Looking At The Wiki Pages For The Animal Companions In Anime Is My New Favorite Thing.

Looking at the wiki pages for the animal companions in anime is my new favorite thing.

this is the funniest tweet i’ve seen in months bye

the future...is beautiful

okay here is my happy headcanon, because the very idea of the world in Batman Beyond makes my heart hurt. Batman works all those years in Gotham and feels like he’s not doing much good or making any progress. Maybe one day, he’s getting older, he’s injured, he permanently retires. Alfred has also passed away, and rather than hardening Bruce, it softens him. He needs a break. Maybe Damian finally takes over as Batman.  And a few more years go by and something is shifting. The reports from Arkham Asylum are increasingly more like updated Date of Death files and less like escape warnings. The villains of Batman’s youth and prime are…also aging? They’re starting to die. And Bruce Wayne, limping around his house, waits and worries about who will replace them for his son, what new evil Gotham will give birth to. Except this is a Gotham that was once full of petty crime and organized crime and insane criminals. And those criminals are aging out. And their children are dissatisfied. They don’t like the legacy their parents gave them. And just disliking it wouldn’t be enough. Except their Gotham is not the Gotham of their parents’ own childhood, the Gotham where Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered. No, the sons and daughters of Gotham’s criminals grow up in a world with the sons and daughters of Batman. Everywhere they turn, Batman is getting their abusive dad off the street and into prison, Robin is saving a classmate’s life, and then there are more of them: rumors, legends, fading into reality. The Batman has an army, the Batman has a team, the Batman has a family.  And an entire generation of kids grows up like Steph Brown. Not all of them don masks or capes. Most of them don’t. But Gotham is changing. The children of Gotham’s crime generation are fed up. They grow up. They leave for college, they stay. They get jobs. And they are sick of what their city looks like. The collective youth of an entire generation finds hope and change in the Batman and what he stands for and puts their foot down: Enough.  Enough with the cycle of crime. Thanks to the Wayne Foundation’s youth programs and houses, the priests that Batman has saved and spared and offered protection, the schools that are in increasingly good shape, crime in Gotham doesn’t explode out of existence as much as it just slowly…fizzles…out. The cops who grew up admiring and loving Batman, wishing they could be Robin, are fed up with the older cops and their bribes and their drinking and push them into early retirement. The shop keepers don’t pay for safety, don’t fund the crime rings of elderly mob bosses. And one day, Damian Wayne looks around and realizes it has been months since patrol was anything more than just a routine. He’s not really doing anything anymore. No super villains out. No Batsignal. And when he does almost stop a mugging, before he gets there, two men around his age walking by on the street are intervening, “Hey, you? Leave that lady alone. Yeah, you heard me. Go, before I call the cops. My buddy and I will hold you down if…” So, he hangs up the cape. He’ll come back for it if he needs to, if the city needs it. He goes into veterinary science. And by the time Bruce passes away, several years down the road, he is surrounded by family who put up with his crotchety complaining and mumbling about things, and show up for dinners on Friday anyway. With kids.  Damian’s a vet, Dick is going to be police commissioner within a year, Babs is running R&D at Wayne Tech after Lucius Fox retired, Tim is running the business and financial side of Wayne Industries and showing photography on the side, Cass runs a dance therapy school, Steph works in pediatric counseling, and Jason is a librarian because he needs SOME quiet after all those years of guns and he manages a dense schedule of afterschool programs, Duke Thomas runs an adoption agency specializing in hard to place kids. And Bruce dies thinking they’re maybe just in denial or that it’s the calm before the storm; he can’t imagine that this is for real, not some kind of trick. But he enjoys it anyway. He just can’t, after all those failures and years of uphill battle, believe that maybe he and his little ragtag family of orphans did it. 

They ushered in Gotham’s golden age. It makes Metropolis look like a rough city. The kids of this generation grow up hearing bedtime stories from parents about a Gotham of terror and darkness and a hero and his tribe that are the stuff of legend, seem ridiculous in the context of the Gotham in which they live and the safety there. And eventually, maybe in the aftermath of mourning Bruce’s death, the Wayne kids make a decision: open the cave. Open it to the public. They set to work preparing it, making it safe, making it a memorial, a museum. 

They go public, and Damian Wayne, a man quiet and preferring the company of animals, says very little in the press release and the speech he gives when the media and crowds descend:  I think you ought to know the man who saved this city. Because they’re okay now. 

so here's some thoughts about the disaster lineage and Jar'kai

(I have a black belt in Haidong Gumdo, so I'd like to think I know what I'm talking about to some extent here but real-life swords =/= lightsabres so take what I say with a grain of salt)

The Disaster Lineage fucking flexes on the Jedi Order when it comes to lightsabre combat and this is my essay.

So, as far as my shoddy research turned up, Jar'kai isn't really one of the numbered forms. That gets me to believe that Jar'kai is something like a method rather than a philosophy/style so for the purposes of this breakdown I'll propose that you can do forms I through VII in Jar'kai.

Now, as someone who has faffed around sparring with two swords for shits and giggles, let me tell you it is extremely difficult to do. I don't know if you guys had to do the dumb motor exercise in grade school where you tapped your head with one hand while rubbing a circle on your tummy with the other and it's doable but like requires focus? Or tried swinging your arms in two counter directions and it's not easy? This is because our brains are coded in a specific way to make movement easier (because we have symmetrical biology for the most part) and require less thought to do simple tasks and theres tricks to the nerves that control our muscles on both sides of our body. You can make your arms move in opposite directions it just takes a lot of practice and conscious thought.

Now, imagine doing that but if you fuck up you die. 🤪

I don't know what a real lightsabre would feel like in terms of weight. It's a different ballgame when you're missing most of the weight of the blade and it's all in the hilt. (I have stunt sabres but they function more like real swords because this is not the galaxy far far away). Regardless of this, lightsabres basically function like hand and a half swords because they can be used either one-handed or two-handed. The strength and control you need to wield a sword, typically used with two hands, one-handed is significant. The arm-power you need to block a two-handed strike with one hand is insane.

Someone, please draw the disaster lineage in tank tops that say "suns out guns out" because I cannot emphasize how strong and dexterous and focused you need to be to dual-wield.

Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka dual-wielding is A FUCKING FLEX.

Ahsoka has a shoto which means it's smaller, this is to make dual-wielding easier because there's less of a chance your swords are going to get in each other's way. It also draws on rapier-dagger combos as well. It's extremely effective sword fighting.

She also typically reverse grips one which gives it less range (reverse grip is unh... really limiting actually, it truncated your threat range considerably but it's useful in specific circumstances. It also follows the rule of cool).

The two thots on the other hand—the Team, the glorious bastards, Ahsoka's two Masters—times we see Anakin and Obi-Wan dual-wield they're using two full-length lightsabres and no reverse grip. These fucking bitches are flexing so hard, they're showing off how good they are, the precision of their control, their strength. Anakin and Obi-Wan are just as good at Jar'kai as Ahsoka. There, I said it. They just don't favour it because Anakin probably prefers the sheer fucking strength he can deliver two-handed with Djem So and Shien and Obi-Wan prefers the control he gets from a two-handed grip.

But make no mistake these absolute assholes are very very good at Jar'kai. I still think about that one time Obi-Wan dual-wielded against Maul and Savage like... we stan one (1) absolute bitch who makes everyone else look like a chump. And Anakin looks very good doing it too. In fact, I headcanon that Anakin taught Ahsoka and is part of the real reason she's so good at it.

Anakin Skywalker would have been a fucking threat if he had made Jar'Kai his primary method of lightsabre fighting. His reach alone would be insane, especially the way he wields the swords. You actually see it in the first fight against Dooku, his range of threat is immense. He's actually shortening his range when he two hands the lightsaber—this naturally comes when you occupy both of your arms, they limit each other—but on the flip side, he's doubling the power output and control when he does and Anakin seems to be someone who likes the fact that he can physically overpower most of his opponents.

Like, spoilers for Rebels, but In the fight with Ahsoka in Season 2, my girl with the guns has to stop him with both of her blades crossed. This is Ahsoka who has blocked two-handed hits before one-handed. She knows she's fucked if she tries that against Anakin and has to compensate.

But Izzy, you might say, Anakin lost his arm doing Jar'Kai! How could he be good at it!?

First, I love that we all agree that Obi-Wan is good at everything and we aren't questioning him. We love and respect Obi-Wan Kenobi on this blog.

Secondly, I don't think Anakin is bad at Jar'Kai at all. We're talking about "sees things before they happen" and "pod racer" Anakin fucking Skywalker. Duh, of course, this sabre thot would be an amazing Jar'Kai practitioner. The reasons he lost the battle with Dooku are threefold in my mind:

He just lost his mother, his still-developing brain is going through chemical hell and he has to be distracted by his grief and anger.

Distracted because Obi-Wan is unconscious and probably hurt. His primary concern is no longer himself ah yes there goes self-preservation out the window 😔

Dooku is a Master—possibly the Master—of Makashi, which is specifically used against one opponent. Do you think Dooku hasn't made sure he's effective against Jar'Kai practitioners? Lol, he eats Padawans for breakfast. RIP Anakin.

Yoda's line is 100% the envy of the Jedi order for lightsabre skills. They settle for nothing short of mastery of every form and method (except Vapaad because Mace took one look at that trend and said Fuck Off, and I love him for that) and the only one who can kick their ass at it is someone who exclusively favours a specific form to the point that they've perfected it.

Marisa/マリカ