about this as he picked up the teal cube and turned it around in his hands. His base wasn't completely destroyed. Everything shrunk as it was being cubified. Perhaps it was all still in there. If he could reverse the effect… “It'll have to be a place with access to a lab. With the proper tools, I could possibly find a way to get my base up and running again.”

“Oh! I know! I know!” Gir squealed, jumping on Zim’s back.

“No, Gir. We're not doing that.”

“But… but…”

“No, Gir,” Zim said again, crossing his arms. “I won't allow my pride to sink that low.”

“But we've done it before,” Gir pointed out.

“Hmm? What's he talking about?” Tak asked sternly.

“Doesn't matter.” Zim answered, waving a dismissive hand at her. “It's not an option.”

“Yes it is,” Gir argued.

“Zim…” Tak growled, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him up to her eye level. “Where is it?”

[-]

Gaz flipped open the pizza box and steam rose off the hot, fresh cheese. Dib reached into the takeout bag. The garlic bread was still hot, too. He bit into a slice, enjoying the warm, steamy goodness and hoping the documentary wouldn't bring up any cow disembowelment's while he was eating.

This was shaping up to be a pretty good evening. Good documentary, good food, and he and his sister were just chilling together. There were no fights, no aliens (except the ones in the documentary, of course), no plans for world domination, no nothing. Just pizza, sibling bonding, and the dulcet tones of the narrator explaining bizarre happenings in Utah.

Gaz was right. He needed to take breaks more often. In fact, he was pretty content to spend the rest of the night relaxing. He could do without dealing with Irken nonsense for one night.

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joeinfurnari · 4 years

Text

My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre might be one of the most difficult movies for many viewers to watch. The artsy crowd would call it minimalist while the more lowbrow among us would say it’s boring! There’s just so little to it that there is a valid case for both. The story is simply a struggling young playwright, Wally agrees to meet an acquaintance, Andre, for dinner at a nice restaurant in decaying New York city and conversation ensues. The end. But like so many things in life, My Dinner with Andre gives you so much more if you really listen closely. I recently watched it again and I forgot just how great it is and how it continues to speak to us today.

It’s so stark and unapologetic about being without plot that it’s become the subject of many pop culture parodies. I know there is a Simpson’s reference to it but I most enjoyed the episode of Community that spoofs it. You may think that this comes from a place of common dislike for the movie but it’s actually the opposite. The parodies just prove how influential and beloved it is. Why? For me, the appeal is the conversation itself. It’s been celebrated for being a complete fiction that does a great job at coming across as a documentary but that’s just appreciation on a formal level. It’s not just that they had a conversation that’s important, it’s what they talk about that matters. The content of that discussion is so important, the writers and filmmaker felt it merited being the subject of a film without any distraction. To say that Louis Malle created My Dinner with Andre for the iconoclasm alone, misses the point.

The two men seated at dinner are artists/playwrights and catch up on the long period since they last encountered each other. They’re not really friends and Wally even debates cancelling the dinner before ultimately opting to go. He’s a working writer and artist making ends meet in New York City while Andre has had a long hiatus from creative life spent on travel and self examination. Wally confirms their community speculation that Andre has money that allows his adventures. Andre at first spends dominates the conversation with anecdotes about mutual acquaintances and talks about some of the retreats and workshops he’s attended recently. Andre has dropped out of the arts and has been on a personal quest to find himself after becoming disillusioned with his life.

In the time since they last spoke Andre describes a crisis in his creative life. He left the theater and traveled to Poland where he spent time with strangers in the woods creating experimental theater. He didn’t speak or understand Polish and they didn’t understand English but the time spent together was transformative. What began for him as creative exploration in the woods forced him to act as himself and in so doing he was forced to examine his life and how he acts when he plays himself:

So, you follow the same law of improvisation…which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do…but in this case, you are the character. So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind…and there's no other person to hide behind. What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions…that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character:

Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I come from, and where am I going?

But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself.

Andre tells more stories of his spiritual and creative adventures. For him, his journey to this dinner has been full of magic, mystery, serendipity and travel to exotic locations including India and even a Saharan Oasis. The restaurant is quite nice but it is still remarkably banal compared to Andre’s monstrous hallucinations and descriptions of his process of personal exploration. It culminates in a description of being buried alive in Montauk, NY. From that point on, Andre becomes surprised by his own reactions to things in his life. He even begins to look at himself and the sort of person who would spend his time the way he has. People in his life who he called friends, repulse him. Figures on television appear to be objectively horrible people. He says,

And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were…and that my whole life had been a sham…

…

I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. I feel I've just squandered my life.

Moments later he goes on to say,

Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally.…but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in…more and more upsetting.

It’s as though Andre has a new perception of the world that is in stark contrast to his former self. He’s alone in this perspective until he sees a woman working in the theater who recognizes the trouble on his face. Where everyone else he encountered commented on how great he looked, this woman somehow knew by looking at him, the emotional state he was in. Because of this woman’s recent loss of her mother, she was able to see him clearly. Andre says,

She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt…or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan.

So they said, " Gee, you look wonderful." Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld.

They're not looking.

That seems very strange to me. Right, because they just didn'ts ee anything, somehow.…except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see.

All of this has resonated with me very personally. I similarly feel as though my perspective on the world has shifted and it has made me incompatible with things as they are and people who aren’t looking. It’s as though my prior life was a dream, honestly. When I think of how I thought about the world and other people for most of my life, I also hate that prior self. I agree with Andre that that earlier version of myself inhabited an insane dreamworld. Andre describes it using the example of his dying mother. Although she was terminally ill and appeared only minutes away from death, the specialist was beaming at all the progress she was making. For this doctor, he had so narrowed his goals/perception to her arm that any healing on that front was cause for celebration. Insane.

I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. I don't…I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things.

We…We're just going around all day like unconscious machines…and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness…just building up and building up inside us.

And later, Andre continues to describe this state of mind:

Isn't it amazing how often a doctor…will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist. I mean, we live in a world in which fathers…or single people, or artists…are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy…of how a father, or a single person,or an artist should look and behave.

They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves…at every single moment…and they all seem totally self-confident.

For two men involved in theater, they are approaching the idea that who we fashion ourselves to be, is selected from clearly defined character behaviors and appearance. For an actor, it must be disturbing for there to be no leap between the actor and the character. Why is it that someone who adopts the role of artist in real life, chooses to look like what we expect? As average people in our world, we’re acting our roles as they have been defined for us by someone else. This should be alarming to everyone and not just Andre and Wally.

I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now.…on our so-called careers…automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority…because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career…well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience. You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot.

How many of us are doing this right now? I did it for many years, always overlooking the here and now for some future reward that all of it was building towards. I also think if your focus is on a career, it’s less on the experience and wisdom needed to fully embody that role. This is why this is such a great film. It may not wow you with realistic explosions but it challenges you to question your view on your life and your world. You shouldn’t be content with the way things are. If you are, you are part of a very fortunate few and you may be overlooking much of the world to do so.

people's concentration is on their goals.…in their life they just live each moment by habit.

…

And if you're just operating by habit…then you're not really living. I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb " to be".…is the same as " to grow" or " to make grow. "

This is something I think about a lot. I live as a cartoonist dedicated to writing and drawing and designing and promoting and tweeting and posting and editing etc. in a driving need to produce, produce, produce. Am I really living? I don’t think so. It’s okay to admit it. This wasn’t a world of my creation but if I’m alive and active in it, I can change it. This film gave me a way to understand the things that I’ve gone through over the last few years. Without art, I wouldn’t have evidence that others have been where I stand. I feel less alone and more hopeful.

Wally talks about the need for escapism and comfort from art against the harsh reality of every day life. The choice is to create art that is comforting but for all its warmth, fails to acknowledge reality and might contribute to a collective disengaging with reality and most importantly, each other.

…we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality…that we're not getting any real sustenance,'cause we don't see the world. We don't see ourselves. We don't see how our actions affect other people.

This is heady stuff, for sure. All of this is to get us thinking about the nature of our lives and really see the things we’ve chosen for ourselves. To truly be free is to be able to think outside the characters and roles defined for us…even the ones we think we chose but didn’t create. Only by looking at ourselves honestly and as objectively as possible can we see how far from our own humanity we have come. Andre went through a personal crisis in which he went through a dramatization of his own death and rebirth. The fresh eyes this has given him as illuminated a very dark reality. There are no fancy distractions in this film because it is a battle cry for humanity’s future. Under the guise of a polite conversation about things most average people would discount as having no bearing on reality is actually about a fundamental reality that has changed without our conscious consent. His advise:

Get out of here.

…

the 1960s.…represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished…and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now…and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around…feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them.…that there once was a species called a human being…with feelings and thoughts…and that history and memory are right now being erased…and soon nobody will really remember.…that life existed on the planet.

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immaculate-benediction-batch · 5 years

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Sorry this is so long......How TV Creators Are Handling Subtext And Shipping

TV series creators have a hard time not tailoring content towards a strictly heteronormative audience, refusing to lean in to queer context, no matter howlarge an LGBTQ following a show may have.

Once a fictional character is put out for public consumption, it ceases to be the one thing it’s described as on paper. This is especially the case with TV and film, where said character goes through so many hands before hitting the screen and becoming public property.

There are three kinds of creators when it comes to queer content on TV. The first (and sadly, most typical) is the creator who will deny any intention of creating queer content, and who will also refuse to acknowledge a queer audience’s interpretation., This often results in an instant backlash, as the Supergirlcast and creators experienced after an embarrassing interview with MTV last summer. When prompted to recap the latest season, the cast broke into a cringeworthy song that mocked fans’ interest in the Supergirl/Lena Luthor pairing, with Jeremy Jordan repeatedly exclaiming that the two will never get together. It continued despite Katie McGrath’s attempt to save the interview saying, “The great thing about what we do is, like any art, anyone can read into it what they want.” Chris Wood then chimed in with “Sexuality is all about others’ perception of yours, right?”

Supergirl is a show with a large female following that from the beginning has gravitated toward the female relationships it portrays, with emphasis on those relationships with strong queer energy. At first, there was a group of internet fans that were drawn to the chemistry between Melissa Benoist and Calista Flockhart, which was maximized due to the characters’ intense mentor/mentee relationship, and that was fine, and for the most part went unacknowledged by the show.

However, upon Flockhart’s exit, Lena Luthor was introduced, played by Katie McGrath. Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor became fast friends, and fans’ fascination with Supergirl’s queer vibes grew strong enough for the the cast to take notice. One would think that by having Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer, two queer characters already in their orbit, fan speculation about others wouldn’t be such an inconvenience that it would have to be addressed by aggressively singing “They’re only friends!” over and over, as if the pairing were unfathomable.

But Supergirl hasn’t been the only show to outright reject queer interpretations. In fact, a few years back, the long-running series Supernatural was called out by its fans for purposefully inserting homoerotic subtext within storylines pertaining to male characters Dean and Castiel, and for rather indirectly addressing said subtext in interviews. In one of them, Misha Collins (Castiel) stated that in certain scenes with Jensen Ackles (Dean) he was directed to portray his character as a “jilted lover.”

During a Toronto Con panel in 2013, it was revealed that a line was changed by Ackles — who last year specifically requested no questions about the popular pairing be allowed during the Q portion of a panel for the show at New Jersey Con–from “I love you” to “We’re family. I need you” because the Actor didn’t think it suited his character. Despite fandom’s interest in the pairing, it hasn’t been enough for Supernaturalto follow through with an actual queer storyline, aside from the one recurring lesbian character, Charlie, who was ultimately killed off. It turns out our tolerance for queerbaiting does have its limits.

Another show that failed to address the sapphic energy between its leads, in effect rejecting a great opportunity to add a bonus layer to an already complex relationship between two women, was Damages. The thriller starred Glenn Close as powerhouse prosecutor Patty Hewes, and Rose Byrne as her protégée, Ellen Parsons. The series went on for five seasons and throughout, though it benefitted from incredible writing, its highlight was clearly the tension and undecipherable relationship between Patty and Ellen.

While there was never any doubt that their connection was what kept the the show’s palpable tension dial at a 10, anytime the subject was brought up to either cast or creators it was denied or waved off as “wishful thinking,” as Glenn Close put it. When pressed further, she added, “I think there’s something seductive about Patty and she just seduces people and she’ll lead people on. I think that can come across as pure seduction.”

With Person of Interest, Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi) and Root (Amy Acker) first connected under very unique, very dark circumstances in which one was holding the other against their will in a life threatening situation. But there was a sizzle there that the audience immediately responded to, and while both cast and writers admitted that was not their intention, something amazing happenedthey took that audience reaction and ran with it. In the end, Shaw and Root’s romance became one of the show’s more compelling storylines.

Jane the Virgin did the same. When a character, Petra, who wasn’t intentionally written as queer read queer to LGBTQ viewers, the writers saw no problem taking the interpretation and adopting it as canon. After years of keeping Petra as a sort of peripheral player within Jane/Rafael storylines, the character of Jane Ramos was introduced as Petra’s defense attorney and eventual love interest.

The third type of creator is everyone’s favorite. This is the one that takes whatever gay subtext or context there is, embraces it, and expands upon it, recognizing that it’s there from the beginning. In the Flesh and Killing Eve are true representatives of queer entertainment that isn’t trying to steer its characters toward a path they weren’t organically wanting to go.

In the Flesh, a BAFTA-award winning series from BBC 3, was easily one of the best shows that no one watched; a zombie show with depth, which isn’t easy to accomplish. The story takes place years after a virus epidemic that turned the infected into flesh-eating monsters is cured, and the rehabilitated are returning home. Its main character is Luke, one of the former infected, suffering from memories of the terrible things he did while sick, and tortured by his own suicide, which was prompted by the loss of love interest, Rick.

The series ran for only two seasons, with a total of nine episodes. It was inventive and creative and stands as one of the greats right next to shows like Hannibal and The Exorcist, which was unfortunately canceled by Fox this year after only two seasons of sacrilege, beautiful cinematography, Alfonso Herrera (Sense8) and a bisexual Father Marcus, played by Ben Daniels.

Killing Eve is a female-led thriller that proves that the secret to making great TV is treating characters like human beings with the capacity to change. Eve, who, when we meet her, is living a life that doesn’t seem particularly terrible, whose marriage appears to be solid, her job secure, is lured into potentially life threatening situations for the sake of following her inexplicable attraction to a female assassin. As if beneath the surface there is a dormant unrest that is awakened with the arrival of Villanelle in her life, and though she does not stop to examine exactly what she expects to get from it, she craves and wants more of these moments that have stirred her awake. She’s both excited and frightened by Villanelle’s audaciousness, by the intrusion into her life,

both figuratively and literally.

The season’s got a few episodes left, yet the most compelling, and most attentively queer moment is part of the fifth episode, in which the two women finally come face to face in Eve’s home. Eve is sopping wet in a gorgeous dress Villanelle’s purchased for her, she’s cold and visibly uncomfortable, therefore Villanelle suggests Eve should change, before proceeding to peel the dress off her herself. It is a scene that doesn’t downplay the very real danger Eve is in by having Villanelle in her home. However there is also an erotic aspect to it that is very purposeful, and as series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge points out, the attraction is definitely mutual, “I knew that the first moment they see each other. I labeled that moment as ‘love at first sight.’ But I didn’t want it to be constrained to romance, or to lust, or anything like that. There’s something waking in Eve every day that she spends imagining what this woman is doing.”

This type of storytelling allows characters to evolve the way that they want to evolve as opposed to forcing them into a first page description. There is loyalty to the authenticity of the story, which comes from meticulous attention paid to the writing, which Waller-Green explains is all about going against cliché: “The moment something feels predictable, there’s a roar in me to just go to the most surprising place. I don’t want to bore myself.”

Often times, when female queer characters are introduced, it is done in order to titillate, and their storylines are the product of a male gaze fantasy. Killing Eve manages to avoid all of that with Villanelle, a character who seems to have no specific preference when it comes to sexual partners, and yet doesn’t feel the need to use her sexuality to get what she wants. In addition to that and the meaty tension between the two leads (Villanelle and the titular Eve, played by Sandra Oh), the attention paid to the very queer theme of the show is evident in backstories of characters that would normally go without one, like that of Eve’s former boss and best friend Bill, an older man in a heterosexual relationship who casually reveals he’s loved “hundreds” of men, much to Eve’s surprise, and further reveals he is in an open relationship, and happily so.

The series proves not only that queer characters are marketablethe BBC series was renewed for a second season before the first even airedbut that straight creators are capable of writing queer content that isn’t offensive or over-sexualized. Phoebe Waller-Bridge credits the authenticity of the series to a collaborative effort, stating, “Because it’s all about the characters, the little details that link the two worlds, everyone’s really made it a psychological piece rather than just an artistic painting of two different people’s worlds,” but it really just goes to show that that negative aspects of queer representation that include the dreaded male gaze perspective can be avoided as long as the bar is set high enough by the showrunner.

It only takes a little bit of creativity and imagination, and a willingness to challenge the idea that heterosexual-based television makes for the best and most successful stories.

Alex Velazquez is a writer, photographer, and queer Mexican living in Los Angeles, CA.

#sherlock #killing eve #supernatural #supergirl #queerbaiting #shipping #lgbt #in the flesh #jane the virgin #person of interest

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formashimataichi · 3 years

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Lot I agree with and yes his problem with loss and the way he was brought up is significant.

Here's where I'm coming from though. Karuta itself as a game doesn't reallly matter. What matters in any of these types of stories is not the sport itself, what matters and always will are the characters and their relationships. The sport and competition are useful insofar as they serve as a playground on which these characters develop and interact.

What makes Taichi so interesting as a character is that his relationship with Karuta exemplifies this principle the most. There are different levels of complexities through which it is expressed. First of all there's what we're talking about which is his inability, because of the way he brought up, to deal with loss in a healthy way. We see this in the flashbacks when he's praised and pushed to be the best at even Karuta and he stoops so low to maintain that as to steal Arata's glasses.

But there's also another dimension to it which is his feelings for Chihaya. Huge part (maybe the main reason) of why he worked hard to excell at it is to get noticed by her since it's the thing that has taken her whole focus. That's why he wanted to win against her that badly.

Thens theres another layer to it which is Arata. His inferiority complex with regards to Arata signifies both "struggles". Arata is someone that he (believes) he can't beat. He thinks they're not or can't be even on the same level. That highlights his problematic relationship with losing and not being the best at something as he was pushed since he was a kid. But not only that, Arata's excellence at Karuta grabs Chihaya's entire attention. Her passion for the sport starts with him and he continues to be someone she looks up to. (She later develops her own reasons for reaching the top that has more to do with her rivalry with shinobu)

Apologoies for the long introduction. But this kind of mishmash of struggles and renaltionships fueled by his anxities and insecuries manifesting in his relationship with Karuta is exactly why I don't think like you think, which is that his arc is about coping with loss and therefore losing was necessary. That's merely one aspect to the story. There are different lessons that can be learned and each could take his arc in a different direction. Just to give you an example I can totally see a conclusion where he ends up with Chihaya but ultimately loses to Arata. The arc could be him learning that not being the best at Karuta isn't the end of the world and that appreciation and self worth dont and shouldnt come from his skill at Karuta. That lesson can be validated by Chihaya for whome excellence at Karuta was not a deciding factor in seeing his worth and deciding to be with him.

I could imagine the opposite where he does beat Arata but doesn't win over chihaya. And the lesson can be that it was insane from the beginning to try to win a person over using Karuta and how that developed an unhealthy relation in which he tied his self worth and performance and enjoyment of Karuta to Chihaya(we see that clearly since its been pointed out several times that when she's there he underperforms) . So "losing chihaya" to Arata wasn't the end of the world and his enjoyment of Karuta shouldn't depend on his attempt to win over Chihaya and that he can find fulfillmemt in working hard at something and excelling at it against all odds but free of the insecurities he brought with him initially.

There are many ways through which he can find self worth be it within Karuta or outside it. My problem with your take is as I said the emphasis on one aspect which is the competitive loss. (Also I think it's kinda misleading to talk about loss. He loses a lot and keeps pushing himself all the time. Sense of cope with not being the best or at Arata's level is more accurate). But if you add the Chihaya dimension you could make a coherent but also satisfying conclusion in which he loses in both aspects but finds self worth.

Guess my point is everyone should stop dismissing others criticisms and for everyone to stop seeing their interpertation as the only valid one.

P.s. I still prefer my arc in which he loses in all aspects but doesn't find self fulfillment either inside or outside of Karuta.

Sorry for rambling for so long.

I don’t mind rambling! I ramble all the time, as I’m sure you’re already aware, lol. And I think I understand what the miscommunication between us is now. I don’t think at all that loss is the all-defining trait of his character arc or the only one by which his character resolutions will ultimately be made. It’s just the one I’ve focused on specifically in my posts since yesterday because of the issue I had with people’s interpretation of that depiction of loss to begin with. I wholeheartedly agree that Taichi’s arc conclusion is also definitely going to take into account his feelings regarding Chihaya and Arata respectively; those are also really important closures he has to reach in order to be able to move forward, and they tie in just as heavily to his issues with self-worth. I’ve discussed those in detail elsewhere, though, so I wanted to focus on the loss aspect specifically with that post I made yesterday, because the overwhelmingly negative reaction to it kind of baffles me. That’s not to say that I think people with other view points are outright wrong or that people don’t deserve their right to criticism. Any narrative is going to warrant that after all, and that’s the beauty of discourse! But I feel like a lot of people who are upset with where Taichi’s arc goes tend to feel like Suetsugu abruptly ended it with the Qualifiers and defined it by that loss—even the main translation team that had been handling scalantions for years quit after the Qualifiers were over, because they weren’t satisfied with the direction his story took—and to me at least, I don’t think that was the end of his story, and there’s still resolutions left to be made by him afterward. I can definitely understand people still being doubtful to a degree, of course, but I simply hope people can be patient enough to see Taichi’s ultimate endgame before they decide whether what everything he went through was worth it or not and if that loss was really the end for him. I have my own doubts about things, too, but I want to afford Suetsugu that chance to prove herself first, I guess. I know that’s not something everyone will feel about similarly, but maybe I feel about it that way because I’m a writer myself. 😂

#this isn’t really specific meta or anything so i won’t tag it as such #but i hope this clears it up! it’s easy for things to get lost in translation in this kind of back and forth hahaha #i definitely feel like loss is at least really significant to him tho #and his relationship with it kind of works to reenforce some of his worst insecurities #or exacerbate some of his more unhealthy goals #like how he goes about pursuing chihaya or how he suffers in relation to arata’s success #so maybe thats’s why i stress it a lot here #but again i agree his feelings wrt chihaya and arata definitely work independently in their own way as well!#musings

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speeding-fox · 4 years

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Sorabon Vs. Porukabon: The Big Race! Enter Bolt Striker! [Part 1 of 2]

~~~~~~

Author's note:

This story takes place long before this story as well as both parts after it, and "~~~~" indicates a scene change, while ---- indicates the same scene from a different perspective.

~~~~~~

Synopsis: Sora and Polka decide to have a race to see who'll win (and claim bragging rights), and Polka and Dot's vehicle gets an upgrade. Some point during the race, Sora encounters a tough foe, and Polka realizes that some things are more important than victory.

~~~~~~

[At a park somewhere in Biida City.]

Wind gently blows as two kids, Sora and Polka, stare eachother down with narrowed eyes. The atmosphere around them seemed tense.

"Did you really think you could defeat me, Porukabon?" Sora inquires as he glares Polka down.

"Heh, as small as you are, Sorabon, this will be a piece of cake, for me." Polka replied smugly while returning a glare.

"Your lame insult has no effect on me. When I take you down, I'll prove that size doesn't matter, and that cake will be mine!" Sora proclaims.

"Then bring it, Shorty!" Polka challenged.

The two then engage in an intense arm wrestling match over a tree stump as Tosukana, Dot, Tiiru, and Shian watched from afar. Tosukana facepalms. "There they go again." He groaned.

"After that fifteen minute Rock, Paper, Scissor's session, you'd think they'd let it go." Tiiru says.

"Porukabon is rather..."competitive."" Dot adds. "Once he gets challenged, he doesn't back down until the other side surrenders."

Tosukana sighs. "Sorabon is the same way, especially when he thinks someone's cheating, like earlier."

The three turn to Shian when they hear a bag crunching. "I don't know why you guys so annoyed." She grabs a handful of popcorn from the bag. "This is entertaining! Keep it up you two!" She raises the fist full of popcorn as she's cheering them on, some land on the ground, then stuffs her face with the stuff.

Tiiru furrows their brows at her. "Shianbon, don't encourage them!" They then stare at the bag of popcorn she's holding in bewilderment. "Where did you get that?" Shian looks down at the bag of popcorn in her hand, turns to her sibling to give them a shrug in response, then turns her gaze back to the two arm wrestlers and munches on more popcorn.

Sora sweats as he strains to pin Polka's arm as his arm was starting to lose strength, victory seemed to be within Polka's grasp, but there was no way Sora wanted to lose against the Rock, Paper, Cheater! Polka was ready to pin Sora's arm as he struggled to push back when he saw a beeron land on Polka's eyepatch, he got an idea. "Hey dude, a beeron just landed on your eyepatch."

Polka scoffs. "You're just saying that distract me from winning. I'm not falling for it!"

Dot chimes in. "Erm, Polka, he's not lying, there really is a beeron on your eyepatch."

Polka pauses as he was just about to pin Sora's arm, he hears a singular buzz, goes pale, and he lets go of Sora's arm and begins panicking. "AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE! GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!" He screams like a girl as he runs about, trying to get the beeron off his face.

"P-Porukabon! The beeron will sting you if you don't stop panicking!" Dot tried to shout admist her brother's screaming.

Polka was too busy shrieking to hear his sister's shouts. He soon trips on a rock, and the beeron flies off his eyepatch as if nothing happened before he fell face-flat onto the ground with a thud.

Dot cupped her hands over her mouth(?) and let out an "Oh dear.", Tosukana and Tiiru grimaced and let out an "Ooooh...", while Shian busts out laughing, mostly from not hearing Polka scream like a girl before, until Tiiru elbows her arm to shut her up. "Ow!" She rubs her arm as she glares at her sibling. "Hey! You had to have found that display at least a little funnnn-" She drones on the "n" when she sees Touskana and Dot giving her looks. "-nnnnevermind."

It was quiet for about a second, until Sora holds a fist up victoriously. "Hah! I win!"

Polka lifts himself from the ground, spitting out some dirt and grass before shaking more off, then turns to Sora with a look of disbelief. "No you didn't! That doesn't count!"

"Yes it does!" Sora argued. "You forfeited!"

"That's because I didn't expect there to be a beeron flying onto my face!" Polka argued back as he got to his feet.

"That's what you get for being lame and cheating at Rock, Paper, Scissors!~" Sora sung smugly.

Polka went over to him and was almost right in his face. "I told you, I didn't cheat, you little punk!"

Sora got right into his face and poked his chest. "You totally did, you Cheaty McCheater Pants!"

"Don't you poke me!" Polka hissed.

The two were exchanging death glares and growling at eachother, it was apparent a brawl was about to break out. "Uh oh." Tosukana muttered. "They're going to fight if someone doesn't do something."

"FIGHT! FIGHT! FI-" Chanted Shian, until Tiiru once again elbows her. "OW!"

"Shianbon, what did I say about encouraging them?!" Scolded Tiiru. She simply grumbled as she rubs her arm, during their exchange, Dot wheels over to the two boys, then raises her hands up to gesture them to calm down.

"Now boys," She starts; hearing her cause them stop growling and glaring with eachother and turn to her. "there's no need to get physical. I'm sure you two can come up with a better resolution than resorting to fist fighting. How about talking it out to reach a compromise?"

"Or having a race with your vehicles!?" Shian butted in. Tosukana and Tiiru stare at her.

"No Shianbon. A having race is a bad-" Tosukana tried to tell her it was a bad idea, but he was cut off by Sora and Polka simultaneously yelling "That's a great idea!"

"Great..." Tosukana mumbled.

"Boys, I'm sure there is a better-" Dot tries to say, but she gets ignored.

"I'm so gonna win!" Proclaimed Polka.

Sora scoffs, crosses his arms, and closes his eyes. "Psh, as if, not with your lame little hovercar."

"Excuse me?!" Snapped Polka.

"Porukabon, my Sky-Soarer can fly at high speeds to out-fly a jet-plane." Sora opens his eyes and uncrosses his arms to point at Polka. "Your vehicle can only go as fast as a regular car can, but if you want to try and outrace me, I'd like to see you try."

Polka growls. "Grrr, fine then, Pipsqueak! Tomorrow after lunch, at Biida Canyon, we'll race to finally prove who the REAL winner is, and I WILL win!"

Sora chuckles. "We'll see about." He turns around to leave the park. "See you tomorrow, and you better not cheat! Laters!"

"Is it just me, or does Sorabon get obnoxious when he gets all cocky?" Tosukana asks as Sora leaves.

"He also gets obnoxious when he's "heroing," so no, it's not just you." Tiiru replies.

"Not as obnoxious as you can get, Tiirubon." Teased Shian.

Tiiru snaps back. "Hey! I am not obnoxious!"

Shian rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure, whatever you say, sib."

Polka grumbles, and begins talking to himself. "Grr, Sora you brat! I hate to admit it, but he's right about the hovercar, it won't be able to out-fly Sky-Soarer with its max speed being the same as a car's," He pauses, then his eye slowly widen as a great idea dawns on him, while everyone else stares at him awkwardly as he monologues. "unleesss it gets an upgrade!" He glances to his sister. "Dottobon, come on! We're going to Triple G's Lab."

He sprints off with Dot trailing behind him, not expecting him to suddenly bolt. "Polka! Slow down! Oh dear..."

Tosukana turns to Shian and says sarcastically: "Thanks for your brilliant idea, Shian."

"Hey, no need to be all sarcastic, Tucker. There's going to be a race tomorrow! Aren't you at least a little excited?" Shian questioned Tosukana.

He simply stares at her, unamused, and clearly not excited. "Actually, no, I'm not."

Tiiru adds in: "Apparently they also forgot there was going to be a storm tomorrow."

Unbeknownst to the group, the Neo Devil Trio was watching everything unfold from the shadows of the bushes from afar. The three ducked down once the show was over. Dandylion shook their fists in excitement and squeals "Oooohhhh hhhhoooo! A race! That sounds so exciting!"

"It also sounds like something Lucy would be into." Hades remarks.

"Meh, I'll pass." Lucifer replies nonchalantly.

"Whaaat?! But Luuucyyyy," Dandylion whines. "I thought you liked racing!"

"You have a collection of toy cars to prove it." Hades added.

"Yeah, and?" Lucifer inquires as he raises a brow. "I rather not race against those brats, and besides, no point in racing if there isn't gonna be an award."

"There could be an award though. Every race has to have an award for the person whom finishes first." What Hades is saying has Lucifer's full attention. "Go on."

Hades continues. "That reward is usually a nice, shiny golden trophy while the second and third place get the mediocre silver and bronze trophies, and the winner also gets full bragging rights."

"And we both know how much you like to flex on people.~" Dandylion chimed in.

It took a moment for Lucifer to think about it, before saying: "You're both right. If I win, not only will I get a trophy," He presses his fist on his hand and rubs it for emphasis. "I will get the satisfaction of rubbing in the brats' faces!" He glances to his sister. "Hades, do you have a plan?"

"You know I always do, but it might be a bit, shall I say, "cheatsy."" She answered.

Lucifer smirked. "Who said I wanted to win fairly?"

~~~~~~

[Inside Graybon Hakese's Lab.]

"An upgrade?" The eldery Biidaman questioned Polka as he twirls an end of his white mustache. "Of course, Porukabon, but why for?"

"Because Sorabon and I are having a race tomorrow, and I want this hovercar upgraded so it can outspeed his Sky-Soarer, as well as to prove to him I'm a winner and no cheater!" Polka shouts with a fire of determination in his eye.

Graybon grumbles. "Oh of course that rascal has you riled up again." He sighed. "Fine, I'll upgrade it for you, but I'm not working on it by myself."

"You got it, sir! Dot and I will be sure to help!" Dot turned to her twin upon being volunteered unwillingly. "You and me? Polka, are you sure about that?"

"Yeah!" Polka assured.

"I don't know, Polka, I'm not sure if I can-" Polka cuts her off before she could finish her sentence.

"Of course you can! C'mon Dotto, think about all the new stuff you could learn by helping me upgrade our hovercar hands on. You did say you wanted to try something big one day, and this is your chance!" Polka hoped saying this will encourage her to say yes.

"I rather have you and Sorabon talk it out, a race could be dangerous, especially considering it's going to storm tomorrow." Implored Dot.

Polka got down on his knees, holds his hands together, and looks at her with a pleading puppy dog eye. "Pleeeease Dottobon, pretty pleeeaaase help me make our hovercar go faster. Pleeeeeaase?" He begs in a somewhat squeaky voice.

A drop appears on the side of her head as she stares at her brother, unsure of what to think. Dot has never seen her brother pull this stunt on her before, but he is her brother, and it's not like she has much of a choice, their only mode of transport home was in the vehicle bay because of Polka's competitive brashness/need for victory. She thought about her twin's plea, then sighs. "Okay, I'll help. Getting to learn something new could help us in the future."

Polka sprang up and hugged his sister. "Oh thank you thank you thank you so much, Dottobon!" After thanking her, he pointed towards the supply closet and tool shed. "Now let's get started!" He starts making his way to the slide-open doors, but stops and turns to Graybon. "Oh, and Triple G, can you call down Aobon-san and Baiorettobon and ask if they could also help out? We need all hands on deck here!"

"Oh, ahm, of course." Assured Hakese.

"Thanks, Triple G! You're the best!" And with that, Polka makes a break for the supply closet and tool shed.

Graybon and Dot watch him run ahead, then Graybon turns to her. "Your brother sure is..."something," when he gets competitve, Dottobon."

Dot replies with: "Yes, yes he really is."

[Cue montage of the hovercar being worked on, from the planning, to the designing, to the inner workings, to updating the design, and Polka painting lightning bolts and strikes on his side of the hovercar (and polka dots on Dot's side at her request); everyone had breaks inbetween of course! With this montage, a few hours only seemed like a few seconds!]

Once he was done painting, Polka let out a "Phew." as he wipes his head with a sweat rag and backs up along with everyone present to admire his and their hours of handiwork. The upgraded hovercar definitely looks a lot better, bigger, and especially looks faster. "Wow, this looks great!" Dot chirps. "Good job everyone!"

"Yeah, nice job everybody! Thank you! Now with this," Polka rubs his hands together. "now I'll surely be able to beat Sorabon in the race with this, er, with my half!"

~~~~~~

[The next day, sometime after lunch.]

A crowd had gathered around the large plateau. None of the kids (whom were stationed at a table with a tarp over them incase it rains, and dawned a headset and mic) had anticipated so many biidaman to come to spectate Sora and Polka's race. How did they all know that a race was taking place?

"Sheesh." Tosukana mutters as he glances around the large crowd. "I didn't expect a crowd to come and watch a race between just two kids."

"How could they all have known? They weren't around during Sorabon and Porukabon's argument, were they?" Dot wondered aloud as she glances around as well.

"Anyone that were around didn't seem interested." Tiiru noted as they spot Shiro talking to some biidaman. "Hey, Shirobon-san!" They call out, and once they caught his attention, they wave him over. "Over here!"

Shiro ambled over to the group. "Heya kiddos, you guys need anything?"

"Just a question answered. How and why are there so many biidaman here?" Asked Tiiru. "None of them were around when Sorabon and Porukabon fought."

"Oh, that's because I made flyers!" Shiro answered as he takes out a flyer that appeared from nothing and shows them. On the flyer in big bold red letters read 'A BIG RACE! SORABON VS. PORUKABON! COME TO BIIDA CANYON TO WATCH THE SHOW! NO PAYMENT REQUIRED!'. "Sorabon told me he and Porukabon were gonna have a race, and he asked me to make flyers and post then all around the city."

Tosukana groaned. "Of course he did..."

"He probably did that to get a bigger head." Tiiru remarks, and right after they say that, guess who happens to show up in his Sky-Soarer. "Speak of the devil..."

As Sora sets his vehicle into neutral, opens the hood of Sky-Soarer, and proclaims confidently: "The winner has arrived!"

"Oh geez..." Tosukana and Tiiru jeered hushedly to themselves.

"There you are, champ! Ready to race?" Shiro chirps.

"Heh, of course I am, Dad! Why would you even ask?" Answers Sora.

Shiro gives his son a wink. "Just askin' cuz I'm rooting for ya. By the way, it might storm here pretty soon, so I want you to be careful out there, sport, alright?"

Sora was staring ahead at the starting line. "Yeah, careful, sure." He takes Sky-Soarer out of neutral, and hovers it forward until it was a couple feet behind it. Tosukana muttered under his breath: "Something tells me he ignored the careful part."

"Shirobon-san." Dot called out, making Shiro turn around.

"Yes, Dottobon- Oh..." He sheepishly rubs the back of his, seeing as she now has a disappointed look for him not supporting her brother. "Sorry Dottobon, Sorabon is my son, so I pretty much have to be supportive and cheer him on."

"No Shirobon-san, I understand." "Weelll, not just that, I've also made a bet with your dad that Sorabon is gonna beat Porukabon." Shiro points afar at Kiiro, who's handing out hot dogs while chanting "HOT DOGS! COME GET YER HOT DOGS! THEY'RE ONLY 2 BUCKS! GIT'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT!", then adds "IF YA THINK MUH SON, PORUKABON WILL WIN, I'LL THROW IN AN EXTRA HOT DOG FOR FREE!"

Dot sighed. "That's so like you two."

"But I do wish your brother luck, and don't worry, if anything goes wrong, I have Crys-Whiter parked nearby." Assured Shiro as he gestured to his mecha a fair distance away. "By the way, good job getting the roles of spokespeople you four, I'm sure you guys will do a great job. Now if you need me for anything else," He points behind him towards some food tents set up. "I'll be over by the food tents, I heard they're having a bake sale." The kids thank him and he goes towards the food tents like he said.

"Speaking of food..." Tiiru turns to Shian, who's been oddly quiet the whole time, to see she's surrounded by food she bought, and munching on some snacks with her feet propped up on the table. "Did you have to get so much?" She responds by shrugging, and continues eating. "I hope you're planning on sharing some of those."

"Hey, Dottobon." "Yes, Tucker?" "Where's your brother?" He asked her while looking all around. "With you here, he's usually nearby, but I don't see him."

Dot replies with: "He said something about making a "dramatic entrance."

Sora scoffs. "Or maybe he wussied out cuz he knows he can't outspeed Sky-Soarer."

A voice echoes from far behind him. "As if, Shortcake!" Everyone turns to see a hovercar fast approaching, not just any hovercar, but Polka's hovercar!

"What on E-, WHAT?!" was all Sora could yell as Polka zoomed over, and stops perfectly at the same distance away from the starting line as Sora's Sky-Soarer. Once he parked in neutral, Polka opens his vehicle's hood, then turns to the awestruck Sora with a smug look, and the crowd is in awe at Polka's hovercar.

"Polka, what the heck is that?!" Sora yelled as he points at Polka's vehicle.

"Sorabon, meet Bolt-Striker! You were right about my hovercar just being a regular car, so with some help, I went and got it upgraded to make it bigger and go much faster, faster than your Sky-Soarer!" Polka claimed as he gestured to his vehicle.

Sora didn't anticipate Polka going out of his way to get his vehicle upgraded, let alone give it a cool new look, paint job, and name. "While I admit that it does look cool, there's no way it will outspeed Sky-Soarer!" Sora proclaims as he hops into his vehicle.

Shian looks to Dot. "I guess that explains why you updated "Yellow-Flighterbug," huh Dot?"

Dot lightly blushes. "Yeah." She says, softly.

"You did a great job! Both halves look awesome!" Shian exclaims.

Dot blushes more from her compliments. "A-Actually, Polka did the painting, including the spots on Yellow-Flighterbug on my request, and I only helped with the design." "So? You still did an awesome job!" "Th-Thank you, Shian."

While awaiting for the race to begin, Polka gazes down to something in his hand: a card with gilded rims, with the letters "B" and "C" both bold, and crimson in color, in the center surrounded by a yellowish-orange sphere shooting out bolts of lightning. When he first received it, he was initially stoked to finally get a card of his own, and customized nonetheless. He recalled what Graybon Hakese told him after he give him the card though. ["The card functions the same as Tiirubon's, Sorabon's, and Tosukana Akabon's Junior Rank Biida-Cop cards, however, I've encountered an issue with it not syncing up with your Bolt-Striker. I do not know what the issue may be, but perhaps you could find a way. Porukabon."]

"Perhaps I could find a way..." He mumbles to himself. His gaze turns to the oncoming storm, before his gaze gets fixed back to his card. "Hmmm..."

"Looking at your cheat sheet?" Sora quipped to Polka, and snapped him out of his focus.

Polka stores his card in a compartment before turning to Sora and shooting him a glare. "No, and it's not a cheat sheet!"

Sora raises a brow. "Uh huh, sure. There you go with lying again."

The two begin to argue. "I'm not LYING!" "You know, if you just admitted you cheated at Rock, Paper, Scissors, we wouldn't be having a race." "I told you. I. DID. NOT. CHEAT!" "Yes you did! I saw you change it at the last second!" "I DID NOT!"

As the two kids argued, the crowd talked amongst themselves with the new information they just heard. "This race is over a simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors?" "How petty."

Shian was sitting back, watching the show as she munched on snacks, while Dot, Tosukana, and Tiiru awkwardly watched them verbally fight from the table. "To think we're friends with those two..." Tosukana whispered audibly.

Something in the far distance catches Dot's eye, and she thought to inform the others. "Guys, what's that?" She points to said object as it's closing in fast, prompting the others to look as well.

Turns out, the object was Lucifer and his vehicle. As he arrives, he settles himself between the arguing kids, stopping them from arguing further. "If you don't mind me interrupting your bickering, I'd like to participate in your race."

"Lucifer?!" Sora called out.

"That's me." Lucifer responded.

"The heck you doing here?! This race is against me and Sorabon only!" Barked Polka.

"The flyer didn't say anything about other not being allowed to join, did it? No." Lucifer nonchalantly digressed.

Sora quickly checks the flyer he just so happened to have to prove him wrong, but nowhere on the flyer did it say that others can't join. "Shoot! Forgot to tell dad to include that detail!" He tosses the flyer aside to glare at Lucifer.

"You may be right, but you're still up to something." Polka states sternly, eye narrowed.

"Yeah. This is probably another one of you and your sibling's lame schemes. Speaking of which, where are they?" Sora looks around for the remaining two Neo Devil siblings.

Lucifer points out his siblings by the sidelines and corrects Sora. "They're right over there." Dandylion and Hades wave at their brother. "And actually, we're not up to anything for once. I'm just here to have fun and they're just there to cheer me on." On cue, the two Neo Devil siblings whistle and cheer on their brother.

Despite his insistance that he's only here to participate in the race, Sora and Polka knew better than to trust Lucifer's word, he and his siblings are always up to something whenever they're around, and he has no other reason to join other than to pull something, but at the moment, they can't prove it. They may not be on good terms right now, but they shared a look of knowing. "Just don't try anything shady." Polka finally muttered. Their attention turns to Tiiru as they blow a whistle and step near the starting line whilst holding a large checkered flag.

They raise the flag to point up at the large floating screen above, which showed a map of the route they're going to take around the Canyon. "Because Biida Canyon is so vast, there will be one lap. The path shown will be the route you're all taking to avoid getting lost, so avoid using shortcuts if you can, and no cheating!" They announced as they then use the flag to point at a floating camera. "There are these floating cameras spread throughout the Canyon to record your progress, so try to avoid ramming into them." The screen now shows a gold trophy. "First Biidaman to make it back here is the winner! Now racers, on your marks!"

The trio reach for their controls. "3!" Hands on their controls at the ready, they close their vehicles' hoods so they don't get wet incase it rains, then they look ahead. "2!" Sweat rolls down their heads as Tiiru gets ready to lower the flag. "1!" Their grips on their controls becomes firm as they prepare to floor it, and Tiiru waves the flag downward. "GO!"

None of the racers hesitated, and they all zoomed off, and because they were so close to the starting line, poor Tiiru ended up getting spun like a tornado for a bit before they stopped, all dizzy, eyes swirling, and wobbly. They dazily babble something unintelligible, then they collapse to the ground. "I'll just...laaaaay heeeere for a few miiinutes." Nobody notices the remaining two Devil siblings nod to eachother and sneak off once the three racers took off, and Dot and Tosukana were busy discussing who should check on Tiiru.

Shian pauses her snackfest to call out to them. "Yo, Ti! You aight, sib?"

They raise their hand up to hold up one digit, and they dazily reply "I was a "Tiinado." Heeheehee."

"Yup, they're gonna be fine." She told the two, then goes back to her snackfest.

Tosukana sighs and gets up from his chair. "I'll drag them back over here so they don't get wet when it rains." He goes over to them, and does exactly what he said he was going to do, shortly after he gets Tiiru and their flag back under the tarp, it begins raining; the biidaman that forgot to bring an umbrella take shelter in the tents. "Huh. I brought them back just in time."

"I hope Porukabon and Sorabon will be alright out there." Dot says out of concern as she stares into the direction the racers took off in as it poured.

"Don't worry, Dotto, I'm sure they'll fine. They can handle some rain." Shian assured her.

~~~~~~

The three racers fly through the canyon, all three are even in speed. Lucifer cuts in first, but is soon overtaken by Sora. The kid pulls down his eyelid and goes "Nah nah!" in a taunting manner, not noticing Polka pull ahead of him. When he does notice, he yells: "Hey! I was busy taunting Lucifer!"

"Should've been paying to what's ahead of you then, so you don't fall behind!" Polka quips before darting ahead.

Sora growls. "HEY!" He speeds after him.

Lucifer calls out to his siblings through his telecom. "The two brats are ahead of me. Are you two in position?"

"Positioned behind some walls obscuring anyone's view of us? Yes we are, brother." Hades replies back through the aircraft's telecom.

He chuckles. "Perfect."

~~~~~~

"Porukabon and Sorabon are head-to-head! The two make it to narrow ravine! Ohhh! They barely manage to squeeze outta there!" Shian exclaims through the speakers as she's standing on her chair. "Sorabon does an amazing barrel roll after going under that archway, and- ooooh! Holy crap! Porukabon grazes a stone and spins out, but he manages to recover and get back in the game! Sorabon's now in the lead and oh my bom this is getting INTENSE!" She stomps a foot onto the table as she scream "intense," startling the rest of the group, and almost spills their drinks.

"Shianbon, sit down! You almost spilled our drinks!" Tiiru loudly reprimands, and ushers her back into her seat, to which she is now pouting. Tiiru chuckles awkwardly. "Hehe, sorry about that, everyone. My sister can get very excitable during these events."

~~~~~~

Throughout most of the race, "bolts of lightning" would strike atop pillars of rock and cause an avalanche of debris to fall. These avalanches would slow down Sora and Polka and have them take a detour. One instance the two had to completely come to a halt so they couldn't get caught in the rockfall, and their slow down gets Lucifer to steal the lead. They blame the storm for the cause of these rockfalls as they speed after him, of the two of them though, only Sora was beginning to notice how "convenient" the "lightning" would strike as the two get close to their route, and Polka was too focused on taking the lead to take this into account. One particular rockfall occurs as they're about to catch up to Lucifer, and cuts them off from him. From behind the newly formed stone wall, they hear his taunt echo to them. "Later losers!" As well as hearing him take off.

Polka slams his fists down on the control panel and growls out of frustration. "Come ON!"

The duo get the same idea of flying over the tall craggy wall instead of taking a detour. Polka bolts on ahead after Lucifer once he flew over, Sora was about to do the same thing, but something dark sticking out of the side of a stone pillar caught his attention. "Huh? What's that?" He flies on over to get a better look to find it was the Devil sibling's aircraft, the two seem to be too busy gloating to notice him.

Dandylion laughs. "Ooohoohoohoooo! That slowed the two brats down good!"

"Indeed, the two will have a difficult time trying to catch up to him now." Hades bragged to her sibling.

"Shall we cause more avalanches?" Dandylion asks.

"Only if they somehow catch up to Lucy, but I doubt it with how long it took to get over that wall." Hades answered, then laughed.

It all clicked for Sora. He knew those rockfalls weren't caused by natural causes, they were all acts of sabotage! "I knew it!"

Hearing Sora yell suddenly startled the siblings and prompted them to turn around. "GAH! SORABON?!" Screamed Hades.

"I knew those rockfalls were all too convenient!" Sora shouts at them. "You were trying to cheat Lucifer into winning by sabotaging me and Porukabon!"

"No! We were simply watching him!" Hades lies.

Sora calls out her bluff. "I literally just heard you both talk about causing the avalanches! And watching him while trying to stay out of me and Polka's sight behind a bunch of stones is too suspicious!"

"Uuhhhh-." Beads of sweat appear on the sides of Hades's head as she tries to come up with a response, but couldn't think of one as Sora is now firing double shots at the sibling's aircraft.

Dandylion yelps as the ship gets hit. "Aah!" They thrust the control sticks forward. "F-Fly away!!" The ship flies forward speedily, and Sora and his Sky-Soarer are now in hot pursuit of the siblings, still firing at them as they chase them down.

~~~~~~

Lucifer listened to some rock music and was singing confidently about how he will win the race and have the privilege of rubbing his shiny new trophy in Sora's and Polka's faces. When he hears his telecom going off, he groans, turns off his music, and answers. "What's going on?" He asked, annoyed.

"The blue brat found us out!" Hades shouts through the telecom. "And he's chasing us down and firing at us! We need you back here to help us!"

Lucifer groans loudly. "Can't you two handle him on your own? I'm getting so close to winning here."

"We could if it wasn't pouring!" Hades yells. "Please get your butt over here, Lucy!"

Another loud groan from Lucifer. "Ugh, fine! I'll be over there asap!" He ends the call. "The things I do for the both of you, I swear."

Lucifer does a u-turn and bolts off into the other direction, zooming past Polka on his way to his sibling. Polka glances behind him. "Why the heck is he turning around?" That thought quickly dissipates onces he realizes he's in first. "Wait, if he's turning around, then that means I'm in first! Ha haa!" He laughs victoriously gazes foward. "Finish line, here I come!"

~~~~~~

The Devil siblings were chased into a dead end. Sora had them cornered, ready to fire at them once more. The two were in a panic.

"Oh dear! Oh dear! Dead end!" Dandylion shouted hurriedly.

"Nowhere to run now, Devil Dorks!" Sora yelled, charging up some shots that will send them blasting off again.

The siblings braced themselves for impact, but luckily for them, Lucifer arrives in time, and he rams into Sky-Soarer to knock it out of the way before it fired at his siblings again. Sora screamed as Sky-Soarer flew through the air until it crashed front-first into a pile of gravel. His eyes swirled as he groans. "The canyon is spinning..."

"Lucy, you saved us!" Dandylion cried out of relief.

"Yes, I did, but if I lose this race because of you guys, you both owe me." Lucifer stated firmly.

Sora shakes his head once he gets over his daze, then he checks for any damages, aside from a few scratches, and a mild dent on the left side, his plane is still functional. He gets it back up and flying in no-time, and flies back to face the siblings. "You jerk!" He bellows at Lucifer. "Not only was I right about you being up to no good and you not intending to win fairly, you dented my Sky-Soarer!"

"And I would've won by now if you didn't have a keen eye and meddled." Lucifer states. "Since you now know about our plan, I can't let you leave!"

A dark glow surrounds Lucifer, and shapes begin to form around his body, when the glow fades, he's now armored. The hood of his vehicle opens up, he jumps up, and shouts "TYRANTULA, HEADS ON!" as he backflips, spins in the air for a bit, then transforms into the head, and attaches to his transformed vehicle, now a robotic body. He poses menacingly once the transformation was complete.

He flies forward a bit to tower over the now intimidated Sora. Lucifer could easily just send him crashing down into the canyon, but that would more time than he wanted, he still wanted to win, so he came up with another idea. He glances to his siblings.

"You two have an idea of what I should scan?" He asks them confidently.

"Oh! Oh! How about scanning that pile of boulders over there?" Dandylion enthusiastically points over to said pile of boulders.

"Boulders?" Hades questioned.

"Yeah! Boulders are reaaally heavy and tough, aren't they?" Dandylion inquires.

"So you're saying if Lucifer makes a Biidaroid from scanning the boulders, said Biidaroid will be tough for the brat to defeat?" Hades, once again, questioned.

"Yup!" Dandylion chirped.

"Sounds like a great idea to me!" Lucifer affirmed as he swats Sky-Soarer out of the the way, and scans the boulder pile.

"WAAAAH!!! NOT AGAAAAIN!!!" Shrieked Sora as Sky-Soarer flipped uncontrollably. Luckily, he manages to regain control and recover right before he crashed again, not into a gravel pile, but onto a platfrom that was conveniently below him and his foes. He let out a sigh of relief. "Phew..."

That brief moment of relief lasted for merely a moment. A sudden boom, not from thunder, but from something crashing into the ground, causes him to jump out of his seat and let out a yelp. "YIKES!"

There was a cloud of dust, so Sora couldn't see what it was that landed, until the dust quickly clears because of the rain. Towering in front of was a Biidaroid made of stones and boulders. "HOLY FIDDLY-STICKS!" He screamed.

"Have fun with our friend, Rocky, kid!" Lucifer taunted before flying off, with his siblings close behind.

"Hey! Get back- WHA!" Sora tried to yell after him, but he had to dodge out of the way of Rocky's swing and fly some distance away behind the enemy. "Gah, I can't defeat it like this!" He glances down to Sky-Soarer's compartment, opens it up, and takes out his Junior Biida-Cop Card. "Time to ready up!"

He opens the hood, and back-flips out. "Junior Cop Sorabon, ready up!" He shouts as he holds up his now glowing card. He gets enveloped by gusts of wind, briefly turns into a glowing light-blue tornado, then bursts out, now dawning his armor!

He shouts "Sky-Soarer, HEADS ON!" as he does another backflip, spins in the air briefly, then transforms into a head for his soon-to-be mechanized body; Sky-Soarer shifts into a body for Sora, the two link up and became one! Lightning disperses behind him as Sora poses once the transformation complete!

The rocky foes turns around just in time to see Sora's completed transformation, and charging up his attack. "Alright, Rocky! Let's see if you can handle this! Double BiiDA SHOOT!"

He fires two charged shots at the Biidaroid, and BAM! "Ha-haaa! Direct hit!" Sora pumps up his robotic fist, thinking he won, however, it was soon revealed that the enemy was completely unscathed from his attack. Sora was stunned!

"The-They didn't do anything?!" He stammered out. "But those were charged!"

It was now Rocky turn. It lifts and aims its heavy arm cannons at Sora, and shoots large stone projectiles at him. "WAH!" He manages to get out of the way of them before he got hit. Those giant rocks were now embedded in the wall Sora was just standing in front of moments ago.

"Oh man, this guy means business!" He stands tall. "But I can't back down from this fight now! I'll find some way to beat you!"

~~~~~~

#Two Parter #Fox's Writings #Bomberman #Bakugaiden #BB-Daman Bakugaiden #Bakugaiden Next Gen.#Shianbon belongs to Groxy/karaoke-bomber #Might start adding synopsis's at the beginning of some of these stories for now on.

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quirkless-and-embarrassed · 4 years

Note

Regarding the character ask meme: I'd love to see your take on Tamaki!

HE IS ONE OF MY FAVES. As you can probably tell by my icon. I’m sorry this took me so long, but I couldn’t resist beginning the new season as I was working on this, aaand geeking out over the anime took up more time than I thought 😂

Answers under the cut because I could not resist including lots of images and because whoa this really got away from me. Spoilers for season 4 of the anime!

Favorite things about him:

tl;dr adorable+disaster+badass = instant KO

i. He’s never believed that the quirk makes the hero. Granted, it’s from his own insecurity that he believes that, but even when Mirio’s quirk was a liability, Amajiki looked up to him as a great hero. It’s especially refreshing to see because everyone else places so much emphasis on what their quirk can do.

ii. Also, his insecurity. Amajiki describes himself as a plain, boring person so terrified of failure that his brain goes blank when he even considers it. He’s not blush-y or stutter-y or those other tics associated with cutely shy characters—his face is kinda awkwardly inexpressive…he actually looks constipated when he attempts to address class 1-a during his debut…and I get a sense of stillness from him, like someone who freezes up instead of fidgeting. But he’s not fishing for encouragement. He’s likely to bluntly, unhappily shoot down any attempt to praise him because that makes the pressure even worse! No “thank you for believing in me, I’ll do my best,” no, “oh you’re too kind, that’s not true,” he’s like: “no, just…no. shit. what now? I’m not Mirio.”

iii. His relationship with Mirio. What he admires most about Mirio is how, when he goes down, Mirio always rises back up—like the sun—filled with warmth instead of with self-recrimination. He draws people in and fills them with energy. Amajiki painfully believes he isn’t capable of any of that, but he trusts Mirio, and Mirio tells him that there’s plenty of warmth to him even if Amajiki can’t sense it in himself, and even if Amajiki is filled by fear at the idea of failure, he, too, energizes Mirio when he faces his problems anyways. They talk, build each other up, and accept each others’ feelings. Amajiki still wants to be like Mirio (cue “imitation is the sincerest form of…”), but he’s learning that even though he’ll never be Mirio, he and Mirio are alike in the ways that matter most.

iv. it’s as gay as the day is long.

v. How steadfast he is. Given his anxiety, it’s not immediately obvious, but Amajiki’s doubts and insecurities center on his capabilities and self-worth—not on his principles or about what needs to be done. When he’s worried about something, he doesn’t even try to hide it, there’s something very forthright and grounded about the way he struggles to confront the current obstacle.

vi. He’s such a goofball when he’s alone with Mirio. Here he is pretending to sever his thumb. Look at that smile. And Mirio’s habit of pumping his arms when he’s excited is nearly as cute.

vii. His hero name is awesome. Suneater. Talk about names that represent your ideal self…

viii. Amajiki doesn’t win his battle against Overhaul’s thugs by discovering his confidence and whipping out a super move (which, incidentally, he attempts via flashback+miritama feels and it fails resoundingly). He wins with the power of friendship, but it’s not the typical Power of Friendship spiel.

He fights three side-characters whose names I never remember, so I call them the garbage trio: theft quirk guy (similar to how Amajiki “steals” the forms of what he eats), a guy who manifests crystals, and gluttony guy. Funnily enough, the three have terrible self-esteem issues! They’re fanatically loyal to Overhaul because he’s willing to use them as sacrificial pawns, and being a pawn is better than being rejected as garbage (which each has as his tragic past).

So the narrative presents Amajiki with two types of bonds. Will he identify with the trio’s loyalty to Overhaul, founded on their sense of worthlessness? Or will he identify with their loyalty to one another, founded on their empathy for each others’ tragic pasts? Essentially: what kind of relationship does he have with Mirio?

It’s not even a contest. Amajiki immediately and fully rejects the Overhaul-brand loyalty as brainwashing and focuses on the bond he understands, the “friends don’t eat friends” bond.

So Amajiki recognizes his opponents’ humanity when even they couldn’t. Even though they thought of themselves as nothing more than Overhaul’s tools, Amajiki intuited that the bonkers guy who shouts “eat! eat! eat!” wouldn’t bite his crystal friend when Amajiki used him as a shield. In doing this, Amajiki proved that their lives have more value to each other more than they ever will to Overhaul. He explicitly praises them for trusting each other—something they can take pride in because they forged it themselves—and ultimately removes their masks, symbolically freeing them from Overhaul’s ownership.

It was a cool idea because usually I see the protagonist summon up reserves of power he didn’t know he had in order to protect his comrades, but when Amajiki was inspired by remembering how Mirio believes in him, it doesn’t actually work because the garbage trio calls on their own bond to counter his power-up. Or usually it’s the antagonist who turns the protagonists’ love for each other against them, and here it was reversed. Except Amajiki used their friendship against them not out of contempt for their bond, “oh your love makes you so weak and predictable,” but out of respect for it, “love is what makes you strong, and I know that because it makes me strong, too.”

ix. His weird, pointy ears.

x. His dub voice acting: it’s stellar. Props to Aaron Dismuke, highly recommend watching his episodes in the dub.

Least favorite things about him:

His first name, Tamaki. It just never sticks in my mind—Amajiki is much more distinctive. (Apparently I have some sort of big three mental block, because I can rarely remember Mirio’s and Nejire’s last names, either.)

He didn’t really grow or learn anything from his fight against the garbage trio. He was already confident in his bond with Mirio, and the whole reason he volunteered to fight the trio was that he thought he could win, so it was basically a high-stakes training exercise in sticking to his guns. I think the purpose of the fight was to teach the audience that he and Mirio are a positive foil for bakudeku, providing another way Mirio is superior to Midoriya + amping Mirio up before his tragedy-slash-victory, so it’s a shame Amajiki’s most major scene wasn’t about himself.

I wish he had more screen time, I wish he had more development, I wish we got his reaction to Mirio losing his quirk, I wish had scenes with more characters than just Mirio, Kirishima, and Fat Gum, etc. The usual gripes about faves who are side characters.

Favorite lines:

Ch132 – I love how forthright he is lol. No attempt to put up a strong front.

Ch132 – When the thug Amajiki’s fighting shouts at him, his feelings are hurt 😂 also bonus for kiri trying to comfort him

Ch135 – cool as a cucumber

And two I won’t include the panels for…

His badass line in 141, “I might not understand your rage. Your grief. Everything that led you here…but I know all about solid bonds! And my friends don’t use each other! Because friends don’t eat friends.”

and when he collapses after beating the garbage trio:*THUD* Huh…why’s the floor so close to my face?doofus

BROTPs:

Kirishima!! His pep talks to Amajiki while they were on patrol were really cute. I can only imagine how he handles Kirishima and Tetsutetsu! He’s totally the third wheel, and normally he’s happy to be! But sometimes he watches the two hype each other up and gets depressed about it because he’s never that positive and encouraging. Sometimes Fat Gum leaves Amajiki in charge and it seriously stresses him out because Tetsutetsu occasionally charges off to do his own thing and it’s a whole ordeal to rein him in.

And oh shit, Nejire’s personality is just as cute as Amajiki’s, I’d love to see more of the two of them hanging out. (and just…more of Nejire in general, please. Her debut was so funny and then Horikoshi did nothing with her.)

In class-a, I’m curious to see how Amajiki and Yaoyorozu would get along. They’re both gifted students with confidence issues and quirks that depend on eating, so it would be nice to see them hit it off. I’d also be interested to see Amajiki and Bakugo interact, especially with Kirishima there.

Also, since Amajiki has such a preoccupation with exuberant, confident people, I’d love to see him somehow meet Inasa.

This isn’t a brotp, but I’ll bet Nighteye intimidated the shit out of Amajiki… Mirio told Amajiki endless anecdotes about Nighteye but it didn’t work, till the day he dies Amajiki will still get clammy any time he thinks of Nighteye’s glare or the purported tickle machine.

Again not a brotp, but I’d love to see Amajiki vs. Shigaraki. That sounds like an awesome fight. (…ideally before Shigaraki gets all OP and only Midoriya can beat him.)

OTP:

Mirio.

NOTP:

Nobody comes to mind.

Random headcanons:

Most of the food Amajiki eats goes into his quirk; he doesn’t properly extract its caloric and nutritional value, and if he’s not careful, he could accidentally become malnourished. (It also makes it difficult to put on muscle.) So he eats a ton, to make sure he has enough to fuel both his quirk and his body, and he’s self-conscious at how much more he eats than other people.

When Amajiki vomits, his quirk is weakened to the point it’s basically null. He has to take a break and chow down before he can use it again. …Re-ingesting the puke is…not an option.

Clothing is a big issue for his hero work. He could develop a really powerful fighting style, one that involves producing limbs from his back and torso, if he were willing to wear a little less…but that’s never going to happen. Mirio can run around naked, but Amajiki can’t!

I don’t know if this is a translation quirk or fanon or what, but I adore it when Nejire calls Amajiki “chicken-hearted” in fanfiction. It’s a short, cute joke about his quirk and I wholeheartedly hc it. I also think Amajiki is closer to Nejire than Mirio is.

Amajiki doesn’t deal with his self-esteem issues by minimizing his challenges. He doesn’t make cheap compromises like, “ok, I know I can do this because it’s so easy even someone like me can do it.” He goes for broke, for being the spectacular hero Suneater, because even if he can’t perceive his own positive qualities, he believes that they’re there.

One of the (many) reasons Amajiki admires Mirio is that Mirio admires him, and Amajiki wants to be able to like himself, too.

When it comes down to it, his self-worth is nowhere near as desperately poor as the garbage trio because he knows true friendship. Maybe if he’d never met Mirio, Amajiki would have been susceptible to their sort of devotion, but now he never will be because Mirio’s encouraged him to value himself. Amajiki won’t accept a bond that relies on degrading yourself—which is important to know, since Amajiki constantly compares himself to Mirio. But Amajiki’s sense of inferiority is chronic without being proportionately deep. He adopted the name Suneater to declare himself Mirio’s equal, and his climactic line of the garbage trio battle, “friends don’t eat friends,” is one that asserts equality and puts his quirky spin on it to show he’s made the principle his own. Amajiki may not like himself but he doesn’t let it get in the way of taking his place as Mirio’s peer.

Amajiki’s parents are also anxious people.

Mirio is his neighbor at the UA dorms. It’s perfect because Mirio can permeate their the shared wall and they can hang out after curfew. (Mirio keeps a pair of sweatpants in Amajiki’s room for those occasions lol.) Nejire is jealous and always talks about gate-crashing, but she never gets around to it. Even after Mirio loses his quirk, his sweatpants stay in Amajiki’s room because neither of them can quite bring themselves to give those times up.

I am a sucker for making characters’ quirks reflect something fundamental about their hearts, so here’s my take on manifest. Amajiki manifests what he eats, meaning he absorbs from his environment and re-creates it in his own style. It’s not imitation, since Amajiki with one cow hoof and one tentacle, kicking ass, resembles neither a cow or an octopus, but he takes the best from what’s around him and reinvents it. “Suneater”? Thanks to how his friendship with Mirio gave him a stable, nourishing environment, he’s absorbed his favorite of Mirio’s traits and manifests them in his own way, as his own strength, because as even name of his quirk implies—manifestation makes latent qualities visible.

Like Bakugo, Amajiki could have resented Mirio for his strengths; like the garbage trio, he could have let his failures convince him that he’s worthless; but Amajiki consistently makes the best of the cards he’s dealt, even though it involves plenty of doubt and self-flagellation that could lead him down a darker path…but don’t. He’s greater than his demons.

Unpopular opinion:

Amajiki’s shy, but…not that shy. He gets like stiffly shy.

Amajiki still has a ways to go before he’s ready to date Mirio. (Not sure what’s the popular opinion on this.)

I really wish class 1-a versus Mirio had been class 1-a versus Mirio and Amajiki. It would have been so cool to see what amazing teamwork they had and how their quirks were compatible.

Song I associate with him:

Titanium—absolutely. I like the versions by Sia, Boyce Avenue, and Kurt Schneider (I couldn’t choose). Circles by Veela reminds me of his spiraling anxiety. And, I can’t resist, so I’m adding Chasing the Sun by The Wanted on here.

Aaand my ship songs…Appreciated by Rixton, and All of Me by John Legend.

Favorite picture of him:

Ch141 – Ironclad certainty. I’m not even gonna apologize for the dimensions and the fact this is huge, just drink it in.

Ch132 – If this isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, I will never trust your judgment.

Ch152 – Unless it’s because this is the cutest.

Ch152 – When Mirio loses his quirk 💔

I’ve also answered these questions for Todoroki, Bakugo, Uraraka, Endeavor, Sir Nighteye, and Shinsou!

#amajiki #amajiki tamaki #miritama #bnha #shie hassaikai #bnha s4 spoilers #thanks for the ask!! this was a lot of fun even if it meant crying over the anime way too late at night #amamirio #nerd mumbling #text #ask meme #long post #asks #I had big feels okay?

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.9

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time as we got even deeper into the fiction reveals of trial 6, I tried probably too hard to justify the auditionees’ nonsensical ideas of how any of this even works, those assholes were nonetheless not the same people as our friends in here in any meaningful way, Tsumugi’s claim that she scripted Maki’s feelings for Kaito was total bullshit but still hit Maki right in the issues about being her own person, her similarly bullshit claim that Kaede and Kaito were never real hit Shuichi right in his own dependency issues, the audience completely stopped being even remotely believable human beings in their reactions to this, and Shuichi broke down and needs to reboot.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, we’ll have to make do with Keebo.

BAD END

…

Keebo: “Is this the end? Please tell me. I’m asking you.”

I suppose we’re meant to believe that the Bad End message is something that Keebo sees? Which seems kind of odd. Or maybe it’s just something that the in-universe audience were shown through Keebo’s eyes.

But it also kind of reads as more of an out-universe thing, since we the players are the only ones playing this as an actual game that could potentially have bad endings. This kind of gives this the effect that Keebo is also speaking to us, the out-universe audience, and that we’ve been his inner voice this whole time. Which doesn’t actually make sense – if we’ve been anyone’s inner voice it’s been Shuichi’s, but that’s obviously not really an in-universe thing.

This is probably for the sake of trying to fool us into feeling like the in-universe audience is a force for good, just like Keebo is going to still naively believe for a while. Not sure how convincing that is after a proportion of the audience last time had absolutely zero empathy with Shuichi’s despair, though.

Keebo: “Whenever I was in trouble, my inner voice would always guide me. That guidance is what brought me here. I don’t believe that’s a mistake.”

His inner voice’s guidance has done fuck all to bring him here. He’s here because he was lucky enough that nobody happened to try to murder him, and sensible enough not to kill anyone himself. I would like to give Keebo enough credit to think that he didn’t need his inner voice to talk him out of murder (…well, at least until this chapter, apparently). All the voice has done is make his actions a bit more proactive and optimistic, but that has meaningfully affected basically nothing of note that’s happened here.

Save this situation?

- No

Remedy this situation?

- Yes

It is perhaps a little confusing that you’re meant to say no to the first prompt, because one might have already realised that it’s not necessarily a literal save-the-game prompt and is instead talking about saving Keebo’s friends. This probably works better in Japanese, in which the first word is the English loanword “save”, which I don’t think has any meanings other than the save-the-game meaning, and then it changes to an actual Japanese word for save/rescue/ etc.

Keebo: “My inner voice is telling me I need to… remedy this situation.”

Apparently this is very much not the same part of the audience that was just mindlessly and sadistically laughing about Shuichi’s despair last time. Since Keebo’s inner voice is an audience survey, it must be a majority that wants this instead, which means we have to assume that those comments we saw before were deliberately cherry-picked to be all the despair-loving ones.

At least this does a decent job of actually making the in-universe audience feel like the good guys, then, since they don’t want Shuichi and friends to be in despair. It makes them seem that way for now, at least.

Oh hey, here’s the music from Danganronpa 1 that was essentially Makoto’s “objection” theme. Of course that’s showing up in this game now. Keebo is basically supposed to be playing Makoto’s role, after all. (Emphasis on supposed.)

Keebo: “We can’t give up. No matter what, hope is always within reach. We must keep our heads high and search for hope, even in the deepest despair.”

Aaaaaand it’s meaningless buzzword time! You can’t search for hope itself. The act of searching is hope, but only if you’re searching for something that will meaningfully, tangibly make your situation better!

Shuichi: “Hope…?”

I wonder if Shuichi’s realising that what Keebo’s saying doesn’t mean anything and is wondering why he’s throwing this word around so eagerly for no reason. Nothing is going to give Shuichi hope without actually addressing the reason he’s in despair, encouraging him to believe that he’s not all just fictional and his friends weren’t just empty lies. Without that, Keebo is just spouting meaningless platitudes that won’t solve a thing.

Keebo: “…You said so yourself – this killing game is the Ultimate Real Fiction. If this is both real and fiction, then logically it can’t all be fiction.”

This is an actually useful argument he’s making, at least. But he really shouldn’t need to use logical deduction from Tsumugi’s words to realise that obviously they’re still real in the sense that they exist and have physical bodies and will really die – and therefore that all of that applied to their friends who died, too.

Tsumugi: “Oh, your inner voice? That’s the voice of the outside world.”

It should be a huge risk for her to be telling him this. Logically this should immediately lead to Keebo refusing to listen to anything his inner voice is saying to him. He won’t for a long while, though, because he’s apparently kind of an idiot. Or just very, very brainwashed. Or a bit of both.

Tsumugi: “I know cuz I wrote your plotline, too.”

That’s not a “plotline”, that’s just a neat audience-participation feature. The actual plotline that Keebo would follow based on that is entirely up to the audience.

Tsumugi: “You’re the audience surrogate.”

This might partly explain why Keebo’s character has always been rather vaguely defined and they never did much with all the interesting potential of him being a robot who’s trying his hardest to learn to be human: because he’s supposed to be a blank-slate self-insert for the in-universe audience to see themselves as. They’re obviously not going to be able to relate his thing of being a robot. Makoto and Hajime were both pretty ordinary guys without anything too overly distinctive about them because they were basically audience surrogates, too.

(And Kaede and Shuichi have far more distinct personalities and characters because they’re not audience surrogates like the previous two games’ protagonists were.)

“Hifumi”: “That function exists to keep the audience entertained.”

Yes, because clearly they’d all have been super bored by this whole killing game if they hadn’t been giving Keebo meaningless nudges to be a little more optimistic from time to time. Nothing else about this game has been remotely entertaining without him, right!?

The hints earlier that Danganronpa might have been getting stale and on its last legs by now do support the idea that this is something they did to try and keep people interested, but Tsumugi is still giving herself way too much credit here.

“Chihiro”: “It’s two-way communication that lets you participate in the program from home.”

Oh, boy, is this the line that’s supposed to justify how Shuichi will ultimately change the outside world by yelling at them a bunch – because he does it through Keebo’s nebulous “communication” feature? Yeah, because that’s totally so different from them simply listening to him because they’re watching this trial.

Tsumugi: “The outside world has been watching from your eyes the whole time! It lets them feel like they’re really a part of the Danganronpa world!”

This cannot be the whole truth. For one thing, if they’ve only ever seen through Keebo’s eyes, then outside of trials, the audience must have been really, really bored? All of the interesting character interactions – all of the watching Shuichi grow and develop which was in-universely meant to be one of the main plotlines of this story – happened nowhere near Keebo. The audience should have been poking Keebo to hang out with more people, maybe get closer to Shuichi, so that they could actually see any of that.

(Although the fact that Keebo apparently spent more of his time with Miu than anyone else is… unfortunately probably quite an accurate representation of what an audience would do. I have seen way too many LPers of this game hang out with Miu for reasons that completely elude me because why would anyone ever want more of her than necessary unless they’re shallowly taken in by the fanservice. I feel very bad for the sensible minority watching through Keebo’s eyes who were fed up with her but didn’t have enough of a majority vote to do anything about it.)

But that collage of illustrations we had a while ago that Tsumugi presented as part of “Danganronpa V3” rather proves that Keebo’s camera is not the audience’s only viewing option. Why would they want to limit the viewers to just that when they have Nanokumas everywhere and could be giving them the choice to follow whichever character they want? And since the Nanokumas are so invisible and mobile that they can get any angle, watching via them would also make one feel as though they’re really in the Danganronpa world anyway, even if it’s not literally through a character’s eyes.

Tsumugi: “That’s why I’m so glad you survived all the way through!”

What the hell were you planning to do if he didn’t? Did you not even have any kind of failsafe in place to try and make sure nobody happened to murder him?

“Junko”: “If the audience surrogate falls into despair, then the audience does, too. By making you fall into despair, I can make the entire world fall into despair!”

That’s, uh, not how audience surrogates work. The audience only feels the same thing their surrogate characters feel through the power of empathy and imagination, but that’s not the same thing as actually being in despair when their character is. If anything, seeing Keebo fall into despair should just make the audience cheer more for him to not give up and keep having hope. You know, just like they should also be cheering for Shuichi and his friends to not despair right now, if they were a halfway reasonable and decent audience.

“Junko”: “My despair will turn from fiction to fact and destroy reality itself.”

However, Tsumugi most likely knows that this doesn’t make sense and is really just saying this to try and pander to the audience and make them feel like this matters. While it’s kind of half her fault for practically telling them herself, the characters in this story have completely messed up her script by figuring out how fictional this all is. But hey! Never mind them (who cares about them anyway they’re not real, right), this is totally all about you guys in the audience! She’s trying to make everyone ignore the fact that her story has gone completely off the rails and is no longer remotely about what it’s supposed to be about by enticing them with the idea that it’s now the audience’s story. You’re the ones in danger now! You’re the ones who get to fight and defeat Junko! Isn’t that just so fun, you guys???

Which, A, doesn’t even make any sense in the first place and, B, is horrendously bad storytelling to suddenly abandon the characters this story was supposed to be about like they’re irrelevant. But it’s going to work on this audience, because apparently they never really gave a fuck about any of this story’s characters in the first place, even though that’s the exact opposite of how an audience should act!

Maki: “Is that why… you want the world to fall into despair?”

Maki Roll, don’t fall for it! That’s not what she’s trying to do and she doesn’t care about any of that! Maki has always been the most subsceptible to manipulation, and it seems like that one Flashback Light that brainwashed them into thinking that “despair” is always bad and that they are symbols of “hope” who must always defeat despair is still affecting her in ways she doesn’t realise are manipulation.

Himiko: “Th-That’s… messed up!”

Himiko also briefly comments on this here like she might be buying this. Shuichi does not. He’s just staying quiet and watching.

“Nekomaru”: “The outside world wants to see horrible setups and payoffs!”

That should be the case, because those are the kind of things that make a good story. But suddenly yelling about despair taking over the world in a way that makes no sense and is unconnected to any of the setup we’ve had this whole time? Not a payoff for anything. Should not be something the audience wants. They should want actual payoff for the characters they’ve been watching all this time.

“Nagito”: “What could be more horrible than a fictional despair eroding the real world?”

“Junko”: “No one could’ve imagined an end this hopeless.”

Yes, look, you guys, this is totally a super awesome plotline she’s come up with and it’s one that lets all of you be the heroes! please keep watching don’t change the channel just because things have gone off-script help

Keebo: “…No. I won’t give in to despair!”

Tsumugi: “Huuuh?”

Tsumugi has a gleeful “oh, I’m so surprised!” face here. She is making it quite obvious that Keebo’s reaction is exactly what she was going for. Keebo, no.

Keebo: “If that’s the voice of the outside world, then the outside world actually wants hope!”

At this point, now that Tsumugi’s veered things around to totally be about the audience’s despair because who even cares about these people who aren’t real, is Keebo even talking about “hope” for Shuichi and the others? Or is this just “hope” for the audience to protect them from the evil despair that’s totally going to be inflicted on them? Almost certainly the latter.

K1-B0 – Ultimate Hope Robot

This is so clearly trying to rip off the ending of DR1. Which the audience is going to lap up because they’re raging genwunners. But this doesn’t work anything like that, because that hope was used to inspire the rest of the characters that the story was actually about. This is very emphatically not going to be that.

“Junko”: “What is this?”

Keebo: “This is the power of hope!”

It’s really not. It’s one guy who doesn’t have a clue what’s really going on yelling a bunch of meaningless words.

“Makoto”: “The final battle between hope and despair!”

It was never a fucking battle! But no, of course it was, that’s definitely always been what those two words are about.

“Nagito”: “The class trial is in disarray because Monokuma broke a rule…”

Himiko: “You’re the one who broke the rule…”

Hah, I like that someone calls her out on that. Tsumugi’s still running away from all responsibility, because of course she is.

(“Smiling, putting on a mask, never saying what you really think. That kind of cowardice is just like Monokuma!” Kaito was really talking about the mastermind hiding behind Monokuma rather than Monokuma himself when he said that – and now she’s putting on even more literal masks than ever before.)

“Sayaka”: “How about we start over and have a special vote?”

Keebo: “…A special vote? But you’re the one who broke the rules in the first place—”

Keebo is quite right to point out that Tsumugi does not have the right to do any kind of life-or-death vote now that she’s broken the rules and messed everything up. Tsumugi, of course, completely brushes off his protest and does it anyway… and the audience lets her.

Trial 5’s whole premise of “Monokuma can’t do what he likes once he’s provably broken the rules” only works because the audience was supposed to agree that it’s unfair and cry foul, but… it turns out the audience is actually a bunch of mindless idiots who are totally okay with a meaningless vote and meaningless deaths to get them their hope fix. So… Kaito’s attempted best-case outcome in trial 5, which he was going for in the hope of saving his friends’ lives and ending the killing game, would actually have saved no-one and ended nothing anyway??? And what Kaito did achieve – letting Shuichi know that Monokuma can’t get things wrong because of the audience, which is why Shuichi went into this trial to prove Kaede spotless in another attempt to end the killing game – is also meaningless? Kaito faked his death and lied to his friends for a whole trial for nothing?

Out-universe writers, no. Why would you ever think this is okay? How can you just completely undermine the best case of the game like this?

(They’re also clearly not trying to go for a deliberate gut-punch of making Kaito’s efforts pointless, because the narrative isn’t acknowledging this at all. Apparently the in-universe writers are not the only ones who have no idea what they’re doing here.)

“Kazuichi”: “Let’s just do one last vote!”

Monokuma: “Cuz that’s what Danganronpa’s all about!”

The fact that DR1 and DR2’s stories happened to work fairly well with a final vote does not mean that it should be taken as a necessary part of a Danganronpa storyline to the point of shoehorning one in even when it doesn’t work.

The final vote in DR2 worked because that wasn’t decided on by Junko and was just a result of the way the world had been programmed. And the final vote in DR1 may have been also forced through by Junko when she didn’t really have the right to do so any more – but she was never entertaining her audience, she was forcing them to watch in order to make a point. Her vote continued that theme, because it was essentially Junko making Makoto stake his life on the belief that his friends would agree with his philosophy of hope (in her attempt to prove that they wouldn’t). Only Makoto’s life was on the line in it, and it was for a reason that was relevant to what had been happening and what he’d been advocating, so it didn’t feel especially unfair, at least not more so than you’d expect Junko to be given she wanted lives to be at stake for everything.

The vote we’re about to be forced into here is almost nothing like that. Oh boy.

Tsumugi: “Between Keebo and I… Which of us should get punished?”

If that was all, that’d be fairly analogous to the DR1 final vote, and fairly acceptable. Keebo and Tsumugi are (supposedly) having a clash of philosophies, so this would just be them staking their lives on that. If it was only their lives on the line.

Himiko: “To end in hope…?”

Maki: “To end in despair…?”

Shuichi: “We decide…?”

Yeah, why should these three get to decide? I thought this story was suddenly all about the audience now, not them! They’re not even real people, right? Why should they get to determine which out of hope or despair the audience wants to see?

But the vote they’re about to have doesn’t have anything to do with this whole deal of “bringing despair to the outside world” or about which one the audience prefers. Because Tsumugi doesn’t have a goddamn clue what she’s doing with any of this nonsense and might as well have not even done that whole bit in the first place. I hope this is out-universely deliberate at least, but at this point my faith in the out-universe writers is slipping.

Tsumugi explains that the “Despair wins” choice will result in everyone except Keebo continuing to live in the school, technically continuing the killing game but presumably never actually killing each other any more now that they know all the motives will be lies.

Keebo: “No! That’s no way to live! Imprisoned in this school, living lives of despair—”

How exactly would that be a life of “despair”, Keebo? They’d be stuck there, sure, but at least the three of them would be alive, and they’re friends (minus Tsumugi, who would hopefully fuck off and leave them alone), so they should be able to find some semblance of happiness in it. You’re only saying it’d be “despair” because Tsumugi has arbitrarily slapped that label on it and therefore it must be nothing but bad, because “hope” is always good and “despair” is always evil, right?

“Toko”: “E-Even if you went outside, there’d be n-no point.”

“Byakuya”: “As I said, all your memories are nothing but fiction.”

“Imposter Byakuya”: “Your hometowns, your families, your friends… they never existed in the first place.”

Wow, Tsumugi, you sure are making the option where they get to escape look more despairing than the one where they stay inside here and never have to face any of that stuff.

…Which actually is kind of analogous to the first game in that they’d be going out into a hostile world where they’re going to struggle to find their feet, and they’ll have to hope that they’ll be okay in that world despite everything. If the narrative was going to present it that way and have Keebo encourage them to still try and live in that world even if it’s scary because it’s better than being boringly trapped in here forever, this’d be acceptably similar to DR1. But nope, that’s not remotely what we’re going to be doing here.

Himiko: “Th-Then at least put us back how we were!”

No, Himiko! Admittedly we didn’t see Himiko’s audition so she didn’t see what she “used to be” like, but the auditions they did see should make it very clear to all of them that the people they “used to be” weren’t them. None of you want to go back to being those people, guys; you should be able to see that! The people that you are now would stop existing if you did that! For all intents and purposes, you’d die!

Tsumugi explains that that’s impossible because Flashback Lights don’t actually retrieve lost memories and can only overwrite existing memories with fake ones. But it being impossible should not be the point anyway. None of them should even want this in the first place.

Shuichi: “So… we can’t go back to the way we were?”

Shuichi, you saw the person who used to live in your body! You can’t possibly want to be him! You’d forget everything about Kaito and Kaede and become someone who wants to get executed in a killing game!

Apparently Tsumugi’s insistence that they’re all entirely “fake” has got to them so much that, despite all the evidence, they’re just clinging to the idea that “real” has got to be better, and nooooooo, guys, snap out of it!

Buuut it’s the “hope wins” outcome of the vote that’s the really stupid part. Tsumugi is punished and they get to escape, except…

“Taka”: “However, you must follow the rules! The game will continue until the final two!”

Tsumugi: “So only two of you can graduate.”

And why, pray tell, the absolute fuck, is this remotely necessary? The only reason that two-person rule exists should be as a minimum, because it’s not possible to hold a class trial with only two people left. If it’s also a strict maximum, then that means that this game is designed to kill fourteen people no matter what, even if there aren’t enough in-game murders for that. The point of this killing game is supposed to be that the participants brought all the deaths upon themselves (even though that’s not really a fair assessment at all when they were manipulated into it). Executing more people anyway even when it’s not prompted by someone becoming blackened in the first place is arbitrarily cruel and not in the spirit of the game at all. This rule should have completely ceased to apply any more, now that we’re in “endgame” mode where clearly nobody is going to commit any more murders. Killing two of them at this point just to adhere to this pointless rule is meaningless as fuck.

Plus, what right does Tsumugi even have any more to insist that they adhere to the rules when she broke them first? Oh, right, because the audience are mindless morons who don’t actually care if she breaks them despite the entire point of trial 5. (Geez, even Kokichi expected better from the audience than this.)

So, the bottom line is that this “hope wins” ending is… two of them get to escape into an outside world that doesn’t even see them as real people, after watching two more of their friends get completely pointlessly and arbitrarily killed. Such hope! Such meaning! Such narrative!

(Okay, they won’t get killed, as we’ll learn later on, but still. It is no less arbitrary.)

Shuichi: “… We got this far… and you’re telling us to sacrifice more of our friends?”

Shuichi is crying and I don’t blame him. Why? Why should he have to lose even more of his friends for no reason? This isn’t fair! At least Kaede and Kaito’s sacrifices happened because they tried to make a difference, but this would be nothing like that!

“Gundham”: “However… even if you do escape to the outside world, you will find it most unwelcoming.”

Keebo: “…No! As long as we never give up, there will always be hope!”

Keebo. Dude. If you were trying to reassure everyone to stay hopeful about things that actually mattered, namely the idea that the outside world wouldn’t welcome them, or the thought of losing more friends, then maybe this would kinda sorta work and be a bit like Makoto was in DR1. But you’re just spouting meaningless platitudes! Stop it!

Keebo: “If it will bring hope to everyone and the outside world, I will gladly sacrifice myself.”

You dying for completely arbitrary reasons is not going to make your friends hope for anything, Keebo! And you especially shouldn’t give a fuck what the outside world that’s gleefully watched your friends die wants from you!

I don’t hold it against Keebo, because he is genuinely well-meaning and trying to do a good thing here, but he is so, so deluded and misled.

“Makoto”: “In order for hope to win, there needs to be one more sacrifice.”

That sentence doesn’t make any sense! That’s not hope! In the real Makoto’s story, hope winning didn’t sacrifice anyone except the mastermind! Makoto himself would have called total bullshit on the idea that pointlessly sacrificing his friends would be for the sake of any kind of hope!

“Sonia”: “Do you understand now? Even if you choose hope, you will still suffer.”

Okay, so, look, I’m not saying that hope doesn’t involve suffering. Remember when I talked about my first-time experience of Kaito’s trial and how the rekindled hope that he might be alive was utterly terrifying? Yeah, hope is scary. But real hope is scary because it’s uncertain, because of the constant possibility that you might not get what you’re hoping for and fall back into despair. Being forced to feel completely arbitrary separate pain that has nothing to do with what you’re hoping for (in this context, they’d be hoping they can fit in in an outside world that doesn’t see them as real people) is not part of the reason that hope itself is difficult and scary and is completely beside the fucking point.

Tsumugi using Sonia here is the beginning of a sequence of her cosplaying almost all of the female characters (plus Chihiro) and having them be all “won’t you stay here with us~? *blush*”. Which is obviously deliberate pandering.

But, like… who is this pandering to? Isn’t she supposed to be persuading Maki, Himiko and Shuichi right now? There’s no evidence that Maki and Himiko are into girls, and while Shuichi apparently is, why should he care about these people that are, to his fake memories, historical figures and nothing more? Why would he be that shallow just because they’re girls? And if this is for the audience, first of all, why, they can’t influence this outside of Keebo’s one vote, and second of all… does she not fucking realise that only about half of her audience is even going to be into girls, and only a proportion of those people should be shallow enough to be swayed by this? Female characters are more than just objects of fanservice and romantic fantasy! There are plenty of people who enjoy this franchise who aren’t here for that, you know! Tsumugi is a girl, she should have more respect for her own goddamn gender than this!

Really, if Tsumugi was properly trying to persuade Shuichi, Maki and Himiko, then the best (cruellest) move would be for her to suddenly start cosplaying Kaede, Tenko and Kaito and being all like “hey, if you stayed here I could be them for you!” (the cospox thing was dumb and there should be no reason she couldn’t do that). Which would of course make all three of them do an immediate huge revolted NOPE, a lot like the time Maki thought Exisal Kaito was Kokichi pretending to be him except worse – but it’d be an impactful moment, at least. Honestly, Tsumugi cosplaying the dead V3 characters here would make this whole part of the trial far more viscerally uncomfortable, like it’s clearly trying to be, than just seeing the DR1 and 2 characters be the face of the villain when they’re not a part of this actual story.

(Man, imagine her doing the part last time where she reminded Shuichi of Kaede and Kaito’s inspiring lines by actually cosplaying them and reciting those lines in their voices, that would be awful, I would hate it and love it at the same time. It’d hammer home the supposed idea that they were always just lies even more.)

Keebo: “Despair won’t end this killing game! Only hope will!”

Keebo says this just before we get dragged into a Mass Panic Debate in which Keebo’s only available bullet is “Hope”. When the only weapon you have is hope, every problem’s got to be able to be solved with it, right? No, Keebo.

This Mass Panic Debate is the worst and the reason I equipped Librarian’s Glare at the beginning, because then all the loud voices get silenced automatically and all I have to focus on is firing. If you don’t hit every single statement’s worth of “despair” in one round, you have to do it all over again, and a bunch of them have loud voices getting in the way. It’s far, far more mechanically difficult than any other debate in the game, which is not at all deserved on a narrative level when what’s happening right now is such a ridiculous mess.

Story time: when I got to this Mass Panic Debate on my first time through, since I was watching not playing and therefore had a little break to let my thoughts flow without having to pay as much attention to what was happening… I was really upset. I had loved almost everything about this game up to this point, and I really wanted it to have a good ending worthy of the rest of it. But this was currently presenting itself as that ending, and this was just bad.

This is supposedly analogous to the part in DR1 where Makoto fired bullets of hope at all of his friends, and I liked that part. It was refreshing and inspiring after a whole game supposedly all about despair to realise that it was actually about hope as well. But here, first-time-me just felt vaguely insulted at the idea that I was supposed to like this as much as I did that. This is just a cheap imitation of that which completely misses the actual point.

The protagonist is supposed to be meaningfully inspiring his friends to not give up and to face the hostile outside world with the hope that things will work out okay. But this “hope” choice they’re being given here is arbitrarily cruel, and Keebo’s words are not even addressing his friends, let alone any of the actual problems that his friends are despairing over. He’s just shooting the “hope” at Tsumugi’s “despair” like this is some kind of good-versus-evil battle. This is exactly the kind of one-dimensional, meaningless hope the characters were filled with when they saw the Flashback Light in chapter 5 – empty platitudes that don’t even remotely address the actual reason for their despair and therefore don’t fix anything at all. And that reason for their despair right now isn’t just the thought of the outside world but also simply the notion that they’re not real, which was pretty compelling when it came up and first-time-me wanted them to get back to that and address that more and hated the fact that it’d apparently been completely forgotten like it didn’t matter.

Of course, I don’t hate this part nearly as much now, because this isn’t the real endpoint of this trial, and with that in mind, Keebo missing the point like this is very out-universely deliberate. This is showing the “battle between hope and despair” that the outside world apparently craves that is the reason they’ve been watching these killing games for fifty-three seasons. Shuichi is going to figure this out quite soon, and then things will get back on track with the characters we’ve actually grown to care about properly addressing the question of how real they are.

But I’m still not super happy with this. Keebo is so obviously failing at presenting any kind of actual hope or compelling story here that it’s a stretch to believe that a sensible in-universe audience would want this either. Shouldn’t they care about the characters they’ve been watching this whole time and be frustrated, like I was, when the story abruptly veers away from being about them into this empty nonsense? Shouldn’t they be calling bullshit on the arbitrary unfair sacrifices for the vote, especially after Tsumugi broke the rules and had no more right to even punish anyone at all? (That was literally supposed to be the point of trial 5, dammit! Kaito deserves better than this!) Heck, shouldn’t the characters be calling bullshit on the vote rather than accepting it? (I can let them off a bit more though, since they’re still mostly in despair and not quite thinking straight.)

This would work a lot better if it was still trying to be mostly about the characters, and Keebo was actually trying to inspire them with hope. Instead of shooting at Tsumugi’s despair, he should, like Makoto did, be shooting the hope at his friends and trying to reassure them that surely they’ll find a place in the outside world that’ll accept them, that surely whichever two of them survive will be able to overcome these last deaths as well and find happiness somehow. That would be a kind of hope that would be reasonably believable as making a satisfying if bittersweet ending. That way, it’d be a lot easier to believe that the audience wants this, and to therefore realise that this is why the killing game has gone on for so long and will still continue if they let this ending happen here.

The fact that this isn’t what happens when it easily could have been makes me wonder how much of this part’s one-dimensionality was deliberate, and how much is the out-universe writers not actually realising that the situation they’re presenting here isn’t “hope” in any meaningful or compelling way at all. My faith in them on this particular front is not very strong, I must admit.

“Keebo! Keebo!”

“Keebo’s on fire!”

“gooooo Keebo!”

The audience has been there in the background throughout all of this – probably as what Keebo’s hearing in his inner voice – but up until now they’ve just been saying “Hope” or “Despair”. As this debate finishes, they finally start saying something of more substance, most of them cheering Keebo on like so. It sure sounds like they care about him as a character, which is what you’d expect if they’d been experiencing this game through him as the protagonist. But they don’t; we’ll see that very clearly later. They only care about him representing their own voices and nothing else.

“i wanna see the color of shuichi’s blood <3”

Wow, fuck, geez, okay. That “fan” of Shuichi’s from before has gone from “somewhat realistic if rather creepy considering that he’s real” to “absolute sicko”. What the hell.

“Now this is Danganronpa.”

Apparently we really are supposed to believe that this kind of meaninglessness is what people have come to like from this show over the years. It so incredibly shouldn’t be, though. What about all the actual class trials before the endgame? The characters struggling with the pain of watching their friends die or realising that their friend killed someone? Isn’t that more compelling than just yelling about hope being better than despair? Apparently not to these idiots.

---

[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #class trial #commentary

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thejackmeister-mongolhistory · 4 years

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Have you read/what are your thoughts on Jack Weatherford's books?

I have indeed read some of Weatherford’s work: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and his Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his Empire. He has another book which is something to do on on the Mongol Empire laid the foundation for modern religious tolerance, I believe, but I have never read it.

Before I go much further, I should state a few things. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World was the first ‘serious’ book I ever read on the Mongol Empire. I had finished reading Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series, which sparked my interest in the Chinggisid Empire: that I was able to, some time after, pick up a copy of Weatherford’s book is what fanned the flames of my passion for the topic. At the time, I can remember being so impressed by the depth of Weatherford’s description and his own passion in Mongol culture, and I do believe without it, there would be no The Jackmeister: Mongol History. Especially in my own earlier videos, before my skills as a researcher had developed alongside my access to sources, Weatherford’s influence can be seen. I think in a video I did on Chinggis Khan’s sons, I basically called them all failures, as per Weatherford’s depiction of them.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World was also a huge boon for Weatherford, as it sold magnificently. There is a good chance today if you go into your local bookstore for something on the Mongol Empire, you’ll find a copy of it there, 15 years since its first release. And online, a search for ‘books on the Mongols’ will likely turn it up in the top results. It’s been translated into multiple languages, has brought him honours and awards even in Mongolia. I think it can be created to some extent to assisting in the increase in westerners (i.e., average people, not researchers and historians) to view Chinggis Khan as something other than a blood crazed maniac. That Bodrov’s Mongol came out just a few years afterward contributed as well: before that, probably most North Americans exposure to Chinggis was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. No disrespect to Al Leong, but it’s not the most accurate depiction.

Weatherford is a skilled writer, and a key to Modern World’s success is that it is a very readable work. The image he presents of Temujin’s flight to Burkhan Khaldun after Borte’s capture, and the choices he faced, I found a poignant image which has stuck with me. Weatherford’s background is as an Anthropologist, and that is apparent in the attention he gives to discussing Mongolian culture. Not an extensive description of steppe tribes and politics, he places Temujin into a cultural context recognizable to modern Mongolians, a focus on his human side, rather than that of the conqueror. Considering that his entire book is on the positive transformative aspects of the Mongol Empire, that shouldn’t be surprising.

Now, that’s a lot of words talking about the books and Weatherford and things about them. My own thoughts on them? Well…

As I have dug deeper into the works of specialists and primary sources, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World has not aged well. Weatherford is a skilled writer and an anthropologist with a deep appreciation for Mongolian culture. But he is not a historian. And when you read it from an historian’s viewpoint, it is a deeply frustrating work. Because there are so many details and facts it gets wrong that it it very distracting. Opening to a random page while I write this, while discussing the opening of conflict between the Mongols and the Jin Dynasty, he writes:

“The unexpected death of the Golden Khan of the Jurched and the ascension of his young son to the throne in 1210 offered the Jurchen court an opportunity to assess Genghis Khan …” (page 82).

A few points just in this line: the Mongols called the Jin Emperor the Altan Khan, so literally the Golden Khan. Unusual to do so in a secondary source though, and rather annoying for a reader who may want something more specific, and to find out who the name of this particular monarch. Likewise, to call them the Jurched is unusual: the -ed is a plural ending in Mongolian which you will see on the end of tribal names. But the Jurchen weren’t Mongolian, and Weatherford’s section on them as a whole emphasis their tribal origins, which is a slight misdirection considering how sincizied they had become over the 12th and early 13th century. Not 100% sinicized, but more than one might expect reading just Weatherford’s work, and enough that the increasing adoption of Chinese culture and customs by the Jurchen Jin court brought friction with the military aspects and particularly those Jurchen who still remained in the homeland, in what we generally call Manchuria. However, the succession changes he described are completely false: from 1208 until 1213 the Jin Emperor was Wei Shao Wang, a man whose reign was so poor he was posthumously demoted from emperor to prince, but was probably similar age to Chinggis himself! He was succeeded by a cousin, the Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, who was again of similar age to Chinggis himself.

The Jin had plenty of difficulties with their emperors, but they never put a child upon the Dragon Throne (I think the third emperor, Xijing of Jin, may have been around 15 when he became Emperor? That was the youngest). This is just one example, but I could flip around the book and find many more (but I don’t want this response to be 20 pages long).

Weatherford is also frustrating in his relative lack of citing his information, especially particularly interesting claims. The importance of footnotes and endnotes in History, is so that others can see where you got your information from. Essentially, so we can see you’re not making it up, or misrepresenting them entirely. For example, on page 235 he says the Mongol conquests led to an increase in tools carpenters in Europe had access too, and that they built new cranes and other devices based off knowledge gained from routes opened by the Mongols. A very interesting point to raise, one I’d love to follow up on, but there is no hint to where this information comes from, or what evidence supports this statement, or if he is even accurately representing what someone said on this matter. Or when he makes those inaccurate statements, we can’t even follow up to see what it was that misled him in the first place.

Finally, while I agree with the general point of his thesis (the Mongol Empire transformed Eurasia) much of his support for this argument I find either unsupported, or just wrong. Page 233, he says literacy increased under the Mongol Empire, presenting Kublai Khan’s construction of a printing office in 1269 so government mandates can be disseminated, as support for this. That isn’t even evidence for increased literacy in China because of the Mongols, let alone the entire Asian continent. And does establishing a printing office offset the destruction of libraries, archives and deaths of learned people in the initial conquests? He presents the Mongol invasions to Europe as ending the Middle Ages, saying at one point.

“European Knighthood never recovered from the blow of losing nearly one hundred thousand soldiers in Hungary and Poland, what the Europeans mounted as the ‘the flower’ of their knighthood and aristocracy. Walled cities and heavily armoured knights were finished, and in the smoke and gunpowder of the Easter Season of 1241, the Mongol triumph portended the coming total destruction of European Feudalism and the Middle Ages.” (page 155)

This is ludicrous. Heavily armoured knights didn’t even end in Hungary, who suffered the worst of the 1241-1242 invasion, let alone in all of Europe. Saying that it portended the end of Feudalism is like saying the death of Augustus portended the end of the Roman Empire. Sure, one occurs before the other, but they’re only tangentially related. As shown in studies by Erik Fügedi, Hungarian castle building actually increased after the Mongol invasion, now largely in stone instead of wood and earthen walls. And of course, European armour making increased in complexity, as the Mongol invasion predated the famous full suits of plate European knights are famous for.

That is in general the problem with much of Weatherford’s evidence for the impact of the Mongol Empire. There is a huge amount of actual effects the Mongols had, both positive and negative. But Weatherford misses much of these in favour of flashier statements like the above. And by trying to prove this point so much, he ends up minimizing the lives lost in the first place: for some regions, that was the entire experience of the Mongols, and the only place they held in those local popular memories after the disintegration of the Khanates. From what I recall of The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, it had many similar problems. That is why I find Weatherford’s work so frustrating: because it ultimately cannot reach the lofty goals it sets for itself, miring the reader down in distracting, inaccurate representations and doing a disservice to a fascinating and important topic for world history.

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tb5-heavenward · 5 years

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The Ace Advantage

Being a sequel to An Elegant Escapade, concerning the friendship between John and Penelope, and the additional dimension of similar between Gordon and Kayo.

so we’re doing this thing again! art via the absolutely lovely @oolongteamix. I don’t know how this one’s gonna roll out, because I’ve only just lately come around to the idea of how I want to actually write it, but then, EE took me a whole entire year to write, and changed a great deal over its course. anyway! I’ve tried to kick this one back to life various times in various ways, when truthfully the best way for me to get anything written is just to start publishing. So here’s hoping.

part one - wardrobes and warnings

Wherein John is surprised by the proposition of murder and Kayo is wise in the ways of women. Gordon makes an inaccurate assumption. Penelope declares war.

Creighton-Ward Manor has guestrooms to spare, even when there are seven guests in total. It's probably just a coincidence that John's room happens to face the tennis court; that the high, white-mullioned window seems as though it's aligned perfectly with the center line, neat and bright and pointed straight at him.

The tennis court did not exist a week ago.

John's checked. Initially he'd just doubted his memory---it's been a long time since he last had occasion to actually visit Creighton-Ward Manor, and the fact that he didn't remember a tennis court may not have meant anything at all. But he'd gone back over the satellite footage, just on a hunch, and had been surprised when he only need to step it back by about a week to see the blank patch of lawn, now occupied by a regulation tennis court, neatly bounded in by perfectly trimmed hedges.

The freshness of the painted lines should've been his first clue, probably. Or maybe the fact that Penelope had made a very specific point of inviting the entire family for a visit in the first place. That's not entirely out of the normal, but generally Penelope saves her bulk invitations for later in the year, to provide a sort of surrogate winter for the Tracy family, confined as they are to an island in the subtropics, and lacking a great deal of seasonal variation as they do.

They also lack the sort of space that would be devoted to a tennis court, back home, although a tennis court is certainly the sort of thing that they might be expected to have, a standard accoutrement of the ultrarich. Instead they have an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which may or may not be redundant, considering they live in the middle of the South Pacific. But his brother is a gold medal Olympian for swimming, whereas John's only sort of a vaguely talented amateur at tennis, and not often home besides. So he's not especially bothered by the fact that they have a swimming pool instead of a tennis court.

So even if it's only a week old, and even if it he's just happened to notice it, initially John doesn't make particular note of the fact that Penny's had a tennis court put in. It's the sort of thing the English aristocracy might be expected to have. He's only even seen it in the first place because he happened to catch a glimpse of it outside his bedroom window. John plays, certainly, but he hasn't played since college. Specifically, he hasn't played since Oxford. Now that he thinks of it, the last time he played tennis, he played with Penny.

The neatly folded and pressed set of tennis whites on the quilted bedspread are slightly less subtle. The tennis racket leaning against the bedside table looks suspiciously like the one he'd played with in college, nearly six years ago now.

As he picks it up, attempting to approximate something like fond nostalgia, the door of the wardrobe in the corner of the room pops open and Penelope unfolds herself from inside it, and just about gives John a heart attack.

"Oh, do calm down, John," Penny chides, in answer to his rather undignified yelp, as though it's John's fault for not expecting that she would be lying in wait in the wardrobe. Her hands smooth over her immaculate white skirt, its pleats so sharply creased that her hands should come away bloody. Her shirt is similarly pristine, pure, snowy white, rouched in the front in a way that flatters her petite figure. Her wrists are bare of their usual gold adornments, and instead she's got a pair of terry cloth sweatbands. The gleam in her eyes is the sort that belongs to the kind of person who lurks in wardrobes as a matter of course.

She also seems absolutely unimpressed by the fact that he'd been about to hit her in the face with his tennis racket, not that he expects he would've actually managed it.

"What are you---what---why?" John demands, lowering the racket and glaring down at the Lady Penelope; dear friend, cherished companion, frequent and insistent intruder into the depths of John's private life.

"Because I didn't want your brother to see me coming in here," Penelope answers pleasantly, and crosses the room to pick up the shirt she's laid out for him on the bed. She gives him a critical once over, then holds it up to measure it against his torso, frowning slightly as she tugs at the shoulders of the white polo. She tuts softly for some reason he can't perceive, and then tosses it aside. "You're always broader across the shoulders than I remember, but never mind, this will do. Do you still serve right-handed?"

John's still snagged on the first point, though as Penelope picks up a pair of tennis shorts that suggest that she doesn't remember the length of his legs, either, he makes a note to make sure he points that out. "None of my brothers think you and I are a thing. No one's thought that in forever, so who cares if you're seen coming in here? It's your damn house. Everybody knows we're just friends." His brain catches up to the end of the question and he adds "And...I don't know, probably? Is that something that changes? I haven't played in years, Penelope."

Penelope rolls her eyes and crosses the room again, this time to prudently ensure that the door is solidly closed. "Not your brothers, your brother. Gordon. I put him in the room at the end of the hall and I can't chance him seeing me in here. I need your help."

"With what?"

Her answering smile is the sort of perfectly wicked expression that John's all too familiar with. It belongs to the version of Penelope that plots and schemes and pops out of wardrobes. It flashes up when she looks at the world around her, or more accurately the unfortunate people inhabiting it, and comes to the conclusion that she's been wronged in some way, and that the only course available is to enact vicious, bloody vengeance. Her hands clasp together before her, fingers interlacing in a manner that's almost prayerful. She's all purity and piety and sweetness and light as she answers, "Why, John, dearest. We're going to murder the little bastard."

The trouble had started, as trouble so frequently does, with Gordon. Because Penelope had said something, and Gordon had laughed.

Kayo sits cross-legged at the foot of her (four poster, canopied) bed, and watches a tennis ball popping up towards the vaulted ceiling, and then back down again. Gordon's lying flat on his back on the floor of her room, and she's not sure where he came by the tennis ball or why he's throwing it at the ceiling. It's almost a full twelve feet, straight up and back down again, and each and every time, her brother catches it without the slightest break in rhythm.

It's this sort of easy, casual athleticism that's gotten Gordon in this predicament in the first place. The fact that this is a quality that she and Gordon share is what has him trying to recruit her to his cause.

He's made his case, and he's made it seem pretty compelling, but there's a major problem with his proposal. Actually there are several, but one in particular stands out in Kayo's mind. She reaches out and snatches the ball out of midair, sandwiches it between her palms as Gordon sits up.

"You do realize that I don't actually know how to play tennis, Gordon?"

Gordon isn't concerned, and he breaks into a grin. "Ping pong, but bigger."

"I didn't think you played tennis, either."

Gordon shrugs. "How hard can it be? If Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward thinks she's good enough at the game to merit putting in her own damn tennis court, then you better believe I'm gonna make her prove it."

The timeline of events, as far as Kayo's been able to determine, started with a call between Penelope and Gordon, a few weeks back. The pair of them had both been occupied with fairly tedious elements of their respective occupations---an eighteen-hour stakeout in Belarus and the careful rehabilitation of a slowly rallying coral reef, respectively---and to hear Gordon tell it, they were just chatting to pass the time. Lady Penelope had idly mentioned that she was thinking of having a tennis court put in.

And Gordon had laughed.

Because---he had told Kayo, just the same as he'd told Penelope---it's a ridiculous affectation. A tennis court. Who did she propose to play with, anyway? He couldn't even imagine any of her society friends wanting to work up a sweat or risk breaking a nail, bounding back and forth after fuzzy neon balls. Specifically---well maybe, anyway, he doesn't actually quite remember, but the point is she'd definitely overreacted---he might've said "what the hell would you want with a tennis court?" It's possible that the emphasis laid on the you had been a rather disparaging sort. It's possible he'd made some comment about Sherbet getting more use out of it than Penelope would. It's possible these remarks were poorly received.

Penelope had frostily informed him that she had played in college, and that lately she'd found herself missing it and in want of some vigorous exercise. Gordon, occasionally capable of misreading signals utterly and entirely, had pointed out that her college career was six years ago, and that the whimsical and nostalgic want of a tennis court was only going to result in a great deal of wasted clay, for skills that had likely turned to so much more powdery red dust.

"Because women just love to be condescended to about their hobbies and interests," Kayo comments dryly, and drops the tennis ball back down, attempts to bounce it off Gordon's face. He's too quick, catches it before it hits his nose, and grins at her. Of all her adopted brothers, Gordon's the nearest to her own age, only a few weeks her elder. Still. There are certain subjects upon which Kayo is infinitely the wiser. "And why should she have to prove anything at all to you, exactly?"

Gordon has the audacity to frown and wave a finger at her. "Oh, no no no. No. No, you're not making me into the asshole here, Kay. She started it. She went ahead and had the damn thing put in just to prove a point. She sent me a picture, before the paint was even dry, and she said, and I quote, 'you're welcome to consider the gauntlet thrown'. A week later she invites the whole family out to visit. So, we're here. Gauntlet thrown. It's only gentlemanly to pick it up."

For all that they have athleticism in common, Kayo's not nearly as competitive as Gordon. Or, if she's competitive at all, then it's somehow in a vastly different way. Competition, for Gordon, is a matter of scorched earth obliteration. He prefers his games to be of the zero-sum sort, with a a clearly delineated winner and loser. It's not that he's a sore winner, exactly, as much as it is that he's an infrequent loser, and hasn't ever really learned the grace to go with it.

Her own competitions, or at least the ones that matter most, are mostly with herself. Right now, at least as far as tennis is concerned, she'd be no kind of competition for anybody. And she doesn't understand why her involvement is necessary in the first place, but Gordon had snuck across the hallway into her room before she could even start get get unpacked, and announced that he had a proposition for her.

"So why can't you just play a few games with her? If the gauntlet's been thrown, clearly she's ready and willing." And clearly she intends to kick your ass up and down the court, and as much as I'd like to be a participant, I think it would be just as fun to be a spectator. This is a thought Kayo thinks, but not one she expresses aloud. "What do you need me for?"

"Well, otherwise it wouldn't be fair! Men's and women's tennis. Tennises. They don't mix, unless its mixed doubles. Only way for it to balance out." He grins a wicked sort of grin, "D'you know, I think she's gonna partner up with John?"

"So?"

Gordon scoffs, "John. You know, my big brother, John? Tall, gangly critter? Lives about eighty percent of his life in space? About as coordinated as a newborn baby giraffe? Only been on Earth for about forty-eight hours, still hasn't got his land legs back? Even if Penelope does know her way around a tennis court, John for a partner is a liability, not an asset."

"Does John know how to play tennis?"

Gordon waves this away as an irrelevant detail. "So what if he does? John walked face first into the patio door on the way back into the house before we headed down to the hangar this morning. John occasionally comes downstairs with his shoes on the wrong feet. I could beat John at tennis, blindfolded, with one hand tied behind my back and standing on one foot. It's Penelope I wanna see on the court, and the only way that's gonna happen---fair and square---is if you and me pair off against him and her."

Kayo begins to suspect that this is not actually about the tennis. She wonders if John's been press-ganged in a similar fashion---wonders if he realizes just what exactly this is about, if it's not actually about tennis. Knowing John, probably not.

And knowing Gordon, he's not going to take no for an answer. So it's not the answer she gives him.

"All right," Kayo says, and unfolds herself from the foot of the bed, stands up and stretches. "But you have to promise me that this is just going to be a few friendly games of tennis, Gordon. Don't take this too far, for your own damn sake."

Gordon bounces to his feet, with the sort of grin Kayo's seen from him before, the kind he employs when he doesn't think anything could possibly go wrong. "Please," he answers, as casual and unconcerned as only an absolute fool can be, "it's not like she's gonna turn this into a personal vendetta or anything. It's just tennis."

"This is a vendetta, John. This is not just tennis. This is war."

In John's opinion this is probably unnecessarily strong language for the situation at hand, but then, Penelope's been insulted.

John still hasn't gotten the particulars of just what exactly the insult was, but Penelope insists that there was one, and apparently the insult in question is ninety-percent of the reason she's had a tennis court put in.

There's also the objective fact that insults are just a part of Penelope's native dialect. She breaks off from her muttered declarations of war against his brother to slip back into her natural speaking voice, "Darling, honestly, do you happen to know if your bare torso is visible from space? I've England's climate as an excuse for the fairness of my complexion, but I do believe you might actually approach incandescence."

One learns to listen around this, and in fairness, she says it as she kneels on the bed behind him and continues to apply SPF 75+ to his shoulders and the back of his neck, because he's long since learned that he can't be too careful when it comes to sun exposure, even on a vaguely overcast day in England, even beneath tennis whites. "I don't know if I've ever successfully been able to explain to you just how quickly I can get a sunburn. And when I was twenty-three, you told me that freckles make me look like a twelve-year-old."

"Because they do," Penelope agrees placidly, and smears a palmful of icy cold sunscreen across his left shoulder blade, and then tuts at him disapprovingly when he shivers. "I suppose this is the least I could do, considering you've very kindly agreed to help me murder your brother."

"To beat my brother at tennis."

"To murder your brother at tennis."

"And why exactly do you need to murder my brother at tennis, again?"

"Because he doesn't think I can," Penelope answers, and John knows her well enough to know the steel in her tone, her utter and absolute determination not to let such an insult pass. Except---

College, Oxford, and the year he'd done overseas getting a linguistics degree, over half a decade ago. He and Penelope had made friends then, and have been friends since. When Penelope had played tennis, he'd been the one to play with her. And they'd been...fine. They'd played recreationally, just for fun and to get some exercise and because it had been nice to have something to do together as partners. But John would never have labeled tennis as a passion, not for either of them. They'd played against each other as often as they'd played together against others, and even then, John wouldn't have called Penelope competitive.

And while it might be an insult for Gordon to point this out, John's one of Penelope's closest friends, and therefore has the license to comment, "Well, but Penelope, I kinda don't think you can either? It's been...what, it's been six years since college? Have you even picked a racket up since then?"

Penelope tosses her hair, as sure an indicator as any of when she's about to disregard someone else's interpretation of reality. "Once or twice. But it's like riding a bicycle, John, it's not as though one forgets how. As a counterpoint, has he ever even picked up a tennis racket to begin with?"

There's probably something John should notice about the heat with which Penelope refuses to use his brother's actual name---but he's never been very good at that sort of thing, and remains focused on the practical problem more immediately at hand. "I don't know if it really matters---I mean, the game's not complicated. It's just ping pong, writ large, and Gordon's got the whole 'natural athlete' thing. And if he partners with Kayo---"

"I'm entirely certain he will."

"---then she's not exactly worth dismissing either. Gordon swims like ten miles a day. Kayo could probably bench press me if she wanted to. Penny, the pair of them kickbox for fun."

"If either of them kick you, I think it probably constitutes a forfeiture of the game."

"I think that might be the only way we could win."

Penelope sighs dramatically, and drapes her arms around him from behind, deceptively affectionate. "My darling, your brother is a cocky, overconfident, weaselly little shrew. I can't bear the thought of letting this lesson pass him by."

This is a list of objective facts about Gordon, but equally these are things about Gordon that John's learned not to try and change. But he's had the full quarter century of his little brother's lifetime to grow accustomed to him. Penelope's only had a measly half-decade, and it's possible that things like this just can't be taught, except by object lesson. It's possible that Penelope's going to be the one learning it. It's more than possible that John might like to see that happen.

"Okay, Pen," he agrees, reaching up to pat the hand she has still resting against his collarbone. She probably mistakes it for affection and not preemptory sympathy. She should know him better by now. "Let's get this show on the road."

#an elegant escapade #the ace advantage #some kind of creative doubt #the brotp rides again

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fightevilandthengetblownup · 5 years

Text

FIC: Tell You All The Things You Should Know

“I’m out, I’m out! You two win, Jesus Christ I surrender.” There was a round of laughter from the pair of them as the third of their little party lurched to his feet from the seat around the beat up table. Sam’s hands were like fleshy dinner plates at the size of them on the table as he pushed his way to his feet with a slight wobble and away. “You guys are crazy, I give up.”

“Aww Sammy, can’t hold your liquor any more?” Dean joked in response, shifting in his seat to watch as his brother caught his balance and rolled his eyes down at the smirking pair remaining at the table. Bobby had left with a snifter of whiskey several hours earlier and a hissed request that the three of them keep the celebrations down; and now Sam was giving into his weak will like Dean had called almost two hours earlier when Jo had brought out the whiskey and vodka rather than just the rounds of beers. “Go on then, get yourself up for a sleep you giant waste of potential.”

“Har har, Dean.” The other sneered back, rolling his eyes again before leaning down to ruffle the blonde on the other side of the table to Dean’s hair up into a mussed pile atop her head. “Don’t let him pass out when you win, Jo, you hear?”

“Sure thing, Sam. Sweet dreams.” Jo’s voice was softer, more conscious of the request for quiet from their host than Dean could remember to be in his current state, or maybe she just sounded softer than he could ever achieve. Dean felt a shiver of envy when she grabbed a hold of Sam’s hand like it was nothing and gave it a squeeze before the other lumbered off through the study towards the stairs.

There was a quiet pause as they could hear the heavy footfalls of the other walking up the stairs and bumbling about on the next floor, before Jo reached out to pour them each another double of whiskey in the same glasses they had been using all night. It was a night to celebrate after all.

—

It had been Sam who decided to call in for backup on the case, and Dean had been surprised when their hotel door had opened to reveal the short, blonde woman rather than the older, cap-wearing hunter they had called about the case.

“So, which of you chuckleheads went and got yourself spotted by the pretty deer-lady?”

The words had gotten a huffed chuckle from Sam as he jerked his head towards where Dean still staring as Jo’d made her way into the room and thrown her dufflebag down on the bed that had Sam’s special chiropractic pillow he’d started taking everywhere with him.

“Stands to reason she went for the cute one.” Jo quipped, smiling up at Sam as she was practically engulfed by his brother in a hug before there was the sound of a loud, girlish squeak. “Hey!”

“That’s what you get for under appreciating me!” Sam replied, releasing her and tugging on her hair sharply in the same jesting way he had before. “What are you doing here anyway? We thought Bobby was coming.”

“Ah he was, but Rufus called and you know how that goes.” The other replied, smiling and holding her hands out in a ‘ta-da’ fashion, before she finally looked over at him. “So voila! Your knight in shinin’ armour is here to save your asses.”

“Really? You’re our saviour, huh?” Dean remarked, raising a brow at her as he continued to work on cleaning his gun as the other hunter made her way into the room and towards the wall covered in newspaper clippings of missing and dead men in the area, the locations of last sightings (practically all being local nightlife hot spots where dancing and dim lighting and the loud thud of music would cover practically any and all noise) and some pieces of lore that they had thought it may be originally. Jo looked decidedly unimpressed and began removing pieces while the brothers’ looked on. “And what makes you think you’re the woman for the job?”

“Easy, Deano, because I, unlike you, will not be fallin’ under some pretty gal’s charms and getting myself on her deadly bed post.”

That had proved far too accurate as the hunt had progressed with Jo’s calm and efficient research added to their own, Sam’s thoughtful suggestions, and Dean’s overall ability to come up with unorthodox ideas on the fly when things went haywire.

It had started out downhill, given Dean had already found himself caught up in a dance with the strawberry blonde previously before they’d realised exactly what they had been hunting, with him having to play bait for the first time in a long while. Things had gone well though with the suggestion, shouted over the thudding music, to take things back to his hotel room going down smoothly with the beauty. From there, it had been Jo’s idea to fill the room with cigarette smoke through the vents from the unaffected pair while Dean attempted to avoid falling under the monster’s powers too far that he would be run through and drained by her hidden antlers like the rest of her victims before having his blood drank and energy absorbed.

While the Deer Woman had been subdued by the smoke and eventually collapsed and died from the inhalation of the tobacco substance in the cramped room, Dean had tried to hide the fact he had indeed fallen victim to her, the cut on his neck oozing slightly while Sam and Jo had wrapped the body in tobacco leaves and cut off the cloven hooves of her feet as per Bobby’s instruction. If either Sam or Jo wanted to comment about it, they’d both kept their mouths shut after a significant glance while Sam had carried the body to the impala’s trunk and Jo had set to the task of patching his neck up instead quietly.

From there, they had returned as a group to Bobby’s house to celebrate a hunt well down and relax some - and in Dean’s case, to be berated for being distracted “as always” by a pretty face by the older hunter for a good half an hour while the other two had watched on in mirth.

—

“Has it been long enough I can start with the jokes yet?” Jo asked, head tilted to one side as Dean tossed back his double whiskey with a hiss at the burning to his throat. She didn’t even flinch at the loud slam of his glass back onto the table, and he had to bit down a laugh at the bemused look on her face. “Cause, like, I very rarely get to be the white knight and I am so totally ready to rub it in your face.”

“Oh really? You think you saved me, huh?”

“I don’t think, I know. You were all ready to get wrapped up and ruttin’ with that girl-”

“Monster-”

“Fucking girl, Dean. You didn’t know what she was to start with, so stop trying to pretend it matters what she was.” Jo laughed a little, shaking her head at him as she rolled her eyes.

Dean shrugged a shoulder in response, hand wrapping around the whiskey bottle and refilling his own glass and then adding another double pour to her own. If she was going to be drinking with him, he thought, she would be matching him like for like at least. “Of course it matters. I mean, maybe not to someone like you, but it does matter.” The moment the words were out his mouth, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, the wrong time to bring this up and the complete wrong emphasis to be making to try to make this point or bring this topic up.

“Someone like me, huh?” Jo asked quietly, a blonde brow raised across at him as she lifted her glass to her lips with a small frown. Dean felt like his tongue was ten times too large as he watched her, too large to correct himself correctly quick enough to stop whatever was going to come next. What did was the almost professional tip of her head as she polished off the entirety of her glass in one gulp and barely even coughed at the burn of alcohol down her oesophagus. There was a matching slam to his own before she was pouring herself a double and touching his up the same amount again with a sneer. “What did you mean by that, Dean?”

“Jo, you know I didn’t mean-”

“Oh yes you did. You meant a lot by that, so lets do this. You tell me exactly what you meant about someone like me.”

“I didn’t… That.. It wasn’t what I meant by that.”

“But what did you mean by it?” Jo practically hissed the question out, eyes sharper than they had any right to be from the amount of drinks they had both consumed so far that night; and Dean wasn’t sure what it was that was keeping her more focused than himself, but he was definitely feeling the draw to talk he would not usually do without copious amounts of liquor in his system.

Shaking his head and lifting his glass to sip at its contents slowly, the older hunter gave a weary sigh. “I just meant that you would think that what the monster was wouldn’t matter. Since it doesn’t seem to matter to you that you’re sleeping one with yourself.” The truth tasted better on his tongue for once than the lies or the bitten off remarks he had been struggling to keep a hold of ever since he showed up on her and the monster’s doorstep months and months ago. At the same time however, as Jo’s eyes seemed to flash with something he couldn’t recognise, Dean abstractly thought maybe he should keep this concealed and buried instead before the fuzzy thoughts faded that again. “It matters to me, but of course you wouldn’t see it that way.”

“And what does it make me to you that I’m… with a monster?” Jo’s voice was quiet and almost accusatory as she looked across at him, her own glass almost half drank already. “What’s it matter or mean to you, Dean?”

“It’s wrong is all, but you know that already Jo.” He scrubbed a hand across his face as he lent his elbow onto the table top and refused to drop his eyes from her widening ones - this talk was a long, long time coming, and made even more needed for him since that hunt a little while back. “I get that you’re all like… in fucking love with him or something, whatever the fuck that means with a manipulating, mind-controlling thing like he is, but Jo, you know that your whole thing is wrong. He’s a fucking monster, for God’s sake, you should know better than to think that’s okay."

“Would you say that I was a blood traitor? That my standards were gone? That I should just bow out?"

Dean balked at the first question, eyes zeroing in on the frozen, icy look on Jo's face as she spoke. There was something to her tone as she talked that Dean couldn't quite place.

"That's not quite-"

"Not quite how you'd put it?" Jo snapped back, her hand tightly gripping around her glass as she raised a brow at him. "How would you put it?"

“It’s just wrong, Jo. It’s Sam and Ruby all over again, and we all know how that ended!” He growled back, hands forming into fists between his knees under the table top as he tried to hold himself back from getting drawn into the anger about that situation again. Jo scoffed at him, flipping her hair and rolling her eyes, which just got another growl from him in response.

“Jesus Christ, I know how that did but this isn’t the same, Dean. Ruby was fuckin’ manipulating him and was so bad for him, this ain’t even remotely like that. This is good for me.”

"But you could do better. You deserve better." Dean found himself answering, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought. "I get that you think you're happy right now, and I'm glad you've got some in your life - I really am, Jo - but it's with a freaking monster of all things. You couldn't have found it with a real person?"

“He is a real person, you asshole.”

“He’s riding about in a real person.”

That got a scraping of metal chair legs upon the tile floor as the other jerked to her feet angrily. Jo looked furious, but Dean just couldn’t find the response to care. It was the truth, he was simply telling her the truth.

“Of course, of fucking course, that’s how you see it!” Jo flung a hand up with the inelegance of an angry, tipsy Sorority Girl as she span about on her heel in the centre of the small kitchen before pointing her finger at him, waggling it. “That’s how all your fucking assholes see this, ain’t it? Just seem ‘im as a fucking monster, another thing to fuckin’ hunt!” She clenched her fist as he looked back at her, unrepentant at all that he’d upset her and feeling the fuzzy buzz of the drinks smoothing his own need to get up and resettle her nerves right now. He was right and she was wrong, and that needed to get across to her. “Just another thing that needs to be dead, and I’m just a fuckin’ foolish little girl who’s a disgrace to the community, right? Bet you wouldn’t have lifted a fuckin’ finger for us if you’d known the truth.”

“Wouldn’t what?!”

“You heard me! You’d have let Walker do what he wanted if Bobby’d told you the truth, Dean. You’d have turned your back and let him do whatever he was planning to us.” Jo’s voice cracked slightly as she stared down at him, and Dean could see the slight shake of her hands as she pulled both arms in against her chest, staring at him like a drowning man desperate for help. He found himself rising to his feet as her words fanned to burning, scorching heat the flames of his own anger at the accusations. “I know you, Dean. You would have left me to face him alone if you knew it was over Grey.”

“Over a monster, you mean.” Dean snarled back, stepping right into her space and sneering down at her as Jo glared defiantly up at him. “Not over anything but a fucking monster.”

“But you.. you don’t deny it.” Her voice wavered then, eyes wide but clearly furious as they stared down one another. A battle of wills finally coming to a head. “You don’t deny you’d have let Walker do what he wanted. You gonna deny if you’d have helped him out too, or not?” Jo’s eyes looked glassy and shiny under the dim, old bulb of the kitchen light, and Dean could barely stand the way she hissed out the next words. “You want to deny you’d have killed Grey instead of wanting Gordon dead? You want to deny you haven’t thought about finishing the job?”

“Jo, I wouldn’t-”

“Oh, but just because it was Gordon yeah? Just because it was the guy that had been gunning for your brother, right? That’s the only reason you sided with me over him, innit? If some other hunter asked you to, you’d do it in a heartbeat.” Her words felt like bolts, spearing right through him and leaving him an open bleeding mess at how true they sounded. Jo’s eyes were staring through him and leaving him to the naked truth of just how he would behave if any other hunter, anyone other than Gordon Walker, had been the one targeting her and her monster. She shook her head when he remained silent, one shaking hand wiping at the wet track on her cheek. “I bet you’d not even disagree with his plan to cut the stain out from Grey would you. Bet you just see a trail of monster filth on me every second you look at me these days, huh, bet I’m nothin’ but monster-fuckin’ trash when you really think about it and you’d want to rid me of anything he’s touched... Even though it is every single part of me.”

That broke the heavy tension between them, his hands coming up to grasp her shoulders tightly and shake them harshly as the idea washed through his mind. If he had received a call about some monster being alive and fucking with Jo? If he had heard Gordon Walker’s take on the pair? If he’d seen them together and just known it was a monster with the ability to control thoughts, and memories, and feelings?

Dean could barely see Jo behind the watery film covering his eyes, snarling and shaking her harshly, with fingers dug in tightly as if afraid to let her go and have this be what she thought of him. “Jo..” He grunted the word out as he blinked, and suddenly he could see her clearly again - her eyes wide and her mouth open in a gasp of pain at his tight grip on her and the almost violent shakes, but making no move to stop him or strike back just a look of simple acceptance flooding across her face - and he let go as if his hands were burnt. “Jo I... I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, Dean.” There was an almost resigned sound to her voice as Jo lifted her hands to rub at her shoulders gently, a flash of pain on her face that rushed over his anger like a tidal wave of ice cold water to the hot flames.

“No, no, Jo I’m sorry. For everything.”

“No your not.”

He felt something constrict hard at that, the way she said it sounding achingly familiar to something she’d said before that he had barely heard and barely remembered when he’d stormed out of the old bar without a glance behind. The resignation, the acceptance and the heartbreak in her tone lanced him right through in a way it hadn’t that previous time. Before? She had just been like a little school girl in his mind, a capable and fierce one, but something off limits and far from what he could handle or desire at the time. Something to be protected from the world and most of all from himself in that tumultuous time they first crossed paths. But now? Now he saw her for what she had always been, and hearing that tone from her, just how much more responsible, accepting and mature she still was to him that she could read him like a book and still care and hurt from his actions, was enough to pierce it into his very soul to never do this again.

“You’re right. Maybe not for everything right now, but-” Dean let out a shaky breath as he stepped back towards her and replaced his hands where they had been, trapping her own beneath them as her stared down at her stubborn look. “Look. I don’t want to be on the same level as Gordon Walker-”

“Good, then don’t fuckin’ act like him!”

“Will you let me fucking finish, God!” Dean let out a huff that was as close to a laugh as he could get at the impertinent look on Jo’s face and the stubborn set of her jaw as she raised an eyebrow up at him. Rubbing his hands slightly before squeezing in a much gentler, calmer way than he had before, the hunter gave a small sigh before continuing, “I want to be better about this, but it’s hard you know? This is not what I expected would be happening in either of our lives, Jo, and I’m just coming to terms with that let alone what your life really is now.”

“Dean, I know you’re trying to protect my feelings, but that’s long in the past-”

“Your feelings are not the ones I’m trying to be cautious of, Jo, you moron.” That time Dean did feel himself give a short bark of a laugh, feeling the heat in his cheeks as Jo pinned him with a raised brow at that. “You’re good, I know you are, I know that you’re happy and you say that you’re being treated well. Even Sam seems to be a fan of your shad- uh, guy.”

“You know his name is Grey.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause as they stared at one another, Jo’s hip jutted out and if her hands were free he knew they would be planted on either side of her hips and she would be the spitting image of her mother with the determined, forceful look on her face. A thought flashed through his mind watching her that this could have been what he could have had. It felt so real in that moment that this could have been it - they could have been fighting about a hunt or Sam doing something stupid, or her mother calling for the tenth time that week to check up on her - and he could have pulled her up in his arm and kissed that look off her face. Instead, Dean found himself tugging her close and wrapping her up in his arms.

“Dean.. what the fuck?”

“Just let me get this out without you looking at me like that okay?” Dean muttered into her hair, and he could tell the moment she recognised his request at the jerky nod of her head against his chest and the way the tense setting of her shoulders seemed to relax a hair. Sighing to himself, palms almost as big as her ribs across her back, he knew from the soft, fuzziness in his head that this would be the one and only time to get this out once and for all if it was ever to be spoken. With just enough drinks to make his tongue loose and his heart win out over his head; and inevitably to regret it in the morning.

“Jo, I’m sorry for it all. For ignoring you, for denying myself and you as well. For putting you in that position so many times to be hurt because of knowing me. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, and I just couldn’t give you what you deserved.” He wasn’t sure when it happened but he found one hand stroking over her hair gently, and surprised at the slight shudder he felt run through her as he continued. “I’m sorry that you died because of me, and that you couldn’t rely on me when you came back. That it took Bobby calling for me to come around. I should have been there for you the way you always were for me, but I just.. couldn’t.”

“Dean-”

“Shush, I need to say this, Jo.” Dean’s voice rumbled quietly between them before he felt her nod again. Sucking in a deep breath, the taste of whiskey filling his senses from the drinks upon drinks they’d both had, he took a short step back and held the other at a small arms length away, hands on either side of her head. He found himself smiling at the confused bordering on concerned look that spread across her face, brows furrowed but eyes wide as she looked up at him and he didn’t have the will to fight off the little voice telling him to stroke his thumbs across her wet cheeks. “Look, I couldn’t face you, not after what happened. And by the time we got here, I was too late wasn’t I? You’re.. your happy now, and I swear that’s all I want for you these days. You deserve more than I could have ever given you, and if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that’s what you have, I’ll never ever bring this up again.” He could see the sharp jolt run through her eyes at that, and let out a deep sigh as he watched Jo’s eyes run around his face as if chasing what he was sure was an extremely confusing look upon his face for her. “If you can tell me he deserves you and you aren’t just...settling or have got yourself caught in something, then I’ll leave it be and never discuss this again. I’ll even shake his bloody hand, okay? I can’t promise to like him, but I can accept it.”

Dean almost forgot to breathe at the way her face shifted at his last words, from concerned and embarrassed and almost borderline angry into something softer than he’d ever seen from her before. It almost reminded him of the way his Mom had looked at his Dad back in ‘73. That thought sent a shock through him and his hands dropped immediately to his sides as he shifted to look over the top of her head rather than look directly at that look, knowing it was all for the shadow.

“Dean...” Jo’s voice was quiet as she tilted her head at him, drawing his eyes back down to her own against his own will, before she let out a sigh. Next thing he knew, her hands were on each of his cheeks and Dean groaned at the feel of her lips against his for just the briefest moment. They were gone a second later, and as he blinked his eyes open, that look was on her face again, stabbing right through him all over again. Jo was smiling so sweetly he wished he’d been by so much sooner. “Dean, he is the best part of my life. He makes me happy, and I really hope you can be happy for me.”

Clenching his fists, he found himself nodding along as her hands dropped back to her side and Jo stepped back from him without any sign that she had felt any of the shivers, shudders or heart thumping pain he was at it. Gulping thickly, Dean nodded his head at her and rubbed a hand across his face roughly compared to the way he wished to ghost his fingers across his lips but that wouldn’t do. “I’ll try, Jo. I promise.”

“Then that’s good enough for me.” Jo replied brighter than she’d spoken all night before she shifted her weight and pointed back towards the table. “Let’s drink to it being enough for now, right?”

Dean let out a chuckle at her attempt at a carefree suggestion before nodding and moving back to his own seat in sync with her. “Sounds good to me Jo.” He sank down into the rickety old chair, hearing the slight whine of the metal as she refilled both their glasses, looking for all the world as if a weight was off of her shoulders while he knew it had settled sharply down on his own instead. Taking the glass she slid across the worn table top at him, Dean stared at the brown liquor for a long moment. “Enough for now.”

Jo chirped the words back at him, and the sound of their glasses chinking filled the room as they moved to finish the drinks in a toast and Dean tried to hide the burning feeling being from the alcohol alone, before the other began retelling some story of some ‘sexy piece of wood’ she took care of a while back and he forced his lips into a corresponding smile.

That she was happy was enough now.

#CA #deanpov #cc

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