Bonniefazfox - Idk But Memes

CARNIVAL AU

I wanted to try my own take at a sort of "swap au " :3! though-- it's more a "role swap" than anything else, haha!

I give yall Zooble another time cuz I'm sleepyyy

Dissonant Melody: B-sides #2 

“THAT HEAVENLY MELODY!” An animatic with audio!!

Previously on the story

Day 18: Box

A box of Bow kids ready to be adopted

so I found something

hello to like, the 30 people that enjoy dedf1sh, I found something. TLDR im in a discord server and someone sent this.

it's all the signatures outside of hotlantis, right? but I noticed something very important

THEY GOT OUT OF THE DEEPSEA METRO!! THEY SURVIVED!!

THERE THEY ARE!! THEY'RE REAL!!

“How old are Jessie and James?”

alright i’m making a masterpost because i’m so tired. these never get notes. please give this one notes. i’m going to run through every single parroted argument. i’m going to run through every thought anyone engaged in this discourse has ever had. please give me notes. not because i want clout, i’m just so tired. so many of my posts get notes. i would trade them all for this post to get notes.

How old are Team Rocket?

25. They’re 25. 

But I thought they were teenagers? Lots of people have told me they’re 15/16.

so i’ve heard! i’m pleased to tell you exactly where that comes from.

1. this post, for some reason:

i have been on tumblr for 10 years now, and i never saw anyone debating their ages before this post started circulating. as you can tell by the low res memebase screencap, it was screenshotted and reposted all across social media until it became legend.

the ages you see in this bulbapedia screencap were edited. bulbapedia has either omitted their ages entirely, or put them at 25 for reasons we’ll discuss at the end of this post. 

because i’m a petty bitch, i googled the tumblr username of the person who added that bulbapedia screencap, found what their current URL was, and searched team rocket’s names on their blog. here’s what i discovered.

OP claims it wasn’t them who edited the ages–that they just found it like this. NOT sure i buy that, because I looked into it, and right around the time this post was made (January 8th, 2014) there was a random, unprecedented edit that erroneously put their ages at 15.

this resulted in mods locking the page, because this person was relentless. they would go on team rocket’s pages every day and try to edit the ages back down. again, i can’t prove this is the same person, but these edits happened within 24 hours of them adding to that post. this is, in my professional opinion, the biggest shift i ever saw in people talking about team rocket’s ages. but there are other things people bring up…

2. “Jessie said she was a teenager!”

she does this sometimes. here are the times she does this.

- In episode 218 of the original series, Plant It Now… Diglett Later, the following exchange happens:

This would make Jessie 12. This is a joke. A running gag in the show is younger characters calling Jessie variations on ‘old lady/old bat/old hag,’ and James gets this treatment to a lesser extent. Jessie, however, is incredibly vain and obsessed with youth/beauty, so she often lies to great extent about her age. When Jessie says something like “Oh, I’m 13 years old ;3c” it is meant to carry the same feeling as “Aren’t I the most gorgeous creature walking this very Earth?” To Jessie, calling her old = calling her ugly. Calling herself young = calling herself beautiful. This trope is common with her particular anime archetype–it is more of a Japanese thing, so while I understand it being lost on american audiences, it is NOT proof of her age. 

Right after this, Meowth calls her out on it, asking her where she learned that math, and Jessie angrily threatens him. It’s a joke.

- In episode 56 of the original series, The Ultimate Test, Jessie is in disguise at a Pokemon League qualification exam. When Ash starts giving her the ‘she looks vaguely familiar’ side-eye, she panics and starts muttering information about herself aloud. I will be using the original Japanese line for this one:

This is quoted constantly as proof that Jessie is a teenager–but she is blatantly stating false information about herself here because she’s in disguise and Ash is onto her. This is a false identity she’s crafted, marked even further by “I work as an idol.” That’s an actual profession she’s talking about, one she doesn’t work. Since Japanese Idols weren’t widely unknown to westerners at the time of this dub, her dub line is simply “Age: 17. Profession: Diva.” which makes it a little harder to read that she’s lying about who she is, but she is. The information she’s stating here is that of an alias. It is not her actual age or profession.

3. You literally just posted a screencap of James saying he should get a driver’s license. 

Okay, smart guy, that’s also jokes. The joke isn’t that he’s too young to drive–the joke is that he was a runaway at five years old and had his childhood & all his milestones taken from him because he defected from his abusive family in kindergarten. Also, he’s in the mafia and he just drives his damn balloon everywhere. The joke is that he’s a criminal driving without a license. The joke is breaking the law because he’s James. Its the same as when Jessie will casually say things like “Oh, that’s a good book! I’ve been meaning to shoplift one!” (EP157)

Also, it’s a dub-only line.

“Okay, I guess I see where you’re coming from. But why are you so sure they’re 25?”

Glad you asked!

You might notice the Bulbapedia article up there says “as of M02.″ M02 is the fandom shorthand for the second pokemon movie: Pokemon the Movie: 2000. It’s referring to one scene in particular, one that had its dialogue massively changed in the dub. Here, Jessie and James are addressing Ash & co.:

The subber condensed the point of what James/Kojirou actually says here–his sentence when translated literally is more like:

Jessie: You’re ten years too early.

James: And us, your elders, are five years too late.

this is… a very Japanese expression, but because Ash & co. are 10 years old, Jessie’s basically saying “You really don’t need to be thinking this deeply about romance until you’re 20.” and James is saying “And we’re past our prime at the tender age of 25…”

Some other times this expression has been used, regrettably, is when older men are perving on the female kids in this show–they’ll say things like “I’ll look forward to you in ten years.” Gross, I know, but the point is it’s a thing people say. 20 is considered the age you’re supposed to settle down and marry. 25, especially for women, is considered the age when you’re “off the market”–you missed your window and now no one wants you.

That ties back into Jessie’s thing about youth and beauty and how other characters call her an old lady. What they’re calling her originally is usually some variation on ‘oba-san.’ This term is so widely used in anime that there’s a TVTropes page on it. An english equivalent would be rolling your eyes and sarcastically uttering ‘whatever, grandma’ or, if you really want me to one-shot kill you, ‘ok boomer.’

Another derogatory term you hear in Japan for this age is ‘Christmas Cake.’ Simply put: Delicious to a point, but no one wants it after the 25th.

Yeah.

“That line is still super vague. Their ages could still be ambiguous.”

I regret to inform you that I am very autistic and I have prepared timelines and flowcharts for you.

Allow me to introduce you to The Birth of Mewtwo, an audio drama that released alongside the first movie and was never given an english localization. TBOM (the book of mormon) was about Mewtwo’s Origins that weren’t expanded upon in the movie. But, in order to get to the bottom of Mewtwo, the story had to get to the bottom of how Team Rocket got their hands on Mew’s DNA–and that all started with a Class-A Rocket Agent known simply as ‘Miyamoto.’

if you didn’t know, she’s Jessie’s mom.

TBOM is fully translated and available to listen to in multiple parts on youtube. It opens with Giovanni placing it in the timeline:

Twenty years prior to Pokemon: The First Movie, when this radio drama is said to take place. It then goes into a flashback, where we get to see Jessie’s mom in her pursuit of Mew.

Jessie’s already been born by the time of this flashback, meaning, with 100% certainty, that Jessie is at least 20 years old.

As time passes, Miyamoto stays on her quest to find Mew. Lost in the Andes mountains, she never stops sending reports back to Rocket HQ. Every few years, they trickle back in, detailing her progress. She keeps a picture of Jessie with her, often meandering aloud about what she anticipates Jessie is doing–the milestones Jessie is hitting, the life Jessie might have that her mom was never able to see. The last report she gives says “The daughter I left behind’s an old hag by now…” the word she uses here is, again, ‘oba’–25 years old and unmarried. Again, this is Jessie’s mom. She might be stranded in the mountains with little concept of time, but it’s clear Jessie is the one thing she never truly loses sight of.

“Okay. That sure is a lot of convincing evidence about Jessie. But Team Rocket has another human person in it you’re ignoring.”

Yeah nah I was prepared for that. I actually could’ve just whipped this out at the beginning but I am feeling incredibly spicy so I wanted to lay the law down and not deal with easy arguments about my special interest tonight. Here ya go!

- In episode 87 of the Sun & Moon anime, Filling the Light With Darkness!, Necrozma places an aura across the Alola Region. This blight makes Alolans lethargic, depressed, and unmotivated. This aura also ONLY affects the adults in Alola–leaving the burden on the kids & pokemon to figure out what’s going on. Ash & everyone in his class–including some who can be argued as teenagers–are entirely unaffected. 

Of the afflicted?

“Alright, one last question…why should I care?”

Because ever since that tumblr post started circulating, it’s been Stressful as all hell to be a Rocketblogger. I know that we all had a lot of fun watching the pokemon anime when we were kids, and we probably all have a lot of shared and fond memories of it. But, weirdly enough, because of that shared joy… Pokeani is the only fandom where people who don’t even watch the show anymore will try to explain to members of the fandom what our own lore is. And a lot of the time, they won’t listen to us when we correct them on their misinformation.

The reason this matters is because Rocketbloggers still to this day get called pedophiles & perverts for drawing/writing smutty art of our funny bad people. And when we try to shut them down pulling all this evidence out, people who have seen a handful of episodes of the show but understandably don’t have the time to watch 1100 episodes will pull the doth protest too much card. It’s annoying but more than anything, it’s exhausting.

So this is a masterpost I made with my autistic superpowers. I hope that, in the future, this one gets spread around more than the one claiming them to be kids. And I hope that maybe, if you’re a rocketblogger, when someone comes in your inbox trying to explain your favourite anime to you… you can quietly link them to this post and no longer have to rehash all the arguments we’ve been rehashing for years.

Thank you for reading. Reblog to save a tired Rocketblogger’s life.

if an off the hook live happens and we don’t get to see something like this i’ll be rlly sad

bow kid octoling ft more bow kids! so many bow kids!

Penny Character Critique Analysis: Death, writing, and her relationship with Ruby

ALRIGHTY so this is officially my first analysis post on Penny as a whole, being said a certain screen here prompted it and after reading into a lot of things and other analysis in the mix I feel like I finally can sort out my feelings about the writing of this beloved character. I want to particularly go in to depth about how she was recieved as a character as a whole, her relationship with Ruby and ultimately how her death was handled. Being one of my most favorite tragic characters I really just want to pin down some thoughts I've had that I feel it is vital I get out. There will be critique on the writing here and there and a little bit of nuts and dolts (because you gotta admit their relationship was one of the most wholesome in the show) but AHEM hear me out yall, and truly while this character holds so much importance with me, along with that comes the genuine criticism of how her arc concluded as a whole so far.

Now let me get this straight. I was not really a fan of her dying a bit. At least in the way she did and ultimately I have a lot to say regarding it after a lot of thought and more research. And this is not just because of her relationship with Ruby (not even talking about the shipping aspect, it genuinely adding a layer of humanity to her and brought out so much character development between the two which was super interesting to me) but I'll get into that in a moment.

To be clear, it is obvious that penny is written to be a tragic character. That much cannot be argued. From the beginning, Penny is shown to be under a strict amount of control from Ironwood, and even to an extent Pietro's worrying for her safety. Which is understandable.

Penny is the first of her kind, an AI that can generate an aura and sentience. She is a war weapon capable of extreme destruction, yet she is given this soft and innocent yet aloof personality that contradicts that. Ultimately, she in some ways is a walking oxymoron. What she was built for (by Ironwood) and who she truly is as a person is really interesting to me from a writing standpoint. We are shown very early on that Penny is just like every other teenage girl, she wants to sneak out, she craves relationships and knowledge about the world, but ultimately because of her differences, there is a hidden barrier she can never cross.

That barrier is broken when Ruby enters the scene. Initially hiding her synthetic identity, this topic is very sensitive for her. She looks thinks and acts like a normal girl for the most part, but isn't. And this is shown to be an extreme part of her insecurities.

We are shown the scene where Penny saves Ruby's life by stopping a car in mid traffic and drawing attention to herself, and ultimately fleeing out of fright of being found out. She's is instructed to by Ironwood to lay low of course, but this is also likely due to her insecurities about being perceived as different. This all changes when Ruby accepts Penny as her first friend, holds her hands and tells her that she is valid the way she is. I cannot describe how this scene made me feel the first time watching it, but the comfort from Ruby telling her that it doesn't matter what's inside of her, she still accepts her as a girl and a friend and won't abandon her. It's perfectly executed, and all in all a really interesting addition to the Penny Ruby dynamic as whole. Penny just wanted a friend, and Ruby accepted her and validated her in her humanity.

We see their relationship begin to develop a bit and ultimately season three hits. Penny is used as a plot device by the villians as a message and ultimately offed in one of the most brutal ways. This scene is very tragic in of itself, and while Penny and Ruby had not yet been able to get as close, it was for sure that their relationship was certainly unique enough to where it really devastating Ruby at that moment. And with good reason; she was killed in front of everyone in the tournament to villianize Ruby's teammate.

All in all, fraud, framing, and Penny getting dying overall seems to be a very prevent theme that adds to the tragedy of this character.

Season 7 hits, and we are all greatly surprised to find Penny is rebuilt, and the fans recieve this REALLY well for the most part. In her short time she was a really interesting and honest to god adorable and enjoyable character, and she was no exception to fans. There is something so interesting about how you can utilize exploring humanity with a robot character that isn't quite human, but deep down craves to understand others and acceptance. Penny from the start is put in this box that separates her from others, but as her relationships fold out the lines begin to blur. Is she really just a machine, or is she much more than that? Ruby is truly a character that helps her find herself and truly learn about the world and what it means to have human emotions and relationships, and that in itself is beautiful. We have this character that is almost akin to an innocent child learning about the world, what is right and what is wrong, and what it means to love. Ultimately, I still feel like love in a general sense is a big theme shown with Penny and her friends, along with the selflessness she shows when anyone she cares about is about to get hurt, and that gives her the humanity she craves.

Continuing on with season 7, Ruby and Penny get a little closer, and the relationship is expanded on. Unfortunately however, Penny still has a duty to Ironwood as the protector of mantle, and that is her primary purpose. We are shown that the authority over Penny still has not quite loosened and that she is still ultimately regarded as a weapon, not a free willed person who should be doing teenage girl things (making friends, learning basic social skills and going through normal teenage experiences). Even with good intentions as a caring father, we still see some of that worry and protectiveness from Pietro as he is afraid of losing her again. Aside from her interactions from Ruby and gang, Penny isn't really able to just live as a normal girl, but is faced with a huge amount of expectations and responsibility as a powerful and dangerous machine that was built to stop evil.

Back to the point I was bringing up earlier, Penny is tragic, and we definitely see this in volume 7, and Penny still isn't getting a break. She is framed on live TV as a volatile killer and is immediately despised by the public. This of course is all a political scheme to sway an election, but Penny is just a tool for their propaganda. And we are shown how Penny's feelings aren't really regarded in all of that, and even Ironwood cares more about how he looks than Penny's feelings (and trauma) on the matter. This leads to the whole fiasco where Penny's decommissioning comes up for debate due to the fact that she is just immediately regarded as a volatile threat. This attack on her humanity hits hard, and weighs very heavily on Penny's heart.

Season 8 comes, and it just doesn't end with the tragic shit. This season however is really vital for Ruby and Penny getting closer and we finally see their interactions bloom, as well as getting some of those more sentimental scenes where Penny is reminded that she doesn't have to be like everyone else to be human, because she is accepted the way she is and not for her purpose or expectations. NND share a lot of hugs this season and truly bring out a lot of soft moments between the two showing how impactful their friendship is.

Ultimately as I said above, the bad guys aren't done. And this time, Penny is hacked and used as a tool to open the vault. The entire virus scenario is really hard on Penny and with the whole fiasco with Ironwood and his treatment of her she is really distraught throughput most of the season (rightfully). Through her expectations with higher ups, as well as quite literally suffering a slow and painful infection leading to her self termination Penny is in an extreme amount of agony. This doesn't help when Ironwood basically held the life of an entire city over her head should she not leave her friends and return to him to do her duty as a machine. And all of those expectations and choices are placed on what is ultimately just a teenage girl who is new to the complexities of humanity.

The points I'm mainly trying to make here is Penny cannot get a break whatsoever, she's under an immense amount of pressure and expectations probably 24/7, and once again she is used as a tool with no regards for her consent or humanity because everyone sees her as a soulless machine.

And I cannot tell you how frustrating that is to see such a sweet and innocent character be treated that way, but like I said initially, she was written to be dramatic, tragic, and excruciating.

Now let's get to the big topic on hand here, Penny's second death.

Now don't get me wrong, I love my share of tragic characters, and I fully believe there are ways death can be a necessity in a character arc to convey powerful imagery. Ultimately this comes down to my opinion as a creative writer, and I in all honesty am not a fan of how Penny's death was handled in hindsight.

Within minutes of becoming human and being saved from the virus, Penny is brutally killed by Cinder (once again) and dies in assisted suicide from Jaune. When I say this scene almost made me cry it was for mixed reason. While I saw this coming, it did make me a little sad considering she was ONCE AGAIN used as a tool by Cinder to get what she wanted. And while she risked her life for thousands, the only ever autonomy she had was choosing her own suicide in that scene, and that is extremely tragic and upsetting in of itself.

I can go on and on about wasted potential because that is a thing but characters arcs can be cut short sometimes. That happens.

But my issue with all of this is ultimately the aftermath.

We have this really important character character brought back from the dead, given character growth, hopes and aspirations only for her to be forced to choose suicide the only time she is given a choice for herself. And I'm not sure about how others feel, but as she is quite literally miserable throughout V7, V8, (and even shown to some extent that she was suicidal to an extent when she asked Ruby to kill her when she was infected with the virus). Giving us her final wish to die so that she isn't a burden or tool to be fought over conveys in all honesty a really sad message about her character and in of itself does a lot of injustice.

But once again, she is written to be a tragic character that doesn't get the good ending.

How that is treated after her death though is really where I have my issues however.

We see in volume 9 that Penny's death is somewhat relevant, Ruby hears her, faints yada yada, but immediately wakes up and there isn't much discussion beyond it. And what's truly annoying is that there was commentary released by CRWBY that the audience was supposed to assume there was an offscreen discussion about how Penny dies, and we are supposed to understand that. Of course we get that vital scene between Neo and Ruby that have illusion Penny tell Ruby that she meant the world to her to try and sway her emotions. I feel like that was a very critical moment in Ruby and Penny's relationship considering Neo weaponized pure emotion from Penny to hurt Ruby, and we are seen she is greatly affected by this. A lot of fans even took inspecting that this meant Ruby held deep hidden away feelings for Penny, which a lot of CRWBY (even Miles Luna himself) acknowledged.

In the end though, V9 doesn't really allow enough grieving time for Ruby and her death isn't really discussed and given closure. And that in itself isn't an issue, but it's where we go from here that I am really going to be critical of.

So we have some pivotal points:

Penny's death is never really a discussion, it's just washed over by team RWBY aside from Weiss's brief mention of it

Ruby's reactions to Penny's death (and ultimately the discussion of her method of death) is brushed over a bit, although not entirely

As CRWBY said, we were expected to have assumed it happened off screen, and that in itself feels disrespectful to the amount of character relevancy Penny had as of late

We actually got some really nice scenes from Ruby regarding Penny, however something feels off

And I want to talk about what exactly that off feeling is, because I truly feel like yes, it wasn't the time to completely mourn Penny in this strange new world, however if she is never mentioned significantly beyond this and brushed under the rug, I can truly say I'll be mad as that is a disservice to her character.

So no, I am not against the killing of characters, or tragedy for the matter, but I care about the messages you convey when you do so as well as what you do with it after.

Upon Pyrrhas death, we got the closure between Jaune and her we needed, the statue scene happened, conversations were had, and the discussions that needed to occur did. This just has not happened with Penny (yet) and I am honest to god just hoping we will see more of this in V10 (if that will even go into production) because Penny's relevancy doesn't feel finisher yet. With all the alluding to it all across V9, and the unresolved issue between Jaune and Ruby, I feel like there needs to be a genuine discussion about Penny to honor her character and give the closure to Ruby and Penny's intimate friendship. It's only fair to Penny's character, sacrifices, and the overall message RWBY wants to portray if they truly plan on keeping her permanently dead this time.

And regarding that, while I feel it is unlikely she will come back (I just don't want to get my hopes up because I'm kind of upset in general) I feel like RWBY has set themselves up to where they could do anything at this point so I say do it well. If you are going to keep her dead, address the themes, honor the character and give it realistic closure with Penny's close relationships (primarily Ruby). If this is in any way setting up a future scenario where mentions of Penny will be relevant (I don't even know at this point because we still have to deal with Pietro just having to deal with his daughter dying twice and just having to suck it) I will be interested to seeing how it is handled, because in the end the care into the writing is what I and others seem to care about the most and how you honor that character. For some that is honoring her death, and for a lot of people, it is that killing her at all was a stupid message utilized for torture porn with no real sentiment or closure to such an important characters commencement.

If the writers ever truly bring her back though, I hope they can finally honor Penny's wishes to have her own autonomy instead of consistently stripping her of her choices and using her as a plot device. And if she is to be dead, for God's sake give the closure needed for the intense and sensitive themes you wish to portray on a teens show. It's only fair to as someone who fell in love with this characters charisma and positivity.

I personally am okay with Penny coming back down the line (as it's been kind of set up to unintentionally imply Penny's relevance is not concluded or over yet, and her dying permanently opens up a lot of responsibility to properly address the themes RWBY chose to utilize) but whatever they choose for the love of god do it right. Penny in all honestly though should never have been brought back just to end her own life, I feel like how abrupt it all was and the immediate (presumed) moving on from it was weird and not considerable but that is simply my opinion.

That's all I have to say on the matter, I hope her relevancy is not truly gone and that Penny and Ruby can get that proper closure over everything that's happened because after all they've done to build eachothers characters and become the most tragic pairing in the show, its owed for sure, however it's gone about.