ATLA Thoughts

Naruto Thoughts

It’s kind of funny to go through AO3 and see how pervasive certain canon has become that has either been implicitly or explicitly contradicted by the text. Little stuff and big stuff scattered throughout.

Like, how everyone assumes Kakashi only read Icha Icha, but I’m pretty sure the implication is supposed to be that, during the bell test, it was his first time reading the series. Then there’s all this stuff about how Kakashi never taught Team 7 anything just because we never see it in the page. It’s pretty clearly implied that time has passed between the bell test and the Wave Arc, with the assumption being that training happened during that time. I think Kishimoto just doesn’t like drawing training scenes. Then there’s the bit about Sakura being super weak, like yeah, she’s not written super well and she’s definitely weaker than the boys, but her standard is still super human. Sakura, even in the first half of the manga, would be able to beat any regular person without any kind of problem. Sasuke seems to lose a lot of personality too, he didn’t get all stoic until after the time skip, he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the first half. Then there’s the idea that Naruto was outright abused by the citizens of Konoha. Okay, so we have no idea how he was taken care of between baby to kid in an apartment, but there’s nothing to indicate that he was treated nearly as horribly as a lot fic seem to write him to be. In the flashbacks it looks like he was pretty much the target of a lot of neglect and poor treatment with a lot of glares and people talking badly about him. But I don’t think there’s any evidence he was physically harmed. Not that abuse needs to be physical to be bad but people seem to really like to turn Naruto’s backstory into just the worst. The Sandaime might have made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think even he would have allowed Naruto to be the regular target of people throwing things at him and feeding him rotten food. I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny how things got all twisted around in the fandom.

My One Change to Star Trek (2009)

There are a good few flaws to this movie but if I were to make one change and leave it mostly alone, it would be the time skip after Kirk gets on the shuttle to Starfleet Academy, right after he meets Bones. Instead of jumping ahead to his final year as a cadet I would have it be more like 7 years, and introduce him as a new transfer to the Enterprise as a Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander.

You can still have him get off on the wrong foot with Spock because of the Kobayashi Maru, but it can be because Spock doesn’t approve of him getting a commendation for what he considered to have been “cheating” and then they just rub each other the wrong way to start. The rest of the gang are all already posted as lower ranked members. I think you could have a fun scene of Kirk reuniting with Bones and Uhura (with very different reactions going on there).

You can still have Kirk overhearing Uhura about the communication because he’s with her roommate, it’s just that the room is a ship cabin instead of a dorm. Basically, instead of the Academy stuff you just have Kirk getting adjusted to the Enterprise. Maybe have Commander Una be injured or on leave or something so Spock is the Acting First Officer at the time.

Then the distress call from Vulcan comes in and the ship get assigned to check it out. Everything else from the time they’re out of warp could pretty much be the same but it would make more sense for Pike to name Kirk as Spock’s Acting First Officer when he goes over and for the gang to be taking over for their commanding officers when they’re injured during the attack from Nero. It just would make so much more sense for already instated officers to take on the roles they do then not even graduated cadets.

(I know this thing is, like, 15 years old now but I was rewatching Beyond and it made me think)

The Problem with KakaObi

Okay look, Kakashi is my favorite character and my fandom bicycle, I ship him with everybody, including Obito sometimes. My problem is that so many kakaobi writers have him, like, secretly in love with him from back when they were teammates and have him pining after his memory for the next 20 years or whatever. And I get it, watching the man you love die for you and then come back from the dead is just full of melodrama. But at oldest Kakashi was, like, 13 when Obito died, I usually view him as 10 or 11. I don’t care what kind of a genius he is, pre-teens are not having an intense melodramatic love going on, they just aren’t. And having an adult Kakashi pine after a child Obito is just gross, it’s gross in canon with Obito and Rin too. I don’t mind kakaobi, not my favorite pairing, but it’s better than kakairu (god I hate that pairing) I just wish people would write them falling in love as proper adults. This is probably why the only way I can read them is in AUs where Obito came back to Konoha. They just don’t work with the canon setting without some real work too many don’t put in. Whatever, people can write whatever they want, I just need to be more careful with my tag search.

Alright, that’s it, just wanted to get the thought out there while it was on my mind.

Dragon Ball Fic Idea

I’m sure someone has likely written something along these lines before but this is just a thought I’ve had. So the Saiyans are all but extinct, but they’re a tough warrior race so there’s believable odds that more than just Vegeta, Raditz and Napa survived the destruction of their planets. I’d find it interesting to have Vegeta and Goku have to handle some group of Saiyans that managed to stay hidden, with like political intrigue and culture clash or whatever. Especially considering Goku is supposedly a third class Saiyan or whatever who managed to go Super Saiyan, not to mention everyone else on Earth. I read an interesting fic where the author suggested that the adrenaline Gohan, Goten and Trunks inherited from their mothers makes the jump to Super Saiyan easier than it is for full blooded Saiyans. That would be a really interesting idea in the context of a larger group of Saiyans, especially if, like, most of them are men and they haven’t really been able to find a compatible species or anything. Actually, that last idea coming into play during the Vegeta Saga would be super interesting. Like, Raditz comes to find Goku only once he learns about Gohan and his priorities completely shift because, holy shit, his baby brother found a compatible mate. That could be a potentially huge idea for them. Maybe have it be a full on AU where Vegeta is secretly working to undermine Frieza and has a group of hidden Saiyans working as a rebellion or something. I don’t know, there’s a lot of ideas you could play with. Just food for thought.

My Fanfic Spider-Man Problem

I love Spider-Man, I love fanfiction, but it’s nearly impossible for me to enjoy fanfiction about Spider-Man. It feels like every one out there is about some infantilized teenage Peter Parker, and I hate it. It’s not that I have a problem with teenage Spidey, though I’ll be honest it’s not my favorite iteration, it’s just that most stories have him as the only teenager in the hero community, which ruins all of his best relationships. One of my favorite comic book friendships is that of Peter Parker and Matt Murdock, Spider-Man and Daredevil are great together, but most fanfic with them has Peter as this goofy innocent kid and Matt as this grizzled adult mentor type, which kind of sucks because they can be a real riot together as friends. I hate having Spidey cut off from all the other superheroes because of the age gap, and that’s not even touching how the Spidey being written in these fanfic is usually completely unrecognizable as Peter Parker. It’s tiresome and makes me want to avoid all marvel fanfiction in general, which sucks. That’s all.

Teenage Vampire Nightmare

My brother just turned eighteen and thinking about him being stuck at the age he’s at now sounds like the worst nightmare ever. Any romanticism teenage me felt about vampire like Edward and Stefan is gone forever, now I just pity them.

The Marvel Problem

So I know that the big thing with Marvel that differentiates it from DC was having it exist in the “real world” and not a bunch of made up cities and since the guys writing the characters were all from New York City, that’s where they put them because they knew it best. But I feel like things have grown to the point of ridiculousness, NYC is a big city but it’s not that big. I was watching a YouTube video about how it doesn’t make sense for Miles Morales to not have Peter Parker around to help him out and his points carry over to the overall hero community. Besides that, aside from Spider-Man, it really wouldn’t be a big deal to move most of the heroes out of New York, give them their own space. I know Daredevil was in California for a while, let him move back there, or maybe keep him in New York, he’s pretty small scale so it wouldn’t be a big deal to have both him and Spidey around. But I feel like the Avengers should definitely move to the west coast, and I mean the proper Avengers, not a separate team. I think Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Danny Rand could probably set up shop in, like, Chicago or something, that seems a good fit for them, maybe Felicia Hardy too. The Fantastic Four could move to, like, Albany or something, keep them in New York but give some distance. I don’t know where everyone should go but I really feel Marvel would benefit from putting distance between their heroes, give them space to act. Just a thought.

Story Idea

So the Lucifer in Supernatural is just the worst, and so is their Michael, what with the whole trying to possess Sam and Dean and start the apocalypse and what not. But I’ve recently been inspired by this great crossover between Supernatural, Good Omens and Lucifer (TV) where that’s not always the case. Lucifer isn’t actually the epitome of all evil in every interpretation of the Bible anyway, I mean Satan and Lucifer weren’t even always the same person, and besides that, Satan as a term was originally, like, a title for Heaven’s prosecutor or something, back before the Christian concept of Hell was a thing. I’m getting off tract.

Anyway, I was thinking of a world (specifically like an AU of Good Omens because I love those characters) where Lucifer isn’t evil, he’s a prosecutor, and judge and jury of hell, which has more in common with the Underworld than it does with fire and brimstone worst place on Earth just because I don’t want him miserable. Anyway, he’s happily married to his Queen, Lilith, totally devoted and monogamous and has been for millennia. Meanwhile Michael is just kind of living it up on Earth, going around drinking, picking fights, flirting with people and eating pie. Sometimes he drags other angels with him because he thinks they need to chill out more, his favorite victim is a little guy named Castiel. Lucifer and Michael get along with their siblings no problem, they especially like each other a good deal, though they can get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Lucifer often considers Michael a jerk while Michael will say Lucifer can be a bitch.

Get where I’m going with this? I just keep picturing Sam and Dean in their bunker staring at these two alternate versions of beings who’ve given them so much trouble, and it’s just them. I think it’s a fun idea, especially if you threw in Crowley and Aziraphale, like they’re just there being themselves.

Disney Hercules

Was watching some old episodes for the nostalgia (forgot how charming this show was) and I realized that this show is actually super in line with Greek mythology in one way, it could not care less about timelines and ages making any sense.

DC Comics - a thought

There’s a tendency in fanfiction that I’ve noticed to kind of de power Superman and Wonder Woman in favor of making Batman and the Batfamily look better. Part of this is probably because of the overwhelming amount of stories centered on Batfamily dynamics and that when writing shock and awe fics people want familiar characters to be their outsider pov, but it just doesn’t work right with Superman and Wonder Woman.

Another part of this is probably because of how the characters get presented in the comics, unfortunately both Superman and Wonder Woman have had to deal with a lot of flip flopping with their powers because the characters were made too powerful and the turn back to try and make them less overpowered has backlashed into making them too weak at times depending on the story. Not to mention how since Batman is part of the trinity that is the face of DC they want to make him equal to the other two within the canon, and it just doesn’t work. I don’t care how smart he is, Batman just cannot handle the problems Superman and Wonder Woman face, he’s only human.

I don’t know, it’s just a common occurrence for a popular character to try and have their real world popularity reflected in the comics, even when it doesn’t work, Batman and Spider-Man have that problem, the latter significantly more so than the former since Batman actually does play a pretty important role to the Justice League, just not quite to the point as he is represented, I think.