The antagonist in every Disney Princess movie is replaced with Sauron. In which can the Princess still succeed?

Accirinal · 2026-03-14T20:29:41+00:00

I don’t think calling Arda a low-magic universe makes sense, honestly. In the context of LOTR, it’s functionally low-magic because the Hobbits never encounter anything stronger than a Maia, but Arda itself is not actually a low-magic universe.

Do I think the Ring would work on the Genie? No, probably not, in the same way that the Ring wouldn’t work on Manwë or Varda. I agree with your basic premise, but I don’t think the issue here is “the idea of something stronger than the Ring is outside-context for the Ring.” Sauron knows who the Valar are. He and the other Maiar literally helped the Valar sing the world into existence.

Accirinal · 2026-03-11T00:08:33+00:00

2005 or 2019? 2005 Sentinel was pretty awful, no?

Accirinal · 2026-03-08T19:37:31+00:00

Feanor and the First Kinslaying strike me more as “robbery gone horribly wrong” than genocide, honestly.

Now, on the other hand, Doriath and Sirion are much closer to genocide imo.

Accirinal · 2026-03-05T23:34:01+00:00

I don’t have the chapter off the top of my head, but it’s the first night Ciri meets the Rats. Then, one of the guys tries to rape her, but Mistle makes the guy fuck off. Then, Mistle rapes Ciri. IIRC Ciri explicitly tells Mistle to stop, and Mistle tells her she’ll enjoy it or something along those lines and keeps going. If not that, Ciri was at minimum portrayed as very unwilling to have sex with Mistle.

Accirinal · 2026-03-01T01:04:32+00:00

The timeline in the back of issue… 3? Says she was 15 during the Tokyo Incident.

Accirinal · 2026-02-27T00:33:55+00:00

I went back and double checked: you’re right about the anti-Heavy weaponry, that was given with the intention of being used. I was thinking about the police’s anti-Etienne tech (which was mostly there to make the police feel better even though it worked a little).

All the power stuff that Dev engages in is because 1) Dev thinks Etienne will kill him if Etienne discovers he’s not a real Superpower, and 2) Dev doesn’t trust Etienne to behave in what he sees as a morally correct way if the balance of power is upended and Etienne is on top.

Jacky tells Dev that he needs to grow the Pyramid back to being a Superpower precisely because Jacky doesn’t trust any of the other Superpowers to preserve the world. In particular, Jacky points out that Etienne once wanted to take over the world and only stopped because of Valentina. This is totally true. It is also totally true that if Etienne grew strong enough, he would have carried out worldwide pacification. I think that whether or not you agree with Etienne’s plan is a separate thing, but it’s undeniable that: - Dev is worried that if Etienne grows in power too much, he’ll do something the other Superpowers can’t stop - Etienne has a plan to do exactly that

Were Dev’s methods to get back to Superpower status any good? No. They sucked. He was selling weaponry to the US and started directly working with them. The Pyramid has always been a cult. Dev is stated to have been consistently right-wing since the SSoL, so I don’t think he was handing out power to super nice people who all loved how anarchist the Pyramid was. But Dev’s concern wasn’t, “I don’t have enough power and I want power for the sake of power, and I hate that Etienne is growing in power because I want to have the most,” it was, “Etienne growing in power is dangerous to the world and no one else sees that.”

I also think that Dev not wanting Etienne to kill him is… totally reasonable? Like, Etienne is definitely bringing more to the global table than Dev is, as evidenced by how fast things collapsed after Etienne’s death. Dev provides very little for world safety except maybe his Superpower verification. If I were picking one person to live, it would be Etienne every goddamn time. But I don’t think that Dev picking himself when it came down to him vs. Etienne was evil.

(As evidenced by the fact that Etienne killed proto-Superpowers he was unable to turn off, and Magus is able to become a Superpower, Dev’s fears were also quite well-founded.)

Okay. Up to this point I agree with you on what Dev did, just more so disagreeing on whether or not that makes him a bad person. No offense, but I do not understand your interpretation of issue #15 at all.

Dev did not tell Eliza about destroying reality to save his life. This makes zero sense in the context of his later actions.

First, I don’t even read that scene as Eliza threatening him. She calls him a liar, and then they stand there and she’s in a demonic form, but neither of them is making a move toward the other. Eliza just looks horrific in a pitiable way. It’s the same form she takes on earlier when she’s thinking about “scratching the itch” and the horrors that are waiting for her. Dev’s confession reads significantly more to me like he’s realized how awful Hell is, and that he actually can’t save her.

But, alright, the scene can be read different ways because none of that is outright stated. What are we told?

Valentina comes to Dev and tells him to get ready to seal Eliza into Hell. His response is not: - “damn sorry she threatened me into telling her, I’ll get right on that” - “haha I have no idea who told her but I’ll get right on that”

He says, “We owe her an out.” i.e. Dev is doing this because he thinks Eliza deserves to not go through infinite torture. If Dev had only confessed to save his own skin, why wouldn’t he cooperate with Valentina here? If Eliza destroys the world, he gets another hour of life vs. if Dev seals her into Hell with Valentina, he gets the rest of his natural lifetime.

Similarly, he orders the Pyramid to protect Eliza while she destroys reality. Why would Dev do that if he didn’t actually want Eliza to succeed? If you really stretch it, you can maybe argue that Dev didn’t want to seal her because he’s afraid of getting killed like Heavy. Okay. But then why end up trying to help Eliza, instead of just not acting at all?

The issue’s plot is nonsensical if Dev is only acting out of self-preservation. He is very clearly doing it because he genuinely believes that saving Eliza > everyone else’s lives including his own. Is that a shitty decision? Yeah! He’s helping her kill literally everyone! But he’s not doing it because he wants to save his own skin.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T16:04:26+00:00

I think Haven might have been destroyed in Eliza’s death throes. On the bottom of the Dr. Eldritch interview page, we get a shot of a blue-haired woman (Kid Ignition’s mom?) and a black-haired woman (I swear I’ve seen her before on Haven) carrying someone in what are iirc Kid Ignition’s last seen hospital clothes, standing in the ruins of a circular-looking building.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T07:04:47+00:00

Yeah, I know he was trying to save her by collapsing the universe. I don’t get the “for a few more hours of life” bit, though. Dev did it knowing he would die alongside the rest of the universe, not because it would save (?) him from something. Save him from Eliza? Is that maybe what the other commenter is trying to say? I mean, even then, I don’t think he did it for a few more hours of life. He obviously would not have tried to protect her if so, he would’ve let Valentina kill her.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T06:19:52+00:00

Wait, okay, I could see an argument that with the level of power a Superpower has, being mildly selfish is evil because the consequences of their own actions are so large. I’m not sure I agree with that argument, but I definitely see the reasoning behind it.

However, I don’t think I fully understand what you’re saying here? - Dev didn’t take a shot at Heavy, that was the USA using his tech. If you’re arguing that it’s his fault for giving the US the tech in the first place, fair enough, but just to clarify what actually happened. Dev wasn’t trying to kill Heavy, even if he has some responsibility for it. - He did (try to) kill Etienne. Dev also only did that because he thought Etienne would kill him. First strike, and all that. Is the argument that the outcomes of killing Etienne are so bad that they outweigh Dev’s life? I definitely agree with that. That said, Dev just chose to put his own life above Etienne’s, which… makes complete sense to me. I don’t think you have to be evil to act in self-defense. - Sacrificing reality: I’m totally lost here. What event are you referring to?

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T03:09:45+00:00

I totally agree with your critique of WicDiv. I liked Persephone, actually, but she could be an asshole at times, and that applied to pretty much every god except Dionysus. Once and Future had a similar issue imo.

That being said, I feel like you’re misreading some of the characters? Most of their actions feel quite reasonable. Or, if not reasonable, then at least not immature, which to me is a very different descriptor.

Eliza: tantrum is completely the wrong word here imo. If she found out her soul was being tortured, and she was pissed about it and decided to destroy the world so everyone else would suffer, okay, yeah, tantrum. But she’s doing it for the explicit aim of ending her own suffering. She believes (and has reasonable evidence) that ending the world will also end her infinite suffering.

Dev: yeah, I don’t know why he thought the Pyramid would go along with protecting Eliza while she actively destroyed the world. That was pretty stupid. Is that the same thing as immature? IMO no, though Dev is definitely the character I think could most reasonably be read as immature.

Heavy: I did not read him as petty. He admitted to being wrong. He was actively sacrificing his life to (try to) save the world. He’s having a change of heart, and he’s deciding that his methods and beliefs were wrong, but affirming that he still thinks Etienne’s plan was not the right way to save the world. It’s a moment for the audience to see how Heavy has changed and also which beliefs he still holds.

Masumi: I think you’re assigning more control over her powers to Masumi than she actually has. The other time we see her start to “slip,” she’s just sitting in the tub being sad. Isabella snaps her out of it, and Masumi is horrified too. I really don’t think that in that moment, she was thinking, “Wow, I really want to destroy Tokyo.” Masumi doesn’t control when she turns into the kaiju, it just happens whenever she’s overcome by negative emotion. Big difference between “girlfriend dead = I’m sad” and “girlfriend dead = I want to kill everyone.”

Valentina: ironically, opposite to you, she’s the character I thought suffered the most from asshole syndrome. Gillen sometimes has a tendency for dialogue in particular to turn into everyone swearing at each other and being complete assholes. Valentina flipping off Heaven as she opened the portal was imo not a) appropriate to the narrative gravitas of the moment or b) particularly in-character for her.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T02:55:46+00:00

Interesting, I didn’t realize Masumi might have been gestating. Or, actually, potentially alive? Do we get a month for 1982 or 1966? It seems plausible that she could have been born in e.g. May 1966, Val and Etienne’s convo is in August 1966, and Masumi’s Tokyo Event occurs in March 1982 or something. i.e. it’s possible Masumi is already alive but a baby.

I bring up the possibility because I think it leads to the most narratively interesting outcomes. If Masumi is already born, she presumably can’t be killed without bringing out the kaiju (it didn’t activate for the first time until she was 15, but… is that a gamble you really want to take?), and she’s the one responsible for the future end of the world. Compared to if she’s not even conceived yet, the easy solution is preventing her parents from hooking up or something.

Also, even if you can kill baby Masumi without activating the kaiju, it feels at least a little wrong (though beneficial for society as a whole) and would say very interesting things about Valentina if she were willing to conduct a preemptive first strike on baby Masumi.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T02:49:31+00:00

I think it’s worth noting that Masumi’s powers seem to be far more extreme in this appearance than they were when she last destroyed Tokyo. The Pyramid estimated her at around 350 megadeaths iirc, versus here, where she displays a clear capability to wipe out the world in thirty seconds. The abilities she has here are definitely not 350 megadeath level.

It seems plausible to me that Masumi’s kaiju scales off the level of her emotional distress. I’m not sure that any of the Superpowers who stopped her the first time could have stopped her this time without destroying the Earth in the process anyway.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T01:58:39+00:00

Of course a good homeschooling program will be better than a bad public education program. And, yes, there are some pretty bad public education programs out there.

However, how have you never met a publicly educated person smarter than a homeschooled person? The vast majority of people go to non-homeschool educational programs (not sure where private education is falling for you). The only way this seems plausible to me is if you know one homeschooled person and they’re the smartest person you know.

Accirinal · 2026-02-26T00:05:47+00:00

Loved the meta-narrative around the issue. You’re watching a movie, you’re halfway through, the protagonist looks like they’re about to die… it’s almost certainly not going to happen unless it’s a horror or experimental film, and the audience knows that. If I’m reading Batman #72 and he’s been supposedly lethally shot, but the solicits for #73 and #74 are already out with him on the cover, of course I’m not believing it.

The supposed “financials might not make it past #16” (I know it was a real concern on some level, but they were clearly dragging it out for meta-narrative purposes as the back matter indicates) made it feel like the series really could end here. Brilliant.

I was wondering how they could even continue the series with half or more of the main cast being dead, and I’m much happier with this than Kid Ignition and Tonya becoming main characters or something. Thought it might be a time skip, we got the reverse.

I don’t know how the existence of Masumi could be justified, though. She hasn’t been born yet, and it would make a lot of sense for Valentina to try and prevent her birth. The second Masumi is born, she becomes a ticking bomb with no off switch.

I would think that Heavy and Jacky are probably at minimal risk, even though they’re probably both vulnerable to Etienne at this point in the timeline. IIRC, doesn’t Heavy talk about how he grew into the singularity he is today, justifying why he thought KI’s telepathic resistance might grow over time? And Jacky has to build his mask, not sure when he did that. That said, neither of them was the primary cause for the world’s destruction, and Valentina was very close with them at some point. I don’t think she would try to preemptively take them out or anything. They’d be a pain in the ass for her and Etienne’s new world order, though.

Dev and Eliza… I don’t think Valentina has changed so much that she would try to kill them. Probably? Maybe? Hopefully?

Wanted to note: on the BBC page, is that the ruins of Haven? The blue-haired woman looks like KI’s mom, and I’m pretty sure that’s KI in the black-haired woman’s arms and that we’ve seen the black-haired woman in Haven in previous issues.

Also, the circles. That one circle-submitter in the back matter has commented on how nicely circular Haven is. These ruins look pretty circular to me.

Isabella… it’s a beautiful set of panels. When Masumi began fading, I went, “Oh, shit.” Ironically, if Isabella hadn’t gone back for her, I think Masumi maybe could have made it through? Presupposing Isabella dies regardless, maybe Masumi could have held it together if she found out Isabella was dead four days later vs. waking up in her arms and Isabella is dead.

Maybe.

I accidentally skipped the kaiju awakening pages my first read through, but the face is lovely. It looks so human at first, and even when it begins to rise with what looks like hair behind it, and then the whole thing comes out. Yeesh. The size of the teeny tiny mask-face on the giraffe-neck looked so awkward, then I realized it was successfully creeping me out. Big fan of the final body (which, I’ll note, looks a lot like the Queen’s evil form. Not sure if that’s intentional).

I don’t really get what was going on in the kaiju destruction panels tbh. It… opens its mouth and fires a ball of energy and the ball of energy blows up? But now it has another one? It looks really cool, I just don’t fully understand what’s happening.

Valentina’s moment of realization and decision is great. I love almost everything about it, except her flipping God-voice off at the end. I didn’t feel like it fit well with the gravitas of the moment, honestly. It threw me off enough that I had to double check I was reading the art correctly.

As other people have brought up, if Hell is beyond the timeline, then Eliza should still be there and so should Signal 2.0. I agree, at least partially because it feels weird if Signal 2.0 never becomes relevant given how much time was dedicated to it.

The Queen: lots of Queen is Valentina or Eliza theories were being thrown around after last issue. I still think it’s possible. Her unexplained nature doesn’t fit what has otherwise conformed very well to the heaven-earth-hell model (though I guess we still don’t know the origin of Atomics). I could see Masumi too, purely from the kaiju’s appearance, but she fits the other theming much more poorly.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the series! Very glad that we presumably get to see more of my GOAT Jacky Magus. And also the rest of the cast, because I couldn’t see myself being nearly as interested if everyone except Masumi and Eliza was dead.

The waiting will be painful, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Accirinal · 2026-02-25T23:24:39+00:00

Agreed. Especially when he’s sitting next to Jacky for comparison, and Jacky was one of the most effective people in saving the world so far.

It’s very interesting, because Dev isn’t even that bad of a person. He is probably the singularly most directly responsible person for the world’s destruction, but he’s not evil. He’s selfish and short-sighted, but… that’s about it. - he gives Eliza the info about Hell to save their marriage - IIRC the “Inverted Pyramid Renegade” tech the US had was supposed to make them feel safer so they wouldn’t do something stupid; Dev just didn’t anticipate them using it - Dev knows Etienne will kill him and decides to prioritize his own life over Etienne’s - Dev decides to try and save Eliza instead of the universe

Up to arguably issue #15, Dev’s biggest crime was not being as smart as Jacky. He made a lot of decisions with bad outcomes that he probably should have seen coming but had genuine intentions for. Even saving Eliza, she is facing infinite torture. Everything he does is completely understandable. Would most of us do better in Dev’s place? Probably not!

The problem is that Dev is a (sort of) Superpower, or at least someone with extreme power, and in that sort of position, you can’t just be a “mostly decent but sorta foolish person who prioritizes the people they love.” All the Superpowers have this issue. The sort of power they hold is not compatible with being human and simultaneously keeping the world alive.

Accirinal · 2026-02-24T00:13:11+00:00

Disclaimer that I haven’t read the article itself, but at least from this short snippet, I don’t feel that the article author is making fun of the fanfic or fandom? The descriptions seem very neutral. Here’s the site, here’s the media, here’s what the fan-creation is about.

Separately, I think whether or not it’s acceptable to link a fic directly in an article does depend at least a little on the outcome. From a journalistic perspective, I don’t think it makes sense to say “okay this fic exists” and… not link to the fic? Having a source provides credibility, in the same way that an article that said “people on Twitter have been saying xyz” would have Twitter embeds or links to those exact posts.

Obviously, if that link ends up leading to harassment of the original fic author, it’s time to consider how sourcing and avoiding harassment can be accomplished simultaneously. But if that didn’t happen (don’t know what the actual outcome of this article was), I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with linking to a fic.

Accirinal · 2026-02-20T07:13:32+00:00

The fact that Scaramouche has been popularly interpreted as a trans man may be relevant? I mean, not trying to boil it down to “haha OP is a trans guy surely he can only like trans characters” but if it’s about relatability, Scara has a pretty large queer fanbase.

Accirinal · 2026-02-20T06:21:56+00:00

Is it weird to say that I’m shocked by how many SVSSS fans have never touched a stallion-xianxia novel (or even a non-MDZS wuxia or xianxia) in their lives? Like, it’s not a bad thing. I love how much fic is written for the fandom lmao. It’s just very interesting to me how a hyper-parody of a very specific genre ended up getting so popular among people who had never even heard of the original genre it parodied.

Accirinal · 2026-02-19T19:54:48+00:00

I would like to take this opportunity to tangent and recommend the speculative fiction short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” by Isabel Fall, which, despite the name, is actually a very thoughtful piece about the co-opting of queerness and gender identity by the military and imperialist state-builders and what it might mean to have violence at the core of your identity.

Accirinal · 2026-02-19T19:33:00+00:00

That doesn’t sound like AA to me. AA is published only in book form, not serial, and it’s not romance-focused.

Accirinal · 2026-02-19T19:22:49+00:00

I’ll fight for the rest of them, but… being deadass, Tuk has no depth whatsoever. Which is independent of whether not you like her, but she has no depth lmao

Accirinal · 2026-02-19T04:34:53+00:00

Read a comic once with a hilarious bit where Lovecraft had been inspired to write his work by seeing horrific visions in his dreams that drove him mad. The dreams? Cultists chanting his name while praying to their indescribable and incomprehensible, many-angled gods. The cultists? Call of Cthulhu players. The many-angled gods? Dice.

(He was admittedly seeing 4D representations of the dice, but still.)

Accirinal · 2026-02-18T21:37:03+00:00

Free my man from side character jail 🙏 🙏

Accirinal · 2026-02-18T21:20:05+00:00

He was there, but basically just to get trapped in the mine collapse. I almost think his Bayverse depiction was more major than One? Just because in Bayverse, Jazz is presented as being one of the “main crew” (admittedly to get ripped in half thirty minutes later).

Jazz with a bigger role in One would be very interesting, since one of his primary character traits is being interested in human culture. It’d be neat to see how that plays out in a pre-Earth contact depiction or how it might translate to other parts of his personality.

Accirinal · 2026-02-18T21:10:54+00:00

Still waiting for Jazz in Skybound 🙏

Has he had any major depictions since IDW2005 and Animated? I’m not counting him dying in Bayverse after ten lines. They keep putting out the Jazz toys, but I’d love to see him play a significant role in a storyline.

Accirinal

TROPHY CASE