Just a random guy who likes making things @zchaotic - Tumblr Blog

Honestly, a bit disappointed because I was hoping he would have more going on than "capitalist who does not believe in friends" but he was still a pretty fun villain in the first half + the second heroes fight.

He just gave the impression that he had crazier ambitions going on.

(still tho, he's probably looking at several life sentences and I hope the kids got to mention all the attempted murder too)

themattress

HIGHLY disagree. I don't know why you had those kinds of expectations for Spinel to begin with since he was very clearly set apart as a contrast to Gibeon, even before he became his successor. Gibeon was the crazy Cyrus / Lysandre type who had a highly destructive endgame to change the world; Spinel was the "rational" Giovanni / Ghetsis type who just wants to control the world, which one can argue is a much scarier type of villain because it's far more real. In today's world, his goal of becoming a global oligarch is disturbingly relevant.

And due to the whole Core thing, his endgame was still pretty damn crazy!

zchaotic

That and if I recall Gibeon became crazy, Spinel in comparison has always been a scumbag.

jadeazora

Honestly, a bit disappointed because I was hoping he would have more going on than "capitalist who does not believe in friends" but he was still a pretty fun villain in the first half + the second heroes fight.

He just gave the impression that he had crazier ambitions going on.

(still tho, he's probably looking at several life sentences and I hope the kids got to mention all the attempted murder too)

themattress

HIGHLY disagree. I don't know why you had those kinds of expectations for Spinel to begin with since he was very clearly set apart as a contrast to Gibeon, even before he became his successor. Gibeon was the crazy Cyrus / Lysandre type who had a highly destructive endgame to change the world; Spinel was the "rational" Giovanni / Ghetsis type who just wants to control the world, which one can argue is a much scarier type of villain because it's far more real. In today's world, his goal of becoming a global oligarch is disturbingly relevant.

And due to the whole Core thing, his endgame was still pretty damn crazy!

illustrious-rocket

Horizons endgame prediction

Spoilers

themattress

Tl;dr - to anyone who purchased Strong Spheres:

zchaotic

Well considering the drug metaphors I see in those, it always has been.

scraftyisthebest

Woo I was busy all morning and that's a lot to take in with Horizons.

Next arc is one showing off a lot of Gen 9 legendaries, like the Raidons, the Kitakami legends, and the Treasures of Ruin huh.

Many people are dismissing it as a "filler arc" and maybe so, but imo, thinking about it, I think this works as something for the kids to do after the whole Laquium business is done for.

This is the Rising Volt Tacklers, fully free, living their original purpose as they were when Friede originally founded the RVTs. Adventurers traveling the world to discover its mysteries and explore the wonders of the world.

This is the kids, following in good ol' Friede's footsteps and having their own adventures, fulfilling what Friede had been doing, now doing it themselves.

I think I like that!

themattress

I think I would like it more only if Liko and the others were being carried forward into Gen 10.

Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be happening, so it's just executive bullshit. I hate the Pokémon Company. I really do.

ultraericthered

I'm a bit on the opposite end there - I'd want to see Liko and the others carried forward into Gen 10 if this was not happening, bc they frankly deserve better than being confined to a three year series in a four year generation. That they're going this direction means that Horizons at leasts gets to be the four year series it should've been from its conceptual offset....but the downside is that the context for why that is so is nakedly corporate mandated cross promotion and marketing-based reasons that force the series to far outpace its original intended narrative in its final year on the air, and that's just....

Yeah, what she said!

zchaotic

At most, the final year's tying up loose ends since Spinel's bs is what was eating up our characters lives. I can think of a few ways that would play out.

jadeazora

Well, I wasn't planning on sharing this until around the end of this current arc, but we had HZ leaks a couple days ago that mentioned the series will be extended, and since WiWa will come out next year (and who knows if that's even early, they could potentially have us waiting till October like ZA and this is the last we'll hear of WiWa till next Pokemon Day), it looks pretty likely to be true.

themattress

Please don't be a Decolore situation, please don't be a Decolore situation...

zchaotic

Chalce is right there, it’s established that she’s been using Spinel as much as that creep uses everyone else. She’s perfect for extending the series just a bit longer as the final major villain.

jadeazora

Well, I wasn't planning on sharing this until around the end of this current arc, but we had HZ leaks a couple days ago that mentioned the series will be extended, and since WiWa will come out next year (and who knows if that's even early, they could potentially have us waiting till October like ZA and this is the last we'll hear of WiWa till next Pokemon Day), it looks pretty likely to be true.

themattress

Please don't be a Decolore situation, please don't be a Decolore situation...

aluwuzhere

What REAL superheroes do

themattress

Don't know who this superhero is, but he has my support!

zchaotic

This is a character from Dispatched Flambae, he is once upon a time a super villain who has a grudge against Mecha man (your playable character) and depending on your actions, he settles for keeping the grudge in the past if he gets to punch you in the face once a month. But he would go out of the way to stop those cowards on the spot.

aluwuzhere

What REAL superheroes do

themattress

Don't know who this superhero is, but he has my support!

byjove

I think we need to start giving stories happy endings again. Grimdark suffering and then everyone dies has been done to death now. We need a reason to hope and a reason to try.

byjove

YES! ABSOLUTELY! I love it when characters face unimaginable horrors and manage to survive and scrape the pieces of themselves back together and start living again. A happy ending doesn’t have to be sugary sweet and placid, it just has to inspire hope.

rebeccathenaturalist

I am most of the way through my fifth decade of life, and I am exhausted by gritty, grimdark, edgy, make your readers/viewers/listeners suffer stories. I've seen entirely too much awful stuff in real life over the years, and while I know some folks find tragedy to be cathartic, or narratively interesting, etc., I am all for hopeful, optimistic storylines. I want to be reminded that this world I fall in love with every day isn't all terrible. I want to see the best of us without some cynical killjoy coming along and saying YEAH BUT WE'RE ALSO CAPABLE OF REALLY BAD SHIT.

Look. Yeah. I get it. It gets drilled into us by fear-based media telling us that the Bad Things are going to get us, every night at six and at ten and all points in between because being online all the time means there's no escape. They've got us by our amygdalas. Which means I do not need my fiction to also trot my sympathetic nervous system around the ring like an anxious, spooking, wall-eyed horse looking for the exit.

People want different things out of storytelling, and I want reminders that it can be better. Stories illustrate visions of "what if", and I want to be shown ways we could make this world better. It prompts us to think about very real actions we could take; even if we aren't superheroes or galactic warriors who can defeat the evil single-handedly, we can still be inspired. I WANT to be inspired. I am like the girl who asked Richard Louv to tell her--right now--what his vision of a better world could be.

If you want your grimdark tragedies and dark retellings of sugary-sweet media, sure. You're welcome to it. There's something for everyone here. But my synapses are burned out from stress; I don't need to add in even more unnecessarily.

themattress

Grimdark tragedies with downer or bittersweet endings work if it's firmly established early in that it's that kind of story, so that there isn't any bait and switching going on. That way, you can just choose not to go down that rabbit hole at all. Forcing those sorts of endings in stories where there was no reason for it other than "True Art is Angsty" is stupid, I agree.

zchaotic

The end of Fire Ending in DS3 where you put the world out of its misery.

funishment-time

this is 100% a personal bias but.

i think one of the reasons attractive evil trauma sadboy characters don't work for me, other than the whole lesbianism thing, is because that's like...real life. that's real life. i'm always being asked to sympathize with those guys irl. it starts when your mom's got a codependent manbaby husband she prefers over you, or when the creepy class clown won't leave you alone in the 5th grade despite your clear protests. then you grow up and they're in your government.

whereas when sad women, esp trans women, are traumatized and act out, they end up socially outcast. or dead in a ditch

themattress

Putting aside the gender thing, my biggest issue with fandom's love of "attractive evil trauma sadboy characters" is that it is constantly, and I mean constantly, downplaying / ignoring / erasing / sometimes even vilifying those characters' victims. I'm not shaming anyone for liking the characters (I like a lot of them too!) or wishing they had found a way to get redeemed if they went unredeemed in the source material; I get that. But there's this obsessive fixation with the way they are victims while not giving even a fraction of that attention and sympathy to the people they've made into victims. The examples are endless, with the latest one driving me up a wall being Henry Creel from Stranger Things, who literally victimizes children, but because he was a victimized child himself once upon a time as seen in a stage play, that gets all the focus as opposed to the children he is presently traumatizing.

zchaotic

The moment that character starts attacking innocent people, blowing up planets/ try to blow up a planet or back up the people who blow up planets, (any of those being willingly)they stop being a victim.

The only exception is of that character really, really doesn’t got a choice or if they actively said no about it and got mutilated into complying. (Added because of that character’s life just gets worse from there) And even then in this one game I played with that topic, that characters victims are in the right to not want her around.

vargamornight

free my girl she did all that but can you fucking blame her

themattress

Nah, I can fucking blame my girl; she gets jail.

zchaotic

Well it's better than death. But I still like to see her sneak her way out of this one.

gffa

TARKIN SEEING VISIONS OF ALL THE PEOPLE HE MURDERED WITH THE DEATH STAR RIGHT AS HE'S ABOUT TO DIE ON IT INCLUDING THE ROTTING CORPSES OF KRENNIC AND BAIL AND BREHA AND CASSIAN AND JYN AND SAW AND ALL THOSE OTHERS???? OH SHIT THAT'S THE NIGHTMARE FUEL I'M HERE FOR WITH THAT ASSHOLE

zchaotic

Next thing he sees is a gate with the words. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."

lizardsfromspace

Every protest brings out people sternly giving advice to people going to the type of protest where you have fun signs that they need to prepare like you're preparing a secret black bloc sabotage of a chemical weapon facility. Feds? LARP? A little of both? It may seem like "make sure your protest is as invisible as possible, except when you're violent. Actually, make yourself threatening and violate FAA regulations for no benefit" is nightmarishly terrible advice, but consider: god it'd be so sick though to be a cool rebel in a mask

The Johnsons are going and they don't even have a personal drone operator??? The dorks???

smegorl

"Utilize the military guys in your ranks" you guys say that anyone who ever served is a genocidal war criminal fascist. If I wanted to be talked down to and treated as expendable by an out of touch moron I would have reenlisted, no thanks commies.

myfootyrthroat

If you're going to an event that requires that kind of opsec, you're not finding out about it on Bluesky.

doomhamster

People like this really are just the leftist version of preppers.

nerianasims

UtiliSe, huh? Does this person pretend to be American? Anyway, this is obvious nonsense. We are fighting and we are going to win with middle-aged ladies in sweatshirts, with people dressed up as frogs thrusting their crotches at ICE, and with portly old men wearing Captain America costumes. Through every bit of crap that's thrown at us, we will have burgers and iced drinks and claw fun from despair, because that's how we do things here.

zchaotic

That and the thought of people dressing up as a Reptar, some unicorn guy and getting the boogie in protest... with that somehow working against these thugs, is about as hopeful as it is hilarious.

Shows how pathetic the wannabe regime really is.