236 posts
Latest Posts by mechalamity - Page 2
Fem Asgore bcuz I lack self control
They should invent a 3rd "timeloop game that focuses heavily on inter-character bonds with a nonbinary protagonist and a ghost of some kind heavily tied to both the time control system and the protagonist" bc ISaT and UT changed my brain chemistry
yeah maybe make the non-binary thing something that happens to them during the game and actually part of their narrative this time
i don't remember.....is this how dbz episodes 200-291 went
I wonder if Vegeta saw a part of his past self in Moro
EVIL RAP ABOUT BEING BAD FT. @paper-mario-wiki
a series of RoR2 shitposts I've done from earlier this year
this sucks so bad i need to [remembers suicide jokes only worsen my mental health] put on the best talent show this towns ever seen
I swear to god raspberries get moldy so fuckin fast you just look at them wrong and they immediately go bad
i will die without routine. also this routine is killing me
Here we go. It's time to talk about my personal fave. As I said before, this is my Main. In Dragon Ball fighting games, this is the character I seek out to play whenever the roster allows. Also arguably the character who's been done the most dirty by just about every form of Dragon Ball, manga included.
The vanguard of a brand new status quo and a brand new direction for what Dragon Ball would even be, washed away by the tides of a status quo resetting to zero.
We're here to talk about the champion of Satan City who carries the spirit of Dragon Ball in her heart: Videl.
(And that is one cookie to @jcogginsa who guessed it.)
Videl was a kid with a chip on her shoulder. I mean. How could you not be? Her father was the legendary world martial arts champion who famously defeated Cell seven years ago.
Don't pay attention to that. He just tripped for a moment. Once he got his second wind, he came right back and showed Cell what for! It was due entirely to Mr. Satan and nobody else that the Earth was spared from the apocalyptic horror that is Cell.
Look, he even said so himself.
Are you gonna call that man a liar? The man who defeated Cell!? I think we can trust Satan's word over yours.
This is the shadow that Videl grew up under. Raised in what had previously been called Orange City, but was renamed Satan City in honor of the world's greatest hero.
Or "Hercule City/Herculopolis" in the versions that edit out Satan's name.
As his daughter, Videl has a perspective on Satan that neither the world nor the audience gets to see: He's a womanizing playboy who cashes in on his world-savior fame for booty.
He also forbids his teenage daughter from dating by putting up the stipulation that any boy interested in her has to be stronger than him, the world champion - A stipulation naturally designed to weed out any possible suitors through intimidation. Wanna date Videl? FISTFIGHT THE MAN WHO DEFEATED CELL.
Oh, but he doesn't teach her a goddamn thing; At least, not anymore, as she does suggest there was once a time when he was her mentor. She's forced to study martial arts entirely on her own because her dad is utterly disinterested in her development in the art.
This is an angle on Satan we never get to see onscreen. Apparently he's pretty shitty about women. You know, I can believe that.
Videl, when we meet her, is trapped in an unenviable position as a martial artist. She hates what the fame of being a legend has done to her dad and wants to knock him down a peg, but she has no foundation to develop her abilities from. The one man who's supposed to be teaching her isn't doing it, and she's been passively discouraged from pursuing more esoteric martial arts because the world champion said that stuff's all fake.
Videl makes for a fascinating foil to Gohan, because they're both children living in the shadows of legendary fathers.
Gohan is expected to be Goku's successor, but wants to live a peaceful life of academia. Meanwhile, Videl is being denied the ability to become Mr. Satan's successor, but craves the opportunity to prove herself.
Nonetheless, both of these kids are prodigies. Videl has a wealth of potential. She doesn't even realize that, despite these limitations, she surpassed her father long ago. Despite being a self-taught teenager with zero comprehension of ki cultivation, Videl hones her skills and developers her art the only way that's available to her: By punching it out with armed robbers in the region.
Backpack Town isn't even her city! She's a one-woman SWAT team for the tri-state area.
As ambitious and driven as she is, Videl is also clever. The anime extrapolates the adventures of the Great Saiyaman into a several-episode arc as Gohan deftly avoids detection by Videl over and over again, but this has the knock-on effect of depriving Videl of one of her best moments.
Because she pegs him instantly. She was already suspicious of Gohan being the mysterious "Golden Warrior", when he tried to use his Super Saiyan form to disguise himself as a superhero.
Which also showed that she was open-minded about the other people who fought Cell. Satan says they were doing a bunch of tricks, but Videl's willing to consider the possibility that there exist people who can turn blond on command.
And then Gohan did this shit.
Because he was raised in the woods by the devil and Goku. Despite trying to keep a low profile, he has absolutely no idea what the baseline for ordinary human ability is.
So. Y'know.
That's pretty fucking suspicious.
Which brings us to Gohan's second outing as Great Saiyaman, and his first meeting with Videl under his new identity. Whereupon she, uh....
Plays him like a fucking sap. It's a great moment that doesn't get its due if it takes several episodes and misadventures for her to reach this point. Videl is exceptionally skilled in the field of paying attention to that time Gohan jumped thirty feet in the air and naturally drawing conclusions from it.
And also his voice and posture and other dead giveaways. Gohan sucks at secret identities.
He's just. So obviously Gohan. There's no way anyone would be fooled by this.
But she's not only adequate at seeing things with her eyes; She's also a legitimately brilliant martial artist in her own right. Due to her upbringing, she's had zero experience with ki cultivation for obvious reasons.
And yet she's talented enough and smart enough to pick up the basics of Bukujutsu in one day.
Oh, don't mind her; That's just Videl making a mockery of Tsuru-senryu by effortlessly devouring their signature technique. This is Goku's first Kamehameha all over again.
She may have started small but Videl learns fucking fast. She has all of the drive and the ambition that Gohan lacks. She wants to be part of this world, she has a ravenous hunger for self-improvement, she's clever and observant, and she picks up concepts insanely quickly.
Videl is fucking primed to be a key player in Dragon Ball's next generation.
...
So now we need to talk about what happened to Videl.
Videl has one major fight in the entire series: Her 25th Tenkaichi Budokai bout against Spopovich.
Which she absolutely dominates. She's stronger, better, and faster than Spopovich. Even the experienced martial artists agree that she's infinity times better than him in every way.
But there's something wrong with Spopovich. He's a decent martial artist, far from the top; He'd competed in the 24th Tenkaichi Budokai and made it through the qualifiers, but was eliminated in the first round. So, y'know, he had no chance in hell against Videl; She's already surpassed Mr. Satan, who won the 24th legitimately.
Uh, by virtue of none of the Kame-senryu or their rivals attending. Mr. Satan is top dog of the same weight class as Pamput from the 22nd.
But, despite being outclassed in every category, Spopovich is also a dead man walking.
He's similar to the Androids in a sense. Spopovich has no ki signature at all, nor does he get worn down by the damage he's taking. This is Vegeta vs. 18 and Piccolo vs. 17 all over again; He isn't feeling the pain from the hits she's landing on him, and so he's able to outlast.
But Spopovich isn't an Android. He's more like a zombie?
At one point, Videl cuts loose and breaks his goddamn neck. Because he's pushing her hard enough that she realizes she needs to go harder, but his body can't take harder. He isn't a match for her. He just. Isn't going down despite not being a match for her.
He can't take this level of force. But he and his ominously vacant absence of ki can put his head right back where it was and continue the fight, no problem. That's honestly scarier than if he'd regenerated.
Also despite not even having the barebones ki signature of a normal person, Spopovich can perform Bukujutsu and fire ki attacks.
Which a fighter of his meager ability shouldn't even be capable of.
All of this adds up to an unwinnable fight for Videl and the setup to... Something. This match has been criticized pretty heavily in the fandom because it gets pretty gruesome and doesn't have a payoff.
We've seen fights go fucking bad for our heroes before. Piccolo once broke all of Goku's arms and legs as well as shooting a hole in his chest, right here in this same arena.
But it's typically building to something. When our heroes get trashed, it's the lead-up to a reversal down the road. Maybe in the same fight. Maybe in a later one. And we seem to be heading in that direction?
After Spopovich and Yamu leave the tournament, we get VIdel a Senzu and she's right as rain.
Spopovich and Yamu steal energy from Gohan and fly off to Babidi's Ship so they can awaken Majin Buu. Kaioshin recruits the various protags to make that not be a thing that happens. And then. Something switches in the narrative flow of this arc.
You can feel it happen.
As our heroes prepare to pursue Spopovich and Yamu, Videl volunteers to join in as well. She's had her eyes opened to a whole new world or possibilities and is hungry to develop her abilities.
And. Then. One chapter later. It's suddenly decided that Videl will not be a part of this storyline after all, and she basically leaves the plot forever.
WHOOPS! Never mind! Didn't want this character here after all. Go home, Videl.
While her adversary Spopovich is unceremoniously unwritten from being a thing that exists.
Babidi just. Kills him. For no reason. Even though his job isn't done yet. Babidi's like, "Oh good, you collected a fraction of the energy we need; That's fine, you can be fired. I don't need anyone to finish the job."
We're just. We're not telling that story anymore. We already threw Videl in the trash; we don't need her nemesis. We're doing a different thing.
Also, because we still have too many characters in this scene, Dabra erases Krillin and PIccolo with magic spit that never comes up again or is meaningful in any way.
You'd think this would be, like, setting up something? Like. Having witnessed it ahead of time, Gohan's able to figure out something about the way Dabra's spit works. So when he fights Dabra in a climactic battle, he can turn this around.
Like when Goku was able to counter Tenshinhan's Taiyoken/Solar Flare in the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, because he'd seen it before and understood how it works. That's usually what Dragon Ball does with this sort of advance notice of opponent abilities.
But. No. The most this ever comes up again is that it momentarily costs Gohan one of his gloves. It's just here to winnow down the cast because Toriyama brought too many characters to this scene.
You can feel the burnout taking hold. As janky as the Android arc was, the Buu arc's level of jank is through the roof.
And that became it for Videl. Denied any sort of payoff for her one fight and instead relegated to background character, Videl never got a chance to live up to the intriguing potential she was introduced with. She was the face of a new direction for Dragon Ball, a direction that ended up strangled in its crib as the series reverted to old ideas and old formulae - strangling her along with it.
Videl is a character I look at and can't help but wonder what could have been. What could have been if Gohan got to keep his focus, and Videl got to remain a key player in a story about him? What could have been if we got to see Videl developing her skills at the same fever-pace that she learned Bukujutsu with? What could have been if she got that rematch with Spopovich she seemed to have been promised by the narrative, and then got to stay involved throughout the Buu arc?
But I guess we'll never know.
cooked too hard talking about how fun transfem asriel could be so im taking a rare moment to post it to the tumblr followers lol
image id under cut!
[Image Description: A discord screenshot. The text reads as follows:
something i think a lot about for deltarune SPECIFICALLY is how societal expectations, narrative roles, hierarchial positionings, and the metanarrative interactions by the player are all often rolled together and depicted overwhelmingly as a shackle for its characters
even seemingly positive ones like "smart kid" "prince of the darkness" or "nice girl in town" are ideas that constrain the people they're placed upon
in that context, i cannot IMAGINE asriel having a positive relationship with his role as idolized golden child in deltarune
I don't think he wears it well. this isn't the sort of story where people can wear that kind of overwhelming weight well
especially considering how asriel is the offscreen apex of all of those conditions I mentioned. both in universe and out, his mere existence is charged with this gigantic significance
so yeah, I think theres no way asriel makes it out of this as "pure uncomplicated good golden boy who everyone loves." something has to crack somewhere and i think one of those cracks could be asriels fucking egg LMAO. Estrogen Will Save Her
End ID]
For the love of god stop
I keep seeing people say "play Outer Wilds, no, I can't tell you anything about it". Bitch. It's an exploration game about astronauts fucking around in space, doing archeology, astrology astronomy and science, with the gameplay itself consisting mostly of navigation in various 3D spaces with your legs or your trusty spaceship. There are interesting characters and tantalizing mysteries. It will require a fair bit of reading and thinking, it will sometimes test your speed, reflexes and precision. The story is about curiosity, courage, compassion, music, death, rebirth, and the terrifying vastness of space. The game can induce agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of heights, fear of depths and that which is unseen or hidden. Your character has four eyes and can roast marshmallows on any bonfire. Bitch.
I love grindr images like this, they're so awesome sauced
I need everyone to see this tweet
the transition im crying
maddie !
Trying to fall asleep in summer is much like the dilemma described in Katy Perry’s hit song Hot N Cold (2008).
whoever makes the thumbnails for gdq's youtube channel is really fucking funny
muoio malissimo
I love how the search function on this site is absolute garbage. I can look up a post word for word and I will NEVER find it
the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’
this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry
pelcan Mouth perfec t size for put baby in to n\ap! inside very Soft and Comfort baby sleep soundly put baby in Pelican Mouth. Put Baby In Pelican Mouth. no problems ever in peliccan mouth because good Shape and Support for baby neck weak of big baby head. Apelican Mouth yes a place for a baby put baby in pelican mouth can trust pelican for giveing good love to baby. friend pelican
i made this exactly one year ago and i still think the idea for it is good
it can happen to you every moment PSA please dont rotate 2d creatures
Bored. At work. Tell me who in dragon ball is transgender. Pride month
isnt balkan a third world country?you have internet??
Уби се
