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mysterycitrus · 3 months

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i know you've been talking about jason lately so i'll ask about smth different... robin jason (sorry)

idk idk lately i've been wanting to take a peek at his robin comics for the sake of writing fic (ofc...) but i'd like to hear what u think before that, a summary of sorts if u may (i also wanna contrast what u say with what i get out of it so yeah)

i feel like his robin days are so muddled by his identity as red hood later on, and even before that it was his death. u had people constantly blaming jason for dying in text (or else they'd have to admit bruce can make mistakes and everyone in dc is allergic to doing that) and painting him like someone reckless and violent (classist editorial u need to DIE), and then people in fanon painting him like a sweet fella who would do nothing wrong and as well as being bruce's Only Actual Son etc etc for the sake of making the situation around him all the more sadder (yeah yeah pathetic meow meow we've all seen it)

and i'm just curious bc i rlly wonder what the actual comics say about him, most likely something in the middle of this? exams are killing me but my god i'll come back to life after im done just to read jason robin's days... have a good day !!!

the difficulty with reading about jason as robin is that there are three primary periods that all differ fairly dramatically from each other — pre-crisis jason todd is a strawberry blond acrobat who’s almost adopted by dick grayson before becoming robin; post-crisis jason todd is a kid from crime alley who steals the wheels off the batmobile before becoming robin; and post-crisis, post-utrh jason todd is a very angry, very violent kid who becomes a cautionary tale after he gets himself killed (something he is often blamed for).

we can walk the line here. pre-crisis jason isn’t particularly relevant because so much of robin!jason’s stories depend on his reinvention after the reboot. all the crucial factors leading up to death in the family — growing up in the alley, both his mothers, his relationship with the robin mantle, his developing relationship with dick grayson, his slow schism from bruce, his relative isolation from other superheroes — are all crucial to who he is, especially after his death.

fanon about jason is annoying because there are valid criticisms that can be made about how he’s written with regressive, classist stereotypes, but as always it pivots way too far in one direction. jason wasn’t the “happy” or “angry” robin in the same way that dick wasn’t the happy or angry robin — they’re both characters that possess more than a single emotion. it’s true that jason was later written to be more explicitly violent (to contrast him with dick) but also like… they’re both pretty similar characters that differ in interesting ways. dick created robin to be a symbol of hope and joy. jason carried that on when he took up the mantle. they can both be angry at stuff without the world falling apart. it’s not that serious.

the dialogue about dick being a child soldier but jason being the true son makes me want to tear my hair out. jason became robin because bruce missed dick and was afraid of being alone. they’re both his gd kids. acting as though bruce wayne doesn’t love dick grayson so much that extra-dimensional beings can clock it is so fucking stupid. it once again ties into fanon’s obsession with each character only getting to be “one” thing. tim is smart, which means he’s the smartest. jason said robin made him magic, which means he’s happy all the time. dick chased after zucco in a grief spiral, which means he’s the violently angry one, with no other character traits. dick can’t have been nice to jason because he’s nice to tim, etc. seems a little silly, no?

i think i’ve only read jason’s brief run as robin once, though ive gone through a death in the family + a lonely place of dying a bunch of times, so ig my advice for reading him is to keep in mind the context in which he was created. dc comics was reeling from losing dick grayson as robin, and were really throwing anything at the wall to get something to stick. many, many negative tropes are baked into his introduction, and thanks to writers like jeph loeb and scott lobdell they have compounded over time. jason’s updated backstory is, with actual critical intent by the writer, a really good examination of how poverty and class will affect how someone views the world. his death was not his fault — and removing sheila haywood from that warehouse purposely makes his story less tragic. he was a good kid! and he was angry for a good reason. if jason had lived, i believe he would’ve carried on the robin tradition and left bruce behind once their differences became insurmountable.

#jason as robin: baby. jason as red hood: really really annoying #jason todd #red hood #batman #bruce wayne #dc comics #the ask and the answer

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deafeninggardenerpanda · 7 months

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i'd love to hear about manmaru metadede !!! i heard it's really Gay but no one ever details it. not a lot of it is translated too, as far as i know, but i really like it.. any excuse to talk about something you like is good too

NO YEA not a lot is translated and the manga itself is already more niche compared to like, mopupupu so its not too well known. translation efforts have really started picking up the past year though (shoutout to @/kirby-manga-translated they do great work). if it needed to be restated for new followers since i havent tl'd in a while, i know a decent amount of japanese so i read them on my own :)c

shoutout to my guy @/rosakikoza as well for giving me his scans hehe. the majority of images below are his or taken from his scans. the rest are mine

*deep breath* the tangent. im gonna need to put this under a cut dont mind me 😍😍😍 did i say 3 paragraphs? i meant 20. like 20 paragraphs

meta knight is absolutely pathetic and incredibly down bad for dedede this manga. its adorable. multiple people ive talked to or seen have come to the conclusion it seems like he has a huge crush on him. a quick brief for those who dont know but this mangas meta is admittedly Veryyyyy different from how you'd expect a meta knight to be. uncharacteristically friendly and cheerful and. pathetic is really the best word for it. hes kinda a loser. incredibly protective of dedede, he switches between two modes of fussing over him quite a bit and semi-often going into incredible rage bloodlust modes over protecting him or his image (youll see a good amount of jp fanwork depict this version of him as a yandere for that reason)

theres also been more than one occasion where meta knight tries to commit seppuku upon accidently doing something he sees as unforgivable towards his king (its in the chapter i just screenshotted above too, another time he broke dededes clock and freaked out about it). i-. dont consider this a cute ship thing for the record im just stating it to emphasize the extent of metas obsession towards dedede this manga. the mans got Problems...

apart from that, also quite differing from most interpretations of both of them, both of them seem to genuinely really like spending time around each other all the time. it comes off as casually domestic and is very cute...

regardless of my attempts to brief it, i dont feel like im explaining this very well so lemme just show you a frankly ridiculous amount of reasons for why i keep feeling like this mangaka ships metadede

-fake kiss: self explanatory

-fake proposal: also self explanatory

mk: Will you marry me!?

ddd: Yes!

context for this scene is that theyre rehearsing for a play, but actually its later revealed that meta knight is playing the princess while dedede is playing the male protag so im not exactly sure it makes sense that hes the one proposing here. my speculation is that to make the proposal seem legit for the gag they Had to use meta LMAO but thats just my take

also to be noted, right after kirby hears the proposal he immediately runs off and tries to tell everyone the news before ddd+mk stop him and explain that its fake. hes not thrown off or weirded out at the idea that they could be getting married in the slightest. kirby says gay rights Real i love him sm

-this one is from what i call the memory loss chapter:

dedede loses his memories from getting hit in the head too hard. the gang figures out that beating dedede up or otherwise causing him injury causes him to regain some of them back though, to which kirby attempts to harm him with increasingly violent means, much to meta knights horror. mk spends the entire chapter trying to protect dedede from him, and it doesnt work obviously, but after a particularly hard hit dedede remembers everyone again... except for meta knight. to which meta knight gets upset about and lets kirby lay into dedede for real. you see where people get the yandere personality from now right. i dont recall this trait coming out too often but ill talk more about it later

-the whole chapter thats a cinderella retelling with dedede and meta knight. also also self explanatory COME ON LOOK AT THIS ONE. LOOK AT IT.

mk: Y…You're…

ddd: Wow, he's so beautiful!! It's like I'm dreaming…!

-theres the mangaka chapter which is a more recent one

the gang makes manga for dedede. meta knight's manga is about how cool, brave, and heroic dedede is. mysteriously enough however the only thing hes good at is drawing dededes face and nothing else. the implications of this one drive me absolutely insane. is it supposed to imply that meta knight stares at his face all day?? admires his appearance??? he looks at him so much he basically has his face memorized????? HUH???????? theres no heterosexual explanation for this. acting like a teenager with a crush out here got damn

=various images im sharing out of context because they r cute

head pats. holding hands and reaching the goal together. peak.

KNIGHT DRESSUP FOR THE KNIGHT. AHAAHGH

ddd: Hoho, pretty spiffy don'cha think?

mk: Ohh!? It suits you!!

fellas is it gay to shout "OHH! META KNIGHT!!" with a dopey grin on your face upon being saved like a damsel in distress

sometimes meta knight acts domestic as fuck too. his copy abilities as he states are: cook! clean!! and sleep!!!

regarding my thoughts on their dynamic in this series overall, i think theyre absolutely adorable. meta knight emits dog energy in this one. eager golden retriever towards dedede, though dedede has his sweet moments towards meta knight too. (viewing it with a shipping lens just for this post ofc) while meta is the more active crusher, some of the stuff above seems to imply that dedede has feelings in return as well :') they just get along really well too its great. theres a different chapter where they perform as a comedy duo. theyve done plays in multiple chapters. its my hc for these versions of them that they love doing performances of all kinds together and do a lot of rehearsals and writing in their free time...

and the yandere stuff i feel like i should address as well. i try not to take some aspects Too seriously because its to be expected things are over emphasized for the sake of the joke with gag mangas. but oh man the man definitely has problems. he needs therapy. i tried to be transparent in listing those aspects as well so people can make their own conclusions on it But theres one more thing id like to mention regarding that

meta knights personality has been shifting to be different from what i listed, as of the most recent volume. my beloved forgotten land arc... a first for this series in that, while the chapters still retain their gag humor and dont take themselves that seriously, its a serialized story that mostly follows along with the game plot that lasts nearly the whole volume (as opposed to other game arcs in this manga being episodic stories, using the games as their theme rather than a full on setting). with the more serious tone of the serialized story, theres a frankly startling hint of character development i never wouldve expected from a gag manga at the end of it

kirby gets ko'd the first round of the meta knight cup so meta knight joins the meta knight cup instead. turns out when he does that the final boss of the cup is dedede. meta knight Really doesnt want to hurt dedede and so dedede promptly kicks his ass without a second thought and wins the tournament. while the crowd cheers for dedede's victory, meta and dedede have a small talk where dedede tells him he doesnt need to fuss so much about hurting him/him getting hurt. presumably this is supposed to mark the end of meta knights intense overprotectiveness because (its never been clear-cut due to the nature of the manga previously, so its a lil hard to say) dededes shown he can handle himself, or like, isnt some fragile thing. i really hope itll stick around because i think its a great addition to both of their characters. the meta-knights have also been appearing way more frequently as of very recent chapters (ones that havent been compiled into a volume yet) which seem to also hint to meta knight getting more independence to his character from dedede's loyal servant. im very excited to see where it goes :D

and like, last last disclaimer if anyone needed it; even tho i love metadede and i like to see things through ship glasses sometimes i absolutely try my best to keep my biases out of my translations. putting out accurate translations means a lot to me! this entire post is me purposely putting the ship glasses on so please dont take it as "omg metadede is canon in this manga". you know way back when i was the only active translator for this manga someone tweeted at the mangaka on twitter mentioning that there were english translations around and he replied to that person. didnt respond to the fan translation thing specifically but the fact that he could know who i am definitely kinda terrifies me. if anyone goes around saying that his manga is the metadede manga because of me and he even has the slightest sliver of a chance of seeing that i will kill yall fr LOL

#asks #anonymous #metadede

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ratlesshonret · 1 month

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Okay so. Limbus Theory Time. But I'd be lame if I did a theory about the soon-to-release (hopefully) Canto VI, so instead I'm doing Don Quixote Theory Hours.

Okay so, let me lay out my thought process. In the latest released piece of content for the main game, "Risk Levels and Classifications" I believe it's called, Don Quixote seems to recognize the name Moses. To me, this implies that she has either met or been in proximity to Moses in the past.

Furthermore, in Canto IV, Don is basically the first person to realize Dongrang is Distorting, and says something about it before even Faust can. This says to me that she has been involved in cases of Distortion in the past, since she recognizes the signs before anyone else. Before this point, supposedly none of the Sinners have seen someone Distort. There was Papa Bongy in Canto 3.5, but the group only arrived after he had Distorted.

If Don Quixote really has been involved in a Distortion case, then it'd make sense that she either knows of, or my theory, has met Moses, the Distortion Detective.

Going even further back, to Canto III, Don beats the shit out of Sinclair when he stabs a dead inquisitor repeatedly, and says that her friends had done similar to her in the past when she had been "overtaken by fervor."

What has, to this point in the game, been the most effective method of "curing" the Distortion? What method has worked on Papa Bongy, Dongrang, and Distorted Bamboo-Hatted Kim?

Beating them up.

It is my theory that, in the past, Don Quixote has Distorted. And she was saved from her Distortion by her old friends "beating some sense" into her.

Past this point is stuff I don't really have much evidence for, but want to talk about anyway. So here's your warning that we're going from "mildly substantiated speculation" to "complete spitballing."

I think that Don Quixote has not only Distorted once in the past, but potentially multiple times. The way Don speaks about when she's been beaten by her friends says to me that it has happened multiple times before. So I don't think this Distortion is juts a one-off thing. She either has Distorted, or been on the verge of Distorting, multiple times before.

Furthermore, I want to look at exactly when Don notices Dongrang's imminent Distortion.

Don notices that Dongrang is about to Distort when he begins talking to somebody who isn't present. As we've seen in every Distortion victim and potential Distortion victim, from Philip, to Yan, to Xiao, to Vergilius, to Dongrang, they all speak with Carmen before they Distort. It's well-established at this point that Carmen is the one who causes people to Distort.

My theory is that Don has spoken with Carmen, perhaps many times, due to her past Distortion. This is why she recognized Dongrang's imminent Distortion, due to the context she knew he was speaking with Carmen. Don isn't stupid, she's been shown to be able to deduce things quite easily as long as she has the background knowledge to do so.

Not only has Don Distorted before, and not only has she spoken with Carmen in the course of it, and not only has she Distorted multiple times in the past, but I think she has some kind of "Recurring Distortion" caused by Carmen not being willing to let up on Don. And I also think that she is still at risk of Distorting, even as she rides on the bus with all of the other Sinners.

Don Quixote always acts like a hero of justice, a valiant knight who respects those who keep the peace and fights to stop injustice and villains all over the City. And yet, we know she doesn't really believe this delusion of grandeur she has. As far back as Canto II, in the scene with the mariachi gang, we've been able to see a side of Don that's much more grounded in reality. The gang even brought up the idea that Don is insincere.

I believe the reason for Don's personality is that she's constantly battling Carmen. If Carmen is really trying to get Don to Distort, she may be attacking Don's sense of justice. Something along the lines of, "You can't really help people, injustice can't be eliminated by just one person." Possibly even telling Don that if she Distorts and accepts this fact, she can do more to combat injustice than she can right now.

I don't think Don's love of justice and hatred of villains is a lie, but I do think her old-timey speak and her sheer dedication aren't sincere. The sheer amount of trouble Don causes when she sees an injustice, and her lack of ability to restrain herself, I don't think can be put up to an act. So what is it?

As I said before, I think she's battling Carmen. Whether she's trying to prove she can serve justice all on her own, without Carmen's help, or whether she's trying to delude herself so hard that Carmen can't get in anymore, I don't know. But I think her act is all an attempt to stop her "Recurring Distortion" phenomenon.

If Limbus knows about her past Distorting, there's a chance they've had her talk with the LCD. If this is true, then it's another potential avenue through which Don has learned of Moses, if Moses and Don didn't meet in Moses' Distortion Detection.

If Don is also at constant risk of Distorting, then this could be involved with the "deal" that she's made with Vergilius. It's possible he sees her deranged behavior as a warning sign of Distortion.

It's possible that Don saw an "injustice" and attempted to right it when she joined Limbus Company, and her being unable to do so caused her to Distort. The "deal" could have been that she wouldn't put herself at risk of Distorting. But this is all just wild speculation.

In short, I think Don is a constant Distortion risk. Carmen saw her emotional instability and intense desire for justice, and decided she could use that to get Don to Distort. Because she is a prime candidate for Distortion.

But there's one more thing I haven't brought up, and that's Don's "friends." The people who stopped her from fully Distorting in the past by beating sense into her. Who were these people?

I don't know. Not conclusively anyway. But I have an idea.

The Udjats.

To be transparent, I did not come up with this theory. But I think it makes at least a little sense. The Udjats, and their leader Dias, seem to be quite invested in Distortions. They would know what to do in the case of one of their own beginning to Distort. It's possible that Don joined the Udjats because she thought they were just, or through some other reason entirely. Again, I have no real evidence of this.

If Don was an Udjat at some point, or knew them in some way, then that'd be another potential route she knew Moses. Moses was once a relatively high rank in the Udjats, and continued being under Dias' thumb long afterwards, as shown by her still having to do work for Dias during the time of Distortion Detective.

All together, this is a bunch of barely-substantiated theories, but I think they make just enough sense to be put out there. "Don has Distorted in the past" is the one I'm most confident in, while, "Don was an Udjat at some point" is one I'm very much not super confident in. But I think it's food for thought.

#limbus company #don quixote limbus company #project moon

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smallfrenchstudyblr · 7 months

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Justice as spectacle in Fontaine, or a too long word vomit from a tired PhD in Law gushing over Genshin 4.0

Alternative title: “Justice must be seen to be done”, a visual playbook by Genshin 4.0

Intro: This is a valid use of a PhD in law, actually.

I made the mistake of playing the 4.0 update of Genshin while I was finalizing my PhD in law and politics, and the result was my brain refuse to think about anything else than judicial performativity and the use judicial spectacle in Fontaine. So time to make good use of 9 years of University by dissecting why I absolutely love how Fontaine’s justice system is presented. It was initially much longer and covering why justice as a spectacle is not necessarily an issue or sign of a disfunctionning legal system, then what exactly about the Fontainian justice system is actually fucked up, but it got too long so I’m keeping that for the indeterminate future. So the pitch of this thing is: Mihoyo is basically providing us with an animated First Person POV game version of legal ethnographic works on justice and the courthouse, and it is really cool.

And since I am a nerd with both too much time to read and to play, we are making this a proper academic, with literature and all, because listen to me, LEGAL ACADEMICA IS COOL, ACTUALLY, and law and literature at large is a genuine field of study that we, as a society, need to talk about more.

[also there is non-zero chance that I edit this brainrot and submit it for publication at some point]

Warning: I am basing this on 4.0, up to and including Act IV Chapter II (hence no discussion of the prison system) and if Mihoyo thwarts the whole thing with 4.1 [oops I am late so now 4.2, since 4.1 did not thwart it] then let’s do what we do when new results contradict existing theories in academia and just collectively agree to ignore it.

TL;DR: Someone at Mihoyo read Simonett’s 1966 essay on The Trial as One of the Performing Arts [Here, just read it, it is fascinating] and decided to make it everyone’s problem

Part 0: if this was not Tumblr.com I would make a recap explaining broadly what Genshin and Fontaine are but since you are reading this I’m going to assume you already know the context.

Part 1: Ok so how does the Fontanian Justice system work, exactly?

Alright, so each area of Teyvat has 1) one core theme/value and 2)a threat to that core theme/value.

Mondstadt has Freedom and people living in fear of a dragon.

Liyue has Contracts/order and the pandemonium of having Rex Lapis killed.

Inazuma has Eternity and being virtually frozen in time.

Sumeru has Knowledge and being entirely manipulated by the Akademia.

Fontaine has Justice and… Justice being parodied into a spectacle?

WRONG.

Because the spectacle of justice, especially the way it is done in Fontaine, is not antithetic to Justice itself. Spectacle is part and parcel of Justice and of any courthouse. Sure, all the dials are turned to 11 and y’know, it is legit called an Opera, but that is more the writers being a bit on the nose and adding drama for the player. The spectacle of Justice, itself, is not that far off from reality. And, hot take but bear with me: it is not (necessarily) a problem.

Ok, let’s dive into what we know of the justice system in Fontaine.

Broadly speaking, we have seen the criminal justice system, and it is an accusatorial, or adversarial model. It’s the US-style criminal procedure: you have a defendant trying to prove that they didn’t do it your honor, and a prosecutor proving that they totally did it your honor. To avoid this becoming a fistfight, you have a strict procedure to follow outside but especially inside the Court, and in the end, a neutral third party decides on the outcome or the trial.

Ok, now let’s zoom on a few things, and why the theatrics of them are actually very common.

Furina, our cringefail darling, is the prosecutor. And they get a lot of stuff right regarding the role of the prosecutor! She decides whether or not to prosecute, based on the information that she has, and whether she likes her odds or not. Fittingly since she is the Archon, the prosecutor in a trial represents the State, the interest of the State (the judge ! does ! not!). It makes sense that Furina, the ruler (theoretically) would be prosecutor and not judge. Moreover, and as we see plenty of times during the trials, Prosecutor Furina is not concerned with the victim, and not even necessarily with the truth; the prosecutor wants to know how likely they are to obtain a conviction in the end. Her job is to be convincing enough to establish a legal truth.

Neuvillette, for his part, sometimes look terribly powerless… but friends, that is what a Judge sitting during a criminal case often is. The first part of his job is to find sufficient information for the prosecution to decide whether or not to prosecute; he is supposed to be entirely neutral at this stage. He kickstarted the investigation straight after the death of Cowell, and was also the one starting investigation on Vaughn right after Lyney is proved innocent. He gathers enough evidence, hands them over to Furina and asks “So? Are you game or do you want to leave that alone?”

And once the prosecutor has decided to move forward with prosecuting, his job is to make the procedure move along, take some decisions based on new information, ensure all respect the rules (hence Childe’s immediate smackdown when he starts to act out a bit too much at the end. My man is here to make sure the rules are enforced and that also applies to Snezhnayan gremlins). In the liminal space of the courthouse, he is the supreme authority… over the procedure. He can tell anyone, including Furina, to stfu k thx. He starts and stops the trial. He allows witnesses to be heard or not.

And the last party involved at this point is the defense, usually the Traveler and any adorable twink we befriended that day [good for you, Traveler, good for you]. They present evidence, they have to be convincing, it’s basically Ace Attorney, we know that part.

Part 2: Mihoyo makes it clear that we are all actors in the Courtroom

Ok, first moment of pause.

Even though these are the most basic parts of a criminal trial, they are ALREADY steeped in drama and theatrics, both IRL and in Fontaine.

First off, Furina plays a prosecutor, Neuvillette plays a judge and the Traveller plays the lawyer.

No but really: they play their role in the Courthouse.

The game painstakingly presents Furina for the first time not as a prosecutor in a courthouse but as a cringefail princess. When we see her initially welcoming the Traveller, going “Fight Me” at them in the streets of Fontaine, she is not a prosecutor, she is just Furina the cringefail princess. We meet Furina as Furina, and later on only, we see her with her Prosecutor face. Furina is not a prosecutor, outside of the Courthouse.

I don’t even have to explain how much Traveler plays lawyer. We are, and I cannot stress it enough, NOT lawyers (yes, even you who developed an unhealthy obsession with Ace Attorney before Genshin). The developers even took the time to develop an entire new gameplay to really, really highlight that is a behavior that the Traveler can only have in the Courthouse. Traveler is not a lawyer outside of the courthouse.

Neuvillette is a bit of a special case. We do meet him for the first time in the Courthouse, as a Judge. But once again, the moment we meet him outside of the courthouse, he is much more approachable, definitely not the same persona as when he bitchslapped my problematic Harbinger into the Meropides prison [we are so going to write something about the Meropides prison once I have played enough 4.1 my friends – update post 4.1: ok Mihoyo that was weak commentary on the privatization of prison and prison labour but I’ll take it]. Neuvillette is probably the one that is the most associated with his courthouse persona, but there is still this gap between Neuvillette-Judge and Neuvillette-reflecting-in-the-end-of-Chapter-II.

So everyone is just themselves in their daily life, but there is something about a Courthouse that turns people into their judicial role. That’s what we call the liminality of the courthouse (Hadar, 1999). And it exists IRL, in a way shockingly close to what we see in the Opera Epiclese.

Magistrates, whether prosecutors or judges, do not act in their own names, they have a role to play. Someone woke up that morning, had breakfast, swore at the neighbour who did not park properly again, spilled some coffee on their documents again ffs, stumbled a bit on the little steps leading to the courthouse, and then, they put on their costume and started to play the role of the judge. As someone who has been in what can only be referred to as “backstage” of a court , and entered the courthouse with the magistrates, I cannot stress enough how drastic the shift in person is the moment a magistrate steps into the space of the trial room.

From there on, they are a Role. Furina, like any prosecutor, is not a prosecutor, until they are The Prosecutor, and then they are not themselves anymore, in the enclosed space of the courthouse. Have you ever seen a lawyer talk in their daily life the way to talk in a courthouse? No. Someone is just some person, until their put on the robe and their Lawyer Face and start their Lawyer Movement and Lawyer Tone. Traveler cannot go all OBJECTION when they have a disagreement with a random shopkeeper in Teyvat. The game doesn’t even give you the option – because you are not lawyer, unless you are in the court. None actually plays a lawyer, unless they are in the courthouse.

And an adversarial model encourages this. You have character, but for it to be a play, or an opera, you need a narrative (murder, ok, that will kickstart a narrative) and you need dramatic tension. Drama is created by the opposition of two characters having opposite goals, confronting each other. Simonett, a former Minessotta Supreme Court Judge, has a fascinating article called “The Trial as One of the Performing Art”, which really ecapsulates how an adversarial system is built on this drama:

‘The trial has a protagonist, and antagnonist, a proscenium and an audience, a story to be told and a problem to be resolved, all usually in three acts”.

More than an inquisitory model (hello, fellow continental Europeans), parties are encouraged to bounce off each other, take initiative, undermine and interact with each other. US courthouse TV shows loooove that, and Genshin absolutely leaned into that. The potential for drama was so strong and intrinsic to the story that For the first time, we got to play a character that was not even with the traveler: Traveler was off investigating, and we played Navia in the courthouse, because the sheer drama of being in the courthouse is too good for the game to pass.

Do you see it yet? Here is more. A judicial role is a role. IRL, a lot of it is emphasized by the robes -the - sometimes complete with wigs and accessories- that judges and magistrates must wear before entering the space of the courthouse. You put them on like you put on a costume -defendant, prosecution, judge and even audience alike (Cabatingan, 2018), there is a ritual of preparing for the performance of a trial the way you prepare for a play. Genshin characters cannot change their clothes [give us a proper fancy-af-judge-robe for Neuvilette Mihoyo you COWARDS], so the game does all it can to realllllyy show you a separation between the judicial role and the actor playing I in the courthouse.

Part 3: Game designers said yes this an Opera and a Courthouse because these are the same thing and they are right

[The urge to include Foucault in this section, but I do not have Discipline and Punish with me rn, rip]

Ok, ok, why not. But what about the stuff that is not in your random courthouse, like a damn AUDIENCE and the fact that it takes place in an actual OPERA ?

Aight, we gotta dive a bit deeper into two things: the role of audience in the judicial spectacular, and studies on legal architecture/judicial space. I told you legal research was cool.

Let’s start with the most obvious one: architecture.

The architecture of Courthouse is actually really important for the delivery of justice. The building embodies the task itself, and targets evert single person that interacts with the building in any way? It matters specifically because we take it for granted, that this this is just a building, that there cannot be more to it. Or: “Law in its everydayness, banks on the usage of visual means of representation, for they seem to lack artifice, and thus enjoy high persuasiveness” (Kumar, 2017, also this is a study on the architecture of the Indian Supreme court and it is so good). But thi is, of course, on purpose.

My friends, your local courthouse looks like an opera. Recently, I went to a play which was entirely a trial, and they barely had to do anything to set-up the scene because… the opera looks like a courthouse, and vice versa. Fontaine’s Opera Epiclese is this on steroid, and also actually used for entertainment like the magic shows, but its architecture and structure are so close to a proper courthouse that once you see it you cannot unsee it. Not matter how different they might look from each other, all, ALL courtroom have the same setup:

Judges on an elevated position compared to all other parties : Neuvillette absolutely kills it here [my man is placed so high up I was close to writing something about the religiosity of justice.]

Prosecution and accused on two opposite sides, virtually separated by the judge, even putting the defendant in their own little liminal space in the liminal space (Zoettl, 2016, Mulcahy, 2007)

Audience space and trial space clearly separated, with interdiction for the audience to enter the trial space

Audience space allowing to clearly see all angles of the trial space

The architecture of courthouse is strikingly similar to that of an opera’s, both in its spatial organization and its grandiose. The entire building is an opera, not just the ground of the stage. You even have a lobby, the space right in the Opera but not the courtroom, which is very similar to the space where people mingle during the interlude at the Opera – the social settings were many legal negotiations happen (Hansen, 2008)

[Fun fact: I am pretty sure the design of the audience space of the Opera Epiclese was inspired by two Parisian Opera houses: the Théâtre de la Comédie Française et the Théâtre du Châtelet. The stage itself is almost more church-like ; I am curious if anyone knows what the inspiration for the “outside building” actually was, for the Opera Epiclese?]

Eltringham (2012) has some really cool writings about the architecture, and people interact with the structure of courts (in his case, the International Criminal for Rwanda) and how all these features contribute to making the courthouse this liminal space where people can play their role, whether they realise it or not.

But, Almost-doctor, I hear you say, what about the spectacle ?! The audience enjoying the show ?!

Ah, yes. The audience. Just as with an Opera, the audience and the actors enter through differentiated means (the “segregation of circulatory systems”), all with their own point of access to the stage or the seats, and never the two shall meet. It is so important to a court system that you will find this feature highlighted by the architects that renovated the Bordeaux Courthouse and the US courthouse design and planning guide [These are just fun and striking illustration I stumbled on while writing this, you can find dozens of others from any given country]. These differentiated access path help reinforce the liminality of the courthouse not just for the actors, but for us, the audience as well.

You could even agree, with Garapon, that the audience itself is “playing” the audience, in the Courthouse (go read Garapon’s 2004 book, if you read French, it’s so good I swear and like it fueled 90% of whatever this word vomit is)). You are not really yourself, you have new, liminal role of spectator. A trial has a “need for a public”, even a silent one. “'Performance always intends an audience”, for Kapferere. and we can indeed talk about a Performance of Justice, when talking about how justice unfolds in the courthouse, especially in a criminal trial (Sausdal and Lohne, 2021).

The audience is an inherent part of the spectacle of justice – because is there a spectacle if there I no audience? If comedians perform a play with no audience, did it really happen? In the words of our own European Court of Human Rights (I am quoting the ECtHR on Tumblr.com, what is life): “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done” (Delcourt v Belgium, 1970). For Garfinkel “Legal rituals ... depend on the outside witness to confer on them not only recognition but validity” (Garfinkel, 1956);

Or, to put it more eloquently: “The need for the presence of a validating public at trials is enshrined in many constitutions and built into the very fabric of court complexes throughout the world. (…) Tthe court as a whole requires its reflection in the bodies of validating witnesses in order that this created place will bring sufficient gravity to itself.” (Eltringham 2012).

If a courthouse was just about the truth, or the parties involved reaching an agreement on what the truth is, there would be no need for the theatrics. We could handle a trial in a meeting group like problem-solving session in any run-of-the-mill company. Put everyone around the table, have a moderator, have a decider. That actually exist, it’s called arbitration, and you may have never heard of it despite the absolutely enormous amount of money that are involved (we are talking literal Billions of dollars every year, here), because the whole point is that it is discrete and confidential. But that is not how trials are, anywhere. It does exist though. It is called private arbitration, a form of private justice that focuses on problem-solving, expediency and secrecy, often because my friends, it involves big names and big money.

But justice? My friend, it needs to be a spectacle. It needs an Opera. Because this is how it gains sociological legitimacy, and it needs sociological legitimacy to function. By having an audience, it gains transparency and accountability.

Conclusion: teaser on why the spectacle of justice is not necessarily always totally bad, but also I am too tired to fully argue that.

Now, you might that it’s a bad idea. That what Genshin is doing is denouncing this inherently spectacular aspect of Justice, that there is something inherently wrong in justice being public and publicized for the gain of legitimacy, and sure, spectacular justice can become a parody of justice or a manipulation of justice and this has happened many times in history. And yes, you could go for that (although show trials have typically been at the service of an authoritarian regime in a transition phase, rising or declining, and target political opponents, which we do not see in Fontaine) but… I have another take for you.

Justice being a spectacle is not… inherently bad.

Hear me out. Making justice into a spectacle does not have to affect its outcome. The presence of a public does not change the course of a play.

Spectacular justice brings elements of entertainment such as narrative fulfillment and catharsis. That is clearly what Fontainians want: a satisfying end to the story, the truth exposed. Justice as a spectacle help people make sense of their reality, comfort them in knowing that justice does prevail. That the guilty do not go scott-free, that the good guys win, that justice is transparent, that prosecutor need to be able to build a good story to prosecute, and there is no good story is there is not someone who caused harm, and a victim that deserves justice. And, from the information we have so far, this does not seem to lead to miscarriages of justices, or a generally biased justice system. But frankly this is too long already and I just wanted to show that the depiction of the Spectacular in everyday justice is actually present everywhere IRL, and Genshin is just providing a really handy illustration, at this point of the story.

The Fontanian system is fucked, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not about the spectacular on its own. Long story short since it be worth its own word-vomit-style essay, it’s because the jury has been replaced by ChatGPT and there is no civil court, only a criminal court, k bye.

#I have no idea what this is it just would not leave my brain until it was written #genshin impact #tagging genshin bc it is the most relevant #law and literature #Usual followers feel free to ignore #Genshin people: this is NOT my usual content #might fuck around and turn it into something publishable at some point #this is probably still full of typo but I am not proof reading a word vomit that goes on this hellsite

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bestworstcase · 6 months

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tangential to last rb (<- heroically resisting the impulse to ramble all over @sailorb00’s art post mrgdhej) ive always thought “maidens choose themselves” was an interesting turn of phrase for ozpin to use given 1. the inheritance rules as he and his proxies describe them and 2. the context of asking pyrrha to become the next fall maiden

specifically, can the presumptive heir say no?

i think “maidens choose themselves” does imply bidirectional agency: that is, a dying maiden may have an eligible candidate in mind, but that candidate too has a choice to accept the magic or not. will the magic cleave to an heir who rejects it?

in V3 team oz hypothesize that the partial magic of the fall maiden still attached to amber will seek its other half when it dies—unless they transfer amber’s aura into pyrrha. but then what happens is ozpin initiates the transfer and the aura+magic is actively combining with pyrrha’s aura when cinder kills amber, whereupon the magic reverses direction to reach cinder.

so we have this scenario where the dying maiden’s aura is being transferred into a new host and the magic, apparently, resists that artificial process. why? three possibilities:

it’s following the technical rule that it must go to whoever amber thought of last at the moment she died,

amber’s half broke away from her aura to rejoin cinder’s half, or

both cinder (the last person amber saw) and pyrrha (receiving amber’s aura) were available to inherit the magic, or at least amber’s piece of it, and the magic went to cinder because she actually wanted it whereas pyrrha felt duty-bound to accept it

and i think there is textual support for at least the possibility of number three, because in V7 what happens is: fria dies (marked by her eyes closing) but the transfer doesn’t begin until penny chooses to receive the magic and clasps fria’s hand. the aura that flows down fria’s arm doesn’t appear until penny is holding her hand! (and the scene gives quite a lot of attention to penny’s hesitance beforehand, underscoring that she makes a choice in this moment.)

and winter also makes a choice in that moment—there is a moment when she sees fria dying in penny’s arms and registers what’s about to happen, and rather than rush to trade places with penny (who is in fighting condition still, unlike winter!) winter instead focuses on cinder, which amounts to stepping back to leave the choice in fria’s hands.

then of course when the magic flows from penny to winter there’s a lot of emotional weight put on winter’s choice to accept it (“thank you for trusting me with this”/“you chose nothing; this was a gift”).

raven is a possible spanner in the works given how little we know of the circumstances and the open question of whether she wanted the spring maiden’s magic, but at a minimum raven must have mercy-killed her with the knowledge that doing so carried a significant possibility of probably gretchen bequeathing the magic to her, and certainly raven doesn’t hesitate to use it.

more importantly, every failed transfer we’ve seen thus far (grimm beetle, grimm arm, aura transfer) have one thing in common and that is an attempt to circumscribe the agency of the maidens themselves; and the situation with the grimm beetle is interesting because the grimm beetle does work. the magic doesn’t resist being split in half and cinder retains the half that she stole—whereas the magic does resist transfer into pyrrha.

in both scenarios amber was in distress and both the grimm siphoning and machine transfer seem to operate on the same principle of capturing the magic via aura, so… the difference between cinder (who wants this power badly) and pyrrha (who doesn’t want it but feels obligated to take it) is perhaps the key variable to explain the different behavior of the magic.

as always i wonder if those “convoluted and stupid rules” and the “random” heir if the dying maiden doesn’t have an eligible candidate in mind are maybe a lot less convoluted, stupid, or random than team oz believes. maidens don’t “choose their heirs,” maidens “choose themselves.”

(see also: cinder siphoned aura out of raven and penny without ripping away parts of the spring/winter maiden magic; cinder also spent all of V8 obsessively fixated on the winter maiden UNTIL salem gave her permission to go for it, whereupon she promptly snagged the relics and left the winter maiden on the table because her ongoing power struggle with salem is more important to her. cinder very badly wanted magic and now that she has it, her desire for more is merely a move in the deranged game she’s playing with salem and what she really wants is to WIN. this is why she’s not getting the summer maiden either.)

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alligator-with-a-top-hat · 6 months

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Gonna meditate on Ridley’s importance to the Metroid series, edited from comments I made on a video about him. After some thought, it’s clear to me that every appearance of his after the first ties him strongly to the theme of each individual game. Analysis under the cut, in in-game chronological order.

Zero Mission's whole premise is being a new spin on a familiar story, showing us things we never thought about in the NES game. Zero Mission's cutscenes show him commanding the Pirate Mothership and deliberately tracking Samus down. His robotic double, Mecha Ridley, is the new final boss stopping her escape from Pirate patrols. It's an organized, calculating side to the Pirates never seen before in the 2D games. The game is about insight into the past, and we gain insight through Ridley.

Prime is about respecting our history and the dangers of wasteful exploitation. Ridley is the face of the Pirates on Tallon IV as they discover and abuse Phazon, and his opening salvo in his boss battle is to bomb the Artifact Temple. However, the Phazon hurts the Pirates as much as it hurts their enemies, and the boss battle ends with the statues of the ancient Chozo blowing Ridley away in violent, laser-y retribution. The game is about destructive exploitation, and Ridley shows what happens to those who go too far for power.

Corruption is about the corruption of the body and spirit by violence, as represented by toxic Phazon. At the beginning, Ridley is his crafty old self, hounding Samus on Norion and forcing her into a boss fight he knows she cannot escape on her own when he knocks her into the generator shaft. But at the end of the game, he reappears, corrupted by Phazon, as an animalistic guardian of the leviathan seed on the Pirate Homeworld, little better than a guard dog. It parallels Samus' own journey as she is corrupted by Phazon, put on a leash by the Federation, and forced to kill those like her. The game is about corruption, and Ridley shows the end of those taken by the corruption.

Samus Returns is like Zero Mission in that it is about shedding new light on an old story, but it goes deeper than that. Samus sparing the Metroid hatchling is the single most important decision in the series, so it's no surprise that the remake should have Ridley -- whose most famous moment in the manga was making the opposite decision in regards to Samus -- appear to try and tear them apart. His appearance also foreshadows his role in Super Metroid, and putting aside the change in tone from the original Metroid II, his appearance gives Samus and the baby Metroid a chance to develop their bond in a way that had mostly been told, not shown. The game is about Samus' moment of mercy, and Ridley is there to see if she can really do it.

Super Metroid is about Samus and the baby Metroid's bond. Samus throws her plans away to recapture the baby Metroid, and in the end it sacrifices its life to save her. Lo and behold, Ridley is the one who separates them, and when she kills him, she finds only the broken Metroid capsule, a tantalizing clue that brings her no closer to the baby Metroid. The game is about what matters to Samus, and Ridley is the one who takes it all from her.

Other M is a game about nothing. Samus does not impact the plot in any significant way because other people sideline her and handle the plot for her. Ironically, Ridley still fits this theme -- he appears as a cloned baby to annoy and distract Samus, has a boss battle that makes no sense in context, and finally is eaten by a poorly foreshadowed Queen Metroid and never comes up again. The game is stupid and Ridley is handled stupidly.

Fusion is about identity and the past. Everything is flipped upside down when Samus is infected by an X parasite, loses everything, and discovers that the monster trying to kill her is, essentially, her. The power of the Metroids, her eternal enemy, becomes the key to her success and survival. In an important scene, the Federation, which Samus has trusted since her Zero Mission, is revealed to have recreated the Metroids. Immediately after this upsetting revelation about an entity she has worked for for years, who does she encounter in the Federation's facility? That's right, Ridley, who has even been possessed by an X parasite as if to mock her situation.

It's not all bad, though. Fusion is the game where Samus finishes Ridley for good (seeing as he doesn’t return for Dread), and fittingly enough she finally comes to terms with part of her past when she reconnects with ADAM. It's a game about the past. Ridley is that past, and Samus finally puts him behind her.

Ridley is so special not just because of his cunning nature and terrifying brutality, but also because of how neatly he fits into the puzzle of Samus' life. He’s a relentless phantom that embodies the violence she cannot escape. He represents everything Samus must overcome to finally find that "true peace in space" from the NEStroid end screen.

Thanks guys 👋

#Metroid #Ridley

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ms-scarletwings · 7 months

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A Messy, Sedulous Necropsy of Zib Membrane

That’s what we call him right? Not Invader Zib? Hell if I know, we’ll let the tags decide.

Whatever he is christened by his author, enemies, or fans, this titular villain of the Zimvoid is such a mind blaster to me. I wish we had more time with him within the comics. I wish he had been a concept explored in the show. I wish he had a movie. I am having fun with a little hyperbole here, but I truly do find him just as interesting and potentially pivotal of an antagonist as Tak was, if not even more.

Both, of course, were so badly underutilized for sake of the series status quo. To that, Zib was a much bigger threat than Tak, and especially to that of the comics’ own. He potentially changes everything, and somehow absolutely nothing by the end. The TV show always had a more overt tone of cruelty and the macabre floating about its themes. These print issues? I don’t dislike them. It’s still recognizably invader Zim, and the more the merrier, content-wise, but longtime fans can feel that there was this change of essence in the transition. More obviously, in the art, but more subtly, there was an audible softening of that bluntly darker, cynical tone the show was made iconic for. To put it very generally, they lean a little more into the whackiness of this world, there’s a lot more dark comedy to be found in what I’ve seen so far rather than in your face darkness, and in the absence of the ost and voice acting the show accustomed us to, the comics leave a lot more room to be read as you wile. To me, they’re goofier and more episodic in spirit.

This all is not a critique or rating on the comics.. It’s purely, I feel, why Zib stuck out to me all the more jarringly in his context. His reveal was a genuine twist that brought forth stakes higher than arguably any other threat in the entire franchise. He represents a plausible while horrifying prophecy of our main characters if only they made worse decisions. The most interesting of all, for every piece of amazing information he fed to us, he bred dozens more questions about everything than he answered, from Irken machinations, to his ambivalent backstory, to the secrets hidden by the sum of his parts.

Though he was left evidently alive at the end of his story, I don’t see any chance for him making a return, so he is memorialized as another defeated one-off the writers have brisked past and left behind for good. Therefore, I’m here today to take what we got and present it on the metaphorical autopsy table. I want to really pull apart why this character alone pulled me back into the TV series, really just flay open the bits I can’t get out of my own head and dig harder until we find something or we run out of threads to tug at. Starting with the one already hanging out of my mouth, but

• B.E.F

“Bad End Friend” is a term I learned the meaning of within the last 12 hours or so of writing this, and I’m exuberant over that discovery. It’s a niche trope i didn’t know ive been a giant fan of since I was a child. Summed up, fictional characters from beloved media, typically, animated child protagonists… given the worst case scenario treatment. Their “bad ending”, whether that means a corruption arc, demonic possession, a lovecraftIan tragedy… usually something that’s anywhere along the lines of a fate worse than death to a full villainous turnover. As a treat. The concept is strongly associated with fanworks and AUs of popular media, but just as often this is something that becomes explored in the source material as well. A couple great examples I know would probably be Ice Prince Finn from Adventure Time or what happens in Undertale when you decide you want to run the most depraved playthrough possible. From a more mature story, “Evil” Morty is another validly arguable sample.

Besides a bit of a fondness I got going for certain dark or spooky themes in general, what I REALLY love about canonical BEFs the most is their utility as characterization tools. They’re the “having your cake and eating it too” option! The perfect way for an author to explore certain things about any character without actually committing to well… a bad ending.

Almost always, they are necessarily hypothetical or reversible. If they’re not reversible, they go often hand-in-hand with a little universe tampering to make happen. Sometimes, this means the story goes the way of time travel and branching off butterfly effects. Sometimes it means confirming multiverse theory, which can be the same thing depending on your semantical position.

And Zib crossed off the BEF qualifications by far and away. His implications are extremely dark given any pause think about them, and he’s a living, disturbing tragedy in aftermath. If you want to view a rigamarole about that aspect of his characterization as he appeared in the comics, someone else long beat me to that and I’m enthusiastically recommending a peek at their own work. I’m thrilled to do so and build a little upon that with those extended what-if-wonders.

• Lessons From a Lost Episode

Elephant in the room I haven’t seen someone ask yet, uh..

By show rules, isn’t Zib supposed to be a clear case of the writers committing the sin of retcon? By show I’m including the unaired scripts, including “10 Minutes to Doom”. In that one we had what looked like the potential setup for a Zib case, and it was deconstructed across the whole episode.

In short recap, Dib learned the hard and reckless way about the true nature of what Irken PAKs actually are. This is not an inventory bag, it is not “gear”. It’s the actual Irken entity- at least, the primary component.

Detaching it from the organic shell essentially caused a temporary split into two instances of Zim, desperately trying to connect back together under threat of obliteration.

Like let me be very clear about this,

The PAK is an autonomous instance of Zim’s consciousness, and it’s the main one. We’ve seen it act to save his life when his body has been out cold or flatlined, and he doesn’t appear the least bit disoriented or confused once “he” wakes and jumps back into the action. There’s no known separate computer assistant AI or security autopilot in there. That code, that program, IS Zim. As Long as the PAK is active, he is capable of staying fully conscious and able to react to what’s happening around him, and that’s what we’ve been seeing, his own actions.

Zim proved me right when Virooz tried to replace him and detached the PAK. Take note of his phrasing after the chair event™.

“I” activated the protocol. Immediately after Virooz ran off with my shell.

“I” Voluntarily chose to do so.

I don’t remember it playing out like that in “10 Minutes to Doom”.

Attaching to a new host wasn’t the first reflex. Dib was not the least bit aware that that he has literally holding the actual Zim captive in sense, and the latter was fighting like a cornered animal to escape him. Failing that, alongside the distance between him and his original body growing fast, he made a last desperate gambit, and he willingly connected himself into Dib’s body.

I can see why he thought this was better than nothing, no matter how repulsive the notion might have been. If he couldn’t fend Dib off physically, he could incapacitate him in some fashion by trying to overtake his will. Maybe give the shell a better chance to catch up, maybe in the longshot hope of being able to pilot dib in order to become whole with the correct host again. And you can say he succeeded, at least in dominating bodily control away from Dib, but at the cost of his already tenuously held sanity. This could be because of the interference of Dib’s own mind still resisting to fully submit, or malfunctions because of the biological incompatibility; however, the thing that Dib mentally becomes is only the basic idea of what “Zim” is. Instead of remembering it needs to reunite with its shell ASAP, the PAK mistakes Dib’s body for its own and goes through the manic motions of following the Invader mission. And it does this, weirdly enough, with almost no regard for blowing its cover.

When things are set right again, Zim’s later words near the episode ending revealed that he knew that was an unsustainable state.

Such a risk was not just accounted for, he was actually banking on it if that clock had hit zero. If Zim had truly lost, if he was really doomed to meet his end on this nasty rock in the middle of Nowhere, Space, then by every damned circuit in his being, he was going to take down this insolent fool boy and as many other humans possible with him. A dying act of vengeful rage.

• The Exceptional… Exception

Now, wouldn’t all of this be the definitive reason for Zib’s existence to be an aberrant impossibility? Yes, but actually no. Fun thing about multiverses is if something doesn’t work in one setting, you can just tweak a few dials and suddenly you have a world where the impossible becomes possible. But that’s a pretty cheap answer, isn’t it? So, what exactly was that crucial difference?

What happened in Zib’s timeline that went down so, so divergently from the events of 10 Minutes to Doom?

Because the only one who was in any position to explain it for us was Zib himself, and he’s proven to be one of the most unreliable of narrators. It’s as @dana-chan-the-control-brain already spared no effort to demonstrate, when he does tell us something about his past, his story is pocked with contradicting half-truths or outright lies. Ergo it helps to break down each recount of events to pick out the real facts.

Version 1: This is an alternate version of dib who defeated his complementing Zim (logically sensible) and went on to achieve all of the success and respect he sought after in his timeline (absolute bullshit). He kind of gestures and only implies about what has happened to his body while explaining that he came to his current understanding of Irken technology by studying it through Zim’s lab (a partial truth). He lets slip in passing that he has in fact fused with the PAK in order to learn how to alter and reprogram its coding, lessons he has applied to Number 2 in order to have a brainwashed pawn (also apparently true).

Version 2, when cornered and red handed: This is an alternate version of Dib who managed to specifically stop Zim's mission (Again, makes sense) but somehow could not convince the world of his findings or his warnings about the Irken Armada (*VERY eyebrow raising). Frustrated with the people’s lack of cooperation, he decides he has no choice but to physically merge with Zim’s PAK post-mortem (concerning and evidently mostly accurate), dominate the Earth himself, and enslave humans to help him in his efforts (highly troubling and probably true). The construction of his EMP super-weapon is successful, but ultimately led to the creation of the Zimvoid when the device was field tested (self evident, absolutely horrifying).

You know what I noticed was missing from both of these accounts? Exactly how his Zim was defeated. Which honestly could have been some beyond useful wisdom to pass along to the main Dib??? More than anything else? I’m not going to fault our boy for not pressing that matter better under the awing circumstance; however, there’s an implication I’ve been reading between lines.

When Zib mentions “defeating” his own Zim, he’s talking about something different than ours.

When our Dib has always talked about “defeating” Zim, he’s meant incapacitation and capture. Throughout the show he explicitly wants to present Zim before an audience alive and whole. Yeah, he fantasizes about other people torturing or disassembling him for study, but HIS role was supposed to be reaping the fame for an undeniable, ground-breaking discovery. Conspiracies and cryptids are all this kid breathes and lives by! And as long as pop culture has always been fascinated with the paranormal, and he has to know this full well, people keep bringing forward hoax after hoax after scam. I mean there’s a freaking current one or few still going IRL about this exact topic. Dib would want no room left for being dismissed as another one of those con artists.

Nonetheless, I actually doubt this is the reason Zib couldn’t get through to the scientific community. A genuine alien lifeform, even a dead one, could still be confirmed by any basic medical examination. The world thinks Dib is too crazy to listen to, but his father is still Professor Membrane. In "10 Minutes to Doom" OUR Dib got as close as having Membrane literally analyzing a PAK, or at worst, preparing to. “Ultimate Dib” gets his hands on the same thing and pulls a move I’d expect from an HP Lovecraft Protagonist instead.

We’re assuming way too much to what these two Dibs have in common, because this ^^^ is really what made the Zimvoid an outlier in the multiverse. That world didn’t only have a very different, more threatening Zim from the main timeline, it had the Dib who proved even more formidable, cunning, and ruthless, even before the fusion.

He didn’t obtain that PAK ala the “10 minutes to Doom” accident, it’s a personal trophy. This is extra strange remembering that capturing an Irken is realistically more easy than killing one. They’re seriously more tenacious than kudzu and will even fight back in PAK form alone. I’m convinced that whatever sort of final showdown made the Ultimate Dib the victor, there are two optional endings on the table.

Option 1: There was not a body even left intact enough to bring in to research. Maybe Dib’s fault, maybe an accident, maybe even Zim’s own luck running out and his incompetent antics finally swallowed him (and possibly GIR). This theory assumes that the PAK was the only sort of remains to come into Dib’s recovery/possession.

Option 2: Curiosity Killed the cat,

but satisfaction brought it back.

Or, the one I personally headcanon. Dib… all Dibs, I assume, don’t just hate the Irken species. They are mesmerized by them, and all that they represent from his perspective. Firstly, the epic villain he gets to roleplay nemesis to in order to feel his own worth and importance. Secondly, an unknown wonder from beyond the boundaries of the cosmos. He’s not really a ghost buster or a Men In Black agent at heart, but a scientist, like his father. Underneath his contempt for Zim’s plans to destroy the world is a genuine and appropriately childish awe for alien presence, especially for Zim’s technology. His silent, dopey smile when Tak’s ship ended up in his backyard said more than words ever will..

Earlier in the show, a great deal of Dib’s time and effort was spent on trying to infiltrate the lower levels of Zim’s base. Sneaking into the house was hard enough, but the computer security can’t be bypassed like the gnomes. Not even by Zim himself unless he really is all himself. Perhaps you’re starting to sniff where I’m going with this one when I refer back to “Bolognius Maximus”. I’ve another reference that’s a little more on the nose, and a lot more… dark.

Were an expired Irken husk before you, you too might take your victory and cash in then. Still, who knows what sudden impulse may run through the head of a less humble version of yourself, one some could call greedier, obsessive to a fault, a screw or two loose, yet, a hell of a smart cookie. Smart enough to see it for what it actually was, the keys to a whole world of discovery that went so many layers deeper than they could ever imagine. It’s possible the Ultimate Dib already learned beforehand the same hard lessons about the PAKs that our own did, and took that understanding toward not repeating the same mistake this time. What happened to Zim? I think he was murdered in cold blood, body, and entity. “10 Minutes to Doom” showed us a fight between 2 brains clinging to one body, struggling until one overpowered another, but that’s not what this is. Through whatever means of science were available to him, this Dib has probably tried to “disarm” the technology by either erasing Zim’s consciousness out of it altogether, or by forcing the autonomous code into a kind of dormancy. His intentions were to render it back to its basic hardware without losing its precious knowledge and usefulness, something like the brain-filled tank that was wired into Skrang’s head. Zim’s PAK doesn’t cling onto his body like a parasitic teratoma this time; it’s merged in a literal sense with his nervous and circulatory system. As well, he has fooled the device’s ability to detect and reject a foreign host shell, the exact same way he deceived the the base’s security AI. If an Irken biology is what these measures authorize to command them and their secrets, then he had the tools on hand to give them just that- in an atrocity I like to call

the darker harvest.

Within this theory, there is not as much room to wonder exactly what became of Zim’s organic remains.

But where Dib fucked up was, for the second time, in his ignorance to the true nature of what he was even playing with. That was a mistake that even the mighty Elder Brains of Judgementia lost themselves to; How much more vulnerable was the weak, human mind? Though Zim can be devoured, he can never be digested. In that fact was born this aberration against nature, sanity, and humanity alike.

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don't have politics. They're very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first… insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but… I'm afraid, uh… I'm saying… I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake." - Seth Brundle, The Fly, 1986

By fusing what is half-mad and what is utterly mad, neither being was cured, only assimilated into the birth of a new madness. The madness of the creature that snickers behind the curtain in the Zimvoid. I rightfully fear that lonesome thing, but not I think as much as I pity him.

• Dejavu, or Re:Plagarism

One more thing about the Zimvoid arc I find curious is the way it makes you question more and more just how much of the aberration is actually still Dib, and how much of it is Zim's infection haunting him. He does nothing with all of his intellect, his resources, and his time in the void doing anything but surrounding himself in everything he claims he despises. He decries alien tyranny in one breath while lording over a homemade, cruel dictatorship in another. He calls for eradication of the very race who's technology and physiology he has thoroughly appropriated. He laments feeling unable to protect the Earth from the Armada alone, yet sneers literally through Irken teeth to insult humans as inferior and of no value to him any longer. Our Dib spent the whole damn show longing for the support of other people, but Zib pushes away potential allies in his arrogance. His broken timeline never became a Dibvoid instead because while only half of his mind can't stand Irkens, both of the souls inside him remember that they loathe and look down upon a Dib, deep inside.

The corruption goes as far as even subverting his own creativity. None of Zib's plans are wholly original. His anti-Irken weapon was already a concept blueprinted inside of that PAK before the merge. Our Dib has several times shown a propensity for some DIY ingenuity, sometimes dipping a toe into the supernatural. Zib entirely calls upon, scavenges and regurgitates Irken designs with a few modifications or upgrades. The Dib Virus, I think is his most uninspired creation yet, for it's original form was always something inside of Zim, even if the latter himself was not aware of the fact. Like all else, it is a weapon he has plundered, customized, and turned around on everyone else for his own selfish ends. This brief point I will end on one more reflection. The one kind of help Zim ever allowed at his side were the likes of GIR and his own creations. Unable to connect and cooperate with his peers and own kind, his ego preferred to be around those defective machines he related to- drones to be owned by him and always loyally at his beck and call. A slave to admire him unconditionally is the only companionship he's ever been willing to admit to desiring.

And what was Number 2's purpose again? What role exactly were the arena combatants auditioning for, when you think about it?

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