GT doesn't even need a parody it IS the parody XD

No one cares about this but me but I still think one of the funniest Spiderman finales to an arc is when during the whole hobgoblin-Rose crime war fiasco Jason (Jack O’Lantern For 11 Issues) hired some guy to kill Ned Leeds (believed to be hobgoblin right now) because he was salty the actual Hobgoblin kept getting his ass or some shit like that and then after Ned got murdered Jason stole all of his shit and gave up being Jack to become Hobgoblin instead, and just like, ASSUMED doing this would make people Respect him better. But it didn’t. Instead everyone just repeatedly called him a giant fucking loser to his face. And then Tombstone threw him out of a skyscraper window. Then Peter kicked his ass. And he deserved all of it

It’s Donnie’s turn to be conceptualiezed lawl

The like three good bits from exaid abridged are really good bc I will never shut up about them. Always always always you know I'm thinking about kiriya going to heaven when he dies (heaven is run by kouta for some reason) and then kouta tells him to strip (which he does because he doesn't want to argue with god) only to find out later that kouta just wanted to steal his fit and he was just streaking the whole time(the funniest component of this is the implication that kiriya would go to heaven). This and the fucking "graphite if I punch you in your beautiful face hiiro will be normal again" "hiiro was normal once?" Absolutely rent free in my mind. Like a chew toy

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

ABOUT NEW 50% OFF CONTENT

Hey sorry to get your attention like that, kind of a scummy move but bare with me a few moments. I’m the other person who made 50% Off, Sparky the Android, I also voiced Haru and Rin and some other small things. People usually just call me PJ now cause I don’t really make content anymore. Speaking of content Alex, Octopimp, decided he was going to make some new 50% Off content this past week and I would just like to explain some things as to why this is a real legitimate slap in the face to me personally. I want to stress that I was not sexually abused, physically abused, or in any major danger in my long creative partnership with Alex, he was just a scumbag who acted like an asshole and treated me really poorly over the course of the show forcing me to eventually quit. I was willing to just walk away from this stuff. Close the door, yknow? Get some closure but Alex seems intent on opening it by posting new 50% off content without talking to me about it first in any capacity. I have not spoken to Alex in several years but I was and always have been an equal creative factor in 50% Off, so him releasing new content without me feels especially insulting.   Alex came to me ten years ago asking if I would be interested in making an abridged series at the time because I had a background writing comedy and went to school for film. This was under the pretense of an equal partnership. We’re both funny, I’m a good writer and a decent voice actor, Alex is a decent writer and a good voice actor. He bought me my first voice acting microphone and we set to work developing the show with me refining a lot of our ideas into actual scripts to read from. As the series progressed I started taking on the larger writing work and Alex the larger editing work. Episodes went from 4 minute goofs (the original concept) to more longform almost 20 minute episodes at a time where characters had their own throughlines and stories progressing. It was a large task for the two of us, especially the difficulty of editing for Alex specifically. I don’t want any of this to seem like I did all the work, or that I never fought with or insulted Alex because that’s far from my point. Both of us were supposed to be partners but Alex consistently treated the show as SOLELY his in increasing amounts. I had to ask him to stop saying things like “I sign your paychecks.” or to stop insulting me in videos when he would add in insults against me without talking to me about it first. I can take an insult! I wrote some content insults about Alex too! But I was always up front and he would slip his insults in, or little jokes that were not in my scripts, without ever talking to me about them I would see them in the video premiers. He consistently minimized my involvement, I had to argue with him to get my name on the end slate, I wrote the theme rap, I wrote 90% of the material, I wrote our dumb tshirt commercials, the show is unequivocally so much of MY VOICE and I was begging to get a little more limelight or recognition. Alex took guest appearances at cons without talking to me. We did a panel at anime expo where HE was the guest and when I asked him about a badge to get into the con he informed me that he was giving the other pass to his girlfriend at the time. And while he did end up purchasing me a new badge to try and make good, just the act of not thinking that that badge should have been mine was so insulting. When we went to funimation he consistently bore it down on me that i was LUCKY that he flew me out so we could go to Funimation even though he would not be going in the first place without my scripts and voice. He made content without talking to me. He kept me at arms length in an arrangement that was supposed to be equal and I never spoke about it publicly because even a small amount of internet fame warped my little idiot brain and I wanted to keep being famous and cool on the internet. 

I never saw our official earnings numbers or even had access to the channel and took it on blind faith that I was being fair. When I quit the show because it was seriously becoming a real detriment to my mental health I walked away from any earnings the show would make after. 

It sucked. It sucked because I wanted to make more of the show. I wanted to finish season one. I promised people I would. It sucked because for some of it I was having fun! I was going to voice actor parties and people were paying attention to me. Selfishly I thought I could right the ship and turn it into a real career but I know that was never really an option. And it sucked because Alex and I WERE friends. I did some of my best material with him. Times hanging out with him where he was a genuine person were great. And I tried so many things! I realized arguing with him wasn't working so I figured it must be my fault. I tried being more supportive of him, supporting his streams, cheering him on at game tournaments, etc. But he just kept using me and the people around him to further his career. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I took the only ownership I really could and I walked away. The show stopped and, I’m sorry to the people who loved it, I think it should have stayed stopped. Nagisa is a fuckin racist caricature, one I actively contributed too regardless of the actions I took to make Nagisa smarter, more artistic, less of a one note joke about drugs and crime. Hell his final speech about how he felt about fetishizing MLM content at the time was feelings I WAS HAVING as a person coming to real terms with their queer identity. Alex is not a queer person! I am! I gave that speech to Alex to perform. I gave him MY VOICE. But it's still a racist caricature rooted in the past that is my fault for perpetuating.  

And again I’m not an angel. I argued with Alex a lot and said a lot of mean things to his face. Some stuff I regret because I’ve spent the time after the show specifically not shoving myself down another pipeline of making online content. The attention makes me stupid and I act like a jerk! I made mistakes while doing 50% Off and I’m sure I’ve hurt people too. I’m sorry to anyone who crossed my path when I was hopped up on stupid internet fame. You met one of the worst versions of me and it was my own doing. I’m sorry to Alex even for some of the stuff I said. But Alex leveraged his position of power over me as an excuse to treat me like shit. I’m in a good place in my life and I just wanted to shut the door on all this but Alex is intent on opening it after all these years and STILL minimizing my contributions. Saying things like “I just don't have the time/resources to make full episodes anymore.” He can’t make full episodes anymore because he would have to replace my voice in them but more than that replace my entire writing style. I was willing to let him upload a short like w/e its 2023 like whatever right? Tell your joke dude I don’t care. Then he posted another acting like he was going to do even more new 50% Off stuff and a close friend spoke with him saying it wasn't a good idea and he agreed. Then he posted them on youtube! And is saying stuff like this to people in the comments.

Like implying that the only reason he can't continue to produce 50% Off in full is because he doesn’t have the energy or schedule. He can’t continue because it would be continuing without me and I know deep down he KNOWS he shouldn’t. I don’t want any fucking clout or want you to watch any of my content because I don’t MAKE any. I wasn't sexually assaulted or physically abused. Alex was just a huge dick to me and a lot of my friends and we all just let it slide for all of our own personal reasons. Hell I was content just walking away the way I did, making the split seem amicable so there wasn’t a bunch of drama, letting the show stay up, and still field questions for people curious about it. I took my gdrive with every script i ever wrote for the show and just closed the door. I’m just tired after all these years of this guy actively ignoring my involvement in the show that is partially responsible for his internet fame. Tired of him pulling this bullshit “uwu i would love to make more but i just can't!” attitude to lie about why he can't actually make more. Tired of him opening that fucking door. 

A few years ago Alex got in contact with me through a friend with an apology. At the time he sent it many streamers were facing backlash for how they treated people in the past, ones closer to Alex, so this seemed suspiciously timed. The apology I got sounded like every other apology Alex had given me over the years. A lot of avoiding his own culpability in his actions. I told him that if we were to resume being friends it would take a lot. I think anyone who makes the effort deserves the chance to be redeemed, but I had absolutely zero trust in him and thought it was unlikely that he really wanted to make an effort to be a real friend to me. After that we resumed not speaking and when people asked me about him I still tried to make our split seem at least somewhat amicable and I try to generally avoid projects he is involved in. 

Imagine my surprise when he walked out on that Jerma stream. 

I want to thank everybody who watched 50% Off honestly and truly. I think some of it still shines as some of my best work. I got to do a lot of cool things like have my voice in a real anime, and I met tons of people who cared about me and my role in the show specifically. Those people were like life preservers while I felt like I was sinking in Alex’s shadow. It’s undeniably cool to have people respond to your work so well and I know I wouldn't have seen that happen without Alex’s skills as an entertainer and producer. Alex has hurt me personally as a friend, as a business partner, and has hurt several of my other friends in various ways with his behavior. The way I felt on 50% Off became truly harmful to my mental state. I struggle personally with imposter syndrome and RSD and at the time of making the show I had gone through very little therapy to help me develop healthy coping mechanisms for those things. It was just like pouring gasoline into a fire. And I really wanted to put it all behind me for the sake of my own mental health and life because all things considered I’m happy where I am now. I’ve worked really hard on myself personally and have been so lucky to have emotionally intelligent friends help me and give me so many chances I should not have deserved. I’m fortunate to be able to support myself and my cat, and I get to make personal art I love without having to push myself into the internet game because if I’m being honest I had a bad addiction to social media. I apologize I don’t have a nice resolution for you, I’m not asking you to stop watching 50% Off, or watch anything I make, or hell even stop watching Alex’s personal content. I just felt like I had this intense pit in my stomach seeing him parade around in the other half of our two person horse costume and insist he’s wearing the whole thing. Yknow? After all these years I just wanted to say SOMETHING about the way I was really treated so I could finally get some closure for myself. Thank you for your time and again to all the people who DID support the show thank you sincerely. 

i don’t think Aisha thinks Brian is lame. I think she hates it when he tries to control her but at the same time is pretty desperate for his attention. This is noticable especially before she triggered when we see her antagonize Taylor about being a villain; I read that as pretty blatantly showing off that she’s “cool and capable” and that Brian needs to pay more attention to her. But I also think she wouldn’t have joined the undersiders just because its the path of least resistance. I think its partially because she thinks Grue and co are kinda cool!

i'm just assuming these are the same person if not oh well they're similar enough. you're 100% right to be clear and if i think about it too hard ill throw up and die, the only reason i abridged to "started thinking brian was lame" for the brianpost is because well there is an age at which it is no longer cool for your older brother to give you rides on his shoulders and you have to start acting performatively disinterested in it regardless of How functional your childhood is. and aisha is around that age. even if she and brian had a good relationship it would still be passe to want a shoulder ride at the so extremely mature and cool and tough age of 14

i think it's really funny (bad) that aisha teases taylor about being the Team Mom. like, they get along okay enough, aisha thinks she's cool, but also she's more of a distant authority figure than a Friend. and brian is of course team dad :) (distant, hurtfully harsh & firm in a misguided attempt at protecting her, misogynist, struggles to respect her as an individual) (i'm largely jesting i know she and alec are both just referring to the Generic Platonic Ideals of moms/dads.)

anyway, i think it's like. aisha thinks brian is lame as hell. aisha thinks brian is cool as hell. aisha wants brian to think She's cool as hell. aisha will never admit this. aisha makes herself a bitch to deal with because she wants him to stop being a controlling asshole. aisha makes herself a bitch to deal with because she wants him to pay attention to her. aisha makes herself a bitch to deal with because she knows he's safe to be a bitch to deal with around. the laborn siblings...

ohhhhh tuna that was sooo good! if you have the desire/time to do so, id also love to hear ur thoughts on aku and chuuya with dr. darling! and OBVIOUSLY i wanna hear ur idea about underground medic darling like u even have to ask that question. 

mmmm so many thoughts on dazai having a crush on a doctor… his heel turn after realizing he likes them and coming back to the hospital would 100% give darling whiplash. he goes from spending most of his time glaring at them in silence unless he had a threat/insult/trick up his sleeve to excitedly babbling nonstop as soon as theyre in earshot. violently resisting even the most minor tests to being insistent that darling has to give him VERY thorough checks every time they see him. from chasing all darling’s nurses around the hospital (causing darling to have to give very awkward lectures on the dangers of getting “involved” with patients after catching them “getting to know each other”) to paying them no attention at all and only wanting to flirt with DARLING now. as an aside i know u dont usually Do male darlings but that last thing would be REALLY funny with a male darling cuz dazai would very suddenly go from giving darling one of his “i have no such tastes in men >:(“ tangents every time he so much as tries to take dazai’s temperature to coming on to him like CRAZY. like congrats on coming out but hold ur horses. hed probably leave his room just as often but instead of trying to get out of the hospital hes just trying to figure out where darling scampered off to. they left him ALONE while he's SICK and DYING! no he WONT go back to his room hes staying with them. he can help them with work, hes very helpful! he’ll even wear one of those cute nurse dresses for them if they want~

also i think chuuya would do the opposite thing with the nurses in this scenario in that hed start flirting with them AFTER he realizes he likes dr. darling. not because hes interested in them, he only has eyes for his cute doctor, but because hed be very embarrassed that darling’s first impression of him was “ungrateful, scary piece of shit” and it’d be his attempt to rehabilitate his image into “sauve, desirable guy”. of course when its time to put the moves on darling he gets nervous and falls flat on his face but hey he’ll get em next time. 

(sidenote i have a really really long draft about psychiatrist! darling would u be interested in an abridged version)

- 🩹

male reader is unfamiliar territory so im a bit nervous to try writing for them but! im always open to ideas u know. the bit about the nurses brought me flashbacks from the manga...the fact that dazai isnt bitchless scares me  And yes anything you have to share i am happy to see

cw: yandere character

after the first interaction with dazai, you're glad to see him walk away. he was most likely your most unpleasant patient by far, with the screaming and glaring and flailing around, going off about how you were trying to kill him (and when you finally got sick of him and told him straight up there were easier ways to kill him here, he went all quiet and stared at you with his eyes bugging out of his head for a moment before going back to shrieking at you). honestly, even that would have been bearable, acting like a grumpy, overgrown child, but what made you cringe was his constant, annoying flirting with the nurses who checked in on him. too many times now you had to talk to them privately, not wanting them to get in trouble.

and things went back to normal, the usual kind of patients coming and leaving, and no sight of him.

until...he came back.

some part of you was convinced that he had been taken over by some entity. he had completely switched from all those weeks ago.

and it was honestly a little frightening. the injury on his leg was…really not so serious that he needed to be hospitalized, but he inisisted, and convinced the staff that he was really in dire need of a thorough checkup and rehabilitation for his severely wounded leg. you weren’t sure if it was his dramatic acting or the envelope he slid over to the receptionist that got him a room. what changed, you wondered, that made him become so desperate to be hospitalized again?

he was all over you this time, happily chattering away when you had to go in to check on him, instead of the previous smacking your hand away and groaning about his right to leave. it was quite strange considering how boldly he had declared you weren’t his type the last time you had to grab his hand to move it aside, shaking you off with an irritated look. even more bizarrely, he had completely forgotten about the nurses who he was constantly flirting with the last time, now treating them with such indifference, it almost hurt you to witness. he demands you stay by his side throughout the night, casually offering that you could sleep on the same bed as him—of course he doesn’t expect you to stay up all night! he also starts following you around outside of his room, walking beside you in his hospital gown like it was a perfectly normal situation. if anyone tries to drag him away, his previously playful expression turns scathing in a moment, and they would scamper away and leave him to torment you. 

he’d have to be discharged eventually, right? once he no longer has an excuse—when he recovers fully—he’ll have to leave. how much longer can they entertain his presence when there’s people who actually need the medical attention waiting? when he is told he can be discharged, he instantly turns to you.

"come with me then," he says, like it wasn't the most absurd request you've ever heard.

“seriously, i can get you a better paying job. or you can just be with me, and i’ll take care of you.”

you refuse, obviously, but he doesn’t look disheartened. dazai osamu leaves after one last look and a promise to return.

3.70 Unabridged

Now that Rosie's legs were strong enough to carry her as far as she wanted to go, she rarely stayed home, and I kinda missed her. Just as she dashed all over the house and yard when she was a little tyke, she spent her days running around the neighborhood, going on every kind of adventure a dog could imagine. Honestly, she was kinda like me in that regard, young, active, and full of energy. But one morning, I woke up and found her sitting quietly next to my bed. Maybe she missed me too. I took full advantage of the gesture to give her some love. But as I said, we were both young and active, so I took her out for a jog while Kooper and Sophia snored. While I was out, Chi Chi called, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear from her. She invited me to go to the flea market, and I accepted. It was the perfect opportunity to tell her about me and Sophia.

"Hiiiiii," she sang. "It's been ages how are you? And where have you been?? It's like you disappeared!"

"Ha ha! Well...yeah...I guess I kinda did. I live in Oasis Springs now."

"Oasis Springs? Why on earth would you move to that place?"

"Because...I'm in love."

She gasped, and her eyes got ten times bigger.

"WHAAAAT??!?!? OH MY WATCHER!! Forget the flea market! We need drinks!!! Tell me everything about this girl!"

She grabbed my arm and yanked me into the nightclub where we met. I laughed as she dragged me up the stairs to the bar. Women were so funny how they reacted sometimes to news like this with their flamboyant animations and expressions. But truthfully, I was glad for it. I had a strong feeling Chi Chi would take kindly to hearing about Sophia. She was more mature than Yasmine and had a clearer picture of how she wanted to live her life. We both knew she wasn't trying to be in a relationship with me. I would even go so far as to say she wasn't even trying to woohoo with me. She just wanted a little fun and ended up with a friend.

"So, what happened??" she asked as we collected our drinks and found a table. "You were single when I last saw you!"

"Ha, yeah. I guess I was single with an asterisk, heh. Her name is Sophia."

"Okay, cousin!"

"We met like right after my birthday. We were both on vacation, and I literally ran into her and almost knocked her down."

"Awwwwww! It's just like a movie!"

"Yeah, and just like in the movies, there were fireworks."

Chi Chi leaned in and listened anxiously, catching every word that dropped from my mouth like a beggar looking for scraps.

"I'd never seen anyone so beautiful, and I felt like I she had me under a spell or something. I couldn't move or talk...I mean, of course I made sure she was alright, but I couldn't say okay and go back to my family. And when she spoke to me, I was like oh my Watcher she's talking to me! I tried to keep my cool and went with it. No clue what we talked about, but we ended up at the bar and spoke some more, exchanged information, and went our separate ways."

Chi Chi groaned and shoved me.

"That is CLEARLY not the end of the story, so keep going! And don't leave anything out!"

I laughed, knowing I wouldn't get away with an abridged version. I realized she was the first sim I didn't feel the need to skirt around various parts of the story. She wanted to hear the whole story, and I wanted to tell her.

"Okay, okay! So, I got back home, and I wanted to see her again. She lived in Oasis Springs, so it wasn't a huge haul, but I was so scared. I sent her a message on Social Bunny instead."

"What?? Whyyy? After that magical moment?? And you know she was feeling you???"

"I know! I know. I had some issues I needed to work through because of my parents' divorce. Plus, I had more growing up to do."

She sighed.

"Okaaaay, I guess I'll accept that. So how did you get here?"

"Well...I moved in with my dad, and he helped me with a lot of things. I met different sims, like you, and had new experiences. With all of that plus lots of talks with myself, I saw what I needed to see."

She looked skeptical.

"Okay...I can see how you were able to pick up the phone after that, but you moved in with her. How did that happen?"

"Simple. She asked me to."

"NO WAY!!"

"Sure did. I already loved her. I was just afraid to admit or even recognize it. But when she asked me, I felt like it was a test. Like...man vs. himself, or something. If I said no, she'd get hurt, but I'd also hurt myself. If I said yes, I'd have to force myself to get it together and stop hiding from my feelings. So I said yes and put all of that behind me."

"AWWWWWWWWWW LUCA!!! I am like SOOOOOO happy for you!! You were such an awkward turtle before, but now look at you!"

I hoped she couldn't see me blushing.

"Thanks. That means a lot to me. I didn't think you'd be mad about this, but there was a chance since I kept promising you a date and never followed up. I was a little nervous about telling you before."

She sucked her teeth.

"Oh please. We both know you were never going to ask me out."

"Oh. Well, that's embarrassing, heh. How did you know?"

"Men are very simple. If you want something, you go after it. If you don't, you don't. Even a scared man will eventually drum up the courage to ask a girl out."

"Well, damn. For what it's worth, I'm sorry if I led you on or anything."

"Oh, Luca, please. I might be younger than you, but I'm grown. And I know us being friends could present a problem, so I'll understand if this is the last time we see each other. But if there's a chance we could stay in touch, I would love that! And I would sooooooo love to meet Sophia!"

"I'd like that too."

"Yay! Ugh! It's almost time for the kid to be home. I guess I should go. It was so good to see your face!!"

"Yeah, same! Uhh, actually...would you mind if I came with you? I want to go to Gilbert Gardens and walk around the lake."

"Sure! But only if you promise you'll be thinking about your proposal!"

When I was a little kid, I used to be pretty arrogant and elitist towards a lot of anime. I thought shonan was stupid and Dragon Ball Z was for idiots. I thought I was hot shit for drawing the characters from the playstation games I was interested in and that the kids who drew dragon ball characters in their notebooks were shit artists by virtue of "being unoriginal" or something.

I was a pretty shit kid. It took watching Gurren Lagaan years later to course correct me on my frankly objectively terrible opinions, and I didn't stop viewing Dragon Ball with some measure of contempt until much later after that. My first exposure to Dragon Ball was through the abridged series, and I was one of those people who believed that DBZA actually wrote it better. Which is an exceptionally arrogant and unfair idea. There's a sort of pseudo-intelectual attitude towards Dragon Ball Z that I inherrited, as I was growing up being sarcastic and critical towards media was attractive. The internet was full of an entire cultural landscape of Nostalgia Critics, and video game reviewers who couldn't help themselves when describing everything japan makes as outlandish and wild. Ever western cartoon I was exposed to would inevitably do a bit where they would have some godawful parody based on someone's surface level idea of anime. I think that attitude is alive and well today, quieter but buried in the hearts of a lot of people who are on their way from being young adults to becoming crotchety old farts. Ready to speak up and pressure others to find ways to apologize for liking something. After I finally grew to love Dragon Ball Z for what it was I also grew to deeply dislike the framework of judging media through quantitative statements. Better, worse, dumber, smarter, peak, cringe.

I've never thought of myself as a Dragon Ball fan, but I've grown to love it more and more. Dragon Ball is a series that will find a way to burrow into your heart one way or the other. After you give it that first bit of forgiveness you'll find yourself letting go of more and more of the unfair reasons you hated it.

I won't belittle Akira Toriyama by pretending he ever had to be a perfect author. And I won't diminish his work by describing it in all the boring stupid ways people are keen to use. Dragon Ball Z can't be described honestly by calling it a show where people just glow funny colors, yell for a whole episode, and then start punching each other and throwing energy blasts. The curtains aren't just blue and neither is SSGSS, unless you suddenly need things to be complicated in order for them to be meaningful. Dragon Ball Z is a show about how he inherit the love people have raised us with, the arrogance and pettiness of the powerful elite, disregarding the idea that what you are capable of has anything to do with how you were born, and how hateful people can be irrevocably changed by being forced to acknowledge the worth of a single kind idiot. It is also exceptionally emotional, uses presentation and escalating force to poke at all the right spots of the brain to make you excited and interested in a show of power you otherwise might never be so you can feel the same adrenaline rush and payoff Goku does, and watch the atmosphere of the fights warp and twist around the changing feelings in the hearts of both the combatants and onlookers. It rocks and if you think it's all an accident I can point you to a man who says "I like birds." and make you look like a moron.

Gonna start fucking crying now.

Meet My Tav: Sparrow

I've been meaning to make a post about them for ages so here ya go lol

Name: Sparrow Pronouns: They/them (non-binary, masc leaning) Age: 26 Race: Human Class: Rogue Alignment: True Neutral Romancing: Astarion and Halsin - but they'd romance every companion if they could

Backstory and other information under the cut (warnings for mentions of violence, underage drinking, and alcoholism)

Sparrow was orphaned at the age of five when a pair of bandits broke into their home and murdered both their parents in front of them - sparing them only because they were a child. Terrified of the rumors of abuse in the local orphanage, they escaped the guards and lived on the streets for several months, relying on thievery to survive, when they were caught by a con-man named Scratch after stealing his coin purse. He took pity on them and raised them to be a proper thief and pickpocket.

Desperate to forget the image in their mind of the blood pouring from their parents' bodies, Sparrow turned to drink less than a year later. Unbeknownst to them, a boon from the god Bacchus protects them from the poison in the alcohol (which is the only reason they haven't drunk themselves to death). Sparrow was arrested at 16 after the pair of bandits who killed their parents showed up at the tavern they frequented. Sparrow killed one of them in a furious outburst, and it drew the attention of the guards. The king agreed to release them from their sentence if they aided him on a quest, and so their first adventure began.

When all was said and done, however, their adventuring party went their separate ways, and Sparrow once again found themselves back to drinking and thieving. They had a few more adventures, they'd tried to form a thieves' crew or a gang or anything, but it seemed no matter what they did, they always ended up alone, drinking their life away in a cheap run-down tavern.

They'd been on a six month bender when one morning as they left the tavern they were suddenly taken by the Nautoloid. They woke up on the beach in the wilds of the Sword Coast with a screaming hangover, and all they could think was "Ah shit; this again."

~

Some meta information: Sparrow was my first ever TTRPG character! So of course when I started playing BG3 I had to revamp them and bring them into the game XD Which, is also why have a bit of a self-insert vibe (if your first DnD character isn't a self-insert you're doing it wrong lol)

This was kind of the abridged version of their backstory, I might make other lore posts and stuff in the future if people are interested?? But I wanted to share them, I love seeing stuff about people's Tav/Durge characters and I have soooo many hadcanons with them it's not even funny. I've featured them in a few fanfictions already and I do plan to write more at some point XD

ALSO PLEASE SEND ME ASKS ABOUT THEM IF YOU'RE CURIOUS I LOVE ASKS SO MUCH (but like only if you want to)

“No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the dish-washer of the café, who passed through it from time to time, to go to her washing in the “lavatory.” When Enjolras defended Rousseau as an exemplary republican a couple of chapters ago, it sounded alarming. And now, this – no woman can be near these educated men while they do what they do in the back room (unless she is serving them). Rousseau’s republicanism excluded women and treated them as irrational and emotional creatures whose sole function was to be wives and mothers. And it appears that Les Amis did not move far beyond this position.

Bahorel speaks about his mistress in a highly misogynistic manner: “One’s mistress does wrong to laugh. That encourages one to deceive her. To see her gay removes your remorse; if you see her sad, your conscience pricks you.” I can imagine Marius’ grandfather saying jokes like this one.

I won’t write much about Grantaire’s drunken ranting – I think that plenty has been said about it. It’s a peculiar mix of drunken nonsense and profound classical (of course) allusions with homoerotic subtexts. Instead, I will say a few words about the part where Grantaire goes on about various cities and countries (Paris as Athens, London as Carthage). When it comes to Russia, Grantaire presents himself as an expert in Russian despotism and says this funny thing that despots’ “health is delicate,” and then lists Russian tsars (though not very accurately) whose lives ended in violent death (I wish the current one would soon join them). I was curious about how Russians handled this passage in their translation (and it’s not an abridged one). It came out that they censored and cut out this entire fragment! It ends with “Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He also admired China” and then jumps to “All civilized peoples offer this detail to the admiration of the thinker”. Mind you: the translation was made during the Soviet times, and one might think it was a good idea to keep this fragment as evidence that the tsarist regime was despotic, and the tsars deserved their grim end, but no. Because even in the Soviet times, Russians were fucking imperialists!

For some reason I can't open or view your updated Finnian Name Theory on mobile, maybe because my phone is too old or maybe the post is so long. I am SO CURIOUS about these comparisons you found between the warrior in the myth and Our!Ciel can you post it separately? 😣🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 I'm sorry if this is asking a lot!

Sure. This post is also going to be bit lengthy though so hopefully you can still see it... I'll add an extra parallel, and some additional images juuust for you.

Parallels between Fionn (the warrior in the Fenian Cycle) and Our!Ciel

🍀The Salmon of Knowledge and Fionn’s Magic thumb  Abridged version: Fionn eats a magic salmon, he burnt his thumb on fat/juice that escaped from the salmon while it was cooking. Whenever the warrior brings his thumb to his mouth, he’s granted forbidden knowledge. 

Our!Ciel always, always, ALWAYS wears the Phantomhive Ring on his thumb. It’s never on any other finger, never worn in any other fashion. One might think he could easily wear it around his neck on a chain, or have it pinned into place, or temporarily fashioned into a broach: But it is ALWAYS on his thumb, even when Sebastian had the perfect opportunity to resize it after the band was shattered. He purposefully places the ring on his thumb, and it consistently remains there.

There's also been some interesting artwork depicting our!Ciel holding his thumb close to his mouth drawn very recently... and even an early image of him licking it, made almost a decade ago. So this has been "a thing" for a while, now.

You’re probably wondering, Okay, but what about the salmon? This is the first meal we ever see in Kuroshitsuji. A meal Sebastian serves his Master. Page one of the manga:

And if you’re thinking “It can’t be THAT important” you’re wrong: because as many might remember, The first season of the anime, did not follow manga canon (although the first meal was still poached salmon and mint salad).  As a result (and sort of a “refresher”) Episode One of Book of Circus is meant to be a “redo” or “recap” of the first chapter. Guess what he’s served, again just to remind us?

Poached salmon!

🍀Revenge parallel, and similar childhood goals

They both ride a black horse

🍀Bran and Sceólang (“raven” and “survivor”) / The dog parallel

Fionn was famously said to have magic hounds, that were once his biological cousins that were trapped in hound form. They were loyal to him and loved him, one might argue, to a fault. He was considered a “master of hounds” and could get his hounds and near any dog, to do what he said.  ...Then, there’s our!Ciel– Clearly, he didn’t feel like he was living up to his namesake. 

Until...of course. He gets a new "dog" of his own.

🍀Fionn’s arch nemesis Fear Dorocha / Sebastian the ‘Black Butler’ Parallel 

(Keep in mind by ‘Fairy Queen’ They mean the Morrigan. Otherwise known as, the "great queen” or “phantom queen” and a powerful Celtic goddess of what one might consider, The Celtic underworld.) 

I elaborated more on this story here in this ask if you want to follow this link.

Kind of weird both both of them had otherworldly evil Butlers to deal with, isn't it?

🍀Bonus 🍀 Fionn is infamously known as "the sleeping warrior." According to legend he's not actually dead...but asleep. And he'll wake up in Irelands most dire hour of need. This 'wake up, Finn!' has long become a part of Irish folklore, and enmeshed in the culture in many sayings, folk songs and such. A message that for obvious reasons was aligned with "if you want this warrior to wake up it means you hate the Queen of England" so it's sort of... an inside joke. Many believe it's even been hidden in more popular Irish songs as well. The best example I have of this, is probably " Finnigans wake " which of course, has nothing to do with the warrior itself. It's meant to be a lighthearted, very funny and upbeat song about miserable drunk old man literally coming back to life because he's mistaken for dead. But the title choice is a play-on words. It sounds like "Finn, again, is 'wake."

Our!Ciel has a tendency to be a very sleepy boy, but I find it incredibly interesting that Sebastian waking him up is such a stark, piece of imagery in the series as a collective whole. (There's another layer of suspicion if you're of the belief the twins were switched at birth). But this is also on the first page of the manga, the first time ANYONE speaks, is Sebastian. And he says this.

Long DID post, lots of inner world stuff

Kind of want to talk about something that's been going on internally, but it requires a lot of background that I haven't bothered to give for several months. But whatever, I'll try to give an abridged version with enough information that things make sense.

Most of us have fused, but it's not...the same as never having had parts. And we haven't all fused. Last February I discovered a part, I don't know that I've ever talked about her on main and she doesn't have a name I'm willing to share here, but I'm going to call her C. She was around when we were a kid (in fact, I have good reason to believe she's the core/original part. I know not everyone has one of those but I think we do). She went dormant when we were 11, and woke up last spring. When she woke up, it was accompanied by a strong internal knowledge that she had been dead and buried in an internal grave the whole time, and that her coming out of dormancy was her crawling out of her grave and taking breath for the first time in 15 years. But although she's no longer presenting internally as dead like she did when she was dormant, she still stays internal and very rarely fronts. She kind of came along with an internal world, and we did some work in therapy to discover it more clearly, but it felt like discovering rather than creating for the most part. Before she woke up I didn't think the main system had an internal world, but we do now. She lives there, and although Cypher and I have fused, Cypher is kind of...pulling double duty? She's fused with me, but she also lives with C in a cottage in our internal world, acting as C's...bodyguard? Knight? Whatever, her protector. C needs a lot of protection. She's extremely vulnerable and extremely important to me/all of us. Most of why she doesn't front is because she's too fragile still, she's recovering, and she's easily wounded, and it's very very important that she not be wounded. When she's wounded things go very badly. Because of that she mostly stays internal, deep in a cottage in the woods. She very occasionally cofronts, and it's always a wonderful feeling when she does, but it never ever happens unless we're alone or in therapy, and even then it's rare. It takes a lot of effort to communicate with her/get her towards the front, and if anything makes us feel at all unsafe she immediate goes back away and it becomes almost impossible for me to feel her/get in touch with her. I spend a lot of time and effort making things feel soft and gentle and safe enough for her to come forward, because it feels so wonderful and whole and hopeful when I can feel her/cofront with her. But it's hard and when she's gone it's hard to bring myself to do the things that will bring her forward again. But that's an issue for a different post.

Anyway. I fucked up last week. I didn't take appropriate care of C, of making sure she was safe and protected and barricaded before going to see our mom. Of course she wasn't fronting or as far as I know even conscious when we saw mom, but we should have done some special internal visualizations and stuff to keep her extra safe, and we didn't. And now Cypher is furious at me for letting C get hurt. I'd been trying to figure out for days why I was decompensating to this extent and why I was so incredibly angry 24/7, and today in therapy we realized it's because of that. I can't apologize directly to C, or well, I can but the message won't get through the protective layers, and I live internally in a castle very far away from the cottage where she is. My inner world self isn't currently even allowed to know the route to the cottage, it's magically disguised. But I can get a messenger bird to carry a letter to the post office in the village right outside of the woods that Cypher checks every so often, apologizing and promising to do it differently next time. It's funny, because Cypher is both living in the cottage with C and still fused with me, so I can feel the acknowledgement as I'm writing this that the intention to apologize has been heard, but I still need to internally go through the process of visualizing writing the note and tying it to a bird and waiting for it to arrive. Internal worlds are fucking bizarre apparently. Or possibly Cypher split into two so that one version could stay separate to stay inside with C? Unclear. Anyway, I'm going to do that and hopefully it will help us all calm down some.

All right. All done with reading The Princess Bride. Here are my final thoughts.

Movie’s better.

I’m still glad I stuck with the book and kept reading, even with the rough start I had for the first 50 pages. William Goldman--the real one, that is--is a good writer. He brought these memorable characters into existence, and wrote so many quotable lines that, word for word, were officially immortalized in the movie version. And while the writing style itself isn’t precisely my favorite, that’s mostly nitpicking. It’s still a good book, and I appreciated some of the extra stuff that it let me see, especially regarding Inigo and Fezzik. I was excited to see Inigo and Fezzik actually survive the five levels of the Zoo of Death. I liked seeing their backstories. Their reunion before the wedding was so sweet and made me smile. And I liked seeing more of Miracle Max and his relationship with his wife Valerie! There’s a lot in the book worth appreciating.

... but there’s also a lot in the book you wouldn’t miss.

Like I said before, I find it funny that the book is what advertises itself as the “good parts” version of this story. If that’s true, then the movie version is the “good parts” version of the book. Nearly every scene I read in the book that I recognized from the movie was longer in some way, and benefited from being trimmed in the adaptation. The movie’s dialogue is snappier, its pacing more exciting. When the book draws things out, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes, perhaps, but certainly not always.

And that’s not even mentioning the parts that I’m glad were cut entirely. I wasn’t interested in Buttercup’s bickering parents. The Countess was just a presence in the beginning that was never utilized again, and for that I’m glad. I’m SO glad Westley never hits Buttercup in the movie, nor tells her she’s now the property of the Dread Pirate Roberts and that she should do as she’s told. And, of course, there’s the adult life of William Goldman (the fictional one).

I don’t like the fictional Goldman. I don’t need to like all the fictional characters I read (hell, one of my favorite books has a protagonist you’re not SUPPOSED to like, who you’re SUPPOSED to not want to see succeed, and yet I was still so invested in him that I cried as everything fell apart for him near the end), but fictional Goldman just rubbed me the wrong way. I stopped trusting him as a narrative framing device, as the ruler of Morgenstern’s words.

Sure, I believed him when he said he abridged the original story the way he did. Sure, I believe he’s doing this out of love for the book. But I didn’t believe his REASONS for doing it. I didn’t believe his mantra about how life isn’t fair. When he brought it up at the very end, I rolled my eyes and thought, “How the hell did we grow up with the same story?” How can you be raised on a romantic idea of The Princess Bride, where all the characters, despite all the odds, find each other and achieve their goals, where Wesley and Buttercup get together at the end, and still turn out like this?

You, fictional Goldman, are no loving grandpa (or, in your case, father) telling this story to someone who needs it most.

I want to make it clear- I’m not trying to insult the real William Goldman or his writing abilities. In fact, since he adapted the book for the movie, I like to think that the movie is him refining his original work. After all, if the author himself was able to shave down the bumpy bits, take out bits that are really extraneous, improve things tenfold, and leave in everything that worked, all while keeping most of the dialogue and plotpoints totally intact? That’s proof that he learned how to make this story the best possible version of itself.

All in all, I’m glad I read this book, but I won’t be returning to it again. It’s a good story, but not the one I love. Fortunately, that perfect version has already proved that it will stand the test of time.

Life may not be fair, but it does have miracles. One of those miracles is the movie version of The Princess Bride.

Suddenly been thinking about yugioh (the abridged series) lately bc it was my formative fandom in tandem w the OG yugioh manga/anime but hooh boy the vast majority of it has Not Aged Well. Some old and very funny fandom drama from back in the day: the guy who made the abridged series liked one ship a lot and the popularity of ygotas was such that this ended up entirely shifting the shipping landscape of the actual yugioh manga fandom entirely, and also resulted in people who hated ygotas forcing that side of the fandom to rename the ygotas version of that ship to something else so there was a clear difference between any fan content involving them 😂

Oh man i used to watch a few of the abridged series as well and LMAO Of course they didnt age well.

BUT LMAO... wth.. what a fucking bizarre shipping discourse situation... I wish there was more of that.