Topic Meme: Day 7
Jan. 7th, 2014 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pockysquirrel How did I go an entire year on DW without my "marry a fish" icon?!
Anyhoot,rivulet027 requested that I write about why Billy is my favorite, and my headcanon pertaining to him. And by a wonderful bit of serendipity, it is also David Yost's birthday!
If we really want to get technical, I've already written the comprehensive "Why BIlly is my favorite ever and means the world to me" post, after NPS Live happened. But that was needlessly angsty and emotional, and this is meant to be a joyous occasion. So let's just go down the list instead, shall we?
Top Ten Reasons (in no particular order) why Billy is Awesome:
1) He is ridiculously attractive and I still have the same massive fangirl crush on him now that I did 20 years ago.
2) His vocabulary. As a kid who was talking about pterodactyls and aneurysms before I hit kindergarten, and who still gets looked at askance for my choice of words from time to time, I dig that there's a character out there who talks like I do. And as a kid it always made me feel special when I knew what he was talking about without the benefit of a Trini translation.
3) His story arc shows that with enough practice and self-discipline, a physically awkward person can become much more athletically adept.
4) His story arc shows that it's possible to become 'cooler' and more confident without having to change who you are or pretend to be something you're not.
5) He's so damned useful. He's so useful, he's forever saving the day in episodes that aren't even about him. He's so useful, the Machine Empire labeled him a threat and kept trying to off him even when he didn't have powers anymore!
6) He developed into a competent leader and was really the one holding the team together during MMAR.
7) Not only did he pass the "face your fears and overcome them" episode with flying colors, he took it to the nth degree when he moved to a planet inhabited entirely by the thing he used to be afraid of.
8) Despite being "the nerd' of the show, he got more dates than any of his teammates. Ever.
9) Half the iconic tech on the show was stuff he built, not stuff they got from Zordon. Wrist communicators? Billy. The Radbug? Billy. And you can't tell me he had no part in creating the Turbo powers. You just can't.
10) He said early on in the series that he had always dreamed of traveling in space, and in the end, he got his wish. It might have been the shittiest sendoff ever, but he got his wish.
And since it's David Yost's birthday...
Top Ten Reasons (in no particular order) Why David Yost is Awesome:
1) He gives amazing hugs.
2) He is super nice to his fans, and appreciates the impact Billy has made on people's lives.
3) It took a fuck ton of courage to finally come out about what happened to him while he was filming MMPR, and he has just been a class act about the whole thing.
4) And he does not suffer haters. At all.
5) And those NOH8 photos he did are adorable!
6) His Tweets are pure gold. He is definitely one of the best things on my feed every day. Not only did he subtly flip the bird to Saban when they asked him to do a cameo in Megaforce, he CRITIQUED THE GRAMMAR IN THE EMAIL THEY SENT HIM. And all in 140 characters.
7) He vacations in Cape Cod! That shows good taste!
8) How close he was IRL with Thuy Trang and how much he clearly still misses her.
9) He hangs out in Amy Jo Johnson's house and derps about like he lives there.
10) He is now 45 years old and he is STILL a stone cold fox.
And of course, headcanon!
This is something else I've posted about before. But that's not going to stop me from touching on it again. I have lots of headcanon for Billy. Lots. LOTS. Awhile ago I ganked some headcanon from an interview with Judd Lynn that postulated Billy was the Phantom Ranger. It lends a whole new dimension to rewatching those episodes of Turbo and PRiS, let me tell you. For headcanon and fic-writing purposes, sometimes Billy is the Phantom Ranger and sometimes he isn't. Just like he sometimes ends up happily married to Cestria and sometimes ends up coming back to Earth and settling down with Trini and working at NASADA. I've got about 4 or 5 subtly different AUs living in my head right now, so...yeah.
But all other AUs aside, my primary Billy-centric headcanon is the one in which he learns how to access the Morphing Grid and becomes successor to Zordon. This was an idea that occurred to me shortly before NPS Live, and at that event someone asked David Yost himself what he imagined Billy's post-series life would be like, and he gave an answer so similar I damn near fell out of my chair. He tweeted almost the exact same thing some months later - proof! And man, when the actor shares your headcanon with you, I'd say that's reason enough to pursue it.
I have a LOT of fic ideas for this 'verse. And really, most of them are just excuses to stick Billy in seasons he never canonically appeared in. I've written and posted exactly...one. *facepalm* I need to be better about that. Maybe this year will be the year of The Last Gridmaster fics? We'll see. At any rate, here in abbreviated bulleted form is what the TLG headcanon looks like:
- At some point circa season 3/MMAR, Zordon realizes that Billy has a capacity to understand and manipulate the Morphing Grid heretofore thought impossible for humans.
- During the Zeo Quest, Billy becomes Zordon's secret liason to NASADA, and between that time frame and Zeo is developing the interface between the space shuttle and the Astro Megaship, thus laying the groundwork for PRiS.
- Zordon also talks Billy into surrendering his position as a Ranger in favor of working more directly with the Morphing Grid.
- He builds the Turbo morphers under Zordon's guidance as part of his training.
- Since Zordon is a shitty mentor and Zeo messed with everyone's feelings, Billy has a bit of an emotional breakdown, cuts off everything he's been working on, and leaves the planet.
- He builds the Phantom morpher on Aquitar and goes rogue. This being his first attempt at building a morpher on his own, its performance is less than perfect, and he swiftly realizes this was a bad idea.
- He sees Zordon one last time during PRiS - see "Rites of Succession" - and Zordon, having foreseen his own death, gives Billy a knowledge download allowing him to access ports to the Grid all over the universe. It takes him several years to sort out all of the data.
- The Turbo/PRiS team does not learn his identity as the Phantom Ranger until well after CtD. By then, he has pretty much stopped using that set of powers.
- As a Gridmaster, Billy starts developing the ability to sense activity in the Grid and starts chasing after those 'spikes'.
- He is, in fact, the 'friend of a friend' who helped RJ create the Jungle Fury powers. Wolf teamup!
- Antonio having built his own morpher from scratch is a huge deal, because it means he's even more of a Grid prodigy than Billy was. Billy will eventually take him under his wing in the hopes that Zordon's knowledge won't ever die with him - and promises to be a better mentor to Antonio than Zordon was to him.
And we're back on schedule! Tomorrow's post will be on color theory as requested bythesecondbatgirl . And Day 9's post will be on why Rocky is awesome and my headcanon pertaining to him, as requested by rivulet027 .
Anyhoot,
rivulet027 requested that I write about why Billy is my favorite, and my headcanon pertaining to him. And by a wonderful bit of serendipity, it is also David Yost's birthday!If we really want to get technical, I've already written the comprehensive "Why BIlly is my favorite ever and means the world to me" post, after NPS Live happened. But that was needlessly angsty and emotional, and this is meant to be a joyous occasion. So let's just go down the list instead, shall we?
Top Ten Reasons (in no particular order) why Billy is Awesome:
1) He is ridiculously attractive and I still have the same massive fangirl crush on him now that I did 20 years ago.
2) His vocabulary. As a kid who was talking about pterodactyls and aneurysms before I hit kindergarten, and who still gets looked at askance for my choice of words from time to time, I dig that there's a character out there who talks like I do. And as a kid it always made me feel special when I knew what he was talking about without the benefit of a Trini translation.
3) His story arc shows that with enough practice and self-discipline, a physically awkward person can become much more athletically adept.
4) His story arc shows that it's possible to become 'cooler' and more confident without having to change who you are or pretend to be something you're not.
5) He's so damned useful. He's so useful, he's forever saving the day in episodes that aren't even about him. He's so useful, the Machine Empire labeled him a threat and kept trying to off him even when he didn't have powers anymore!
6) He developed into a competent leader and was really the one holding the team together during MMAR.
7) Not only did he pass the "face your fears and overcome them" episode with flying colors, he took it to the nth degree when he moved to a planet inhabited entirely by the thing he used to be afraid of.
8) Despite being "the nerd' of the show, he got more dates than any of his teammates. Ever.
9) Half the iconic tech on the show was stuff he built, not stuff they got from Zordon. Wrist communicators? Billy. The Radbug? Billy. And you can't tell me he had no part in creating the Turbo powers. You just can't.
10) He said early on in the series that he had always dreamed of traveling in space, and in the end, he got his wish. It might have been the shittiest sendoff ever, but he got his wish.
And since it's David Yost's birthday...
Top Ten Reasons (in no particular order) Why David Yost is Awesome:
1) He gives amazing hugs.
2) He is super nice to his fans, and appreciates the impact Billy has made on people's lives.
3) It took a fuck ton of courage to finally come out about what happened to him while he was filming MMPR, and he has just been a class act about the whole thing.
4) And he does not suffer haters. At all.
5) And those NOH8 photos he did are adorable!
6) His Tweets are pure gold. He is definitely one of the best things on my feed every day. Not only did he subtly flip the bird to Saban when they asked him to do a cameo in Megaforce, he CRITIQUED THE GRAMMAR IN THE EMAIL THEY SENT HIM. And all in 140 characters.
7) He vacations in Cape Cod! That shows good taste!
8) How close he was IRL with Thuy Trang and how much he clearly still misses her.
9) He hangs out in Amy Jo Johnson's house and derps about like he lives there.
10) He is now 45 years old and he is STILL a stone cold fox.
And of course, headcanon!
This is something else I've posted about before. But that's not going to stop me from touching on it again. I have lots of headcanon for Billy. Lots. LOTS. Awhile ago I ganked some headcanon from an interview with Judd Lynn that postulated Billy was the Phantom Ranger. It lends a whole new dimension to rewatching those episodes of Turbo and PRiS, let me tell you. For headcanon and fic-writing purposes, sometimes Billy is the Phantom Ranger and sometimes he isn't. Just like he sometimes ends up happily married to Cestria and sometimes ends up coming back to Earth and settling down with Trini and working at NASADA. I've got about 4 or 5 subtly different AUs living in my head right now, so...yeah.
But all other AUs aside, my primary Billy-centric headcanon is the one in which he learns how to access the Morphing Grid and becomes successor to Zordon. This was an idea that occurred to me shortly before NPS Live, and at that event someone asked David Yost himself what he imagined Billy's post-series life would be like, and he gave an answer so similar I damn near fell out of my chair. He tweeted almost the exact same thing some months later - proof! And man, when the actor shares your headcanon with you, I'd say that's reason enough to pursue it.
I have a LOT of fic ideas for this 'verse. And really, most of them are just excuses to stick Billy in seasons he never canonically appeared in. I've written and posted exactly...one. *facepalm* I need to be better about that. Maybe this year will be the year of The Last Gridmaster fics? We'll see. At any rate, here in abbreviated bulleted form is what the TLG headcanon looks like:
- At some point circa season 3/MMAR, Zordon realizes that Billy has a capacity to understand and manipulate the Morphing Grid heretofore thought impossible for humans.
- During the Zeo Quest, Billy becomes Zordon's secret liason to NASADA, and between that time frame and Zeo is developing the interface between the space shuttle and the Astro Megaship, thus laying the groundwork for PRiS.
- Zordon also talks Billy into surrendering his position as a Ranger in favor of working more directly with the Morphing Grid.
- He builds the Turbo morphers under Zordon's guidance as part of his training.
- Since Zordon is a shitty mentor and Zeo messed with everyone's feelings, Billy has a bit of an emotional breakdown, cuts off everything he's been working on, and leaves the planet.
- He builds the Phantom morpher on Aquitar and goes rogue. This being his first attempt at building a morpher on his own, its performance is less than perfect, and he swiftly realizes this was a bad idea.
- He sees Zordon one last time during PRiS - see "Rites of Succession" - and Zordon, having foreseen his own death, gives Billy a knowledge download allowing him to access ports to the Grid all over the universe. It takes him several years to sort out all of the data.
- The Turbo/PRiS team does not learn his identity as the Phantom Ranger until well after CtD. By then, he has pretty much stopped using that set of powers.
- As a Gridmaster, Billy starts developing the ability to sense activity in the Grid and starts chasing after those 'spikes'.
- He is, in fact, the 'friend of a friend' who helped RJ create the Jungle Fury powers. Wolf teamup!
- Antonio having built his own morpher from scratch is a huge deal, because it means he's even more of a Grid prodigy than Billy was. Billy will eventually take him under his wing in the hopes that Zordon's knowledge won't ever die with him - and promises to be a better mentor to Antonio than Zordon was to him.
And we're back on schedule! Tomorrow's post will be on color theory as requested by
thesecondbatgirl . And Day 9's post will be on why Rocky is awesome and my headcanon pertaining to him, as requested by rivulet027 .
no subject
Date: 2014-01-08 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-08 03:05 pm (UTC)After reading this post, I really, really, really, REALLY hope so! ♥
no subject
Date: 2014-01-09 04:34 am (UTC)