Shoutout To The Time I Was A Trump Supporter In 2016 And 15ish-yr Old Me Was Given VIP Seats To A Trump

it's actually confuzzling me rn, what that average slugterran knows.

Eli knew the deep caverns, but not dark bane specifically, or that dark water exists. Kord talks about dark water like it's something trolls have stories about, but not much experience with. and the Shane's have a drop for the chasm that leads to the portal from what lies beneath, which feels overkill in terms of hiding their stuff. Unless:

maybe they know of the deep caverns, but it's more of a legend that's considered probably true to people, like dark water. Like they know there's a hell down there, but till...recent history...no one went down there, so who knows what was down there? And the Shane's were fine with that very shallow understanding.

this assumption is also helped by the common misconception of the shadow clan. Slugterra society's view of them is based on legend, even though they are easier to see, and definitely believed to be real. Maybe slugterrans know it very basically as "the evil ppl in hell and the evil shadow clan fought like a trillion years ago, ooo scary", and only a few experts know the truth (blakk reading the sacred texts possibly depicting this history comes to mind).

...I'm sure I'm missing a line in some early episode that clears things up, but the show actually does a decent job of giving us the smallest possible clues ever and keeping this fandom alive on 40% "WAIT I JUST REALIZED" moments, so I'd love to hear any scenes you all remember that can help this discussion

Why did it take 4 rewatches of s1 to realize Eli says "if blakk has buisness w the deep caverns we don't know what else can can do" at the end of the deadweed episode?

meaning, will ACTUALLY told him about the deep caverns?!?!? And knew the whole time?!?

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

Eli Shane and Junjie be like

staying strong

okay, I have a hot take that might get me on thin ice.

I like that many of our cool characters aren't reoccurring.

like, it's always felt a bit cheap in a lot of media, that despite a fictional world claiming that the world is so BIG and VAST, all the characters we run into are "important". It's like the skywalker effect in Star Wars - like, one family and one group of acquaintances don't run the show. It makes the work feel small. And don't get me wrong, there's great writing to be had w knowing all the network of important characters to a worlds lore! But in a show like Slugterra, which is decently long but isn't the length of one piece, everyone reoccurring feels hollow to me. I LIKE that Vance is probably important and doing things - or shows to not do anything idk - off screen. I like how we see other slingers only when it's convenient for them - they have lives outside the blakk battles. I like how there's not just 20 important people in Slugterra - there's ALOT of interesting people, and whenever we watch an episode, it's usually someone new showing up, expanding the lore w their prescence then going back to live the lives we headcanon over.

I'm showing a friend of mine the show, and she said something interesting around ep 8: "I never know what's gonna happen in this show." Like, TRUE! We know the gang will be involved, but otherwise, we're uncovering lore, and in that search and those fights, we could run into ANYONE. It's not my hero academia: oh it's the tournament arc, time to see this group of characters. It's not a sitcom - everyone is reoccurring and the wider world doesn't exist. It's a lore expansive universe.

of course we are going to see some acquaintances once or twice, then never again. It's like real life! Which just makes those we keep close that much more important and impactful. Like remember - friend or foe, there's only been 4 characters who CHOSE to not vanish from Eli's life once their buisness in that cavern or tournament was over. I like that. I like that feeling that there's a lot of cool people in the world, and you don't see most of them, but you see as many as you can - and some will even choose, amongst all the other races and battles and underground circuits, to stay by you.

I think we should have seen those characters more - but perhaps doing their own thing, or seeking the Shane out in particular, hence them being plot important. And I think, to not ruin the worldly effect, this would have to be done sparingly, over a long period of time. Slugterra doesn't have that, so...I'm okay, with the canon experience.

I kinda wish Dana was more included. A lot of cool characters just show up for a tiny amount of time and dip forever which is a shame. It’d be cool to see a side plot where she slowly unravels the secrets will refused to tell her dad by snooping on Eli or something

Dana

Twist

Mario

Vance

And like a bunch of other ppl I can't name rn

Are all individuals that should have been seen more.

Honestly yeah, getting to see Dana more would have been awesome, especially if she happened to run into the Gang while they were Secret hunting leading to fun shenanigans

Side plot regarding any of the side characters would have been amazing i wish they pulled a Storm Hawks, and by that I mean have an episode just decided to the Villains/side characters and what they get up too while the Heros are off doing who knows what.

But with such a large cast of characters, it's inevitable some get lost or underutilized, unfortunately.

Especially those who were created to just fill a serten role like Vance or Mario.

Not everyone can be a C.C. fitting whatever role the narrative demands.

pre ghoul blakk in some god awful engineering shirts + a bonus. shirt transcript under the cut if you can't read them.

shirts are in order: i'm into plants (with a nuclear symbol) engineering works engi-neering my limit i don't suffer from insanity. i enjoy every minute of it.

welcome back, everyone!

Driving 10 hours tomorrow, let's cope by discussing Ghoul From Beyond

specifically, when the Goon implies Eli's a better host than Junjie.

now, this doesn't make much sense at first. Junjie is the more experienced fighter. He has wrist blasters. He knew a lot about the eastern caverns and thus had the information to steal about how to conquer them. But then...

and this is what got me to making this post. Junjie is super powerful and knows those caverns, so he was a "good host" and all. But Junjies main source of slugslinging proficiency is actually his Slug-Fu.

Something we don't see the Goon be able to do. Is it because it's impractical as he's mind controlling? Or that his chi isn't powerful enough? Possibly. I don't think the goon is able to do slug-fu, I think we would have seen him use it by now if they did. But the goon obviously didn't need it to cause damage to the east.

Now, into the west. Eli's powers were never spiritual or anything like that, they were all tech based. Blasters, mechs, slug biology...they amped those up for the war with Blakk. I think megamorphs were a thing in the east, but could only be made and controlled using blasters/experienced slingers (or at least that's what I'm rolling with, since it is admittedly hard to excuse the show for being so mute about the blaster tech in the east). so the goon controlled Eli and his ghouled bandoleer and shot his super good blaster and megamorphs and was like "omg, this champion has power I can more easily exploit! Score!"

and then the goon in ROTE is like "nah wills better, he's got Eli's blaster and junjie's level of knowledge about these caverns, this one's my fav"

and, onfg what would the scene if Will getting gooned looked like, what did his head look like, how did the goon taunt him, especially after meeting his son and Will not knowing anything about what's happened since he got sent to hell, OMFG DAMN IT ANOTHER PLOT BUNNY-

I love the little details of the show lmaoooo

I was just thinking about this if you had rewritten Slugterra accession what would you do differently? Would you bring back Dr.Blakk as the main antagonist? Or would you bring in a new villain for the Shane gang to go up against? Let me know what you think.

soory yall ive been so busyyyy BUT

Blakk would have a lasting effect, but he would not be the main antagonist. at least not for a while. cause i think this show could have been so loooooooong....id introduce blakk in like season 7 lol. honestly, slugterra has a rich tapestry of small compelling villains, with some being more important than others depending on their alliances. i'd bring back the old classics (saturday, cc, twist, maurice, blite, you name it) and also add new players - ones that grew undr blakk's shadow, ones that were released/escaped from prison for some reason, ones that hid to wait out blakk's plans and now finally feel ready to make their debut, or even some legendary evil ppl that in age have come to terrorize one cavern and, compacent, their terror hasn't been on wider slugterra's radar. and hell, it could be people killing, or controlling, but it could also be small stuff again, like a kid abusing slugs, or other implicited abusive stuff going on (cause kid show, but cmonnnn, its slugterra, they are so good at being like "yes ur honor this dude was mind controlled for 20 years and we simply let the audience look into the explicit behaviors that we animated for him afterwards" they could so do that w harsher subjects)

i would do...everything different. keep the gang together. have everyone - especially eli - grapple with the concept of how to move forward and make slugterra better - stopping those slug markets and whatnot - while also contending with their trust issues (and possible depression, in elis case) after tad. out with the universal slug or whatever, bring in wtf dana's been doing with the shadow walker - maybe shes been exploring shadow clan territory in the south and calls the shane gang when she finds new shane secrets/treasure. maybe his could be a segmented like a show - some episodes are the gang trying to fight crime but also help people out, supporting programs that make the world better, and the other half is involving a tense plotline with the shadow clan about uncovering the stuff dana found (maybe a secret passage to the back end of the deep caverns, in a cavern that's thin enough to where the shadow walker could just barely manage to take a traveler to the other side). In both plots, old and new characters get introduced and recontextualized in the absence of Blakk, especially Twist, who would probably come back in the context of "hey, why not help out the gang covertly into finding will and rescuing him so i can kill him or something!", getting more evil from his time and trauma w blakk but then as eli's hero worship of the shanes and will decays further it prompts him to come back to the good side?

That was a rant but yeah - came up w that on the fly. But I actally wrote a little of a story involving after ItS - one called "I'm sorry, I dont know what the moon looks like tonight", whose later scenes take place after ItS, and TEAL "To End A Legacy" (which is my first slgterra fanfic) where i continued the slugterra plot....in a really dark way...and IM GONNA FINISH IT 2025 IS THE YEAR I FINISH THINGS I SWEAR-

find me on ao3 at Mister Rose, i havent done stuff in a little bit but ill come back i always do (post 2017)

but!!! That doesn't work either!!! The southern caverns are the hottest; and by there name, there where Antarctica should be? The magma caverns could be anywhere. The eastern caverns (many of them more northern) are rocky, the cold precipitation is not a thing there, and therefore (besides chillborne) we lose an indicator. and worst of all, we see from eps like the slug race and that one ep w halling blakk in a trailer that entrances to caverns can be random and have COMPLETELY different geography to one another - despite being right next door. I contribute this to different slug energy and human interference. But we can't even rely on surface geography 😭

memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made

okay I understand this is my really niche interests coming together and it's just me

but I REALLY wanna write a slugterra fic someday where Annie Oakley is relevant because she's my hero and idk there's a lot of parallels of what her real life was like to the situation in slugterra and i love her she is my queen and i want more ppl to know about her

but if I never do, please, ppl, READ THE ANNIE OAKLEY WIKI PAGE I LOVE HER AND YOU WILL TOO

like I'm imagining Eli just being like "oh yeah Annie Oakley! by the time she was my age her dad died when she was eight and she hunted for a living and used her skill to join a circus-like act to flee from the slavery her mom accidentally sold her into, and used her quickly made fame and talent to pay for her family's mortgage, and then her, her Irish husband (though they read like an aspec couple), her adopted Native American chief father (the one who led the last major Native American uprising in the US, yeah, THAT ONE), and all her homies spent their lives teaching marksmanship to a reported over 15000 woman and fought for the suffragettes and almost killed Wilhelm (this would have stopped WW1) and basically chilled out their whole lives while also being oddly intertwined in American politics. Plus she had a rival in the circus troop who also hated her guts for no reason! But Annie was a better shot so everyone took her side. So yeah she's a bit inspirational to me"

but that doesn't read like fanfiction it reads like plagiarism of the wiki page! I just wanna insert all the things I love into my art I'm so FUSTRATED THIS SHOULD BE WORKABLE INTO A STORY. Any plot bunnies are appreciated.

before there was slugterras Wild West and Eli Shane, there was the American Wild West and Annie Oakley :)