# 08
[...]
the scene of file island breaking apart is beautifully distressing
[there's a plot where Leomon goes in and out from being possessed by evil forces]
I don't know what else to say about this other than,
the back of my mind is thinking about how ultra series had Leo, and digimon had Leomon, and they actually don't appear to be connected, except that digimon decided to coincidentally come up with the idea that Leomon can't be trusted and can just become a weapon of evil forces [*L]
[*L] context:
it should be better known that Ultraman Leo is a reference to Leon Trotsky - no joke - *but* Pokémon decided for no good reason to create a fire lion that appears to be similarly shaped. (Leo's signature move is a flaming kick) this has led me to joke that Pokémon accidentally created a Communist/Trotskyist pokémon [*L2,*L4,*p]
it's fully possible to create a lion pokémon without that being a possible accusation... Solgaleo is notable for this. but the particular laziness of pyroar's concept uniquely gives it these qualities. [*s,*f]
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# 15
the pagumon aren't inherently bad, but they are bad, and why
i guess it's because they work for Etemon. if they would choose a less evil faction they wouldn't be considered as bad
we do a lot of baking feudalism and warring states periods into fantasy stories. all we can dream of is whether the dukes and earls and barons are good or bad and which one you work for
i think too much about how they probably had to censor "Dukemon" because it sounded too much like fascist Italy
but if so all they did in the censorship was fail to realize that feudalism is simply evil by itself if we want to reasonably call fascism evil. we nearly understand the problem when we portray these regional warlords as evil and heroes overthrowing them, but we fail to understand that fascism wanted not a lot more than to restore characteristics of feudalism and the "evil" of both is inextricably linked
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# 29
[...]
chosen children quickly run away from The State before it's discovered they've been fighting digimon
i feel like when we try to analyze whether superheroes are part of The State, we don't think enough about which State they belong to and and which ones exist
here, it's like they are inside the digimon State administered by mysterious holy forces but outside the earth State
which is to say, under a nationalist logic the digimon war is none of the earth's business at all because it belongs to the digimon world. but of course that's not true at all
i am like. just trying to parse this plot. it really reads as symbolic imagery being used accidentally that carries the baggage from years and years of previous kaiju media
the point of kaiju shows is War Scary and it's strange when you are just trying to live your life and suddenly international war crashes into everybody's country. basically like how the author of _Childhood's End_ said it was really weird to have blimps going over, it didn't feel real, and then he went to write a scifi book
but this situation is strange. it's kind of like another country's civil war crashing into your country. and specifically the civil war of a feudal country that can't get its shit together so all the different warlords are thrashing around in different directions. when the Third World crashes into japan, it's very inconvenient, and people are awfully confused, because they don't understand this feudal catastrophe. but at least they don't resent the digimon world yet, at this time
it's still a really /interesting/ plot point that the digimon world and japan should be two separate "countries", but simply because some kids had their lives disrupted by the digimon war, they now have to fight in the digimon war to help this other country get its shit back together.
this may not be a very unique thing in fiction but it's like, does the real world /ever/ work this way??? is there a metaphor we can pull out of this, or not??
all i know is my favorite part of digimon is when Leomon tries to win the war by mobilizing the humans to annihilate all the digimon while he gives himself the X antibody [*x]
[that is not a real part of digimon]
[*x] surprisingly, "leomon x antibody" actually does exist, though I had never thought to look it up until now [*x1]
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# 34
i am so curious if tailmon is going to end up stuck with hikari [...]
[tailmon, a secretly good digimon, fights against the evil boss digimon vamdemon]
what an amount of revolution against feudal warlords for one show [*]
[*] god like
here is my second really dumb idea
digimon becomes fully self-aware and like the digital world stops having evil warlords and the earth kids have to explain to them the confusing concept that now everybody can just equally be part of the same realm, but now they will each have to figure out how to run society lest the whole thing devolve into another big nasty war between good and evil
even the good digimon are extremely confused by this concept because how can everybody just get along? it's always worked this way. people have never just been able to get along, there's always had to be a team of holy knights that destroy evil people, what would we do without that
basically they are learning what a republic is but with all the more difficult advanced boring politics stuff removed so you aren't actively thinking this is a story about political concepts; all we are left focusing on is a world beyond evil people taking over fiefs and good people standing up and saying 'don't do that' where everyone has to actually learn how to get along but sometimes it's very difficult
this is accidentally beginning to sound like mlp:fim but weirder. whatever
the more i try to describe this the more i think that it could actually work as a concept for a digimon keychain because maybe you actually have to figure out this puzzle of how to get multiple digimon to work together for some reason, and one or two of them is always bad and uncooperative
there could be a gimmick where you could have 3-5 digimon in tabs on one watch OR you could choose to play in co-op with multiple people but you aren't required to
now i'm trying to figure out how to work in confused leomon or "jaggedmon"
i had this image that maybe Jaggedmon had been assigned to lead a group of chosen children, and maybe is successful in that task, they cleanse the digital world of evil at least for the moment
but then at some point Jaggedmon's confused sense of justice becomes a problem in some way
jaggedmon looks like a vague variation on Leomon but more like a buff jaguar and has a blade with some kind of jagged crack or flaw in it - hence the name - as well as fracture shapes on its body. it wears a rose, and maybe has a special move called Brutus Javelin where it throws a simple thorn-like lance
i also immediately imagine along with Jaggedmon that we need a "banchou" character to oppose jaggedmon's bullshit - but it shouldn't be leomon or jaggedmon again, so it should be like, BanchoTaomon or BanchoGreymon or something. some other normally good/Vaccine digimon that is now "/bad/".
you know what. hell. we could just have a big handful of new "Bancho" digimon for no good reason at all. that would be weirdly fun
[edit:]
yeah. like. they build their new republican digimon world where everybody will live in harmony
and then one day Jaggedmon is really upset
just like on this first show he acts up and bursts into a bit of a whining fit, like, I don't like this, it's not natural, good and bad digimon can never get along. but i do have some ideas for how to create a better world
then he proceeds to assemble a group of followers that is precisely half traditionally good digimon and half traditionally evil digimon. it is entirely confusing how his version of things will be any better than what's been already achieved
hero 1: but if jaggedmon doesn't want to work with evil digimon, why has he recruited half evil ones?
hero 2: i don't know, nothing he does makes any sense
hero 3: jaggedmon, if you hate good and evil digimon trying to work together, why and how have you done it so effectively
jaggedmon: uh
i think the idea is kind of that eventually digimon no longer have the Virus / Data / Vaccine attributes and they are transformed to new kinds of digimon, which may be similarly simple but are not so obviously Good/Evil.
ideally you'd actually get a slightly new design for all the digimon, but probably less dramatic than the X antibody designs and not different enough to merit a new LCD sprite; it would just be kind of like this continuity has its own aesthetic but there are strong lore reasons for it.
but in any case, jaggedmon had no idea whatsoever that this was what was supposed to happen or how to achieve it. the heroes have to figure it out and show him. when probably it dawns on him, oh, oh man, i was so stupid. he is not as unreasonable as his real-world inspirations.
but the heroes are pretty wary of letting him lead the transformation. they know he has a flawed understanding of many things, though they are conflicted due to the fact he really did successfully lead the chosen children back when; he does have skills and is not truly a bad digimon. maybe they eventually decide he is actually allowed to help, but he can only do it along with the supervision of digimon who understand stuff better.
hmmm there could be like, crests or digimentals or something like that but half of them sound good and half of them sound bad but ultimately they are all good if you use them right and bad if you use them wrong
[edit:]
* maybe at the very end jaggedmon reverts to a digi-egg (could just be overexertion and not intentionally slaying him or anything) and actually becomes somebody's companion digimon
* "I shouldn't be called a Virus! what harm have I ever caused?" *the kids look at each other doubtfully*
* i am half tempted to name a new mechanic called Errors which is the new representation of 'bad' choices. intended as a simple pun on computer errors and 'user errors' of using a computer program the wrong way. but i don't know whether that's making the symbolism too overt or not.
* I guess an alternative name is segfaults. there could be the term "Segments" and a segfault could be stepping out of rules of how Segments are supposed to work. it's a bit technical-sounding but also straightforward enough. also, jokingly shortening them to "faults" and saying jaggedmon "has faults" is pretty funny
* jaggedmon: [showing on handy chart] "we have broken out of the cycle of Virus, Data, and Vaccine... and now, we are all Free!" [*af]
=> https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraman_Leo_(series) *L2. Ultraman Leo ;
=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism *L4. Trotskyism ;
=> https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pyroar *p. Pyroar ;
=> https://teddit.net/r/pokemon/comments/7izfff/why_have_we_had_so_many_firefighting_starters/ *f. Why have we had so many Fire/Fighting starters? ;
=> https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Solgaleo *s. Solgaleo ;
;
=> https://wikimon.net/Leomon_(X-Antibody) *x1. Leomon (X-Antibody) ;
=> https://wikimon.net/Attribute *af. Attribute / Free ;
;
:: t. 2023-02-27T10:36:40Z
:: cr. 2023-02-27T10:36:39Z
:: ar. 2023-03-05T10:59:43Z
:: t. jaggedmon
:: t. 1677526600
