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Cake day: March 7th, 2025

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  • I think the possible motivations/reasons behind this prolonged effort could be read in a number of ways tbh.

    Scenario 1: they simply haven’t played all their cards yet.

    This is, in my opinion, the least likely on its own because it was made clear early on that Putin intended for this to be a quick operation. It only undermines his perceived power to say this and then choose to feign weakness. Compound it with either or both of the following, though, and it does start to seem like a picture is coming together…

    Scenario 2: putin is not acting on reason.

    There are rumors that he is terminally ill and acting on a desire to shore up his legacy before dying, leading to frantic miscalculations. Who knows if the rumor is true, but, given his age and the commonality of mortality, I could be convinced. He’s clearly got the ego necessary to fall into this sort of thought if circumstances gave a little nudge and securing Ukraine as a Russian territory would probably do wonders for a fragile pride like his.

    Scenario 3: the invasion of Ukraine is not the actual point of this operation.

    With the Kremlin’s well known affinity for espionage and psyop tactics, this one seems the most likely to me. I won’t pretend to know what the actual goal beyond control would be here, but it would never surprise me to learn that they have done one thing 100% in order to set up or hide another. From wars, to negotiations, to tactical games; controlling where the opposition looks, or further, what they think of when they see it, is often a key aspect of securing a win condition.

    Their wheels have been turning toward toppling their fellow contenders for the title of #1 world power for a long time now, and Putin seems real ready for something to budge. Either he is a mad fool, lashing out at the world to appease his ego, or he is playing a devious long game and aiming for something bigger than he is letting on. Whatever the cause and whatever else he’s still got up his sleeve, it seems very likely that he is confident in the cards he has yet to play. If he doesn’t secure that legacy and he’s on his way out anyway, why would he care if he permanently blacks the skies with nuclear war? I wouldn’t put it past him to hold his confidence up on this final “fuck every fucking one of you” to the world.

    But at the same time, I’m a legitimate dumdum so idk whatever. Just like people obsess over ww2 these days, people are gonna go nuts over this era someday soon tho. I’d bet on that












  • Jsyk, the androids don’t have infinite power. This idea comes from a mistranslation and it’s actually that they always function at maximum power with deep reserves rather than having an endless supply of ki.

    Agreed on the rest though. They are not comparable. My true point was that human is human. They are all human in different ways and to deny that just because some of them aren’t fully human reminds me of blockhead ideas about race and race mixing. Saiyans and androids are on another level altogether though and that’s hard to deny.

    And I would 100% buy that Toriyama forgot about Tien just like he forgot about Launch lol. It was kind of a running pattern in his career to forget minor details and whole-ass characters here and there



  • I’d say that going Super saiyan is definitely cheating. Having the ability, not so much.

    And jsyk, according to Toriyama, Pan is supposed to have around the same potential as Gohan, if not even greater, but with Goku’s instincts and tenacity. This means that, except for maybe a fully trained Broly, she has the potential to be the strongest saiyan in the series, so of all the mixed species characters you could pick, she might be the worst possible example lol. It’s more word of God than it is hard canon since Tori never got around to showing us her as an adult, but still.

    I think Krillin would whoop base Goten 1v1 tho tbh. Obviously not with raw power, but K-man has decades of experience on the lad and, as far as saiyans go, he seems to be leagues behind everyone else in battle iq/interest in improving.


  • Maybe. I’m pretty sure Tien mopped the floor with him in DB, but that was a long time ago. I don’t think either of them have enough feats in Super to definitively say who would win, but Tien is consistantly more dedicated to training and has an even trickier arsenal of techniques, so I’d put my money that ways.

    And being half human is still being human. That’s genetic diversity, which is not cheating.