THINGS I REALLY WISH GARM HAD THE BRAINCELLS TO WISH FOR USING THE MEGA WEAPON...

This part though... This. Freaking. Part.

Imagine Garmadon and Lloyd fighting off droves of Vengestone Warriors, and Lloyd freezes in place upon watching his father fight, remembering how he was thrown around and grabbed and beaten and bruised by his father before, and he doesn't move because he's too terrified of having to work with the man who almost killed him multiple times. A Vengestone Warrior creeps up on Lloyd and Garmadon takes it out, which snaps Lloyd back to reality and they fight more and more of the VS Warriors.

Gotta love the fact this is Lego's way of saying think twice before getting a tattoo.

How did hellspawn react to Lloyd Oni form?

She's just...frozen. There's no way that thing attacking the Overlord is her dad even though she just saw him turn into it, right?

Sure, she's seen him angry before. She's seen him frustrated — she's seen him annoyed on several occasions. But she's never once seen the rage. Not from him. That's never been him.

Yet, it currently is now. And it's... quite a sight.

She ends up seeing it again after crystalized— apparently, one of her grandfather's awkward attempts to mend things with her dad just happens to be helping him further explore and control his Oni side. If Lloyd had his way he'd pull himself as far as possible from that part of himself and never think of it again, but Wu makes him do it with a "Face your fear before it faces you", a.k.a another dose of hated wisdom no one asked for.

In the end, he's standing in the courtyard with the father who made the fucked move of faking his death, and is now letting him help him.

And of course, there just has to be a whole crowd secretly watching even though he'd very much like it if they minded their own businesses but in his experience, nothing ever goes his way.

At some point, Garmadon voices his curious thoughts of whether hellspawn has an Oni form. Lloyd adamantly told him there's no way in hell he's dragging her into this and Garmadon kept quiet...for now.

One night, Lloyd got really violent—apparently Lord G pissed him off so horribly just to get him to turn into an Oni and as a result, he ended up destroying most of the courtyard while attacking Garmadon. His friends tried to step in to get him under control but that didn't work—nothing worked until hellspawn called him fearfully causing him to suddenly stop what he was doing and look at her. Realizing she's genuinely afraid of him, Lloyd turns back.

But as time passed, Lloyd started getting more in control of his Oni form to the point he has no problem whatsoever with walking around the monastery in it. Oni are a LOT more overprotective over their young—which is annoying to hellspawn but his fur and horns are nice.

My biggest problem with Ninjago’s writing is how meaningless death and sacrifice are.

The first major character death is Zane’s sacrifice, which is still cited as one of the saddest Ninjago moments, because it was expected that he had died at that moment and the audience doesn’t go into the sacrifice the idea of him coming back. Even afterwards, there’s no strong indication that he’s going to be completely remade and rejoin the ninja team— he lives on, but differently.

Next season, Zane is remade and rejoins the team. The idea of nindroids coming back from the dead is introduced to the audience and the stakes of life-threatening situations are removed for Zane— as long as technology exists, he can be remade.

At the end of Possession, Morro sacrifices himself. This “death” (really his second death) is portrayed as final and irreversible. The quote about Wu only being able to save those who want to be saved seals it: Morro is going and he doesn’t want to come back.

Morro is brought back from the dead for Day of the Departed.

Also, Cole is made into a ghost, which is initially portrayed as something permanent, but Day of the Departed makes what reads like a few quick excuses and undoes it. Between Morro and Cole, it is demonstrated that death is not permanent for ghosts.

At the end of Possession, Garmadon sinks with the Preeminent. He passes on his leadership, lessons, and robes to Lloyd and they sail away. Lloyd goes on to honour his father’s memory and become the leader Ninjago needs.

Garmadon is brought back by Harumi, just as Lloyd has moved on. He demonstrates that death is not permanent for Oni.

In Skybound, Nya is killed, but Jay’s wish undoes the events of the season brings her back to life.

When Cole falls from the Bounty in March of the Oni, he somehow defies the properties of the Oni cloud and returns to the ninja. The show doesn’t even elaborate on that.

Lloyd is crushed in the battle at the end of March of the Oni and meets the FSM, who brings him back.

Prime Empire deaths are reversed at the end of the season.

Harumi, Vangelis, and Aspheera are clearly defeated and Harumi’s “death” was read as heavily implied.

They return, as well as Garmadon, for Crystallised.

Nya sacrifices herself and turns, irreversibly, into the ocean in Seabound. She also returns in her normal form for Crystallised.

Overall, the way the series repeatedly refuses to make character death and character sacrifice meaningful and give these things real, appropriately far-reaching consequences creates a mindset of “oh, this character is dying. They’ll be back.” and makes it difficult to convey the full emotional impact of a beloved major character giving their life in the pursuit of their goals because there’s a heavy precedent of characters almost immediately having their death reversed. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that keeping something like this up will get boring after a few seasons (I acknowledge that Ninjago is ultimately just 22-minute advertisements for Lego toys, but I think I can still care about the plot).

It’s also not just that the characters are immediately brought back, it’s that their death has absolutely no effect on the plot moving forward other than “Ninjago wasn’t destroyed last season”. Sure, Zane is silver sometimes and Cole briefly had a scar, but the characters don’t mention that they literally died (or equivalent), it has no psychological effects*, it doesn’t lead into the next season’s plot points, and it doesn’t affect the narrative at all. Each season that was resolved with a character sacrifice or each arc that ended in a character death could very easily have been resolved any other way without significantly altering the plot in the long run.

*I acknowledge that Ninjago is for kids, but if Ninjago can have fantasy violence, it can have fantasy consequences of violence. I fully believe that there is a way to discuss mental health in an age-appropriate way if a writer wants to put in the effort.

There’s another post to be made about how Ninjago handles side characters’ achievements in this exact same way.

100% convinced that this is what happens whenever some fan or reporter starts talking about Lloyd⬇

Some kid: [pointing at Lloyd] Wow! The green ninja!

Kid #2: I bet he's not scared of anything

Kai: [immediately seizing the chance to embarrass his little brother] Hey, kids. You wanna hear about the time the green ninja blew up all the light bulbs in the monastery because he saw a ball of lint that he thought was a spider?

-

Random lady: [to her kid] You know, I bet the green ninja always did HIS homework

Cole: [coming up behind the lady] Actually, the green ninja is a middle school drop out. Got kicked out actually. He also ran away from his school a bunch of times. Can't do a lick of algebra. Oh! He also used to hid whenever he was supposed to be doing school work, and-

-

[In an interview]

Reporter: [to Lloyd] You being the leader of such an important team must require you to maintain a high level of maturity-

The rest of the ninja: [laughing histarically] "HiGh LeVeLs oF mAtUrItY"

Jay: HA! You're talking about the same guy who once ate a bowl of sour gummy worms with chopsticks and called it dinner! [stars laughing again]

Nya: He once gave himself a black eye when he passed out and fell face first on the table at breakfast. All because he stayed up the night before playing video games

Zane: [nodding along to Nya] It was last week in fact

Incorrect Quotes #1

Jay: *wakes up in the morning, goes to the kitchen and stares at the coffee pot*

Jay: Is everyone done with this?

Nya: I think so, why?

Jay: Good, I need a pick-me-up. *goes to the fridge and grabs the last bottle of Zane's cooking wine*

Zane: Jay, I need that for-

Jay: *pours all the wine into the leftover coffee and swirls the pot to mix it*

Jay: *stares at the rest of the team in the living room and CHUGS the pot in one go*

Cole:

Lloyd:

Nya:

Zane:

Pixal:

Master Wu:

Kai: Dude what the fuck it's not even nine-

Jay: Time is a construct we created to torture ourselves and life is a prison from which there is no escape. Suffering is the universe's only constant, nothing else matters.

The Ninja:

Jay: Oh! Zane made waffles? Why didn't you guys tell me?

I think I'm gonna start crying at how freaking many there are. 😭

Works In Pain:

Jaded Scarlet

Fragments of You

Hello Hiroshi

The Realm of Absolute Madness

An Underworldly Visit

Parchment

Please... Just Kill Me (for the love of God, don't ask me why my sleep-deprived brain decided to name it tHis)

Gone In Green

Substitution

On A Wish & A Memory

You Could Stay

Of Pencils & Paintbrushes

Wilted

Borg's Fault At Its Finest (wHY did I name it this - what the heck was I on six months ago-)

"And then tag as many people as you have WIPS" : impossible

@httydbooks-doodler @fandomhoppingtrash @sunnylighter @northpen

W I P S

Got tagged by @manjirian !! Holy h e c k. I don't name my art stuff so this is gonna look wtf 😭 there's no description at all lmao-

(also most of these are probably WIPs that I'm never going to finish XD)

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs. I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? DnD campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!!  

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Take your pick 😭

Tagging: @leesbian42 @justeliiijah @emisnt2 @lalu-garmadon @namelysane @astrobabe146 and anyone else who wants to do this cuz i can't remember people rn XD

Harumi, take notes 😭

I started therapy today and I get into how my parents died and he says, “let me guess, great devourer?”

He was right but he didn’t HAVE to say it