The last thing 43-year-old Paul Manchester wanted was to get sucked into another world- and definitely not when he's got work in the morning. But instead, he's stuck tagging along with his 11 year old son while he and his new "Digimon" best friend go on a journey to save the "Digital World," or something. His son Asher and his new bad influence don't seem nearly as bothered by the ordeal, so Paul is left on his own to navigate a whole new world of problems and solutions- that as he goes on, become more and more painfully apparent he'd long since outgrown...
Figure out That mess, and having to put up with the little creature that won't leave Paul's side, that is. At least it actually listens to him when he says something.
"Let's trust the boy, alright? The kids seem to know more about it than we do."
Updates will come when they come, but I'm in this for the long haul.
(Just as a HEADS UP, this story features some intense themes that may be upsetting to some readers- such as bad parental figures, unhealthy family dynamics, child abuse, a lot of time spent in an abuser's pov and headspace, and similar elements that may sour the experience for some. Specific content warnings will be listed in the end notes, and feel free to comment and ask me to warn for anything else if I missed something. The ultimate goal of this story is Catharsis, but it'll be a long road to get there.
The father main character here is neurodivergent and not a good person and this fic does not shy away from that.)
Read on AO3 or RoyalRoad (content warnings listed)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
The last thing 43-year-old Paul Manchester wanted was to get sucked into another world- and definitely not when he's got work in the morning
Tags used on this blog will be #digimon generations for general discussion, and #fic update announcement for new chapter notifs or any important news.
becoming too OC pilled will ruin your fandom experience forever. i have invented The Character who is perfectly tailored to my own tastes and not beholden to any writers or showrunners. and i can even make more of them if i want. but watch out.
We probably wont ever see Tactics 1 again. Really felt like a waste of an episode when we've already done the Tomoro and Raito stuff over and over. I dont understand why they didnt just make it GIFT members instead of random Tactics leftovers that did not and will not matter.
EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY! UGH!!!
FUCKING WASTE OF TIME IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY!!
long ass rant below the cut. you have been warned.
there are so many ways this episode could have been WAY more interesting but the writers chose none of them and instead gave us the most egregious kind of "filler" possible (i really hesitate to call a lot of stuff filler but this fits the bill)
we have:
fucked up weird animation
characters you haven't seen in forever or thought about in forever suddenly showing up only for 2/3 of them to get kidnapped and have no interesting character moments
TOMORO is the one that doesn't get drugged? HUH??? you go out of your way to show chiropmon going "weird" multiple times. chiropmon does nothing about it. makoto gets drugged. you could have had MAKOTO interacting with raito (something we hadn't seen yet)
hell! you could have had reina interacting with raito (let her call him a jackass! the narrative is too kind to that little shit as it stands!). why? pristimon has a refined sense of smell from "drinking" so much tea.
BUT NO EDGY BLUE FUCKER IS HERE AWWW YEAH WE GOTTA GET SOME CLIPS OF HIM INTERACTING WITH TOMORO! (i was telling one of the discords i'm in that i low key think the decision to do this was to get raitomo shippers to do free advertising for the show and i'm not convinced i'm wrong. no tremendous hate to raitomo shippers but i don't see the chemistry and i think this kind of shit is beatbreak's equivalent to teen wolf queerbaiting but that's another essay for another time when i don't have things to do)
the ONLY thing i think i liked about this ep was like. we see the digimon doing stuff on their own ig. raito confirmed caring about monodramon is nice.
now to be clear on my "filler" definition here: i don't think every episode has to have plot or shit to be worth the airspace. for me, "filler" is an episode that feels like it's just there to say you had an episode.
in appmon, there's an episode that's a series recap with silly things in between (a clip show) that they did in part because they got moved to a different time slot; this is the most rudimentary kind of filler. it adds nothing but reminding you of what has happened before.
in transformers: prime (bear with me here), there's a clip show episode that could similarly constitute "filler." but while being a recap, it also has a narrative frame that gives the clip show new context and texture. it tells us something about the world and makes us appreciate what the writers are doing better. nothing of plot relevance is done. this is "filler," but it is still filling.
then you have the episode of beatbreak that just came out. it isn't a clip show, but the thing about it is that we didn't really learn anything new about the world of the story. "raito bullied other tactics teams! :(" yeah what the fuck else is new he's an asshole. this was some first draft shit that really comes across as wanting to be subversive about the beach episode trope and instead fails to deliver on both beach episode needs and story needs.
"raito is working with a five star" is maybe the only important part of that whole episode, and it isn't given enough gravity in the moment for me to take it seriously. we're supposed to think the five stars are this corrupt organization thanks to klay being our intro to them! gasp! "you're working with the five stars?!" tomoro says. two camera shots later he smiles at raito because he says "i want to get stronger and beat you tomoro" GAG SHUT THE FUCK UP.
that writing doesn't tell us why raito is interested in working with the five stars. it doesn't establish anything new about raito and essentially wastes our time for about five minutes at the end of the episode with the writing team winking at raitomo shippers like "yes we see you blowing up the beatbreak tags." it's not in character for tomoro to brush off someone working with the five stars so easily. it's bad writing for him not to be more pissed than a quick ":( but five stars bad"
we don't learn anything new about granit or hotaruko either. they're there to just get kidnapped.
this is the kind of episode that the more i think about it the more angry it'll make me, and that's disappointing off the heels of what is maybe the best singular episode of digimon in the entire franchise (i am not exaggerating). "cold rain" was insane.
