In Mass Effect 1, there's an offhand remark from Shepard (while discussing comparative species lifespans with Liara, IIRC) that humans are "lucky" to get to 150. This, of course, implies that some do, and maybe some people even live a bit longer than that.
Shepard describes it like it's unusual, but not wildly-unheard-of. The sense I got was perhaps it's comparable, in universe, to us getting to our mid-90s. On the one hand it's definitely not the way to bet, but on the other you almost certainly know someone who has, and if you met someone who was (say) 95, you wouldn't instantly disbelieve them when they told you that.
Anyway, someone who hit 150 in 2173 would have been born in ... 2023. (Phrased like that, it's rather weird, isn't it? It's not us, but it could plausibly be some of our children - for those of us who have them, of course.)
Of course, this does also have some weird implications. Depending on how far into their sixteenth decade people ever get in ME!verse, you can just about imagine some poor unfortunate who got born in 2020 and met their end in 2176. Getting Covid at the beginning and Reapers at the end really does read like a 24-Carat run of bad luck, doesn't it?
But there are also some more amusing possibilties. Consider (say) a 155 year old in 2173. They'd have been born in 2018.
... oh goodness. It's just about possible there might be someone alive in 2173 who slightly remembers the Liz Truss premiership, isn't it? I'm almost half-tempted to try and write the obvious crack-fic about "explaining the lettuce to a turian visitor to the retirement home".
Almost tempted, I mean. I won't actually do it - it's probably too weird even for the world of fic - but oh my! the temptation is there!
Do you think Ferengi are pseudo-amphibians? Like, Cardassians are reptiloid, do you read Ferengi as pseudo-amphibians, thinking how Ferengenar is a constantly raining swamp?
I was going to play Mega Man X5 tonight, but it's acting kind of buggy and I'm not in a mood to try to troubleshoot my copy of Legacy Collection 2, so I'll write about Dragon Ball instead. Specifically, what happens next?
Let me make this clear up front: I don't actually know the answer to this. I'm not an "insider" claiming to have "leaked" information. All I want to do is discuss the possibilities, and the culture of speculation that seems to persist in the fandom.
I tend to call this "modern" era of the Dragon Ball franchise a "renaissance", because very little official material came out between 1998 and 2012, and then after Battle of Gods ushered in this new wave of Dragon Ball movies, TV episodes, web series, and comics. I've been covering this all year in the #2023dbapocryphaliveblog, in case you're new to this blog, and while much of it hasn't been very good, there were a lot of bright spots. Battle of Gods, Broly, and Super Hero were classics, the Tournament of Power basically saved and otherwise lackluster Dragon Ball Super anime, and the Granolah Saga in the DBS manga is a fun read with a great cliffhanger.
However, things have slowed down a lot this year. The Granolah Saga ended and the manga began a long, long adaptation of the Super Hero film. There was some hype about a new Tenkaichi Budokai video game, but there's been no word on when it'll come out what we can expect to see. I get the sense that the fans are champing at the bit for some big announcement, like a new movie or anime series, but it hasn't happened.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but back in my day you just had to wait and see, and accept the possibility that you may never get what you were hoping for. The vibe I get from DBTwitter is that people think they can somehow manifest a new animation through sheer force of will. News will spread of some Toei panel and fans will cling to the hope that there must be some big Dragon Ball announcement, and it must be nothing less than a teaser trailer for Xenoverse 3, a DBZ remake, and release dates for the next five movies. Then the panel will come and go, and it just ends up being a fluff PR thing where a spokesperson says "Dragon Ball is very fun and Goku is cool." and that's it. And all the fans get upset until the next panel, where they put their clown makeup on all over again.
"No, this can't be happening. Dragon Ball 2uper is real..."
When I was still new to the fandom, I always wondered how Dragon Ball AF could be such a potent fantasy for so long. But now I've lived through the Dragon Ball Super era, and seen fans chasing similar dreams. People have been waiting for Xenoverse 3 for over six years. They've been expecting "Dragon Ball Super II" ever since Dragon Ball Super I ended five years ago. And I'd say it's a pipe dream, except fans held out hope for Tenkaichi 4 since 2010, and it looks like we're actually going to get that one? You never can tell with this franchise. My kneejerk reaction to Dragon Ball Magic is to dismiss it as fake, but I can't be completely sure.
The weird thing is that 2uper, Magic, and XV3 have been hyped up during a boom period for the franchise. Dragon Ball Super had a 131 episode run, followed by two feature films. It's still going, but people want 2uper to animate the Moro Saga. People want a new web anime, but there's already a web anime. Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been running since 2018 and it's still going. Xenoverse 2 is still releasing DLC packs. I recognize that some of this content isn't what everyone wanted, but it's weird how fans are demanding new projects before the old ones have run their course. At least when AF became a legend, there weren't any official works to compete for its attention.
It occurs to me that maybe this is just part of the fan culture, and every so often fans will collectively agree on some imaginary premise and Goncharov their own series. Maybe that's what AF was then, and what Magic is today. They're not hoaxes, but rather some sort of mutually-agreed-upon daydream. I'm not sure I get it, but it is what it is.
Anyway, my position has always been that Dragon Ball has ended before and can end again, so there's no reason to assume that there will be some new anime or movie or video game to look forward to. I watched Super Hero fully believing that this could be the last one, even though the box office numbers suggest that a sequel is probably inevitable. But nothing is guaranteed. Dragon Ball GT started strong in the ratings, only to get canceled about a year later.
And yet, there seems to be some kind of guarantee, because of this guy:
I think there are a lot of fans who believe that Dragon Ball Super has a lot of loose ends to tidy up, and the series can't end until Goku and Vegeta surpass Jiren, Beerus, Whis, and Orange Piccolo. And maybe this is true, but I'm not so sure. But Black Frieza isn't just a loose end. This seems like a pretty big honkin' deal, and it would be pretty weak if they wrapped things up without some kind of reckoning here. Frieza's the main villain of Dragon Ball Super now, and in his most recent appearance he revealed he can defeat Goku and Vegeta with frightening ease. And yet, he spared them. Why?
So that seems like the obvious direction going into 2024. This is why fans are so burned out on the manga this year, because they know a Black Frieza arc is coming, but they have to wait for Toyotaro to retell Super Hero before we can even find out when it's happening.
My guess is that Toei/Shueisha decides to tease this out even longer. We get to chapter 100 of the manga and it starts some bullshit arc about Goten and Trunks playing superhero park rangers on 17's island. Or... that dumb android from the Moro Saga comes back and they jerk around with that guy for 18 chapters. They'll get to Black Frieza eventually, but I suspect that they're holding off until they can set up a Black Frieza movie. Then the manga can just adapt that movie and everything gets paid off around the same time.
Either way, I'm a little skeptical about it just being Goku and Vegeta training to beat Black Frieza. I keep coming back to how he let them live at the end of the Granolah arc. Ostensibly, he just wanted to frighten them, and make it clear that he no longer sees them as a threat. But maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe Frieza needs them alive for some reason. Like he plans to use them to achieve some goal, or he needs their help to stop some even greater menace that we haven't seen yet.
Maybe that's what Frieza was talking about at the end of the Broly movie when he said he wanted "one other". I kind of thought he meant to use Broly as an ally against Goku and Vegeta, but maybe he's planning a campaign against some other guy, and he sees Broly as a potential resource. And maybe that's why he spared Goku and Vegeta on Planet Cereal. If he kills them, he might not be able to find Broly when the time comes. Or maybe he just needs all three Saiyans, so he has to pull his punches.
Or maybe I'm overthinking this, and it just turns out that Black Frieza ends with a manga arc where Goku turns "Ultra Instinct (Defined) (Remastered)" and wins a paint-by-numbers battle. Or Roshi beats Black Frieza, because that sounds like something Toyotaro would do.
So what would happen after Black Frieza? See, that's where I wonder about the future of the franchise, because so much work has gone into mining past arcs. The first DBS movie was about bringing back Broly, Bardock, and Gogeta. The second movie brought back the Red Ribbon Army, the androids, and Cell. Frieza will almost certainly get another turn, and then what? What's left?
I mean, let's break this down by the major antagonists we've had so far.
Pilaf Saga. The Pilaf gang are still living in Bulma's house, apparently, so that comic relief bit from Battle of Gods shows no signs of ending.
Red Ribbon Army. DBS Super Hero brought them back and opened some interesting doors for future Red Ribbon stories. It's hard to imagine the Army making another comeback since Cell Max destroyed their secret base and all their top leaders were killed. But the Red Pharmaceutical Company still exists and someone must have taken over after Magenta's death.
Tien Shinhan. Tien never left, and while I'd be down for a Tien-centric saga, it seems pretty unlikely after all these years. At best, he gets a prominent role in a story featuring some more important player.
King Piccolo/Piccolo Junior. Piccolo never left either, and now he's got his own movie in Super Hero.
Saiyans Saga. Vegeta never left, and DBS: Broly pretty much covered the idea of "here are some new Saiyans we didn't know about before."
Frieza Saga. Resurrection F, Tournament of Power, DBS: Broly, this upcoming Black Frieza thing, I think this has been covered.
Androids/Cell Saga. 17 and 18 never left, and the idea of more androids and a new Cell was already covered in Super Hero.
Majin Buu. It's been 27 years and no one seems to want to do anything with this guy. Maybe 2025 is the year when Akira Toriyama finally does some big Buu story to justify keeping him around this whole time.
Zamasu. I mean, the dude got erased, so it'd be pretty bullshit to bring him back. Then again, it was pretty bullshit of Toriyama to create this idea in the first place, so I can't rule it out. "Whoops, more Zamasu" might be the storyline that would force me to quit the Dragon Ball fandom for good.
Tournament of Power. I mean, they could do another Tournament of Power for funsies, but it probably wouldn't live up to the spectacle or the novelty of the original. More likely, I could see some adventures featuring prominent characters from the event, like Jiren, Hit, the U6 Saiyans, etc.
Moro. I did not enjoy the Moro arc much at all, so it kind of bums me out when people suggest that Toei should do an anime adaptation of it. To me, that would be just as big a waste of time as the DBS manga doing the Super Hero adaptation that's going on right now, but it would be even worse because Moro kind of sucks. In the same vein, doing stories that follow up on the Moro arc would be difficult because you'd have to refer back to the Moro arc, which only appeared in the manga, which not everyone read. So it's this difficult spot where you'd have to animate the Moro arc first, just to do a new arc about Merus and Jaco or whatever. It's probably not worth it.
Other Z Movies and GT: The success of DBS: Broly sort of opens the door for similar reboots of guys like Cooler, Turles, Janemba, Baby, etc. But honestly, this seems pretty far-fetched to me. Broly was a much, much bigger star than any of those other characters, so what worked for Broly isn't necessarily a road map for a guy like Bojack or Omega Shenron.
Looking over all of this, I kind of wonder what's left to do. Maybe something with Majin Buu, or the big shots from the Tournament of Power, and after that, I think they'll have used up all the viable nostalgia. After that, Dragon Ball will probably have to come up with something brand new, which is kind of a dicey proposition, because they've been hit-or-miss with that. Granolah and Tournament of Power were good, Moro and Zamasu were bad, so when I hear they're doing something all-new, I get kind of nervous.
But in the end, I don't know what will happen, which brings us back around to where I started. We'll just have to see what shakes out.
Someone may have already posited this, but I think it would be very funny if one of the guests suddenly got up and left the table, right as their character is about to do something, and Erika Ishii takes their chair, and the character is revealed to be Yu, the unseelie changeling.
I don't think it necessarily makes sense with the current batch of guest players' characters, but it would be a neat "Did you forget about me? Did you think we'd forget about you, and what you did to our malleus key?" dramatic curveball.
Even though I think everyone’s headcanons for their Azem’s original name are really cool and I like that everyone is unique, I’m constantly surprised by the fact that Bacchus/Dionysus/Eleutherios isn’t more popular, since I feel like it’s the one that best matches hints we’ve been given from the devs?
Dionysus is specifically known as a “traveler” and perceived of as foreign/an outsider from the rest of the Greek pantheon, despite being just as much a major part of the group as other well-known gods.
Considered a subversive god whose followers crossed social classes and boundaries; not an elitist, willing to invite everyoneeee to the party (for... better or worse...)
Known for having an androgynous appearance, which could be reflective of WoL being female or male.
Closely connected to the Underworld but known for rebirth. Way more intertwined with Hades than you would expect from a god of life.
That whole thing with... the grapes... and the wine... The grapes you save in Limsa at level 30 are even called “Bacchus Grapes” lol
You’re gonna tell me this isn’t on purpose?
Releasing crystal mom from the Underworld is a big theme.
Best known for having a posse who can literally tear you apart with their bare hands. The god of “Fuck around and find out.”
Described as “the pure light of high summer”???
Associated with life, the natural world, liberation, granting the wishes of others, reckless abandon, and for kicking ass even without being a war god.
I actually doubt the devs will give Azem an official name just because they seem to want to leave things up to the players’ imagination, but I feel like there’s a lot of hints pointing in this direction and I’m really surprised I haven’t seen more people utilizing this name. D;
I think Richard will be in Eternals 2, there are currently rumours of it, but also in the comics, his character is reborn. So, I hope it’s true and he is because I was disappointed with how his character ended. I did love the movie though.
me too for all but only if Richard wants to. but regardless he won’t really get a choice because like Gemma said Marvel owns them for life now.
it’s hard to say if any of these rumors are pointing to the right thing, and the Eternals writers sure went out of their way to go around blabbing to any outlet that would listen that Ikaris is really truly no joke extra super dead. but they don’t know anything either, really, about Marvel’s plans. and I hope they aren’t hired as the writers again tbh.
I...have an idea. I think I know where that anime might diverge (assuming it's what we ficcers would call canon-divergent).
Imagine that Into the Breach (the underground tunnel subplot) happened on schedule, instead of early. Either the team took longer to find the buried city, or Ruby never fell into the sinkhole and they came back empty-handed. But the former scenario works better given that classic white-out, ears ringing effect that goes along with surreal awareness or loss of consciousness, after the train wrecks. You'll recall that exact moment centered on Weiss.
So, there's no real time gap between the train blowing holes into vale and releasing grimm, and the orchestrated fall of Beacon tower. RWBY are separated one by one as before, as they fight through the cars. But now, Yang is taken by Raven instead of left behind. RWB arrive into a city already overrun with both grimm and the full force of White Fang, just as Beacon is, so no teams arrive to help. Instead, the Atlesian fleet does.
From there, Weiss is taken to Atlas and joins that academy. Ruby and JNPR either follow immediately, or gear up and make their way to Atlas, later. Yang and Blake are the question marks for me. V2 Yang might very well have stayed with Raven for a time, if given the opportunity. I can't see v2 Ironwood accepting Blake though, because he (and many others) would assume she had been a plant. I can see her trying to find Yang and then going on that one woman rampage against the White Fang, as Sun once suggested. It would be an effective way to reduce their screen time and focus on Ruby and Weiss, as it appears the anime will do.
if the choice is gonna be another massive interruption to the economy that pisses everyone off or increasing pressure on people to get to 90% vaccination rates do you think large employers and the government are going to choose the latter
