PD 6.5: Ben 10: Heroes of Evolution

PD 6.5: Ben 10: Heroes of Evolution is the sixth episode of a meta complementary project for Project Deca. The following events are completely non-canon to the series and should be treated as such.

Episode
Attai, Ben, Blake, Terox, and Devil Watcher were all gathered in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks. Each of them held a script, as usual, although Devil Watcher was currently preoccupied with trying to fold his into an origami duck (without much success, mind you).

"Well, this was a weird one." Ben said, scratching his head while looking over his script. "Almost seems more like a parody than a straight tribute."

"That was the idea, at least with the Devil Watcher storyline." Attai replied. "Heroes of Evolution has gotten an...interesting reputation since it was originally popular, so anything else would've seemed almost out of place."

"How so?" Blake inquired.

"Well, back in the day, HoE was widely regarded as one of the best things the wiki had ever seen period." Attai explained. "Looking back on it, most people have done a 180 on that opinion after growing up a bit and recognizing its flaws. Even the original creator expressed his opinion that it was badly written."

"But most things on this wiki are bad in hindsight." Ben pointed out. "Why single out this show?"

"I don't think I can stress enough how much this show was seen as a masterclass of fanfiction." Attai tsked. "So many people jumped on the bandwagon for it that after it lost its good reputation, the market for calling it out was exponentially larger than anything else the wiki's seen so far."

"Makes sense." Blake nodded. "So, about Devil Watcher over there..."

Devil Watcher looked up upon hearing his name and hastily tried unfolding his script to read his lines.

"Why is he..." Blake struggled to think of a way to phrase this. "...The way he is?"

"The original Devil Watcher was the peak of edgy for the sake of being edgy without any form of self-awareness, so this version of Devil Watcher is that kind of character taken to its logical conclusion." Attai said. "Most people play out their 'edgy' phase in middle school, so Devil Watcher's edgy persona creates the implication that he never really matured past that point."

"Well now, hang on a second!" Devil Watcher protested. "The whole ending with Tennyson rebutting my points and my committing suicide was extremely edgy! What makes that edginess okay and mine not?!"

"There's a difference between being edgy and being serious." Attai huffed. "The point was to contrast your forced dark tone to a dark tone that's more grounded. Dressing like a Hot Topic reject and going on shallow 'everything sucks' rants usually aren't ways adults would handle a difficult situation. There's nothing wrong with having dark elements in a story, but turning it into a melodrama for the sake of having a cheap shock factor just makes you look like a tryhard."

"Sounds like a hard line to balance." Ben mused.

"It can be." Attai nodded. "That's why most stories trying extra hard to be dark end up falling flat."

"Oh, like Ultimate Alien." Ben said.

"Quiet, you'll upset the neckbeards."

"Well, other than all that, I don't think there's much to talk about here." Blake interjected, closing his script. "Any final thoughts?"

"Just one question." Devil Watcher said.

"What is it?" Attai grumbled.

"Why did I say 'KABOOM' out loud that one time?" Devil Watcher asked. "It seemed kind of random."

"The original HoE had a tendency to write comic book-style sound effects into the text of the story instead of just showing the things the sound effects represented." Attai explained. "Most of the original author's writing did, actually, but we're focusing on HoE for the moment."

"Really?" Devil Watcher said, puzzled. "Even I think that's silly."

"That's saying something." Attai scoffed. "Alright, let's wrap it up. Project Deca is now officially halfway over, so I only have to do six more of these stupid meta episodes. See you in July."

TO BE CONTINUED