Flash Man03

He fell first but she fell harder

Idk, Frak sets a pretty high bar for how abruptly and how completely he likes the girl he likes. He has fallen, on his face, repeatedly, extremely hard for this ship. It would be difficult to top- but I do think it would be unsatisfying if Sora didn't fall equally hard.

+ extra

In a lot of media, you'll see two characters be put together where one character is mentally ill and the other has to "save" the mentally ill character. It's stupid, especially because you can't really save someone from mental illness unless they want to be saved. Lloyd and Harumi on the other hand are both mentally ill, in different ways. There is no "one character has to save the other" hell, it's even made into a plot point. Lloyd WANTS to save Harumi, he does, but all of his efforts fall flat because she does not want to be saved. And In the end In crystalized, Harumi saved herself. She made the choice to want to be better by herself, for herself. Lloyd had nothing to do with it, he was just waiting for her to come to that conclusion. He never gave up on her, and he stood there for her, but Harumi saved herself.

That or take they're energy for example: they match each others freak. Harumi does something insane like resurrect Lord Garmadon from the grave as a heartless oni, takes over Ninjago. Lloyd jumps off a monorail or whatever that thing was, starts a revolution. Insane plan after insane plan. Harumi is crushed from a building, Lloyd immediately starts looking for her but she's not there cause she was resurrected by the fucking overlord and now works for him, and when she kidnaps Lloyd she's like "let's see your inner oni". Lloyd gets kidnapped and decides they're BOTH jumping off this floating oni temple. In primeval's eye, instead of making use of their time and trying to get the other out of the way, they just fucking bicker like an old married couple.

Not to be anti-serpentine or anything, but Frak's dad Reginald talking about how hard he had it because of snake racism is actually crazy when you consider that he would have been alive and a part of the constrictai tribe that wanted to destroy all humanity. Like, my guy, you were part of the problem. They don't like you because you wanted them all dead by the hands of an accident evil snake monster that killed lots of people less than a decade ago. Let's be real here.

And yeah we can talk about the comics and the reveal that the serpentine weren't actually evil and both sides were manipulated and deceived by Chen and maybe their anger at being banished is a little justified, but you still don't get to attempt to irradiate the other side completely, fail, then try play the victim when they're mad at you for it.

Also the timeline doesn't really make any sense, because if we assume it's been about 10-12 years from the pilots to dr s4, and I think it was confirmed that Frak was born after s1 (he would have to be because his parents are from different tribes), then that would make him only about 10-11 years old, which I really don't think he is supposed to be. UNLESS we follow the theory I've seen about serpentine aging quickly until a certain point, then aging like humans (a theory that started around Skales Jr. looking and acting like a 5 -7 year old when only a year or two had passed from the earliest point he could have been born).

It's also not fair to assume that, just because he's a serpentine, Reginald "wanted all humans dead" back in season 1. We don't know if he participated in those events. Not to mention, discrimination against serpentine clearly continued even after the events of season 1 and 2, based on the lack of integration and how Reginald spoke about back then.

I believe Frak could have been born prior to s1. Yes, the serpentine tribes were entombed, but I don't believe that means that *all serpentine* were entombed. Some of them were, but the majority of the serpentine were just living in hiding from the humans. Further, I believe that the entombed serpentine tribes solely consisted of the serpentine's soldiers. This is evidenced by the following facts:

All of the imprisoned serpentine had special abilities, wheras other serpentine we've met, including Mambo, Reginald, and Aspheera, do not display such abilities.

No pink Hypnobrai were present in the tombs, potentially indicating that no women were present in the Hypnobrai tomb, but it's possible not all Hypnobrai present that way.

We have seen serpentine that do not physically allign with any of the entombed tribes.

For a second here I was kind of hoping we'd see Sora with her hair down.

When Frak says he wants to leave his dad problems at the tree of burdens, I really wanted Sora to reach back to her ponytail and remove the ribbon. With her hair falling loosely over her shoulders, she would quietly pass it to Frak, and he would add it to a branch.

Something to symbolize both of their dysfunctional families. Sora's parents, Frak's dad, their own loneliness and the abuse they've suffered, tied together in a bow of magenta flowers.

Imagine Lloyd gets in trouble fighting the villain d'jour and gets rescued by bikers with a spider logo. And then the head biker uses powers of destruction, and Lloyd is like "Father?" and they take off their helmet and it's Harumi?!

After the merge she reforged her gang as like a force of peacekeeping in the Merged Lands, and she reunited with Ultra Violet, and Kilo, and they build a Mr. G, to replace Mr. F, who replaced Mr. E. They're one happy family again.

Maybe she's even like a Lady Eboshi figure, taking in survivors and building a community out of it. And maybe she's actually planning to doublecross Lloyd for Lord Ras, or another influencial villain, in order to protect that community.

But he doesn't know that (that's a lie he lets her believe, of course he knows that), so they spend a few days together. He sees his dad there, retired, and he's like "What gives?!"

"Well, I told you I swore off violence."

"So you gave your crazy destructive powers to one of the most violent people in Ninjago?!"

"Well, I couldn't pass them to you, and she asked..."

Lloyd is absolutely livid with his stupid evil dad. His dad is too busy tending to his ferns, and being a good grandma to a bunch of orphaned children who like to play pretend ninja with him to care.

Arin and Sora can be there, Sora is super confused, Arin is super suspicious. He can explain to her that The Quiet One is, like, the Green Ninja's archnemesis. And Sora is like "They look more like they're flirting to me."

"That's how she gets in his head! Lloyd doesn't think clearly when it comes to this lady, we need to protect him for him!"

But Sora is already enamoured by this cool biker lady, who kicks ass, and is a leader of a whole village, and a runaway princess, and wants to teach her cool attacks.

And then Harumi gets through to Arin, by relating to losing their parents, and then Arin is conflicted and doesn't know what to think.

"See? Told you! She gets in your head."

Lloyd and Harumi can have a sparring match, and Lloyd tries to beat her like he did his dad, by not fighting, but she goads him into attacking, the professional ragebaiter that she is, and she's the one who uses the Way of the Silent Fist on him, until she's got him pressed to the mat with her foot, and they're breathing heavily, and staring into each other's eyes, and then they both blush and look away.

They have a round two, and Lloyd tries to use spinjitsu, only for her to smirk and shatterspin him. And he's horrified. How?! Why?!

"Your father taught me. It's an ancient dark form of spinjit—"

"I know what it is!"

Is she stupid?! Doesn't she know that shatterspin shatters the goodness in you? And Harumi just smiles and shrugs "What goodness?"

Her goodness died with her parents. The Shatterspin doesn't change her at all.

And it's good that she knows it. The Shatterspin is what eventually helps them beat the bad guy when she realizes, to her surprise, she is not willing to trade Lloyd for her people.

She's not his enemy, but she hasn't changed fundamentally. She tells Lloyd there is still so much anger in her. This is who she is meant to be. This is why she's the perfect Elemental Master of Destruction, why she mastered Shatterspin so well. Why Lord Garmadon is such an awful master for him, but such a perfect master for her.

For his part, he doesn't believe her goodness died with her parents. He gestures at her village, at all the good she's done. Maybe they can learn to work together? In the future, the ninja might need all the allies they can get. Maybe someday, she could come to the monastery, and he could teach her to find inner peace.

"Are you saying you found yours?" she asks him.

He looks at her, in the setting sun.

"I'm still learning."

... that Wu caused the Merge. She'd be absolutely livid.

"I'd like to believe he had a good reason!"

And she's smiling, passive aggressively.

"alrighty we finished planning out lloyds whispering woods arc. good job team!"

"uh... sir?"

"what?"

"lloyd just drank tomorrows tea and it caused all of our scrolls about the whispering woods arc to go blank"