#he very much fights his own battles thats a pretty significant thing that happens | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

betawooper · 3 years

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rating every demon fight in kny bc i can

non-biased, completely objective rating (more or less) of every significant demon fight in kny based on a number of factors, including:

cleverness of fighting tactics

placement in the story’s timeline

integration of character backstories

cohesive themes between characters

etc

by non-biased and objective i mean i’m not skewing the rating if a death felt fair or whatever

everything past where the anime ended will be under a read more so anime onlys who havent watched mugen train, youre safe lol

oh and i reread the manga like 20+ times (reread the latter arcs at least 40 times, haha hyperfixations am i right?) so be rest assured im not pulling these ratings out of my ass

also ill randomly be bolding certain phrases just to improve readability

anyways let’s gooooo

VS NEZUKO

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kamado Tanjirou and Nezuko. Tanjirou is fending her off by putting the axe handle in her mouth, keeping her from eating him. End Image Description.]

10/10

i like how realistic it is, because yeah tanjirou would react the way to he did with zero fighting skills against a demon

very clear why tanjirou is fighting nezuko and shows a bit of worldbuilding on how normal people react to their family becoming demons

always nice to see worldbuilding

giyuu is the perfect example of a seasoned demon slayer who’s good at his job, and he juxtaposes tanjirou very well in that aspect

my only complaint is not directly in this fight itself but how nezuko is handled throughout the story as a whole

like bro, it is literally never explained why nezuko is different from demons

could have been easily explained if maybe her family’s ghosts like slapped her hand every time she wanted to eat a person but nope

she’s just built different lol

so yeah youll see future ratings get points docked off bc nezuko unlocks some secret power with no prior explanation other than she angy >:3

VS TEMPLE DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of a demon. The demon has a sharp-nailed hand over his neck and there are four text bubbles around him saying “But a wound like this... will heal in no time! See? The bleeding already stopped!” End Image Description.]

10/10

may be more forgettable compared to like rui but still good

tanjirou did exceptionally well in this fight and his ability to think on his feet is once again beautifully illustrated here (trapping this dude’s head against the tree trunk with the axe)

very clever

again, establishes more demon worldbuilding regarding regeneration and still being able to move without their head

and the demons burning in the sunlight thing since nezuko wasn’t able to show that

the ending where tanjirou hesitates to kill the demon also serves to show his sympathetic nature towards demons that will last throughout the entirety of the first 60-ish chapters

we’ll talk about what the hell happens to tanjirou after that

or not, it could honestly be its own post

VS HAND DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of a many-handed demon. He has six hands around him, three of them covering his mouth while he chuckles, two of them grabbing his cheeks, and one holding on to the top of his head. There are two text bubbles saying “That’s how many of Urokodaki’s students I have eaten! I’ve decided to kill all of his students!” End Image Description.]

10/10

ooooh probably the first big fight against a demon in the series

oh yeah not doing the two random demons tanjirou one shot in a single blow bc eh

anyways hand demon’s pretty goddamn scary, considering the fact that this is the 5th demon or whatever tanjirou has had to face so far

very nice way to show us how much tanjirou’s innate intuition and all his other random abilities (sense of smell, hard forehead) can come together and help him decapitate this guy

i liked the mini history with urokodaki this dude had and why he had beef with our favorite mentor figure, it establishes that urokodaki was in fact a super good demon slayer and its cool to see that actually shown

i also liked that small moment of compassion tanjirou gave this demon, staying consistent with tanjirou’s established kindness

the demon’s sad tale with killing his own brother very much humanizes him when all the reader has seen up to this point is that this guy is a monster who eats people

sets up the theme of demons just being humans but being victims of circumstance that unfortunately doesn’t hold up as well in arcs past mugen train

VS SWAMP DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kamado Tanjirou fighting off three horned demons as they appear from below. There is a spiky text bubble saying “Three of them!!!” End Image Description.]

10/10

not my most favorite fight but it still portrays everything alright and im not allowed to let my personal opinions mess with the rating so

i like how tanjirou mentioned the fact that he trained in conditions similar to the bog and explains how he pulled off the whirlpool form

using past experiences to aid him in the present, nice nice

tanjirou and nezuko dont quite work together very well but its yknow the first mission so ill chalk it up to simple inexperience

also the way the muzan curse thingie was hinted at here? fantastic way of showing that little bit of demon worldbuilding

...

oh god, it mentions nezuko being stronger than normal demons

ok its not a problem here per say since i can still suspend my disbelief, but later on it just becomes a glaring problem that gets worse over time

VS SUSAMARU AND YAHABA

[Image Description: Manga panels of Susamaru and Yahaba. The first one is a joyful Susamaru about to throw a temari ball. There is floating text saying “Is she one of Kibutsuji’s minions?!” The second image is an annoyed Yahaba, holding one of his eye-hands to cover himself. There are two text bubbles around him saying “My kimono got all dusty. Tch!” End Image Description.]

9/10

why dont these bitches have a good looking panel together dammit

anyways amazing entrance, the way yahaba used his hand eyes to track down tanjirou is really neat

the synergy yahaba and susamaru have is incredible, its awesome dude, they work extremely well together and it shows

tanjirou actually mixing his water breathing forms together is a god tier move and i absolutely love how he can show off his ability to think on his feet once again

establishing how yushiro’s bda works early on is really well done

establishing tamayo as a fugitive this early on is also super well done

not to get into spoiler territory but both these things pay off

how tamayo ended up defeating susamaru is literally awesome in so many ways

shows off both how smart she is by exploiting the muzan curse

and speaking of the muzan curse, we actually get to see what happens to demons who even say his name, back when it was hinted with the swamp demon

tamayo is amazing dude, and we get some real evidence of the horrible suffering demons go through if they even accidentally attempt to betray muzan :D

...

now heres what keeps this fight from being perfect

nezuko somehow grew stronger against susamaru’s temari

with no explanation

which could have been easily explained if tamayo was like “oh yeah the drug also boosts a demon’s strength temporarily”

but nope

god, i just dont like how gotouge handles nezuko’s power boosts throughout the series bc like i said before

no explanation is given anywhere

this is a huge issue, this isnt a pokemon game, you cant just kill demons and get exp at the end of every battle, level up, get some sweet stat bonuses and move on

(actually if gotouge established that this is how nezuko grew in power, than all my complaints about this would be gone, im not even joking)

anyways i get that nezuko is supposed to be “special” but thats too vague of a descriptor

how the hell is she special? ya gotta be more specific and stick with that explanation or that suspension of disbelief is going to disappear

VS TONGUE DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of a four-eyed demon with horns and a long tongue. He is crawling in an awkward position, one foot in front of his tilted head. There are two text bubbles around him saying “Heh, heh! I’ll slurpy slurp your brains out through you ear!” End Image Description.]

10/10

not much to say, showcases zenitsu’s true abilities really well

nicely done

VS HORNED DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of a big, single-horned demon. There are three text bubbles saying “You dodged! You’re awfully lively for a human! It’ll be a treat to carve away your flesh!” End Image Description.]

10/10

would have ignored this fight if not for the fact we havent seen inosuke fight before

it definitely shows how very fast-paced and wild inosuke is

no complaints here lol

VS KYOGAI

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kyogai, a demon with tsuzumi drums attached to his shoulders. There are four text bubbles around him saying “Why?! Why does everyone keep sneaking through my house? It’s so aggravating. It’s my prey! It’s my prey! Found in my territory!” End Image Description.]

10/10

establishes marechi blood pretty early on, once again expanding the worldbuilding of kny which is always cool

interesting terrain where it’s always shifting, tanjirou once again proves his ability to adapt really quickly by altering one of his forms to work with the turning room

(man, i wish the form mixing/form modification thing carried on throughout the rest of the story, but it really didnt which is just a shame)

the injuries tanjirou had prior to this mission actually affecting him was a nice touch

oh yeah, kyogai gives us more worldbuilding (which is always nice) regarding the 12 kizuki, and the aspect of him being cast out due to being weak shows a lot about muzan’s indifference towards his own demons if they arent strong

his backstory being a failed writer once again humanizes kyogai as a former human being and not just a monster

tanjirou shows his sympathy and compassion again by not stepping on his written work and complimenting his bda

well, tbh tanjirou’s actions kinda came out of nowhere but its a very minor thing and not enough to dock a point off, like it didnt affect the outcome of the fight that much if at all

(so if you see future battles where points are docked off for things not logically making sense, its bc whatever nonsensical concepts were integrated into the fight actually turned the tide of the battle and thats a big no-no)

very good fight and if you remember how kinda bad tanjirou was at accurately slicing the swamp demon, you can see that he’s already improved leaps and bounds

im so proud of him

VS MOTHER SPIDER DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kamado Tanjirou and the Mother Spider Demon. There is a light shining down from the top right on to the demon as Tanjirou slices her head off, rain following in his wake. There is floating text saying “Water Breathing: Fifth Form - Blessed Rain After the Drought!” around them. End Image Description.]

10/10

i mean does anyone disagree?

all the demon slayers getting their necks snapped by her threads was pretty horrific, probably more horrifying than anything else we have seen in the entire series if im gonna be honest

the death scene is probably the most beautiful one in the series

it reveals a water breathing form that we havent seen before thats the 5th form

as far as i know, no other breathing style has this merciful sword stroke so it shows a lot about the original water breather and what they might have been like

but enough about them, really the focus is on tanjirou bc this is like the best example by far of how kind and sympathetic he is to demons

dunno what else to say, its perfect

VS SON SPIDER DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of Agatsuma Zenitsu performing Thunder Breathing 1st Form: Sixfold on a spider-like demon. Zenitsu is crashing through the roof of a shed, and a zig-zag path is left behind. There are sound effects all over the panel, saying “Bam!” in large font. End Image Description.]

10/10

chose a picture without a huge spider on it bc i would like to not scare myself half to death

anyways extremely amazing fight, showcases zenitsu’s immense talent and skill, adapting the 1st form of thunder breathing to be a more versatile move

theres a moment where his backstory with kuwajima and kaigaku were revealed and his hidden insecurities are out in the open which is super nice and further develops a character weve only considered as comedic relief until now

the anime made the backstory scenes and the killing scene so much cooler

while there is no thematic connection between zenitsu and the demon, it really isnt necessary to keep this fight interesting

anyways another pretty much perfect fight

VS FATHER SPIDER DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kamado Tanjirou and Inosuke slashing at the Father Spider Demon. The demon has blocked Tanjirou’s sword with his arm, and Inosuke is slamming both his blades down on the demon’s other hand. End Image Description.]

10/10

again, not my most favorite fight but it does everything right

i do have to say it was excellent how gotouge hyped up the father spider demon to be the big bad, only just so the plot twist later takes the readers by surprise

nicely done

VS DAUGHTER SPIDER DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kochou Shinobu and the Daughter Spider Demon. Shinobu’s back is seen and her haori looks like a butterfly’s wings keeping her afloat as she holds her stinger blade out to the side. The demon looks surprised as blood gushes from her side, arm, shoulder, chest, neck, and forehead. There is floating text on the panel, saying “Insect Breathing - Butterfly Dance - Caprice!” End Image Description.]

10/10

first time weve seen shinobu and her fighting style

what i love most about this is how much it shows her true character, appearing as a carefree and naive individual so she seems underwhelming

then bam, reveals exactly how dangerous and uncaring she is of demons, listing out the specific ways she would torture the daughter spider demon in grotesque detail

her using poison to take demons by surprise is also super clever and brings back the worldbuilding established way earlier about wisteria being poisonous to demons

amazing integration of that concept

anyways this fight really encapsulates who shinobu is as a character and thats why it gets a perfect score

VS RUI

[Image Description: Manga panel of Rui holding his hand out directly towards the viewer. There are two text bubbles around him, saying “Give me your sister. If you hand her over quietly, I’ll spare your life.” End Image Description.]

8/10

not only is it a super scary fight but there is a deeper conflict between rui and tanjirou, what it means to be family

they are opposites in the sense that while tanjirou believes love is what makes a family, rui’s subconscious desperation for an unbreakable bond drives him to use fear to keep his “family” together

excellent juxtaposition of their values, and this is only further emphasized when rui expresses out loud what he was going to do to nezuko

i also like the symbolism regarding rui’s bda, how he uses threads or the “familial” bonds to cut up his fake family with it if they act out of turn or annoy him

super neat detail

alright what i dont like about this fight is nezuko (again)

mostly her unlocking her bda to turn the tide of the battle bc her mom was like “yo, wake up, your brother is going to be killed”

feels... forced ig

her bda in general is confusing and not consistent

man, i wish i could make a stronger argument for this but i do believe the problem stems from the fact that we dont ever know what nezuko is thinking, and what she thinks of tanjirou specifically

if she even cares for him as a sibling or if shes only going along with what her family is saying to her, things like that which would have been fixed if gotouge actually gave her thoughts some screen time

so the action feels pretty shallow

im also conflicted over tanjirou somehow remembering how dance of the fire god works

on one hand, hes using past information and applying it in the current setting so he doesnt die, which is understandable

but on the other hand, this was a teeny bit random?

i think what could have fixed this is if there was a scene in the beginning of the series where tanjirou was performing it himself, like practicing before he actually had to do it for new years

so that when the rui fight rolls around, it would have felt less like throwing dry spaghetti at a wall

but yeah

overall super good fight, giyuu ending up having to kill rui instead of tanjirou was super good in that tanjirou didnt become a pillar this early in the series and to show how strong giyuu is

there are some odd bits regarding the ultimate “beheading” of rui using nezuko and tanjirous supposed bonds but it doesnt kill the fight entirely so it deserves its pretty high score

***under read more is manga-only fights so beware***

VS ENMU

[Image Description: Manga panel of Enmu holding his hand out directly at the viewer, with a mouth on the back of it. There is floating text to the top right of Enmu that says “Whispers of Forced Unconscious Hypnosis!” End Image Description.]

9/10

id say this fight is definitely overshadowed by the dream stuff prior to this but its pretty good in its own right

enmu fusing with the train was kinda confusing, like when was it established that demons could fuse with objects?

this worldbuilding element doesnt even appear again so yeah thats why it loses a point

how the kmbk gang end up defeating enmu is pretty sweet though, tanjirou using dance of the fire god to sever the neck bone was really nice and shows that him using the breathing style in the rui fight wasnt a one time thing

while kyojuro’s role was smaller in this part, the next part makes up for it so i cant complain

anyways ye, almost perfect score but its pretty good

VS AKAZA (MUGEN TRAIN)

[Image Description: Manga panel of Akaza holding his hand out to the viewer’s left. There is a text bubble saying “Why don’t you become a demon?” End Image Description.]

10/10

this encounter is literally amazing okay?

after the crew kills the big bad, it seems like everything is fine

but plot twist, upper moon 3 appears out of nowhere

this is the first time the reader has seen an upper moon, let alone the 3rd/4th strongest demon in existence and the way gotouge handled this twist is fucking amazing

kyojuro’s death scene really shows just how human even the strongest pillars are against demons with incredible power

its just

amazing

VS OBI DEMON

[Image Description: Manga panels of the obi-like demon. The first image shows the obi hung in the air and strung over each other like decorations, with women-shaped patterns in its folds. The second image is Hashibira Inosuke fighting the Obi demon which now has lips and eyes. There is floating text in that panel saying “Breath of the Beast: Sixth Fang - Jagged Gnaw!!” End Image Description.]

10/10

on to red light district

this fight is admittedly super forgettable and not very interesting at least compared to the main fight with daki and gyutaro

but it wraps up the sub plot of the women and uzui’s wives going missing so it gets a perfect score for not messing that up

oh and it establishes the stretchy neck thing daki has going on which is very good

VS DAKI AND GYUTARO

[Image Description: Manga panel of Daki and Gyutaro. Daki is sitting on Gyutaro’s shoulders. There is a text bubble on the top right that says “The two of us are one, after all.” as well as floating text that reads “The power of the irregular siblings...!? Next issue lead color and the fight reaches its climax!!” End Image Description.]

8/10

love how this battle challenges tanjirou’s sympathy and kindness towards demons, just simply bc daki and gyutaro are horrible people

(too bad nothing came of this, which ill explain in the hantengu portion)

daki and gyutaro are very good villains and kept this fight super interesting from start to finish

uzui acting as a foil to gyutaro is nicely integrated and properly shown with how jealous gyutaro gets over seeing uzui’s perfect form and stature

tanjirou not only mixes forms but mixes breathing styles as well, which is so fucking awesome

(too bad it was only used like once throughout the entire series, its quite unfortunate)

the super high tension right after inosuke gets stabbed and tanjirou wakes up was expertly portrayed and handled, it felt like the kmbk gang and uzui were actually going to lose

super awesome

the tanjirou and gyutaro parallels are expertly portrayed, with how gyutaro taunts tanjirou over failing to protect his little sister, and the more visual thing where tanjirou imagined his own neck underneath his blade, that was super duper nice

the ending is extremely tense and emotionally gripping, gotouge did a really good job with that artistically too

the demon mark acquisition scene was surprisingly not frustrating, considering that it wasnt really explained prior to the battle

i do think it has to do with how it was explained later just exactly how they worked so its not just some random thing gotouge pulled out of their ass

so pretty good

what i dont like is nezuko and her full power demon form

first of all where the fuck did that come from? she just got angry and suddenly shes as powerful as an upper moon

how?

that doesnt make sense???

her extremely quick regeneration makes no sense

her ability to manipulate her blood’s properties makes no sense

and it doesnt even appear again so what was the point of that existing

none of this is even explained later which annoys me

that one part where tanjirou sings a lullaby to her to calm her down was alright ig but nezuko in this fight makes me extremely irritated and frustrated

just ugh

VS HANTENGU

[Image Description: Manga panel of Hantengu opening a shoji door. He is crawling inside, his hand in a gnarled, unnatural position. There is a text bubble saying “Eeeeeeek.” End Image Description.]

1/10

swordsmith village

this fight can go fuck itself /j

no but seriously it has so many problems that it would be shorter to name its redeeming qualities (which ill do later)

first off, the nezuko full power form thing again

i hate it so much with a passion

again, where did her ability to regenerate instantly even come from???? this is never explained, ever

and why did she cut herself on tanjirou’s sword anyway

did she somehow know that it was going to turn red if she burned it?

gotouge what the fuck, there is literally no reason why nezuko would do that and we cant even read her mind to see her thought process

gotouge hates nezuko, i swear

remember when i said uzui is meant to be a foil to gyutaro in the rld fight? its pretty obvious that those two are opposites, it was nicely done

... what the hell does mitsuri’s insecurities about strength have to do with whatever the fuck hantengu has going on (which is basically nothing)?

so no meaningful connection between mitsuri and hantengu

theres no meaningful connection between tanjirou and hantengu other than tanjirou getting pissed off for like the second time

also tanjirou’s thing with being kind and sympathetic to demons was entirely dropped at this point

but instead of it leading up to a corruption arc of some sorts, it just doesnt

like honestly if something actually came of that anger he exhibited in this arc and from red light district from this point forward story-wise, i would have counted this as an amazing writing decision

but it literally doesnt so who cares

(god, i really start to hate what happened to his character after this )

and genya’s revealed motivation also doesnt fit at all with hantengu’s thing, he’s not a foil, not a parallel, nothing, there is nothing

tanjirou being the catharsis for development for mitsuri and muichirou, who he has only talked to like twice

theres definitely a better way to handle those two’s developments without his help

like gotouge, you have a big cast of characters, use them lol

i want to kick hantengu in the face for being boring as fuck (at least his clones have cool looking weapons)

doesnt even have a proper backstory, just a single spread of him being blamed for shit as a human

like... thats it? this is upper moon 4 what the hell

theres no clever form mixing here at all (regarding tanjirou) which probably would have helped with foreshadowing the 13th form for dance of the fire god/sun breathing better

also gotouge established that as tanjirou’s thing and now he doesnt do that stuff anymore which sucks

oh hey remember when tanjirou actually learned how to do zenitsu’s speed boost thing?

if you didnt, i dont blame you bc it literally doesnt appear again, ever

you could argue that he adapted it into his “waltz flash” technique or whatever the fuck that is but the way it was integrated into this fight was like throwing dry spaghetti at a wall

which is just a shame bc its meant to be representative of how tanjirou and zenitsu are good pals but the way it was utilized is forgettable as hell

i absolutely loathe the crimson blade concept as a whole and im mentioning this now bc its going to come into play why future instances where this goddamn thing comes up again causes points to be lost

its inconsistent as fuck ill tell you that

at least some yoriichi stuff appeared here and not shoved into the final battle with everything else

so the yoriichi stuff later didnt come out of absolute nowhere

genya and mitsuri’s unique fighting styles expand the kny worldbuilding just a little more which is always nice

tanjirou got a cool sword out of this which would have been cooler if him and yoriichi had a deeper connection that was actually explored

but we didnt get shit so whatever

other people getting demon marks being revealed here is also okay so that again, the final battle isnt filled with absolutely everyone getting their marks at once

demon marks have their own slew of problems but its not as bad as the fucking crimson sword shit

god i hate the crimson sword shit

...

dude this section needs a tldr, even i cant sit and read through my shit

TL;DR - this fight sucks and crimson swords are bullshit (more on this later)

VS GYOKKO

[Image Description: Manga panel of Tokitou Muichirou and Gyokko. Muichirou is looking to the left while Gyokko is looking to the right, both with their backs to each other. There are mist clouds billowing in the foreground and background, as well as a slash mark going across Gyokko’s neck. End Image Description.]

7/10

this fight suffers from the same lack of cohesive themes through characters like the hantengu battle bc the antagonist is given nothing

but its better

we havent actually seen mui fight before so theres no consistencies that the reader has to keep track of for now

and there arent like 10 characters in the fight so this fight gets a lot of points just for being a lot more coherent

i do like that this fight shows just how good mui is that he can defeat an upper moon by himself

mui’s backstory is neat

gyokko’s bda is very interesting too

... thats pretty much it lol

ye, anyways not the best fight but not the worst fight either

VS KAIGAKU

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kaigaku holding the hilt of his blade with one hand. There is two text bubbles around him, saying “...As usual, you’re still shabby. It’s been a while, Zenitsu.” End Image Description.]

9/10

alright on to final battle arc

theres some good fights and then some really sucky ones, but this one was pretty incredible and very emotionally charged

theres a clear reason why zenitsu and kaigaku are battling each other (kai betrayed the corps and inadvertantly caused the only parental figure in zenitsu’s life to die, and zenitsu is rightfully pissed off about that)

the visual yin-yang symbolism is awesome too

zenitsu winning due to using the 7th form he created himself (which i have reason to believe was inspired by tanjirou) was the perfect ending to the fight, really couldnt ask for anything better and is a perfect example of how much of an effect tanjirou has had on zenitsu

the 7th form is what tanjirou’s waltz flash should have been lol

what keeps this fight from being absolutely perfect is lack of development prior to this conflict

(since the final battle arc is basically a culmination of all the hinted developments through the series, im going to actually factor in how much and how well these conflicts were foreshadowed)

anyways if we had actually seen zenitsu, kaigaku, and kuwajima actually interacting with each other and showing how they were essentially a family (not just through flashbacks), it would have made zenitsu placing the responsibility of killing kai onto himself a lot more tragic

but like, apart from brief flashbacks where zenitsu actually met kaigaku off screen and that one thing all the way back in natagumo where both kuwajima and kai were introduced, thats pretty much it in terms of thunder family development

so yeah its underdeveloped for sure

also one random thought, i personally think zenitsu should have gotten his demon mark in this fight, it would have been cool to see

VS AKAZA (INFINITY FORTRESS)

[Image Description: Manga panel of Akaza’s face. There are two text bubbles around him, saying “Okay, let’s get started. It’s time for the feast.” There is also floating text saying “The inspection of the strong has begun...” as well as a simple box on the lower left, denoting its the end of chapter 147. End Image Description.]

6/10

oh god please dont hate me for this

ill list the good things first how about that

this conflict was foreshadowed perfectly in mugen train, you bet the readers were expecting a tanjirou vs akaza battle after the death of kyojuro and gotouge delivered

akaza’s power is shown extremely well with how many close calls tanjirou and giyuu had while fighting him

akaza eventually giving up on his own volition was really nice and fit into the context of the battle very very well, like sure tanjirou and giyuu wouldnt understand why he gave up but us readers do know

akaza is a really good character and a good villain

now notice how im only mentioning akaza and not giyuu or tanjirou in the good aspects

bc those two are eh

no form mixing at all from either tanjirou and giyuu

i know i said form mixing was kind of tanjirou’s thing but you’d think giyuu would have gotten more creative with his moves once akaza said that he was getting predictable

(well he said he “ran out of water breathing forms” but same thing)

so its kinda bland lol

speaking of giyuu, his whole thing with his insecurities of being weak wasnt handled well (it was sort of immediately brushed off in pillar training, and its unclear what part of his character arc he was in)

like sure him announcing that he’s going to protect tanjirou is cool but it feels like he was haphazardly dropped into the tanjirou and akaza conflict

isnt he supposed to be both their foils? that wasnt really explored that well in this fight and theres no deep meaning behind him even being here just analyzing what he did in it

he could have been handled better or even given more focus is what im saying

the anatta state came out of nowhere, im sorry okay? just bc inosuke like barely hinted at not being able to sense grandma hisa bc she had no fighting spirit and tanjurou magically taught his son how to achieve this state doesnt mean it was properly integrated into the fight

if the anatta state was actually explored prior to this battle, i would have given it a pass but it just feels like a cheap and poorly developed trick to get around akaza’s technique development (which is overpowered as fuck might i add)

gotouge should have just given akaza a plausible weakness to his technique development instead, especially since they dont use or even mention the anatta state after this

the transparent world shit makes no sense but ill elaborate on that in the koku battle analysis

oh and this thing doesnt affect the score but why wasnt there a “yoriichi visage overlapping” moment when tanjirou was fighting akaza? hes an upper moon, he should have gotten those visions but he didnt

for some reason

anyways this battle was alright and has good set up but the middle and end parts didnt hold up as well bc random concepts were thrown at us without prior explanation or development

VS DOUMA

[Image Description: Manga panel of Douma licking Shinobu’s butterfly pin. There are two text bubbles around him saying “Anyway, tonight is a good night. Such fine feasts keep showing up one after another.” End Image Description.]

9/10

damn, such an amazing fight

the build up to this was properly foreshadowed

shinobu finally showing her true anger after hiding it for so long is amazing

douma is a super interesting character and fantastic villain

shinobu showing off her true power and determination against douma was sooooo nice

shinobu’s poisonous body plan is so clever and so interesting

if i was to rate the shinobu part of the fight alone, it would have gotten a 10/10 no question

the reason why its knocked down a point is because of the kanao and inosuke part

dont get me wrong, the way kanao is able to hold her own against douma by herself is pretty cool, how shes meant to parallel douma with their similar struggles surrounding human emotions and demonstrate how she has grown as a person, how she regains the ability to cry

that shit is cool, inosuke also getting in touch with his emotions after learning what happened to his mom was super neat as well

however

bc this battle takes place in the final arc with everything else, there wasnt proper build up regarding many things, the kotoha reveal especially

so inosuke feels kinda forced into the kanao shinobu and douma conflict, similar to how giyuu felt forced into the tanjirou and akaza conflict

its quite unfortunate bc if the kotoha stuff was actually explored prior to the confrontation, this “forced” feeling would have disappeared

i know some people have suggested that the douma fight should have just been its own arc, and i very much agree, it would have certainly helped fix this problem regarding inosuke and kotoha

last random thought, i wish shinobu, kanao, and inosuke got their demon marks

VS KOKUSHIBOU

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kokushibou looking directly at the viewer, holding the hilt of his blade as if he’s going to pull it out. There are text boxes around him saying “This... is Upper Moon One... He’s so different compared to the other Upper Moons. He looks so dignified and majestic.” The text boxes are narrated by Tokitou Muichirou. End Image Description.]

5/10

this fight is... mediocre

at least theres a more tangible connection between muichirou and kokushibou

even though that was handled kinda poorly

tbh there really was no point to revealing that mui is koku’s descendant like at all, it just had no significant bearing to the plot of the fight

sanemi’s backstory being here is... okay ig?

idk the whole shinazugawa conflict has fundamental problems that i just cant think of any other place to put it without changing the entirety of canon

the marechi blood concept coming back was nice though

genya is there

him getting his bda was cool and helped turn the tide of the battle in a satisfying way (before kicking the bucket but thats not the focus here)

gyomei is a hollow husk of a character who barely got anything at all

but his fighting style is extremely cool and conveys his immense power very well

oh and him and sanemi are amazing at working together, like better than giyuu and tanjirou, and better than kanao and inosuke

theyre that good yet pretty much nobody acknowledges it which is sad

koku himself is pretty interesting and pretty tragic, very nice villain

but everyone together?

gonna be honest but this is such a random collection of characters, there was basically no foreshadowing that these four were going to go up again kokushibou, they are not that connected very well

i know there was this one post that focused on the theme of family that was common in all 5 characters in the fight but its just not enough

it would have been more cohesive if gotouge emphasized gyomei, mui, sanemi, and genya being like different aspects of yoriichi coming together to kill kokushibou hundreds of years after yoriichi failed to kill him

lmao its not like the 4 of them defeated koku with the power of family or friendship, they just smacked him over and over with a flail, shot him with magical bullets, and stabbed a crimson sword into his abdomen

wouldnt have been too hard to switch over to koku’s pov and go “damn these bitches are like my stupid brother”

...

speaking of crimson swords

i fucking hate the crimson sword concept oh my god can i complain about it now? im gonna complain about it now

unlike demon marks, the crimson blades werent even given any proper conditions, you just hold the stupid thing hard enough and it somehow imbues it with magical properties with no logic behind those properties

what part of crimson swords completely destroys a demon’s body in an instant? even muzan didnt go through that process when he was almost killed by yoriichi so where in the goddamn fuck did it come from

it could be explained bc the sword was left in the same spot for a long time but this tactic doesnt even appear again in a meaningful way (didnt kill muzan when tanjirou and giyuu held the sword together) so what the fuck was the point of having this even exist

its so underdeveloped and confusing and i hate it

the transparent world stuff is also confusing as shit and its pretty much never explained how they work aside from the vague “close your mind” advice, like why did it exist, it did nothing to help the present day demon slayers

its just so... poorly integrated

yeah anyways this is around the same rating as the akaza fight but a little worse bc there wasnt that strong set up beforehand

VS KOKUSHIBOU (SENGOKU ERA)

[Image Description: Manga panel of a bag getting ripped open, pieces of a wooden flute tumbling out. End Image Description.]

10/10

easily 10/10

this fight shows the tragedy of kokushibou giving in to his envy and hatred, when yoriichi cries over seeing his own family commit terrible attrocities against the people he wanted to protect

and yoriichi dies, now carrying the fact that he couldnt even save his own brother from the influence of muzan on his conscious forever

what a sad ending for yoriichi

and after koku angrily slashes apart yoriichi’s corpse, having him find and keep the flute he gave to him when they were kids to the present day gives him a small shred of humanity in the midst of his monstrous anger

VS NAKIME

[Image Description: Manga panels of Nakime. The first one shows a low quality version of her playing her biwa. The second one is a close up of her eye. There are spiky text bubbles saying “It’s Upper Rank... 4!” End Image Description.]

0/10

no nakime backstory

not even a goddamn fight

forgettable

useless

VS MUZAN

[Image Description: Manga panel of Kibutsuji Muzan in his white-haired, mouth-covered form. There are text bubbles around him saying “Not a single one was of use to me. I will crush the demon hunters tonight. I’ll massacre them all right now.” End Image Description.]

1/10

._.

i have many complaints but ill try my best to not make this another hantengu rant section lol

first off, obanai deserved better

im serious, this poor dude was forgotten until pretty much the end when we finally get a backstory out of him

and then he died

what a waste of a potentially amazing character

mitsuri getting taken out early was ehhh

pretty sure someone else made a post about her supposedly being extremely strong but she was nerfed in this battle which i agree with

literally none of the pillars work together very well, like remember how i praised sanemi and gyomei for being super coordinated? lmao that doesnt exist anymore

you could say this is caused by desperation though and you wouldnt be wrong, its just boring to sit through

that causes issues bc this now basically requires the crimson sword and transparent world concepts to be there to spice things up

but in this fight, they do nothing in the long run (except for tanjirou using the crimson sword at the very very end)

youve already heard me talk about why those two things are super shittily integrated and i cant be bothered repeating myself so moving on

kanao, inosuke, and zenitsu

they... exist? they didnt do much tbh, which i guess is the point but like, now its boring again

nezuko could have been used as a potential way to raise the stakes and make things interesting again (like “ah shit, muzan might actually be unkillable if he gets nezuko but its okay bc shes not here- oh fuck shes here this is not good”)

but nothing came of her running off except confirmation that she became human again so whatever

uzui and shinjuro are useless, why werent they at the fight?

like they could have followed nezuko and contributed to the battle even a little but they just didnt and now theres literally no point to them appearing in this arc at all

wasted potential

tanjirou

i wish him going absolutely apeshit had actual substance behind it, like it being a part of his character arc or something

i remember having this one theory that he had a corruption arc (due to dropping his kindness thing towards demons) and i wanted this to be true so badly

but it doesnt exist

not with how the series ended

god

the only thing that saves this fight from being complete trash is tamayo’s poison thing being amazingly executed

and the part where everyone got blasted away, losing limbs and shit, that made things a little more interesting again

but thats it

VS MUZAN (SENGOKU ERA)

[Image Description: Manga panels of Kibutsuji Muzan, Tamayo, and Tsugikuni Yoriichi. The first one has Muzan and Tamayo, while the second one has Yoriichi pulling out his sword. There are text boxes saying “And the moment I met him, I understood that I was born into this world to defeat this man.” End Image Description.]

9/10

finally something good again

while short, that’s just the nature of all of yoriichi’s battles with demons

anyways pretty nice, theres a clear reason why this battle exists (shows the scenario that made the original breather get super close to defeating muzan in detail)

adding tamayo here was a nice touch

my only complaint is that it seemed extremely coincidental that yoriichi somehow developed a breathing style specifically countering muzan’s multiple organs without even knowing prior that he had all those brains and hearts floating around freely in his body

like thats kind of ridiculous, even for yoriichi whos supposed to be “blessed by the gods”

could just be me though

VS TANJIROU

[Image Description: Manga panels of Kamado Tanjirou in his demon form. The first image has his eyes closed. The second image has his eyes opened and the tumor on his face almost completely faded. There are text boxes around him saying “You will destroy the demon hunters in my stead.” End Image Description.]

1/10

hoo boy

ok first off, demon tanjirou lasted for 2 chapters

thats it

2 chapters

so thats already a problem

i am aware its meant to parallel the beginning of the series but also its ridiculous how completely vague and rushed this entire thing was

nezuko doesnt do shit through not just this battle but this entire arc which i already explained so not gonna go into it further

kanao magically having a demon cure on her made very little sense

the scene where tanjirou leaves muzan in purgatory is pretty but if you look at it in the context of everything else, its ambiguous and confusing

(if someone could explain it and see how it connects to the original theme of “demons just being victims of circumstance,” i would love to hear it)

actually you know what makes me so mad about this “fight” as a whole? there was so much potential to do more with this concept

and im not talking about him escaping and nezuko becoming a demon slayer roleswap au (even though its a pretty cool concept)

him becoming a demon could have been a metaphor for his lost kindness and sympathy towards demons halfway through the series

it could have been a punishment for letting his anger towards muzan cloud his judgement

it could have symbolized literally anything about him losing his humanity as he got stronger

but those three things are just scenarios from my head, they dont exist in this series just based off of what weve seen from these two chapters

its disappointing

the only thing keeping this from getting a 0 is the one part where inosuke couldnt chop off tanjirou’s head bc he cared about him too much

that at least shows inosuke had grown as a character

everything else is just meaningless and convoluted garbage and “convoluted” is not what you should be aiming for if this is supposed to be the ending of your series

IN SUMMARY

early kny is very good, later kny is questionable and the ending is just a mess of wasted potential and disappointment

i get why gotouge had to have the transparent world ability, crimson blade ability, and the demon marks appear before they all appeared on yoriichi but theyre all just so underdeveloped and terribly handled in the battles they are used, it makes me want to kick a wall

like lmao, i could literally think of so many ways they could have been properly integrated, hell, im even writing a whole goddamn rewrite using my ideas for these three things (link to that is in my pinned)

just, god

if you want to debate over these ratings, my ask box is open ig? idk

#kny #kimetsu no yaiba #kny meta #demon slayer #my writing #long post

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ketchup-monthly · 3 years

Text

Sanders Sides D&D 2

Ooh fresh take: Jan is virge’s patron and that’s why there’s beef

Also: Jan is some sort of fae related being

Jan: i need you to do something for me Virgil: no Janus: that's not how this works!! Virgil: watch me :P

Okay so I was thinking of Patton as a cleric cuz ooh healer however, Patton as a Druid makes me so happy

I want logan to have Rage

(Also that could tie nicely in an arc about Logan learning to accept feelings)

but barbarian logan is going to be a scholar again and is gonna be smort

bc hes logan. he cant be not smart

Oh I figured he’d be the bbeg that eventually joins the party (hurt/comfort baybee!)(Remus)

he was the bbeg but then joined the party as a bardbarian or just a bard

plus, actual bard who accidentally casts vicious mockery instead of bardic inspiration

Side note: please include a scene where Remus attempts to seduce the dragon

also with this second au, i can start them at like level 5 so people can multiclass

Pat as cleric/druid

gasp logan as artificer/barbarian

janus sorcerer/rogue

because basically everything but alchemist would work well with barbarian, but alchemist feels very Logan

bc mad scientist being actually mad

alchemist logan making an experimental potion and going "here im not sure what this does but im sure its fine! someone drink it"

Remus does it voluntarily, but Logan usually tries to get Roman to drink it

Virgil will occasionally drink it when he's on his last legs and is just like.....100% done with the party

remus as a wild magic path barbarian and just fucking teleporting or doing something equally ridiculous whenever he rages

Oh my god Remus with rage would be a force to be reckoned with

You gotta describe the first time he goes into a rage really dramatically

obviously virgil is trying to "escape" his patron, Janus (really just do whatever he says to not do out of spite)

Eldritch knight roman

Feywild warlock virgil

hey so in the second d&d au, should roman and remus be actual full siblings but like remus went darkside and like romans just trying to get back at him for putting a dark stain on the family name

hey hey hey what about warforged Logan? (essentially a robot)(so like "i dont feel anything" becoming real)

okay hear me out. elf roman and elf base simic hybrid remus. so like maybe the reason remus went darkside was experimentation? so like. hes elf but special

FALLEN AASIMAR VIRGIL

virgil just transforming in the middle of a combat scenario and like his eyes turn into black pits and flightless skeletal wings appear on his back and like everyone near him has to make a charisma check and like he deals extra necrotic damage

Pat is the one human stuck in a band of misfits

so with it, roman would be a full elf, and remus would be an elf that has tentacles bc octopus

So robot logan

i meant literally he doesnt feel anything

like he has all the emotions, but he doesnt physically feel the need to like eat or sleep or stuff like that

he just.....he pretend he don't have the feelings.....but he do.....he feel so much and he hides it all in his littol mechanical heart <3

plus......if he warforged, then like.....AC huge

he stands in front of friends.....he protecc...."no, i don't have feelings, i am physically incapable of affection" but he do!! he do! he take hits for them because he do!! he care so much

Bro he spouts all this and then he uses a reaction to dive in front of someone and everyone’s just like oh

LIKE ROMAN STILL BEING MEAN TO LO BC HE THINKS HE DOESNT HAVE FEELINGS BECAUSE HE DOESNT HAVE A HEART BUT HE DOES

hey hey everyone needs to grow

and logan standing up for himself and other people stepping in and saying no stop thats not right

plus if canon wont give me roman facing the consequences of his actions towards Logan......

but also Roman learning how to properly handle his own emotions and how he interacts with others

logan who doesn't view himself as anything more than a machine to be useful to others

the party giving logan love and affection until he slowly learns his own worth as a person

Roman and Logan not getting along (maybe Roman has a Lore reason to distrust Warforged, maybe not) and slowly learning to trust each other

when Logan is feeling real down or having some issue, Roman actually comes through to help him, showing how far both characters have come

Okay yes but also can we please give Roman more confidence than canon? Like I’m sooooo sick of low self esteem being played for laughs or just being really really sad

this boy is going on a mission and will slap his brother upside the head and tell him to shut tf up remus youre not a monster just come back home and he will do it alone if need be

OKAY SO WHAT IF HE ORIGINALLY WENT ON THE QUEST JUST TO STOP REMUS ONCE AND FOR ALL BC ROMAN THOUGHT HE WAS A MONSTER, BUT ALONG THE WAY, AND AFTER LOGAN, HE CAME TO REALIZE THAT NO, JUST BECAUSE REMUS (AND LOGAN) ARE DIFFERENT, THEY ARENT MONSTERS, JUST DIFFERENT

AND LIKE IN THE FINAL PUSH TO MAKE REMUS JOIN BACK WITH HIS BROTHER, ROMAN IS PROJECTING HIS OWN FEELINGS ONTO REMUS AND EVERYONE IS LIKE WOW BRO YOU GOOD THERE, BUT ITS A BIG MOMENT FOR LOGAN, ROMAN, AND REMUS

im unsure as to how, but it happened when he was an older teen/young adult. a simic scientist either picked him (read: kidnapped), or remus volunteered (potentially to escape court life, unaware what exactly the experiment was going to do to him physically

bc also, remus and roman are royalty

so like. how best to get at the nobes/royalty/rich famous people than by turning their kid into a monster

wait, wait, wait, because i'm lowkey a sucker for this trope, but i'm not sure if it fits Remus: the experiments left him with some fairly significant physical pain/uncontrolled magical reactions. through some combo of trying to deal with that and trying find a cure for his pain, he keeps like....absolutely wrecking random towns on accident but also deliberately wrecking certain places looking for either a) vengeance on the guy(s) responsible or b) someone who can make the pain stop

SO LIKE. WILD MAGIC BARBARIAN DOING WEIRD SHIT TO HIM WHENEVER HE RAGES

AND LOGAN COULD MAYBE HELP WITH THE PAIN AND SHIT

BC ALCHEMY

Yknow, for simplification purposes, we could say the True Bbeg just gave Remus lycanthropy and Remus hasn’t managed to control it yet

lycanthropy but simic shit?

Mr. I-Don't-Have-Feelings sees the poor dude in pain and also Roman in emotional pain from seeing his brother in pain and is absolutely like "i must resolve this like right now, immediately" because he definitely doesn't hate seeing his friend suffering, or his friend's brother whom he's just met

he definitely doesn't relate at all to the idea of someone else shaping your body and absolutely does not sympathize with Remus's plight

i was thinking the grappling thing and either manta glide or the ability to breathe underwater for the simic stuff, but like he doesnt have control over the tentacles yet?

Manta glide seems like we could have fun battle scenes

he just jumps off a cliff to avoid mushy talk/dealing with his actions/roman

Roman: Remus just because you're a monster and though i wish i was an only child-- Remus, jumping off a cliff: byyeeeeee Patton: Roman, look what you did! Virgil: dammit jan what did you do? Janus: why do you think i had anything to do with that? im a fae, not a genie Logan, thinking: what an asshole. i wish i could do that

oh my god Logan always being tired mentally bc he cant sleep

Oh my gosh I love that. So Remus got kidnapped super young, (from royal family) they never found him, as a result Roman had to grow up super fast (side effect: lowkey inconsiderate and forgets to ask for others input). Meanwhile, Remus was experimented on by True Bbeg and came out with some trauma and super cool additives

yep! chronic pain and ptsd and all sorts of other shit!

so like, simic hybrids are usually created when they're adults. but what if the true bbeg decided to go younger to see what would happen, and thats why remus has chronic pain and stuff

he was still growing when his genes were spliced, so hes dealing with growth plates shifting and his body maturing and puberty and body changes and stuff

Pat is going to have a lighthearted story. Im saying that now. Hes the one without all the baggage

Sure, but his parents have to lowkey be the really kind people who are surprisingly always down for violence

everyone: multiple crises Pat: y'all need help Pat: love and affection in spades for his little band of misfits

Patton (which I think would be pretty simple, honestly he might just see danger and jump in and suddenly everyone in the party has Feelings)

Logan

Mhm. So how did he grow up? Was he just poof created? Wait

What if he was created by the king?

To make up for remuss disappearance

wait, wait....angst......he was created to fight (hence the barbarian stuff) but alchemy is his real passion

wait so like. a second son???

hes there to replace remus?

Yea! (But like in a sympathetic grief way) But that causes a bit of a complex in Roman and ergo Roman and Logan have a bit of a beef

okay so like. hes there to be a companion for roman, and like take remus' place, even though hes not actually in line for the throne?

LOGAN AS A KNIGHT

and just......the conflict of being created for a specific purpose (plus being, you know, robot and technically incapable of deviated from said purpose) vs the fact that he actually does have independent consciousness and like....wants to live life for himself

the parents made Logan a barbarian in hopes that him and Roman would be safe

okay. so logan was created by the king with the sole purpose to take remus' place as romans brother/companion, and to be his like guard? protector? and fight, but logan wants to be an alchemist and study shit

wait, wait, wait.....thinks about Asimov's Laws

he.....his first operative is protect (specifically protect Roman)

oh man. so hes literally just a shield

his second level operative is just like.....care for Roman's emotional well-being, but he doesn't really know emotions because he was kinda just spawned and nobody told him how

and he just....kind of....lets Roman treat him like garbage and take all his grief out on him because he's staunchly in denial of both having feelings or knowing how they work

Anyway Yea so Logan created by royal family in place of Remus which created angst between the two “brothers” and identity issues in Logan. Their arcs are learning how to healthily process emotions plus Roman apology and Logan commits to alchemy

So big question: why did virge make a deal?

Tricked

he gave janus his name

and instead of janus like killing him or whatever the fae do to people who break the rules of dealing with the fae, jan was like. hey. i'll give you magic, but do what i say

Janus is lawful neutral, but leans towards being selfish

hes self serving, but he has a strong set of morals and rules he follows

Tho I want to Virgil to also not be pushover so let’s say loophole happened and Jan has to stay with virge (hence why Jan is a part of the party)

okay so a couple of the rules are dont give a fae your true name and don't try to figure out their true name

what if virgil accidentally gave up part of his true name, and got stuck in the deal, but then figured out janus' true name

so in the same vein that janus had control over virgil, virgil now has more control over janus

he still gets his magic from janus, so he cant break free completely, but virgil has more freedom and can occasionally tell janus what to do or when to shove it

there should a running gag where virge can explain how he learned Jan’s true name but Jan can make something loudly censor him every time

(he learned his name bc once he heard janus practicing his evil genius voice and talking to himself in the mirror and janus said his true name)

so maybe janus sent virgil on the quest to protect a town or stop something related to remus, but virgil dragged him along

he might just be trying to protect a town thats close to a ley line, or something fae-related, and they just happen upon the whole thing

janus is selfish. but lawful vs chaotic is where he comes through, in morals vs doing whatever. janus has a strong set of loyalties to the fae, and to himself

so like....Remus is just too close to Jan's stuff and he wants to take him down

Virgil is just like....exhausted and said "fine, but if i gotta do this, you're coming, too"

or at least figure out a way to protect his place, even if it doesnt mean fully taking out remus. just moving him would work for jan

Janus: virgilllllllllll hes going to mess up my magic storage locker Virgil: Jan, its empty Janus: but its mine

Yea. Remus attacks a city away from the fae: Jan: Yknow I’m gonna sit this one out Virge: oh no you don’t, get up

Janus vs Janice

so his real name is Janus, but Virgil calls him Janice

Virgil: This is Janice Janice: with a “U-S” Virgil: mhm, sure Jan

I'm a big fan of just like any of the old theory name being various aliases for Jan

Damien, Dante, Ethan, Declan, etc, etc

#ss d&d 2

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musashi · 3 years

Note

sending u this ask as an opportunity for u to talk to me abt fi!! i love ur thoughts n words on things nd i don't send asks as much bc i don't have. good words to talk to u abt stuff but i rlly enjoy just. ur Passion nd stuff. autistic people r the best at talking abt stuff i stand by that we r just Epic. anyways if u wanna, i'd love to hear more about just... how fi sorta. changes, over the game? like the Little Things that show her starting 2 care abt link more, or becoming more "human"!

i love this whole ask. you’re right autistic folks r sexy as hell idk how the divine powers that be fit so much passion into my tiny body but i’m glad they made the attempt.

ANYWAYS FI. i don’t think i’ve ever actually laid this out because for the most part it is incredibly subtle and requires a lot of filling in gaps yourself, and i think that someone who cares less abt her can probably come away from it with an entirely different interpretation. fi’s development of actual feelings are a very sudden a mysterious thing, and i have a LOT of thoughts about them going in a lot of different directions so forgive me if this answer isn’t particularly linear or coherent. i’m not just gonna talk about her slow burn into feeling things, i’m also gonna talk about... why i think it happens.

we don’t get to learn a lot about sword spirits and how they come into being, other than it takes great power to enchant a sword with a spirit/temper a sword with one inside it. hylia obviously created fi and, presumably, demise created ghirahim, and they are pretty much as opposite as two people can be with their only real characteristic in common being precision, intelligence & otherworldly loyalty to their respective masters.

we thus don’t get to learn how much control the creator of a sword spirit has over what kind of spirit comes of it, if their personalities are organic to their experiences or crafted from the moment they awaken. what i mean by this is like... ghirahim could have been a cold, calculating AI like fi when he was first tempered and gained his dramatics over time, we have no idea how long he’s been alive in comparison to her, if his personality is so much more extroverted because he was allowed a life outside his blade whereas fi was isolated in hers for millennia. or if he just came into creation immediately ready to scream and stick his tongue in ppl’s ears.

i swear to god i’m going somewhere with this. ok. anyways.

fi in the beginning of skyward sword is, i think, how most people remember her--data-interested, icy, and detached. there is a reverence in how she addresses link from the start, even before he formally becomes her wielder, but beyond that she is calculating and precise and rarely wastes words. all of this kinda paints a picture of hylia creating fi, to me--breathing life into the spirit and willing her to be effective, be efficient, be loyal, and be sharp. when you have that image in your head, a lot of how fi operates makes sense--she wasn’t created to have emotions, because emotions get in the way of what her purpose is. hylia made a weapon and a servant, not a friend. it sucks to think about, but that is fi’s purpose.

the game is very careful, however, to show you it’s not that simple from the beginning. because hidden in Ice Queen Fi’s introduction is... a surprising amount of personality.

like this shit, where she straightup just dunks gaepora in the trash because his #Lore is out of date. it’s hysterical because you really do not know if she’s just a) an AI who doesn’t understand when she’s being kinda Rude or b) being snarky On Purpose. and that ambiguity in itself crafts this beautiful air of mystery where you, from the get go, don’t entirely know what to expect of fi all the time.

or this, which she says directly after link hesitates to accept the blade:

this scene, which people who have edgier takes on fi constantly use to paint her as intentionally manipulative, where all i see is... her using emotional validation to calm link down enough for him to take in what’s happening. a really important thing about fi is that she’s paradoxically an empath? she can read auras and detect emotion with extreme precision even if she’s incapable of feeling it herself in the beginning. so she knows everything link is experiencing here, understands that it’s holding him back, and takes care to deconstruct the whirlwind of emotion he’s collapsing under and explain to him why he can and should trust her words.

again this is all in her introductory scene. they write her very specifically to be a seemingly flat character with this... rumbling of something more going on under the surface. so much so that the first time you get to a sacred spring and fi, completely randomly, just starts skating across the water’s surface and speaking ancient poeticisms to you, you don’t question it. you’re not like hey, why is sword alexa doing a little dance? you just accept it as something fi is doing, because fi always feels like she’s at her job, and you don’t know how she acts outside of work, but you kinda feel like maybe you want to.

fi’s affinity for music is another way they insert humanity into an AI without making you think too hard about it. singing and dancing are inherently human, artforms are something we associate with the heart and soul. even teaching a robot to paint is, in itself, an art project crafted by a human hand. but you don’t really... consciously think about that, when you watch her do these things. you just kind of accept that she is this otherworldly thing guiding you. you don’t think about the contrast of this programmed assistant performing music alongside you in a sacred ritual. you’re just kind of like, yeah? i can’t JUST play nayru’s wisdom on my harp, i need someone who can sing and god put a vocaloid in my sword???

throughout the game, fi’s dialogue chains when you summon her don’t change in any meaningful way (besides based on what you’re carrying, where you are, etc) but as you near the end, there are a couple things of note. one that sticks out to me is what she says about one of the mid-game minibosses, who is also an artificial intelligence--

a lot of people laugh abt this line and make jokes about fi being hot for the tall handsome robot pirate and they’re valid. but the thing is, like, from the beginning of her mission, fi knew she’d essentially be dying once the world was saved. and early game fi has no hesitations about her part in things regardless, because, as we know, she wasn’t created to feel things like that. she wasn’t created to fear death, to grow attached to life or anyone in it, or to experience sorrow at the idea of saying goodbye. but this is mid-game fi, who still... never says anything she doesn’t deem entirely necessary, but she says this. for no discernible reason, she says this. it’s an unskippable dialogue option, one they WANT you to see and one that is different when you know where she ends up. admiration is already something you wouldn’t really expect of her, but it’s more than that--she’s longing for her own story to mirror it. by the sand sea, fi has started to realize she doesn’t want to go to sleep.

it’s another one of those moments where you’re kinda like, ‘haha, what, fi?' and then move on. another one of those moments where she kinda does something a little unexpected, but not so unexpected you question it too hard. fi excels at those.

before you go off to fight demise, fi stops you to warn you that it is the final battle, and you cannot return. and when you tell her you’re ready, she says this:

as i’ve said, fi doesn’t waste words. almost always, everything she says is for the purpose of efficiency, and rarely does she offer thoughts without fixed probabilities and ultimate endgoals in mind.

this is a sentiment.

it serves no purpose. it is purely an expression of devotion.

and because of EVERYTHING i’ve mentioned thus far, this line both hits you HARD as significant and foreboding in how suddenly tender it is, AND manages to read as in-character for her to say. because the way they write fi’s humanity is so beneath the surface, so easily missable, so hard for me to even lay out with concrete evidence despite the fact that i’m a person who reads a text dump of all her dialogue before bed every night.

but to me, what lays out fi’s inner workings best is actually her actual goodbye, and... not the moment most people would think, tbh? it’s not her tender farewell that speaks her emotions loudest to me, but the moment right before:

these lines, which would read as perfectly in character if it were early game fi, cut you. her complete and utter flippancy, the way she talks about all you’ve been through together as though it were nothing to her, the absolute coldness here after everything. you as a player feel kind of pathetic when she says this, like you were misguided in growing attached to her and thinking of her as a friend. and you KNOW thats the intended effect, because this is what link looks like:

he takes a moment in that last shot to like. swallow sadness and turn away from her, but even as he’s turning his head, he doesn’t take his eyes off her until the last possible moment. she hurts his feelings! why.

because it’s an act, is why. of COURSE fi loves him. of course she’s grown attached to him, of course she’s happy to have known him, of COURSE they’re friends. but fi was NEVER supposed to feel that way, she was never supposed to have the capability to love, and there’s no calculation she can run to set the uncertainties of that at ease within herself. so those lines up above is her trying her best to reset herself to who she was in the beginning, to snap herself back into the role of an emotionless servant to the goddess, to convince herself--not link--that saying goodbye won’t hurt. she’s trying to cope with something she has no idea was in the cards for her, and that’s why she’s seemingly so cruel for a moment.

all of this becomes apparent when she calls him back moments later and tells him how she really feels. there’s major whiplash because fi herself is Going Thru It. but essentially what’s happening in that moment is she thinks she knows what will hurt the least, but she miscalculates and backpedals and realizes even if saying goodbye hurts, it hurts less than pretending she doesn’t want to.

i think a lot of people overlook that line--“the most precious data i have on record.” fi, who contains multitudes within her. who contains knowledge immeasurable, the thoughts and feelings and stories of thousands. of civilizations, of gods, of countless ages passed. everything she holds within her is dwarfed entirely by what she feels for link, beside link. nothing in her encyclopedic knowledge can even compare to her friendship with him in the significance it has to her. like all things, fi has her own way of communicating her meanings, and this is her way of saying she really, truly loves him.

in addition, she very carefully does this after he abandons the sword, so it’s clear that it’s of her own will, not a part of her purpose as his servant. for this whole cutscene, up until she end, she drops the honourific and calls him just Link.

and while i see a lot of people debate if she truly does ‘feel,’ anything, like... she says it right here, she does. whether or not she was able to feel from the beginning or not, she can feel now. she has trouble putting words to those feelings, or explaining to herself and others where on earth they came from... but she feels now. that cannot be disputed.

happiness that she was able to know him. loyalty she wants to transcend lifetimes. sorrow at the idea of them having to part. gratitude that he took the chance, and did so beside her.

let’s talk about gratitude.

in skyward sword, gratitude is a tangible source of magic. it opposes malice, which as of botw is a reoccurring thing in zelda lore. skyward sword has two items--evil crystals and gratitude crystals--that represent malice and gratitude respectively. while the first isn’t entirely relevant, the second is something you’re actively encouraged to more or less harvest by helping people and basking in their thanks toward you. these feelings of gratitude are so canonically powerful in the zelda universe that they can turn monsters into humans entirely, and the outpouring of energy that event causes makes every monster & hostile creature within all of skyloft turn docile at once.

according to batreaux, the monster in question, this is well-established legend, the idea of gratitude granting humanity to the nonhuman. skyward sword literally said the power of love was canon.

the song that plays over the goodbye, of course, is called fi’s gratitude.

this is just one theory i have on the matter, but... whether hylia intended or foresaw fi to be capable of feeling human emotion or not, i do believe it was gratitude that woke her heart up. whether she was meant to love or not, link’s spirit contained within it enough love for the both of them, enough to touch her soul and rouse her from her cold and emotionless state. as always, through everything, they work in perfect tandem--his passionate heart touches hers as it sleeps, her wisdom holds him steady and level-headed.

when fi says “may we meet again in another life,” she says it like a prayer, because it is one--she knows hylia, knows that hylia loved link’s spirit just as she did, and knows that hylia of all people understands what the sword spirit is going through. and fi also knows that hylia immortalizes those she loves with cycles, with reincarnation, eternal life without the pain of never dying. fi doesn’t have a soul that hylia can bring back from death nor a physical body to revive, but she works with what she can--and so long as link’s spirit breathes anew, he finds fi. in a sunlit grove, with light bearing down on her, safe and warm and always loyal, even as the world rages on outside. fidelis, she was named for--“faithful.”

the fandom doesn’t really talk abt it, but fi is an angel. she’s an angel god sent to watch over one human, and when god said your mission is complete fi faced god and walked backwards into hell. her divine mission is long passed, but it stopped being about what she was fated to do long ago.

fi began to watch over link because he was her master. and fi resolved to stay forever because he was link.

#skyward sword #long post #hand of sorrow #wendy rambles #Anonymous #wendy answers

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chikkou · 4 years

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Will you talk more about Lisa?? Lisa the character specifically but also your feelings on his feelings about Buddy? I just thought your analysis was so good and I want to hear other thoughts you have on her.

yall are honestly spoiling me rn sdhkfdjfks this is like a dream come true

i already got into the stuff with buddy in this ask here but i have a LOT to say about lisa and the connection between her and buddy so u better settle in!

ok so firstly ill start with lisa. i played the original lisa game (lisa the first) not long after it first dropped in 2012, and im not even kidding when i said it changed me LMAO.... seeing a story about a girl suffering is nothing new, but austin jorgensens approach to it was so fucking unique. you dont just witness it, you get to EXPERIENCE it right along with her. many stories that involve sexual abuse/rape show or otherwise depict it explicitly for the shock value, which is both disgusting and, in my opinion, extremely fucking exploitative. i feel that it is horrific to dignify an act so deeply evil with screentime. but lisa stood out to me immediately because, even though you know exactly whats going on, the game NEVER shows anything explicit. everything is layered in subtext and symbolism, and austin is fantastic with indirect storytelling, so you learn so much from just a little drop of information. this applies not just to the game proper, but to the character as well.

in case its not clear: i absolutely ADORE lisa. she is my favorite character in all of the games, bar none. its going to sound kind of fucked up, but as a kid around her age going through some fucked up shit, her committing suicide at the end felt like a sort of victory to me. she knew she could never escape from marty or what he was doing to her. he leaks into every single part of her psyche, everything she ever cared about or loved is ruined because of him, and even the vague memory of her mother is completely corrupted, and turned into a muddled version of him. lisa the first also had the added benefit of some religious commentary, as there are crosses all over their home and marty is characterized as an extremely religious man, which i fucking LOVE and wish had come back in the painful, but its an acceptable loss. anyway, lisa committing suicide at the end was an act of defiance against not just marty, but martys god, as suicide is considered a mortal sin in catholicism. lisa knew she’d never be free of marty in life, so she escaped the only way she could; she was defiant to the end.

ive seen people complain that the painful has a bit of a “lost lenore” thing going on, since lisas death seems to fuel the Manpain of both brad and buzzo, but i actually disagree. on the contrary, its just like austin himself said - lisa will never be gone. lisa is ALWAYS there, with brad, and buzzo, and buddy, and marty, and yado, and the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. i dont necessarily think that there is something paranormal going on in the game, but i AM going to say that, unlike other cases of a girl/woman dying for a mans backstory, lisa isnt just a bittersweet memory they can reflect on and then put away when its convenient for them. she is a presence that is felt throughout the entire game. brad sees her more than once, sometimes watching, sometimes reprimanding him. buzzo is clearly haunted by her, as he cries out to her a few times in the joyful. every character who was directly touched by lisa - brad, marty, and buzzo - calls out to lisa as they die. call it their guilt or call it her actions, but in either case, it is clear that lisa just as significant of a character in the painful as she was in the first, even if she cant always be seen. even in a meta-sense, every game in the series - even the joyful, whose protagonist doesnt even know who she is - is named after her. she is at the center of everything that happens in them.

that actually brings me to buddy, because i find the dynamic between her and lisa fucking fascinating. as i previously mentioned, brad never talked about his past with buddy, and snaps at her for bringing up his adoptive son dusty (rando), so it goes without saying that she definitely doesnt know who lisa is. in spite of that, though, lisa is a fucking massive part of buddys life, and while she may not know the person herself, i think she is aware that when people (and brad especially) look at her, they arent seeing HER.

i mentioned it in another post, but even though brad takes it upon himself to raise and “protect” buddy, he seems to almost unwittingly recreate lisas appearance, primarily by allowing her hair to grow long even though he knows what a risk that is to her safety. he also treats buddy in a manner thats incredibly similar to how marty treated lisa (sans sexual abuse, of course) - he insults her, does not let her leave the house at all, and forces her to do unsavory things that no one should ever have to do (in buddys case, this means killing at least two innocent people because brad doesnt want a “weak” daughter). the most literal comparison between buddy and lisa is the fact that they are both very young girls being essentially held captive by their father figures, albeit for different reasons, and both long for freedom from their captors.

theres also the fact that both buddy and lisa have to deal with misogyny and the effects of rape culture firsthand; they both battle against men who feel entitled to do with them whatever they please, and the threat of ongoing sexual abuse looms heavy over both of their heads. neither one can seek help from anyone; the neighbors in brad and lisas town seem complacent at best, if they even know what is happening to lisa at all, and buddys only allies (sans rando) are long dead by the start of the joyful. this is not just a hypothetical or a distant possibility. this is the real, tangible fate that will befall them if they cant somehow secure their safety.

sadly, because lisa wasnt playable in either of the rpgs, we dont know if she was able to fight as brad was, but it is highly probable that she had the innate skill but was never able to learn it (as marty highly discouraged them from learning “their grandfathers karate,” and seemed disgusted whenever brad did so). however, she did have ONE weapon she could make use of, and this is a weapon buddy ends up using, as well - her femininity. she became close to bernard (aka buzzo), made him fall in love with her, and then used him as a last ditch effort to stop martys abuse by having him mutilate her face. im not saying lisa never cared about bernard - in fact, i think she DID really love and care for him - but her own fucked up experiences with “love” meant she really couldnt understand what it was supposed to be like, or that it was wrong to manipulate the people you care about. lisa did very few things wrong - it pretty much just stops at the maiming of the cat and her manipulation of bernard - but she knew that she would never get away from marty without some kind of drastic action being taken, and scarring herself was her last ditch effort before ultimately committing suicide.

buddy ends up taking a somewhat similar tack in the joyful, and like in lisas case, its simultaneously resourceful and horrific. one of buddys key moves in the joyful is to flash the enemy (which the player obviously doesnt see) in order to distract them long enough to get the kill. its fucking horrible and disgusting and makes you feel so dirty, but then, how must buddy feel having to do something like that just to survive? shes just a child, but in a world where almost every man is out to get you, she knows this has to be done to save herself, very much like lisa. unlike in lisas case, though, buddy is successful in securing her safety in this way - lisas effort is for naught, and leads to her committing suicide not very long after.

in a way, i sort of attribute buddys brutality to lisas omnipresence; all of the men pursuing buddy are just like marty, monsters who would harm a fucking child for their own disgusting ends, and i think that when buzzo said that lisa wouldve loved olathe, what he means is that she would have loved seeing so many horrible men being punished for what theyd done. so in my opinion, buddy carving out a place for herself in olathe by killing all those who would subjugate her seems very much in the mentality lisa would have had. sure, there are some innocents who sadly get roped into it, but that would definitely not be her intention; for example, if buzzo could have practiced amputation without harming a living thing, i dont think lisa would have asked him to practice on the cat. note the LACK of brutality at the beehive and the swamp bar, two of the few peaceful places in the painful and both devoid of predatory men hunting for buddy - lisa has no qualm with any of them. but marty? brad could hardly even get a full sentence out before killing him on the spot. i dont doubt that that has a great deal to do with lisas presence.

ok i talked for a while LMAO but basically i think that, in a more metatextual sense, lisa and buddys relationship really strikes me as an accurate depiction of generational trauma. of course it was intentional with the more obvious trauma chain (marty to brad to buddy), but the trauma chain of marty to lisa to buddy is rarely ever addressed due to lisa not physically appearing in the painful. however, i believe it may inform buddys actions a great deal more than people realize - after all, buddys experience is unique, but who could understand it better than lisa? who knows that sort of pain, of being alone on an island, the lone woman trapped with a man (or men) who want nothing more than to cause you harm? even without her realizing it, lisa is guiding buddy, encouraging her to take back what is hers no matter the cost, to punish those who would try to take what they want from her. lisa might be dead, but she is a vengeful presence throughout every game, and buddys actions feel like theyre meant not only to save herself, but to avenge lisa, even if she doesnt realize it. at the end of the day, buddy and lisa both get to exact revenge against all the men who have wronged them, and they succeed. they are aggressive, and violent, and selfish, and ANGRY - and they have every fucking right to be.

#lisa the first #lisa the painful #lisa the joyful #long post #yall GOTTA stop u know good and damn well i will talk about this game all fucking day hdskjdsk #rape mention #abuse mention #lisa #anya's anons

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fizzingwizard · 4 years

Text

Digimon Adventure: Ep 19!

Wow! That certainly was an Episode!! It was pretty fun from start to finish, though nothing mind-blowing, but it was definitely the ending that made me gasp. Not wholly unexpected to an old turnip like me, but promising lots of fun (and angst!).

Picture of the week: MIKO, THE TRUE STAR OF THE SERIES!!

no for serious are the writers reading my reviews? they keep giving me what I want. within reason I guess. They seem to have an extremely limited budget as usual x’D

but Miko is still adorbs

ok I’m really looking forward to recapping this one so let’s get to it!

So last week I thought the kids sans Taichi and Yamato were abducted by Devimon, but apparently that either isn’t the case, or it was, but then Devimon decided it’s best just to dump the kids back on Earth and hold on to their partners. Because that’s the current situation. While concerning that the kids are separated from their partners, it’s probably best this way, since Devimon appears to be sending Gesomon(?) and Parrotmon(?)

to the human world, if I remember right. It’s hard to remember what happened in the first fifteen seconds kay So when the kids find their partners it will probably be in the human world and they can fight back.

Meanwhile Taichi and Yamato are alone and very Confuse

Taichi tries frantically to contact Koushirou. The others too... but especially Koushirou.

Finally he gets him!! He’s so happy!! My Taishiro heart flutters!

But I was fully expecting it to be a trap. When I saw this still here, my first thought was “Devimon’s forcing him to tell Taichi a lie by threatening him with a gun!!”

of course thats not whats happening. Koushirou is relatively fine and there are no guns (yet). What’s happened is the other kids have been sent back to the human world for reals this time!

This show is not even bothering to hide its Taiyama angle.

They spend the entire episode giving each other Significant Looks like this. The entire episode.

Now where’s Jou through all of this, you ask?

He went to talk to the police. He’s shocked they don’t believe his story about monster attacks and the world ending (well, at least Tokyo ending). I freaking love how taaaaall Jou is. Though it makes Koushirou look like a bean x’D

Jou = beansprout / Koushirou = bean

Koushirou has a much easier time dealing with the news that the police don’t believe them. He’s a denizen of the Internet. He knows how people’s minds work. And he has tons of chat logs to prove it.

People are chatting and spreading gossip and disbelief and complaints, but my favorite is the comment that just says “It’s a flood of fake news” xP

The home team runs into Mama Yagami! Who Sora literally calls Mama Yagami! x’D I mean I know that’s how kids generally refer to their friends’ parents but I still lol’d.

So un... Jou is almost as tall as Mama Yagami. LMAO. I’m gonna assume she’s short. Jou might indeed be quite tall for his age but Sora and Mimi are pretty close to Mama Yagami’s height too. I guess we haven’t seen Taichi standing next to his mom yet! With his hair he’s probably taller than her.

So Mama Yagami is HILARIOUS and I’m so glad that’s a continuing thing in the reboot! She was already that way in 99 Adventure, but we’re just seeing a lot of it now - like every time she’s around. (And we didn’t see it in Tri so I missed that.) Basically she seems like a basketcase. Not a totally irresponsible one, more like just... generally the carefree go with the flow type. Which is not bad. She just also seems a bit, uh, ditzy?? I think Taichi probably grew to be so serious by necessity. Dad’s busy with work and someone’s gotta make sure mom doesn’t leave the house without her keys!

The way Sora just stares at Hikari like “explain??” after Mama Yagami thrusts Miko at her and runs off to get her car with a big smile as if they hadn’t all nearly died recently... bahahaha.

also I love how she doesn’t even bother asking her son’s good friend if she knows where he is after not seeing or hearing from him for three full days

^The face of a boy shouldering the weight of nuclear family life and all its batshitness

Taichi and Yamato determine their priority is find the Holy Digimon. I wish they were a little more concerned with what happened to their friends’ partners, but I guess this is the only goal with solid clues. Anyway before they can do anything they are attacked by Bulbmon Looks like subtitlers went with Valvemon which also works, who looks like a Lego monster creation by an eight year old (and probably is).

He has the Domo face. Grrraaah

Domo is NHK mascot by the way. bahahaha

Next these guys come swarming out of Valvemon. (And if we didn’t already get it, apparently Digimon can construct other Digimon as we’ve seen before.) Nothing is quite as freaky as gas masks. They are commanded by Minotaurmon/Mintaromon whatever.

They too have the aim of Stormtroopers though so our heroes will be fine...

... probably...

... then Leomon finally shows up!! Yay! He looks good! All beefy and scarred and sounding exactly like Zaraki Kenpachi. Uhh. Is it the same VA?? Nothing comes up in the Google search so maybe not but it sure sounds like him. (Minotaurmon and Ogremon also sound like Leomon... while it’s normal for VAs in kids shows to voice multiple characters esp minor ones, it literally sounds like Zaraki Kenpachi is the voice of all the characters in this episode besides the main ones. And Mama Yagami of course because that would be weird.)

Leomon may look cool, but his ride... and his friends... uh, less cool x’D I want to strangle that ostrich thing with its own scarf somehow it inspires violent emotion in me

In the smallest, most shocked voice, Yamato says, “Leomon...?” It’s honestly kind of adorable. He’s clearly remembering what Neemon said about Leomon leading the resistance way back when.

Leomon helps them escape. Taichi very considerately and cutely helps Agumon aboard the fashion disaster ostrich emu thing.

Yamato also considerately helps his partner but rather less cutely xD

Leomon takes them to his hideout and gives them your standard fare of weird-looking Digi fruit. He then proceeds to tell them about Devimon and that he is trying to infiltrate Valvemon yadda yadda.

Taichi is freaking ADORABLE, immediately concerned that by saving their asses, Leomon’s battle plans have been ruined. Leomon waves that aside though. Yamato is equally adorabibble when he asks after Neemon and gets told that they made it to Leomon safely.

Leomon plans to try to get into Valvemon again because he knows Devimon’s put something related to the holy Digimon in there. Taichi is determined to join in. He doesn’t have much of an argument as it why they should be allowed when they just got their butts kicked so easily, but he has a trick up his sleeve: the Burning Eyes of Fiery Passion.

Not to be outdone, Yamato shoots off his Icy Eyes of Cold Determination.

Faced with this twin assault, Leomon has to give in. Ahh, I remember last week when we saw the trailer for this ep and I naively thought Leomon would train them like Piximon did in 99 Adventure. Nope. They’ve just met and they’re already spy buddies.

Okay, okay, yeah Leomon does seem to have some knowledge of the “Chosen Children” and that’s his real motivation. Still.

They break into Valvemon and we get the excellent invention of Agumon riding on Garurumon. I assume because of Garurumon’s advantageous speed. That seems to be recurring thing in this show.

Idk I just capped this because he’s so darn cute

I don’t know why I capped this one though.

They enter some sort of central space where Leomon tells them something relevant to the holy Digimon is being kept. (Lol I already forgot the details of what he said.) There are two protectors, Minotaurmon and Bullmon. Leomon tells the kids to take Bullmon while he faces down Minotaurmon. These guys might have been somewhat intimidating if we hadn’t already got Perfect level evolutions mastered, not to mention the occasional Jogress :P Sooo I didn’t feel too worried.

... uh, never mind x’D Taichi what are you doing

Yamato saves his idiot butt and almost gets in a bind himself. Once again I’m just wondering why they are sticking at Adult level. Whatever. They win of course

Leomon uses his Fist of the Beast King to maim Minotaurmon. His brilliant one-liner? “I have more than one first.”

Bully: *punches you*

You: ow

Bully: *smirk* I have more than one fist.

You: That’s funny, I only have one, but it’s made of titanium *You punch the bully straight through the stratosphere* Quality over quantity!!!!

*cough*

Our heroes approach the secret compartment supposedly holding something to do with the holy Digimon... Yamato gets a look inside and gets the black shadow of true terror over his eyes

becaue floating inside like some kind of Weapon X experiment is... Takeru!!!

Hold on while I put in my ear plugs. Okay, ready, screech all you want now.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

So... okay. First of all, baby Takeru is sooooooo cute <3 I had two predictions about what happened to Takeru last week. Either he ended up in the digital world and was now on his own, or he got abducted by Devimon. I thought the former was more likely, but in hindsight, it should have been obvious that it was the second. This show misses a lot of points where I feel like they could have developed some relationships or thrown in some drama, but it never passes up a chance for Yamato angst.

So yeah, this is pretty much gonna destroy Yamato xD Not only is the baby brother he wanted to protect no longer at home where he can easily protect him, he’s now in the digital world and in the enemy’s clutches.

I BETTER SEE REALLY TRAUMATIZED YAMATO NEXT WEEK. Of course, I expect him to be cool-headed enough to try to save Takeru, but I will be very disappoint if this goes off with no break downs at all. Takeru is always Yamato’s number one priority!

Super exciteddddd

So I give this ep 7.5/10. The .5 is pretty much for ending with a killer cliffhanger. My one real complaint about this ep is how highly plot-based everything is - we finally got the team all together only to split them up, and on top of that, once split up, we don’t even get all that many character moments between Taichi and Yamato. As I said, they give each other lots of Signifcant Looks, but man cannot live on bread alone. However this is par for the course for this show and I know I should stop mentioning it every week because I doubt it’s changing. We will get the big shockers when we get them and not a moment before.

I just want Yamato to cry in front of Taichi and make him all uncomfortable x’D That’s what made 99 Adventure so great bahahaha

Some cool bits from next week’s trailer:

Surprise surprise, Angemon is the holy Digimon! Or one of, anyway. And he is indeed trapped. This makes the “Angemon is Devimon” theory less likely. Let’s not forget that our heroes’ Digimon partners were evidently a band of powerful warriors in the past, but they’ve forgotten much of it. I won’t be surprised if the result of that war played a part in Angemon’s abduction.

Next week they’ll have to fight to save Takeru from being drained, I guess.

And then!! Digi egg! Excite. Also I only just noticed that his hate says TK!!!

Takeruuu <3 My first fav when I was 10. Though my heart has belonged to Taichi for many long years, I still have a special spot in it for Takeru only <3 Even if he does dress like a celery stick

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure reboot #digi spoilers #digimon #fizz watches digimon 2020 #i made edits lets see if they save for once...

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the-writing-dump-bin · 5 years

Text

A Dangerous Game Part 3

SFW but has violence

Ten months ago

"Ahh... Ahh... Ahh... I should be good here." You huffed, leaning against a building wall in an alley you ducked into, pressing your hand to the bleeding cut you sustained. You and your team had been on a lead when you were confronted by the hit team and ended up in a battle.

Everything was going pretty good for your side. You had one of La Squadra's members, Ghiaccio, trapped in your Stand and almost had him finished when you were attacked from behind by Melone. He grabbed you by your arms and pinned them around your back, making you release your Stand's hold on Ghiaccio; he fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breath.

"Son of a bitch!" You cursed in Melone's hold.

"What a great idea!" Melone rubbed the side of his face on yours. "You look like a perfect specimen for my Stand."

Oh shit. You panic. You've heard of Melone's Stand, Baby Face, and being a woman, you really had to get away from this creep.

The only option would be to use your own Stand, Nine Inch Nails, but with how close Melone is, you would be affected by it as well. The feeling of Melone's fingers caressing your hip made you cringe; this can't happen. With a scream, you activate your Stand around you, trapping you and the lavender haired man inside.

The air depleted quickly with the two of you caught in the translucent coffin. Your vision blurs as you gasp, hoping Melone breaks first that his hold on you loosens and you can get away from the fray of battle.

Its been almost two minutes. His hands falter, but so do your legs and you drop to your knees with Melone still behind you- if only he would pass out. With the last bit of strength you were feeling, you pulled your arm free and rammed your elbow into his face. Once he let go to grab at his nose, thats when you released your Stand and ran as fast as you could away from them. Thats how you ended in the alley way you are in now.

Gasping, you examine your arm. Giorno would be able to fix you; you just had to get to him somehow.

Scailing the wall, you cautiously peer around the corner to see if anyone followed you; it looked clear. Taking a deep breath, you go to make your way towards the safe house, when you started to feel dizzy. Your eyes blur and your breaths got even shorter. "Wh-What the...hell..." Suddenly, your left hand is slammed to the side of the building, then your right. The feeling of something very strong squeezed your wrists and you felt something press against your body. There was nothing around you, so what was was this feeling of weakness in your body, and what was pressed against you?

"You're an interesting girl..."

A smooth, deep voice could be heard around you, but there was no one around...was there?

Materializing in front of you, was a tall man with eyes black as night and red as blood. A bit of his silver hair could be visable under the black hat he wore. His chiseled bare chest was eye level with you, black straps across his muscles. "Risotto Nero..."

"You've heard of me." He glared down at you, the height difference between you pretty significant. Gritting your teeth, you muster any strength to activate your Stand, but was stopped when Risotto squeezed your wrists and pushed you up against the wall more with his form. "I dont think so. I saw you back there with Melone. Someone this close to you, you'll be affected as well. Besides, I've already been working my own Stand on you."

Looking to the cut on your arm, you saw little ghost-like beings on it, wriggling around. Thats why you were feeling dizzy, your blood was being manipulated. "So you got me. Now what? You're going to kill me?"

Risotto looked at you with an unreadable look. But it wasn't the look that was unsettling, it was how long he looked at you for. Those eyes burning into yours, making your cheeks dust with a pink and your stomach flip with excitement. In a terrifying way, he was sort of...handsome...

Finally moving, Risotto's lips curved into a sly smile. "Kill you? Its an option..." He bent down to growl in your ear. "But then, that scary Stand of yours would go to waste." His eyes flicked to the dripping wound on your arm, face coming so close to it that he could smell the iron in your blood. This was oddly arousing.

"A-Are you going to k-kill m-me or not...?" Between low blood pressure, and the strange knot forming in your stomach, you felt like you were going to throw up.

Risotto straightened a little, looking back at your face; dirtied and bloodly from the fight with his men. Smiling, he loosened his grip a little, his thumbs rubbing the inside of your wrists subtly. "I'll let you live...this time..." He released your arms and backed away slowly, not breaking eye contact with you as he let his Stand go.

He was far enough for you trap him, but you didn't. Risotto Nero, the ruthless leader of La Squadra, let you, a member of the enemy, live. You fell to your knees, weak from the fight and blood loss. With one last quirk of his lips, he turned to make his leave. What just happened? Risotto could have killed you right on the spot, but didn't.

You felt like something passed between you in the moments he stared at you. He was dangerous, a killer, yet there was this pull that made you quite interested in this man. "Hey!" You shouted after him, making him stop in his tracks. He turned his head enough to look back at you, kneeling on the ground. "You got a nice smile, did you know that?"

Risotto took a moment to process your words then stuffed his hand in his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper the size of a business card and smirked. "So do you." He flicked the card at you.

You caught the card mid air between your fingers, returning the expression. He nodded once then left the alley. Looking at what was printed, you realized it was his phone number.

What a turn of events.

Risotto Nero, leader of La Squadra. You, a member of Bucciarati's gang. About to get caught up in something dangerous and forbidding. But that's the risk of the game, isn't it?

---

Risotto stealthy followed Bucciarati and Mista back to the safe house you were located in.

Earlier that night, while the rest of the hit team sulked from the wrath they recieved from their capo upon learning your "escape", Risotto decided to take the risk and head to your house to make sure you were safe. When he got there and no lights were on, he made himself invisible and made his way in without any signs of a break in.

No signs of struggle was inside, so he guessed you were still with your gang; maybe you would be home soon. His heart picked up in excitement when he heard the door open, but quickly hid and camouflaged himself again when he heard two male voices belonging to Bucciarati and Mista.

He quickly learned that they were here to grab things for you, since you were staying at the safe house. At least he knew you were okay.

Very carefully, he followed the two down the hall. Mista went into the bathroom while Bucciarati went into your bedroom. Thinking Mista was fine, Risotto followed Bucciarati into your room. He watched him rummage through your closet, putting clothes in a duffle bag he found. Then he went to your dresser and packed your underwear. Risotto noticed the blush on Bucciarati's cheeks when he pulled out a pair of your panties, holding them a little longer than Risotto liked.

Just before it was time to take their leave, Bucciarati doubled back to grab the pajama pants you had on your bed; that's when he noticed the open letters in your nightstand, picking up the most recent one.

Risotto's heart stopped as he watched him read the letter. This was bad.

"Who is 'N'?" Bucciarati muttered out loud. "Abbacchio! I can find out by using Moody Blues." He stuffed the letter in his pocket.

Now this went from bad to worse. Risotto had to get that letter back.

Once Bucciarati and Mista left your house, Risotto snuck out the back window and followed them back to the safe house. He stayed behind a good distance to not be noticed-even in his invisible form- but still close enough to hear them talking.

It was twenty minutes of listening to Mista's rambling until Bucciarati switched the subject. "Mista... Has...has Y/N ever mentioned that she's seeing someone?"

"Hm? Like romantically?" Mista thought back to the conversations you've had. "Not that I can think of. Why?"

Bucciarati paused a bit, thinking if he should tell him about the letter he stole off of your night table. "Mista... I like Y/N. Almost so much that I tried to kiss her earlier before we left to get her things."

Rage ran through Risotto as he heard the words that came out of Bucciarati's mouth. He could kill him right here and now for him to be advancing on you but kept himself in check. If he were to kill them both, he knew that you would know he did it. His only mission right now was that letter and get it back before Abbachio could find out he wrote it.

"Whoa! Are you serious?"

Bucciarati nodded slowly, feeling a little shame. "But she rejected me. She told me she wasn't looking for a relationship right now." He stuffed his hand in pocket and touched the paper, tempted to tell Mista what he found, but decided against it. "I thought maybe she would have told you anything."

"Sorry, man."

---

Arriving at the safe house, Risotto slipped in silently behind the two men.

"I'm gonna crash. Here's the rest of Y/N's stuff." Mista handed the bag to Bucciarati and headed off to his room.

Bucciarati sighed, running a hand through his hair. The words of the letter ran through his mind. There was obviously a recent meet up, and this person had bought you something to wear for the occasion. He made his way up the stairs to your room, knocking lightly.

Risotto held his breath. Just on the other side of that door was you. Though he seen you just hours earlier, he longed to hold you in his arms- away from this place. His heart fluttered when he saw you through the crack of the door when you opened it. He went to move forward to you but stopped when Bucciarati moved in his way.

"Were you asleep?" He asked you, holding up the bags in each hand. "I brought your things."

"Oh, thank you, Bruno." You stepped back a little for Bucciarati to enter and walked back to your bed. Bucciarati shut the door behind him before Risotto had a chance to squeeze into the room, leaving him out in the hallway just on the other side of the door.

Bucciarati walked beside you, placing the bags on the bed. He eyed you subtly as you went through the bag Mista packed. There were some things in there that you probably wouldn't need, but you were thankful for the thought. Going through the one Bucciarati packed, you found the pajama pants and put them on under the robe you were wearing; you had just gotten out of the shower before he knocked on your door. You smiled at him, thanking him again for getting you your pants.

Bucciarati sighed lovingly. It warmed his heart to see you happy. "Is there anything else you need? Or want?" Or want to tell me?

You shook you head, grabbed a tank top to put on and shed your robe, climbing into bed. "Can you shut the lights off when you leave, please?"

"Of course." Bucciarati nodded and walked to the door. His hand came up to flick the light switch but noticed something in the small laundry bin that was in the room. Looking in your direction, he could see you were facing away from him. Curious, he peered in and saw a matching lingerie set; laced black and red.

Don't forget to wear this, I know you'll look absolutely delicious in it. The letter had said.

"Bruno?" You said with a yawn. "The lights?"

Shaking his head from the thoughts running in his head, Bucciarati shut off your lights and left the room, shutting your door behind him. He made his way back downstairs and into the common room, finding Narancia sitting in front of the TV playing a video game. "Narancia, where is Abbachio?"

Narancia was pretty wrapped up in his game, focused right to the TV and flailing his arms around while pushing buttons on his controller. "He left about a half hour before you and Mista came back. He didn't feel like spending the night here so he went home and put me in charge of watching Y/N."

Bruno stared down at him. "While you were playing video games? How are you supposed to watch her if you're doing that?"

"Eh?" Narancia blinked, realizing he wasn't doing his job. "Oh my god! She could have left!" He quickly stood up and started to run to your room before Bucciarati stopped him.

"Easy, Narancia. She's still up there; she's asleep."

Risotto watched the two from the corner of the room. If Bucciarati could only stand still for a moment, he might have a chance to maybe get the letter out of his pocket carefully. He quietly sighed with relief when he heard Abbachio wasn't here. That gave him more time to come with how to get it back.

The easiest way would be to kill him- maybe the others, too. But Risotto knew how much you valued your gang members. They were your friends, and most of all, the only family you had. He knew you wouldn't forgive him if he took it all away from you. But maybe he can do something...

Bucciarati left the common area and went to the kitchen, leaning against the counter as he dwelled over the contents of the letter. If that lingerie was in your laundry bin, then the meet up with whomever you were supposed to meet was to had happen some time in the last 24 hours. The meet up must have been thwarted by your capture by the hit team and you couldn't get to whoever you were dating. Unless...

Risotto grabbed a knife from the knifeblock that was on the counter and thrusted it forward, stabbing Bucciarati in a less vital spot, but enough to bring him to his knees. Using Metallica, he took Bucciarati's iron from his blood to make him collapse in a heap put him in quick unconscious state. This act made Riostto lose his invisibility, his Stand growing tired as he stood over your leader. Stuffing his hand in the jacket, Risotto pulled out the letter and sprang to the door.

Giorno ran into the kitchen upon hearing a thud from the other room and saw Bucciarati laying on the floor in a pool of blood. With no hesitation, he used his Stand to heal him. "Gold Experience!" While his Stand did the work, Giorno looked up to see a glimpse of Bucciarati's attacker and locked eyes with the evil that was Risotto before he was completely gone from sight. "Mista! Narancia! Trish! Quick, Bucciarati has been attacked!"

The three ran in as quick as they could and stood shocked as Bucciarati lay on the floor; Gold Experience tending to his wound. "What happened?!" Giorno informed them that he heard something from the kitchen and found Bucciarati bleeding.

Bucciarati regained consciousness and heard Giorno's report. "T-They must be after Y/N... For when she e-escaped from them..." He stood up with shakey legs. "We have to eliminate them before they can eliminate her. Trish, make sure Y/N stays here. Giorno, Narancia and I will go in the direction Risotto went in and look for him. Mista, you go get Abbachio and meet up with us; we'll need everyone." With this new issue, Bucciarati forgot about the letter, not even checking his pocket. If they were coming after you, then his main objective was to keep you safe.

---

You woke with a disturbing feeling and sat up. The room was still covered in a little darkness as the twilight of morning peeked in through the window. Getting up, you made your way downstairs and to the kitchen, you froze when you saw the drying blood on the floor. Wh-What...

"Y/N," Trish squeeked behind you. "Please go back to your room. Its very dangerous right now. Bucciarati was attacked a couple hours ago by La Squadra's leader. They must be mad that you escaped and he came here to retrieve you."

Risotto did this? You couldn't really believe it. The kidnapping was a hoax so the two of you could be together; he wouldn't attack your friends without reason...would he?

"Bucciarati and the others have been out looking for him. They want to find him before he alerts his team and start a bigger fight."

This can't happen. You didn't want anyone to get hurt. You had to stop this somehow. "Trish, which way did they go?" You asked as you pulled your shoes on.

"What? No, Y/N, you have to stay here! Its Bucciarati's orders!" Trish stood in front of you, Spice Girl appearing beside her, ready to stop you.

You didn't have time for this, nor did you want to hurt your friend, but you couldn't just sit back and have them kill each other. Faster at using your Stand, you trapped Trish before she could stop you, just putting her under so she couldn't stop you from leaving the safe house. "I'm sorry, Trish."

You weren't sure which way to go, but something told you to head in the direction of La Squadra's base. The streets were bare, civilians at home and asleep while you ran. Approaching the fountain where Risotto parted ways with you the morning before, you saw them; full on in battle with the other. Your gang versus Risotto's. Team members against team members. Leader fighting leader. You stood there and watched them, unsure what to do.

On one side, was Bucciarati, who gave you a home when you were abandoned by your family. The other side was Risotto, who you unexpectedly found companionship with.

You loved them both, but in two very different ways. "Bruno... Nero..." With a shout, you rushed forward into the fray between the two capos and activated your Stand.

You could only use it on one person...so who did you choose?

#a dangerous game #jojo #jojos bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #risotto nero #risotto #vento aureo #golden wind #my fic #my writing #risotto x reader

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megashadowdragon · 4 years

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@spoonoftar @thehtg-therealone

Someone made a thread about 1 on 1 fights recently. So I decided to post this.

Understand something though: This is purely about story. A lot of people tend to jump to conclusions and will have knee jerk reactions without even reading but I want to make it clear this is just about what would make for good storytelling. This is me explaining why I believe this particular rivalry has a lot of story potential.

I'm aware that no one is going to enjoy this but I do this because a lot people are under the impression that RWBY needs less 1 on 1 fights and that couldn't further from the truth. One thing that most people don't seem to understand is why this form of storytelling is so effective. Over-the-top spectacle can be visually appealing but unfortunately by itself thats all it will ever amount to. A battle that is all flash and no substance. One such example is Raven vs Cinder. While the fight makes for decent eye candy it is by far lacking in terms of story. There is a reason why fights like Gaara vs Rock Lee, Ichigo vs Byakuya, Deku vs Todaroki, Gon vs Pitou, Luffy vs Rob Lucci etc have and will be engraved in the minds of viewers for years to come. It is because people are attracted to great drama. Not simply the flashy abilities. While that can get people interested in a series it's appeal is only surface level. Thats not whats going to stay with people. What makes a fight great is the character drama between the two individuals. It's the story told through that conflict.

I get that RWBY is a show that tries to push Teamwork & Unity as a theme....but so does literally every other shounen battle series. Yet they all still have very memorable and compelling 1 on 1 fights. You don't have to have one or the other. Both are necessary. Wanting to emphasize Teamwork is great but the fact is that in Battle focused stories 1 on 1 fights is actually what builds character. Something that many would argue is utterly lacking in RWBY.

Which is why I argue that there is far more story to pull out of the Jaune vs Cinder conflict than there is the Ruby vs Cinder conflict. And that this is the better narrative to spin based on what we already have.

Keep in mind I'm not saying that Jaune & Cinder are the only characters you can(and should) do this with.

Ruby & Salem

Weiss & Watts

Yang & Hazel

Blake & Tyrian

Are all Hero/Villain relationships that you can build great character drama with by setting up a proper clash of ideologies. I'm only using Jaune vs Cinder as one example because pretty much everyone hates Jaune and would be glad to see either him or Cinder killed off never to be seen again and I feel that is an utter waste of story potential.

But first I'd like to explain why Ruby & Cinder fails as an effective Hero & Opponent dynamic as RT is currently trying to present it as.

Why Ruby vs Cinder Fails

“If your characters don’t have a response—in speech, in thought, or in action—to the events happening to them, they haven’t been touched by those events, and the reader will likewise remain untouched and uninvolved.” —Beth Hill

It's very clear that Cinder & Ruby are being set up as rivals. Silver & Gold. Naive cute youth, vs Cunning mature beauty etc. Not to mention Cinder's very typical "Villain obsessed with the Hero" shtick. Though I'd like to argue(and I'm sure I'm not the first) that their conflict doesn't really work. The narrative tries to set up some sort of a beef between them, but ultimately it just falls flat. We know that Cinder really really hates Ruby.....But why? Because she scarred her face? This comes off as really shallow and isn't something that the audience can really invest in. Now you could argue that this is done in an attempt to make Cinder seem vain or petty, but without any backstory the audience isn't able to be invested in her reasons. Because again, it's superficial. On the flip side, what is Ruby's reason for despising Cinder? Because she's evil? Because she hurt her friend? Again, these are incredibly superficial reasons. It comes off as "I'm good and you're evil therefore I hate you". It can be seen as nothing more than a good guy who hates a bad guy for being bad, and a bad guy who hates a good guy for being good. Not to mention, Ruby hating Cinder for killing Pyrrha is hardly believable in the first place due to the fact that she has hardly spent any time with Pyrrha whatsoever. Without any deep seated emotion behind them or layers to this conflict it will always come off as empty. A vapid and contrived good guy vs bad guy beef loosely concocted to make Cinder hate our main Hero and nothing more.

However the conflict between Juane and Cinder has again far more story potential. From an emotional standpoint it just works. Jaune had strong feelings for Pyrrha be they romantic or otherwise and thus unlike Ruby it gives him ample reason to truly despise Cinder. This alone is already enough reason to be emotionally invested in the conflict as we have watched Jaune and Pyrrha grow closer over the course of Season 1 only to have her be brutally murdered by Cinder. Jaune's feelings of weakness, self-doubt, guilt, and anger are all heavy emotions brought about by Cinder's actions and we perfectly understand why he feels the way he feels. His animosity towards Cinder is only stoked knowing she feels no remorse over her actions and in fact practically forgot about it. As such we genuinely want to see Jaune get revenge for Pyrrha and make up for his failure at the end of Volume 3. So already when looking at just Jaune's side of things we find that his motivations for hating Cinder make perfect sense due to the emotional weight behind them. But what could make Cinder care enough about Jaune to hate him like she does Ruby?

Values in Conflict

"Great drama is not the product of two individuals butting heads; it is the product of the values and ideas of the individuals going into battle. It's conflict between characters and their values. A good opponent has a set of beliefs that come under assault as well. The beliefs of the hero have no meaning, and do not get expressed in the story, unless they come into conflict with the beliefs of at least one other character, preferably the opponent. The actions of the hero and the opponent are based on a set of beliefs, or values. These values represent each character's view of what makes life good. In the best stories, the values of the opponent come into conflict with the values of the hero. Through that conflict, the audience sees which way of life is superior. Much of the power of the story rests on the quality of this opposition."

-John Truby, The Anatomy of Story

Parallels: First when looking at their characters they're both very similar in some respects. Especially in terms of their goals. In Volume 3 Episode 7 opens with Cinder stating that she wants to be Strong, Feared, and Powerful. From this it can be inferred that there was indeed a time where she was not those things. Why else would she desire them? It was because she did not have them. Therefore, once upon a time Cinder was weak, pathetic, and powerless. Her semblance also hints at this as it really seems rather pathetic compared to most. It's barely anything that could provide an advantage in combat. I wouldn't be surprised if her power was once considered worthless or even outright unfit for combat. Basically from this we can conclude she was an individual who was in a situation where she constantly felt weak and helpless and because of that weakness she desired power so strongly that she would do anything for it. Even her name which has been implied to be fake and something she invented on her own hints at the idea that she hated the person she was and wanted to become someone else entirely. Now, similarly Jaune has also always been considered a weakling. A joke. A goofball nobody, that no one ever takes seriously. As we know from Volume 1 this is something Jaune is fully aware of and he despises it. He hates being pathetic. Weak. Thus, he desires to be a Hero. Someone he can respect. So much so that he'd forge his transcripts and infiltrate the most prestigious Huntsmen School in the world. He'd go to such drastic measures as to commit a crime of this caliber if it meant taking a step towards his dream. As such if we were to give them a conflict: Cinder's reason for hating Jaune could be that he is a reminder of what she used to be. A living breathing remnant of that pathetic weakling she once was. Thus looking at him disgusts her as he symbolizes her past self, the identity she tried to forget that keeps coming back to haunt her. So having Jaune serve as a reminder of her own weakness will be the start of her wanting to see him dead just as much as, if not more than Ruby.

But how will their conflict be structured? Since RWBY is an anime, or more specifically an honorary shounen considering it's place in Jump. Lets use a bit of shounen storytelling. Shounen's most prominent writing technique is one where the fights act as Character Arcs in and of themselves. Now, matching one's internal struggle with the external one is nothing new or revolutionary but shounen battle manga have unquestionably mastered the technique. Every fight tells a story and can even sometimes be considered the "Hero's Journey" in miniature. Often acting as clashes of not just personality, but ideologies, and are used to explore the themes of the narrative. The main thing I'm pointing out with this analysis is how fights can and should be written. Fights can be far more than a mere spectacle of flashy movements and abilities. With this in mind lets just imagine that each of their fights/clashes/encounters spurs on development in the two culminating in a final fight towards the end of the series, that concludes the story arcs of both characters.

~Themes~

Ambition: Both characters clearly posses great aspirations and ambition. Now I know Ambition is a word people like to tie to Villains. Deeming them selfish because of it, whereas the Heroes are portrayed as "selfless" doing things for the sake of others rather than themselves. However theres nothing wrong with having an Ambition. It's not an evil thing in it itself. Nor is it synonymous with greed. It's perfectly normal to have goals and to work hard towards achieving them. Thats all Ambition is. However the difference is in how you go about achieving those goals. Sometimes the hero and the villain are basically the same except for the fact that each took a single step in a different direction. Thus, one layer of this potential conflict between Jaune and Cinder can be about Ambition and how each character represents the flip side of what it means to pursue a goal. Now their goal in itself is somewhat similar. They both seek power and strength but for different reasons. While for both of them it is on some level a quest for self-worth, Cinder desires power largely for the sake of having it. So that she can inspire fear. Jaune desires strength so that he can protect those close to him and to have the ability to help those who need it. Where Cinder is ruthless. Jaune is Kind and Compassionate. Where Cinder uses the people around her like tools for her success. With Jaune we see that his support system on the ladder to success is built on friendship and mutual respect. Cinder tears down those around her using them as stepping stones to achieve her goals whereas Jaune holds up those around him and they eagerly do so for him in turn. Cinder may have worked hard but she gains strength by stealing from others whereas Jaune simply works hard and his power is one that literally allows him to give power to others instead of taking it. And Lastly, where Cinder's actions are clearly rooted in some deep seated hatred. Jaune is motivated by love. Or at least the memory of the woman who once loved him.

Destiny: Another layer to the fight could involve Cinder's belief in Destiny. Putting that empty one-liner of hers to good use we can pit Cinder's Destiny against Jaune's Hard Work in a clash of ideals. When creating a clash of ideals it's important to look for the positive and negative versions of the same value. A thematic clash of a Self-Made form of Destiny vs Predetermined Fate form of Destiny. Jaune's position in this thematic conflict being that the person you turn yourself into is entirely up to your own actions. Not Fate. This was also Pyrrhas version of Destiny. Jaune is essentially carrying on Pyrrha's will by representing her ideals in his final rematch with Cinder. It's the idea that regardless or who they are or where they came from it is their actions that brought them here. This should involve Jaune showcasing the techniques he's trained his ass off for pitted against the powers Cinder has ruthlessly stolen while under the belief that this is her Destiny. One that Fate owes her. During their final fight thanks to his training with Ozpin, Jaune has reached his true potential and with a combination of his newfound strength, some strategy & tactics forces her to concede that the previously untalented nobody is now not only the "stronger" fighter but also the stronger person. With Cinder ultimately coming to the conclusion that she could have been anyone she wanted to but has willingly turned herself into nothing more than a monster. A beast to be put down. And she had no one to blame but herself. Hers was a path of self-destruction where Jaune's path was one of self-overcoming. Having triumphed over his own weaknesses and short-comings whereas Cinder merely succumbed to them. Jaune's victory shouldn't simply be in defeating her or watching her die. He should utterly destroy everything that she believes in. Proving that everything she did to achieve her goals was worthless. That everything she did uptil now meant absolutely nothing.

Ozpin & Salem: Whats more, another layer to this fight could be to depict the difference in ideals between Ozpin and Salem. I've always been curious as to who would train Jaune. After all he is the weakest but the one with the most potential and storywise it just makes sense to bring him up to the level of everyone else so that he's not a hindrance on the battlefield. But in regards to training I've always had in mind that either Ozpin or his own Father would be the one to assist him. While I may prefer the latter, despite my preferences I will admit that Ozpin makes the most sense. It's far more appropriate that both Ozpin and Jaune; the two people who experienced the biggest failings during the Fall of Beacon come together to correct the mistakes they made. Both of their failures being tied directly to Cinder it makes sense that their combined effort should be eventually what put her down. With Ozpin seeing Jaune's immense desire to overcome Cinder he finally decides to train him personally to aid in his success as well as make up for his own mistakes. Seen from this perspective it's hard to imagine how Ruby even has a stake in this conflict at all. Cinder's defeat should mean something for characters involved and seeing Cinder defeated should mean the most to the man who failed to protect his school and the boy who failed to protect his partner. That way the victory is actually emotionally impactful because of how personal the victory is to those who had a hand in it. You can also think of this as being similar to Deku & All Might's situation. Remember Ozma is basically the Original Hero. So we have a young boy whose always wanted to be a Great Hero being trained by the former Greatest Hero there ever was. Thus, adding a new twist to the fight so that now it's a battle between the boy trained by Ozpin and the girl trained by Salem. Both Salem and Ozpin have raised up two youths who represent their ideals and the winning side will essentially be the ones to inherit the world. Not only would this conflict be about leaving the world to the next generation but also through these two individuals be a battle that asks the question of what ideology will decide the future. In addition to this, Jaune and Cinder could be used to mirror the conflict between Ozpin and Salem. Acting as a microcosm of their grander conflict. We have this generation's new Hero a White Knight attempting to save a beautiful Princess(Cinderella) from destroying herself on the path of Evil. Just as Ozpin tried to do years ago with Salem but failed. Here we can have Jaune succeed where his Master had failed.

Summary

So heres a quick and shortened Summary of how their conflict can play out: Jaune, no longer grieving over Pyrrha is now using her death as inspiration to become the Hero he dreamed about. He will no longer be treating his life as if it had no value. Pyrrha did not sacrifice hers so that he could die pointlessly. That would make her a fool who died for nothing. If he died then Pyrrha will have wasted her time on him. Death is not an apology. He makes an oath that he is going to live. That he would repay her sacrifice with success. With victory. By becoming the greatest Huntsmen he could possibly be. And save as many lives as possible in the process. He would do it too. Remember an Arc never goes back on their word. But the first step to that, would be defeating her killer. He would seek to surpass and overcome Cinder. Rectifying his first and greatest failure. He attacks her everytime he sees her. He loses every time but each fight he comes back just a little better than before. He won't stop coming back either. No matter how many times she seemingly gets rid of him Jaune Arc always comes back. Whenever he is not on screen he is busy training. With a new move or a new trick here or there and gradually he begins to become a real nuisance to Cinder. Now, remember from Her perspective Jaune represents her past self. Or rather a better version of her that was weak and powerless yet still striving to be strong and through effort is slowly beginning to achieve it. Though not through the methods she currently uses. This is important because Jaune's consistent interactions with Cinder will start to affect her development. Causing her to reflect on her actions and question if the path she's on is the right one(note: we did see a brief glimpse of this when Cinder was watching Tyrian attack that Ursa like a madman). After all if the man she once deemed a weak failure can continue to grow like this what had been stopping her from simply doing the same? He had not sacrificed his limbs and turned himself into a monster. Did she really need to be ruthless? or even join up with Salem to achieve her goals? Thoughts like this combined with Cinder having flashbacks to her past whenever she sees Jaune suddenly makes him someone she must kill at all costs due to him drudging up old memories, making her question everything she's done up until this point. Then it becomes about proving herself correct. About putting the past behind her. That, if she didn't kill this fool and prove that his way was wrong then she'll have lost any justification for her existence and acquisition of power. She had to join up with Salem. It was the only way to become powerful, strong and respected. She had no other choice. But in addition to these thoughts there was also a new emotion bubbling to the surface whenever she interacted with Jaune. Respect. Admiration. For the person who was just like her. Showing stout determination in the face of those who deemed him weak. Driven to prove them wrong. Absolutely dedicated towards achieving his ambition. These such traits would lead to her sparing his life on occasion and additionally, she finds herself slowly yet surely looking forward to their encounters. She remembers his name now. How could she forget? Jaune Arc? The name practically rolled off the tongue. Now whenever he appears before her stronger than he was before she can't help but grin. Eager to attack him. See how far he's come. At this point she's nearly forgotten her hatred towards Ruby. She was enjoying watching Jaune improve himself simultaneously proving wrong all those who doubted him. Even her.

Similarly, we see that Jaune slowly starts to understand Cinder over the course of their encounters, whereas in their first official meeting he couldn't comprehend her actions at all. He starts to relate to her intense drive to be something greater. Bits of information lead to him coming to the conclusion that at one point she was someone like him, weak and helpless. However she'd actually achieved her goal. Coming from absolutely nothing to someone so powerful. Which gave him hope of him doing the same. But her path has made it clear she didn't have any of the heartfelt support that he did. Her having only the monstrous Salem to turn to. Jaune against his better judgment begins to feel sorry for the one known as Cinder Fall. Yet the same time he'd also begrudgingly come to respect her and all that she'd overcome. But he was confused. Why did she desire further power? Did she not see how strong she already was? Then it dawns on him. She had already overcome so much yet she hasn't overcome herself. She was still so lost in her own anger that it has blinded her to the realization that she had already achieved her goal. So Seeing her as the monster he could have become, Jaune makes the decision to let go of his hate for Cinder. Lest it turn him into a monster as well. Thus no longer feeling hatred for the woman he so consistently opposes he begins seeking answers. To understand her. To learn why she is the way she is. After, learning of her past her understands what he must do. Spending all his time with Ruby had taught him that being a Hero was about more that just rushing in and slaying some monster, it was also about lending a hand to those in need. Even if they didn't deserve it(Edit: While I think it'd be interesting if Jaune comes to this realization because of Ruby, we do in fact already see this in Jaune's character when saves Cardin despite all the horrible things he'd done to him).

(Note: This fight can occur just before the final battle. You can have Jaune & Oscar show up fresh out the metaphporic hyperbolic time chamber (or whatever kind of literary device you wanna use) in time to help Team RWBY deal with Salem. However Jaune doesn't have to literally surpass Cinder for this to work. You can have him surpass her metaphorically. In fact it might be more thematically potent to have Jaune still be weaker than her in terms of overall power but still manage to win. Showing that for all her great power she's still worthless without the strength of character that Jaune has and thats what makes her weak.)

Long story short, their fight concludes with Jaune completely besting Cinder. Jaune's final blow kills the parasite Grimm within her. Cinder dies, but only for a moment before Jaune's powers restores her again, but in that brief moment she remembers Ruby and how pointless her hatred towards her was. How petty she was back then. This brief moment of repentance causes the maiden powers to be sent to Ruby. With this victory, Jaune crushes her ideals and sets her back to Zero. Destroying her Grimm parts and using his semblance to completely restore her human limbs and heal her scars. She is completely human once more. Giving her a chance to start over.

The point being: these two characters, whether it's their personalities, characterization or themes simply make for the better conflict. It works because Jaune's existence attacks her beliefs about herself and her motivations for being on the path she's on. Cinder's existence provides Jaune with motivation while attacking his weaknesses as a character and pushing him to be better. Thats what a proper Hero/Opponent dynamic should look like. Yes, I understand that some people prefer Team fights because they find it interesting to have other characters cover their weaknesses in battle and while that may be "useful" it's not as compelling storytelling as having characters overcome their weaknesses. Having someone to protect you is fine but if relied on it can reduce the characters to feeling stagnant. You cannot grow if you're always being protected. A 1 on 1 forces a character to face their weaknesses and find a way around it or overcome it. This is what builds character and leads to character growth. Hence why 1 v 1s are significant in stories like this. It allows the characters to stand on their own two feet when they have to. More importantly, this specific encounter can actually tell a proper story. One of two people with opposing world views, and personalities that come into conflict who are ultimately challenged and changed by said conflict. Jaune helps to rid Cinder of her hatred and desire for destruction, even giving her the option to choose her own path from here on out, while Cinder inadvertently helps Jaune to become the Hero he initially set out to be. Theres arguably room to take this a step further by going in a romantic direction, what with Jaune being a "White Knight" and a wannabe Prince Charming and Cinder being "Cinderella" and a wannabe Princess but ultimately the point is the fight itself gets a story across.

Final thoughts

-Some would argue that they just want to see her get unceremoniously killed off, and while that might be emotionally satisfying in the moment but Jaune saving/not killing her is the better conclusion because it better expresses an answer to a thematic argument. It's essentially one big middle finger to her entire way of life. Crushing everything she believes in the process.

-I know some people might take issue with Jaune being able to restore limbs but this is purely theoretically and I only included it because of the symbolic meaning it provides of the "monster" of Cinder's rage being destroyed and her humanity shining through. However, it should be noted that Semblances grow over time. They evolve. If we look at it in rpg terms Jaune's Semblance is basically at level 1. So for all we know it might not be outside the realm of possibility if it grows even further.

-Others might take issue Jaune beating her at all because she's a maiden but it's entirely appropriate imo. You don't really need to be as powerful as someone else to actually beat them in a fight. "Power levels" don't always decide the outcome of fights.

-If this is to work then theres one thing he should be doing and it's constantly training. That kind of all day, every day, work all day/sleep all night, Roronoa Zoro/Rock Lee style training routine. Only to emphasize the theme of his Hard Work vs Cinder taking the Easy Route of just stealing power instead of becoming strong through her own merit. Basically, Jaune takes the hard road to growth while Cinder cuts corners.

-One more thing that I neglected to mention earlier that leans into the idea of Jaune & Cinder being used to represent the greater conflict between Ozpin & Salem(and I mean strictly thematically not romantically) is that one of Jaune's themes is that he represents The Sun. Jaune's first name meaning yellow in French and the etymology of the name "Arc" not only has "Holy" connotations but is also a reference to the Sun. Jaune Arc essentially means Yellow Sun. The reason this is significant is because the Sun in ancient times was worshiped as the "Life Giver". Which is literally Jaune's Semblance. So Jaune is the Yellow Sun that Gives Life and Cinder is the burning flame that reduces all things to Ash. One representing Life and the other representing Death and Destruction. Much like the God of Light & Darkness but more importantly like Ozpin & Salem as it makes for a great way to symbolize the Cycle of Life, Death & Rebirth. With this in mind if my scenario plays out, the scene where Jaune saves Cinder can be read as: "a wild flame reduces all life around it to Cinders but through the light of the Sun that life is reborn from the ashes anew". If such a thing happened I'd be curious about whether or not this could lead to Cinder gaining a new Semblance, one representing her growth as a character. Something Phoenix related? I dunno, thats just a random thought.

#rwby #rwby theory #rwby theories #rwby meta #rwby theorys #cinder fall #rwby cinder fall #rwby cinder #cinder rwby #jaune arc #rwby jaune #jaune rwby #rwby jaune arc #jaune arc rwby

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tatticstudio55 · 5 years

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Daenerys as an anti-Cinderella?

Another asoiaf/fairy tales meta

It’s always fun to wonder which fairy tales goes best with which asoiaf characters (especially the girls, for some reason). For Sansa and Arya, the references are overflowing. With Dany it’s… trickier. Only two – or maybe three – classic tales really fit. Two of those I’ve already talked about in previous posts (Thumbelina and The Fire Bird). There are some general “clues” pointing to Cinderella…

-Viserys, the Anastasia & Drizella duo to Daenerys’s Cinderella

-In ADWD, Cleon the “butcher king” of Astapor make a marriage offer to Daenerys and gift her with a pair of slippers, but

Irri slid the slippers onto Dany’s feet. They were gilded leather, decorated with green freshwater pearls. Does the butcher king believe a pair of pretty slippers will win my hand? “King Cleon is most generous. You may thank him for his lovely gift.” Lovely, but made for a child. Dany had small feet, yet the pointed slippers mashed her toes together.

-Cinderella is named as such for her habit of retreating close to the ashes-filled hearth once her work is done (from “cendres”, the French word for “ashes”). Bettelheim view Cinderella’s behavior as a product of sorrow and grief for her dead mother. For Dany, ash is also linked with sorrow and, first inverted trope, with the mother mourning her dead child:

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin. – Daenerys, AGOT

There’s also the “Queen of ashes” nickname Dany is sometime dubbed with (more so in the show) and the fact that Cinderella herself is a “queen” of the ashes, somewhat (hence why she’s called “Cinderella”).

-Mirri Maz Duur is an inverted fairy godmother to Dany.

But these are details. Overall, Dany comes off as the anti-Cinderella of asoiaf. This becomes especially apparent in ADWD, where she’s, essentially, a glorified slave to her duties who dreams of escapes with her “prince charming”, i.e. Daario. This all reach a culmination point when she goes to the “ball”, i.e., the grand reopening of the Daznak’s pit. Unlike Cinderella, who’d give anything to attend the ball, Dany would give anything to skip it:

“Even if the pits must open, must Your Grace go yourself?” asked Missandei as she was washing the queen’s hair.

[…]

She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself. – Daenerys, ADWD

Whereas the ball meant dreams and freedom for Cinderella, for Dany, it’s the perpetuation of a nightmare. They both present themselves at the event under a veil: a literal one for Dany,

“And over it, the long red veils.” The veils would keep the wind from blowing sand into her mouth. And the red will hide any blood spatters. – Daenerys, ADWD

A metaphorical one for Cinderella, garbed so elegantly that her step mother and half sisters don’t recognize her. This idea of disguise is interesting. For a start, it contrasts with Dany’s refusal to put a veil between herself and Astapor in ASOS. To borrow Clapton’s words on Dany’s white garments in the show, the purpose of the veil is to “remove herself (Dany)” from the situation. Dany’s choice of clothes is a mean of non-attendance, while Cinderella’s costume allows her to go incognito and enjoy the moment. There is the contrasts of colors: Cinderella wears an immaculate, pure white dress (at least in the Disney version), whereas Dany wears yellow silk and a blood-colored veil. Finally, in some versions, the ball attended by Cinderella is a masked ball. This could be significant, since the reopening of the pits prove to be its own kind of masked “ball” (and even more so in the show, where the sons of the Harpy creep inside the pits wearing literal masks):

At the base of the Great Pyramid, Ser Barristan awaited them beside an ornate open palanquin, surrounded by Brazen Beasts. Ser Grandfather, Dany thought. Despite his age, he looked tall and handsome in the armor that she’d given him. “I would be happier if you had Unsullied guards about you today, Your Grace,” the old knight said, as Hizdahr went to greet his cousin. “Half of these Brazen Beasts are untried freedmen.” And the other half are Meereenese of doubtful loyalty, he left unsaid. Selmy mistrusted all the Meereenese, even shavepates.

“And untried they shall remain unless we try them.”

“A mask can hide many things, Your Grace. Is the man behind the owl mask the same owl who guarded you yesterday and the day before?

How can we know?”

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” - Daenerys, ADWD

Behind the drum marched Brazen Beasts four abreast. Some carried cudgels, others staves; all wore pleated skirts, leathern sandals, and patchwork cloaks sewn from squares of many colors to echo the many-colored bricks of Meereen. Their masks gleamed in the sun: boars and bulls, hawks and herons, lions and tigers and bears, fork-tongued serpents and hideous basilisks. – Daenerys, ADWD

In fact, some descriptions of the event, when taken by themselves, almost make it sound like there’s an actual ball happening inside the pit:

Across the pit the Graces sat in flowing robes of many colors, clustered around the austere figure of Galazza Galare, who alone amongst them wore the green. – Daenerys, ADWD

We could even dig further: dancing, in asoiaf, is often used as a euphemism for dying, or is used in scenes going heavy on the death-related subtext. What do people do in a ball? They dance. What do people do in the pits? They die.

“Barsena is very quick,” Reznak said. “She will dance with the boar, Magnificence, and slice him when he passes near her. He will be awash in blood before he falls, you shall see.” – Daenerys, ADWD

Cinderella’s ball is a dream and Dany’s “ball” is a nightmare, but both are woken from it, for the twelfth stroke of midnight will lift the charm. Fun fact, if I’m not mistaken, there were twelve fights planned that day: Khrazz, the Spotted Cat, a “Lysene youth with long blond hair”, an elephant, a bull, a mock battle, a folly with dwarfs, Barsena, a folly with old women and “three more matches”, according to Hzdahr… yup, that makes twelve. Each fight is a “stroke of midnight” for Dany, pulling her from the nightmare, urging her to wake up. At Barsena, she snaps. The charm falls, her carriage turns into a pumpkin and her gown into rags:

She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi? ” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.” – Daenerys, ADWD

In her haste to flee, she loses a shoe:

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet. When she landed in the pit she lost a sandal. Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough. Ser Barristan was calling after her. – Daenerys, ADWD

The aftermath finds her alone in the grass sea, wearing literal rags (again, not unlike Cinderella), in a dream-like state and wondering what just happened. Unlike Cinderella, Dany has no desire to relive the ball and would much rather stay where she is, with her rags and her animal companion. Both girls experience an unpleasant return to reality. Cinderella must go back to being a slave to her step-mother and half-sister, while Dany knows she must go back to Meereen (which doesn’t quite work out, but).

Yet for everything nightmarish about it, the reopening of the fighting pits meant something Dany deeply dreamed for and desired: peace. No more bloodshed in the streets of Meereen. The safety of her people. She wanted it and she got it, until the whole farce blew up in her face and the pit of Daznak turned into a pumpkin. I think that’s when she realized it: that the peace was never real, that Hizdahr’s “peace” was an illusion (as many before me have pointed out), a veil that got lifted with the twelve death blows of the pit.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf and fairy tales #asoiaf meta #cinderella

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legolasgoldy · 5 years

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VI. The Lovers || VIII. Strength || XVIII. The Moon || ★ Seven of Pentacles || ☆* Two of Wands || ◥█̆̈◤ Four of Cups || ━━╋⊂ Three of Swords

Tarot-inspired Prompts

// Phew, sorry this took a few days these questions are so gooddd. It took a lot of typing, I hope its not too much to read!haha XD Thank you so much!!❤ @blind-mutant //

VI. The Lovers - have your character’s heart and mind ever been at odds with one another?

X-men verse: Yes, a few times. When he first started getting his mutation and really struggling to come to terms with it, he was really confused as to what he should do. It took him a month or two to decide, and ultimately his head chose to leave to spare his family from any problems his mutations would cause even though his heart told him to stay and have their support.

Also with Rhys, there was a lot of his heart telling him something his mind hadnt quite realized yet. It was a very subconscious thing because he knew he loved him, but never thought about in what way. It was obvious to everyone else, he absolutely adored him, loved his smile, his voice, everything about him and spent time always thinking of him. The problem was, it didnt click in his mind right away that all of those feelings were much more than friendship. All he knew, was that being with Rhys made his soul happy. When he did finally realize, everything just seemed to make sense but due to the whole drunken night incident a whole new struggle arose. He didnt think Rhys would feel the same way so that made his head clash with his heart a lot. All of it was a misunderstanding of course

In Mainverse: Phew, Im only going to list one time and make it brief or else we’ll be on this one question forever. When crossing the Helcaraxe, it was nothing but a mind and heart battle. He was constantly aching for comfort but hating everyone for hurting him so badly, but somewhere in his mind he knew he didnt hate them, he loved them and thats why it hurt so bad. It took the whole elven 30 years in the Helcaraxe to finally cope and his mind and heart match as much as it could.

VIII. Strength - is there a moment your character has ever had to fight for something or someone?

X-Men Au: In his usual X-men verse he hasnt had to do anything extremely drastic, but he does defend the people he cares about from judgemental people on several occasions. It sounds awfully tame but I think eventually when on his own and living with Rhys, both of them having jobs, having a happy life. He feels like they did a lot of work to get there too. Finrod helped Rhys through a lot of hard times, and they overcame past demons to live happy and together. Sometimes those demons do resurface but they fight back against that.

He does have a verse where he and a friend were captured, and he protected them from Hydra, and for the sake of not writing a lot of gore, in short theres a lot of biting and fighting. He gets muzzled, his hair cut, tested on, but eventually he gets his friend and they get out but the friend doesnt make it far, the friend supposedly drowns in the river. Key word being supposedly. XD

MainVerse: Yes. There is a lot of war throughout his lifetime that he fights in and a lot of emotional turmoil. He had to fight to be with Maglor the moment they first fell in love. Feanor forbid them to be see each other, Maglor had to marry someone else, etc. That was the least of his problems though, when they all were fleeing Valinor he had to fight to try and keep his cousins/friends from killing each other ( which they did) at the first kinslaying. He also had to fight and struggle to keep his family alive in the Helcaraxe. Then there was just so much fighting in Middle Earth. The only time there wasnt, was in the time of great peace when Morgoth was quiet, and Finrod was free to run his kingdom happily and be with his family and lover, still in secret, but he’d take it. After all that crap, keeping their romance secret wasnt as big of a deal anymore. Thats not to say it didnt bother him sometimes, but there were worse problems.

XVIII. The Moon - what is the most significant secret your character has discovered?

X-men AU: Aside from finding out what happened to Rhys, there isnt much else significant. His life in this au is relatively calm compared to all other aus. Unless you count teenage talk, and secrets swapped between friends. Theres tons of those but none of those are massive secrets.

MainVerse: Probably when Ulmo came to him and gave him a hint of what was to come and what he needed to do to prepare. Any secret from a Vala is hella significant. Similarly, the most significant secret he ever kept himself, is that he was shagging his half-cousin for centuries and they in fact were kinda secretly married twice XD Also, any events of his foresight telling him something can also count.

★ Seven of Pentacles - what tests your character’s patience more than anything?

Prejudice.The only smidge of patience he has for it, is giving them a chance to educate themselves on the matter and be a better person. He’ll even offer to educate them. If they keep squandering that chance then he has no patience for them. You can lead a horse to water but cant make them drink, if hes gatta just forget them and protect innocent people from them then oh well. He tried. Hes not gonna tolerate someone whos ignorant biased hateful views hurt people.

ー☆* Two of Wands - has your character ever had to make a tough decision between two choices?

X-men AU: This goes along with the first question. Most of his tough decisions were due to his mind and heart saying two different things. When his mutation started surfacing, not only did he feel like he had to choose between leaving and staying, he felt the need to either keep in touch or break up with his boyfriend. Those were two very very hard decisions. Of course he had only just turned 16, he was such a young boy and in his mind at the time those were his only choices. He got so afraid that his family would suffer if someone judged him, he wanted them happy. The same with his boyfriend, they had both planned to go to go through highschool together then attend a college of the arts to study music. They had such big dreams that he suddenly didnt think he could do anymore. The thought of trying and failing, then hindering his boyfriend from achieving his dreams was too much, he couldnt find it in himself to risk everyones happiness, and/or safety. Heaven forbid him being a mutant were to effect his parents jobs! Or people pick on his little siblings at their schools. He thought of everything bad that could happen, and in that already stressed/very frightened state he decided to leave. Of course Charles Xavier found him and told him about the institute, and this whole thing was mended but it was devastating at the time.

MainVerse: Whether or not to leave Valinor was a choice that changed his entire life, and set his entire future in motion down the path of doom. It sounds really dramatic and it was. ;-;. When all the Noldor decided to leave when the trees were killed his mother wouldn’t go with them, and he couldnt bear to leave her but he felt the need to go and protect his father and siblings too. So he told her he would take care of them for her. At that time there was no doom of Mandos, and there could have been a way back to see her at some point and time. It wasnt too unreasonable to think seeing as the Valar said they could go, and they hadnt committed any crimes yet.

After the kinslaying he had a choice to turn back with his father and his people, to be forgiven and have the curse of doom lifted off him but he couldnt leave his siblings, cousins, and lover. He had to choose to stay with them, and thus making the decision to never see his parents again until he died. In a way he had no choice, he couldnt let his siblings, cousins, and lover go to middle earth, where the dark lords were, alone. Theres no way he could so in that aspect it was an easy choice, but hard and heartwrenching all the same. Another tough choice was to travel through the Helcaraxe but that wasnt his sole decision, its more complicated so I wont mention that one.

◥█̆̈◤ Four of Cups - how indecisive is your character?

Finrod is pretty decisive, the only decisions that are difficult for him are the ones where his heart and mind clash like the other questions asked about. He has such a big heart, he always tries to consider everyone and do whats best but sometimes the situation calls for a lot of thinking rather than acting on emotion. Something that important takes a lot of thought.

━━╋⊂ Three of Swords - what was the worst betrayal of trust your character has ever experienced?

X-men au: I think going back to the tough decision question about his mutation beginning to surface. At the time when that happened, he felt very betrayed by his own body. Everything just started tumbling to pieces in front of him. His body kept changing and his teeth were growing so his mouth was incredibly sore around his canines not to mention accidentally biting himself a lot. His ears, and sense of smell, and taste were malfunctioning from the change so noises that didnt normally bother him hurt sometimes to the point of bleeding ears, things that normally tasted good suddenly tasted bad, he kept smelling things he didnt want to smell. Not to mention his voice started doing really weird things and he suddenly got abnormally strong. Not only was all this suddenly happening to him, his fear of what would happen to everyone else just made him feel betrayed by the world for not accepting him and forcing him between a rock and a hard place. Of course later, things did work out and he realized there were a lot of people who supported mutants too, and that he just had to see it. The longer he had his mutation he felt like it was who he was meant to be, now he wouldnt know what to do without it. Just being so young and everything happening so suddenly did make him feel betrayed for several months.

Mainverse: Hm, well theres several betrayals that he went through although things like the kinslaying wasnt directly to solely him so I wont elaborate on those. I would say its a pretty good tie between his uncle Feanor refusing to let Makalaure/Maglor be with him and basically forcing Mags to marry someone else specifically to keep them from ever being married was a pretty bad betrayal at the time. Feanor had always been rough around the edges, but Finrod had never expected that extent of a betrayal.

The biggest betrayal of his entire lifetime I would say is what Curufin and Celegorm did in Nargothrond. Finrod had been one of the best kings in history, he was sweet, compassionate, loyal, trust worthy, he cared about everyone not just his own subjects. His kingdom thrived and was so happy, he kept it hidden from evil all that time. There was such an immense level of respect between him and his subjects, and Curufin and Celegorm specifically visited Nargothrond to try and undermine that respect and trust. They widdled away at it and planted all kinds of seeds of doubt to the point when Finrod decided to go with Beren to retrieve a silmaril, it was absolute mutiny. Everyone in the entire kingdom turned on him because of what Curufin and Celegorm had done and said to them, only a single handful of people remained loyal to him. A single handful, thats it, out of that entire massive kingdom. Finrod simply took off his crown and tossed it on the floor bc thats all he could do, it was such a betrayal there was nothing else he could have done. Finrod went into Angband with only part of that handful of people because no one else would follow him. They all died except for Beren who Finrod died protecting. Luckily his nephew Orodreth got the crown and not Curufin and Celegorm, but much good that did..Not long after Nargothrond fell and Orodreth and his daughter was killed, and most of Nargothronds people were either killed or enslaved. So.. yea. Massive Betrayal. Hugee. Lead to the entire kingdom and its people being dead.

#this-is-gizmo #Hopefully theres no bad typos i dont think i can read through all that again X'D i wrote too much #blind-mutant #Thank you <333 #My Finrod Headcanons #AU: Xmen #but also main #answered

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gendrie · 7 years

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sis tell me about your top 5 Arya moments and quotes pls. your wisdom is much needed in these trying times :D

alright lets do this:

"The wolf blood." Arya remembered now. "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.”

I feel like such a cliche with this one but its a classic for a reason lol. theres nothing about this scene i don’t love. all the nature imagery for starters: the sound of the wind and the water. the eyes of the gods peering into arya as she kneels before the heart tree, asking for their help. and then! “ from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf” and arya feels lightheaded. i don’t think she’s actually hearing nymeria either. she’s warging her wolf. the best part is the old gods actually communicating with arya, obviously. i will never stop stressing this because ?? it literally never happens in any other scene?? this is the most northern thing ever too and it happens in the middle of the riverlands. it has huge significance for arya’s identity arc as well. she starts to doubt herself here. after hearing the news that winterfell has been burned and her little brothers are dead but the gods intervene and with ned’s voice reminding arya of who she is and where she belongs she finds the strength to carry on. its just an intense and beautiful scene.

She looked at their filthy hair and scraggly beards and reddened eyes, at their dry, cracked, bleeding lips. Wolves, she thought again. Like me. Was this her pack? How could they be Robb's men? She wanted to hit them. She wanted to hurt them. She wanted to cry. They all seemed to be looking at her, the living and the dead alike.

this moment is so important to me. its so important to the story. arya has seen so much of the war. she’s fought in the battles. she’s seen the dead bodies and burned villages. she’s seen all this death and destruction. and its mostly from the lannisters. but then she starts too see a lot of the evil the northmen are doing too. and it breaks arya’s heart. she’s so ashamed. but its an inevitable truth of war, unfortunately. i like to harp on this a lot but the truth is very important in arya’s story so this is something she has to see. she hates these men for what they’ve done. they’re supposed to be her people but they have betrayed everything she stands for. but all the same, she shows them mercy. the villagers yell at her to stop but she fills her own cup until its brimming over with water. while standing on gendrys shoulders (yes this detail is important) she pours it over the first man. and she does it all again for the other two. these men are criminals. they’re in disgusting shape, naked and filthy. but arya is still able to do and watch as they’re given mercy via anguy’s arrows without flinching. she feels duty bound to give them one last drink of water but she doesn’t make excuses for these men. this shows the huge potential in arya to become a great leader. the experience is so valuable as well. all these lessons the war taught her will effect how she rules in the future.

Arya put her lips to his ear. "It's Jaqen H'ghar."Even in the burning barn, with walls of flame towering all around and him in chains, he had not seemed so distraught as he did now. "A girl . . . she makes a jest." "You swore. The gods heard you swear."

she 👏 did 👏 that 👏 arya played a faceless man like it was nothing. she is the damn champ. and this is only in the second book. now that she’s had faceless men training herself arya going to be a an even bigger force to be reckoned with. but yeah this is just one of the best tricks in asoiaf. jaqen really thought he had the power and arya just switched it up before he knew what was happening. i love how the three wishes trope is used with all the power of names business. its very old school. the entire “only death may pay for life” stuff is my favorite too. i even like all the weasel soup stuff that follows even though its horrifying. “a girl should be bloody too. this is her work” but like my last point, thats a lesson arya learns from. she’s cunning and clever and a very quick study. i love her.

"I'm sorry, my lady." Arya suddenly felt bad for her, and ashamed. "I'm sorry I tore the acorn dress too. It was pretty.""Yes, child. And so are you. Be brave."

when i started this i said i wasn’t going to include any arya/gendry moments but i lied to my damn self. kinda. this is only partially about the otp. i love this entire chapter because its pretty different from a lot of arya’s. the theme of love and romance is really strong (i wonder why?) her interactions with lady smallwood are beautiful. the dialogue between them is great and this woman treats her so kindly. arya’s so responsive to that. we see her open up to lady smallwood. unlike with the highborn women she grew up with. she even says the acorn dress is pretty in the end. the “be brave” just destroys me. and arya even remembers the lady who said she was pretty at acorn hall. theres the wrestling and the song :) i mean what can i say that i havent said a hundred times before? arya and gendry are gonna fall in love. another fave bit is when harwin says "arya was much the same at winterfell” after her and gendry play fight. which shows that she can be her true self with him. he even says just arya when asking if she wants to see the forge with him. she’s not in survival mode or hiding her identity. she’s just arya. and he’s gendry. and they’re beautiful.

. . . but it wasn't.Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

ah, needle. i couldn’t not include this scene, ya know? i tear up every time i read it. i love the dark, watery atmosphere of braavos. its the perfect backdrop for this scene which is essentially a rebirth. arya is told by the kindly man she must rid herself of her possessions. thats the first step. the next will be her body and her feelings and, ultimately, her future. so she takes everything out into the night and stands at the waters edge and throws it all in; her little trinkets and even her clothes. everything except needle. she can’t part with it. that sword is a symbol of everything that makes arya stark. its such a profound moment for an identity arc. when we’re stripped bare, what makes us who we are? and this is what makes arya: her mother and her father. her brothers and her sister. old nan’s stories. her home and its people. jon snow’s smile. (and i am actually tearing up now as i type this lmao) thats who she is and arya cannot give that up. she thinks the old gods wanted her to have needle. the many faced god can’t have it. so arya hides needle. she conceals it from the faceless men and buries those memories deep in her heart. with a promise that one day she’ll be back for them all. and that day will be the day i die.

#this ask was a struggle tbh lol #top 5 arya moments???#uh??#ALL OF THEM #so i just went with my gut #blacksmithgendry #ask

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groundramon · 7 years

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★ ★ ★ ★ ★

:O!!!

I’ll take this as asking for five facts about five characters bc im currently waiting for all/most of the items to unlock on my current zoo tycoon game and idk what to do to kill the time besides this sO:

Character 1: Skift (bc I dont talk about him enough)

1. Skift is a very ambitious person. One of the main reasons he enlists in the army in Majjikku is in hopes of some day becoming a war hero. He’s also easily influenced by other peoples’ approval or disapproval, despite how adamantly he would insist otherwise if you ask him. Hence why he wants the validation of being a household name and a hero in the history books.

2. The other main reason he enlisted in the army is because he absolutely despises his family. I’m still working on the kinks of his backstory but the jist of it is that he comes from an extremely large family with a neglectful mother and an absent father. He and his other siblings around his age were raised by their elder siblings, but Skift had the misfortune of having a personality that completely clashed with theirs and often got in fights with them, that sometimes even turned physical. As soon as he was old enough to enlist in the army, he left home and headed to the nearest enlisting center (which unfortunately was several days away since they lived in the middle of goddamn nowhere, but he makes at least)

3. Skift has no real education, living in the middle of nowhere and not having anyone to teach him skills. When he was younger he got along with his siblings better and was able to learn basic math, and of course he can speak fine, but he probably can’t read very well and anything besides basic addition and subtraction is a mystery to him. Having said that, illiteracy and a general lack of scholarly knowledge, isn’t uncommon on the Parity side, as they have the very minimal requirement of laws and government required to run a government. (Literally you can kidnap someone and as long as you give them adequate shelter, food, and water, and you dont abuse them or anything, the “police” wont do anything about it)

4. Skift gets a strong rush while in the middle of combat. Adrenaline does good things to his psyche and as long as he doesn’t suddenly realize that those were real people dying on the battlefield, he’ll be in a good mood for the rest of the day after a Parity victory. He’s not bloodthirsty, but he does get uncomfortably into it when in the heat of battle, even if he has to watch the person he’s killing die in front of him.

5. Skift in a way is supposed to be a sort of clueless libertarian/anti-ally who isnt a bigot. Like, think a white person who doesnt believe in systemic racism but wouldn’t discriminate against a person of color because the whole reason they dont believe in systemic racism is because its bad for the economy. (Which, it is, they’re right about that lmao). I dont know entirely what I’m planning to do with that concept because I dont know if I, as a very dumb white person, have the ability to play with racism/the concept of colorblindness like that, but I hope I can do SOMETHING with them. Either I’ll need to educate myself or I’ll just change that trait to being dumb about politics in general, I dunno. (Because he doesnt really care about the politics of Parity vs Halcyon, he just agrees with the Parity because thats all hes ever known.)

Bonus fact bc I had too many: Skift is pretty heavily inspired by the design of an old warrior cats OC I had named Falconstar/Falcon. He’s not exactly a dead character (I dont do anything with Warrior Cats anymore but if I did, he’d be on my list of potential characters to reboot, altho i dont know if id have the heart to take him out of the universe/AU he’s from…) but I feel like their personalities are different enough that they wont be mistaken for one another. Also Skift has a stupid scarf.

Character 2: Phillip (or is it Lenny? Idk I think I changed it to Phillip)

1. Phillip is also from Majjikku, I should mention, but he’s a part of the Halcyon side. The first thing I should mention is that he’s a prince, and 3rd in line to the Crayking throne - he has an elder brother who joins the army with him, and an elder sister who stays behind to keep the kingdom safe with their aging parents. I believe they also have a younger sibling or two, but they’re too young to be politically important. Anyways, its worth mentioning that the only reason Phillip was sent over her sister is because he’s an inadept spoiled brat, and the Halcyon side was asking for at least two members of royalty to join their ranks to form an alliance, so Phillip was sent alongside their actually combatually adept elder son. The Halcyon sent Phillip to the “less useful” soldier training camps, while his brother was able to ascend straight up in the ranks of the army. Since arriving in Halcyon territory, Phillip hasn’t seen his brother once. (It’s worth mentioning as a side note, the Craykings only allied themselves with the Halcyon side to protect their own necks. They believe the Halcyons have the upper hand in the war, and want to be on the right side of history when the war concludes. And they dont have the strength to stand up to both sides; the Halcyons have promised to protect their underwater empire from the Parities due to their allyship.

2. As I mentioned, Phillip is an inadept spoiled brat. Years of coddling in his palace have turned him into a demanding asshole who makes jokes at the expense of others and has overly high expectations from others, despite thinking he himself deserves to sit on his ass all day. There’s a deep reason for it, as there is for all my characters, but there are so many layers that caused him to act like this that at this point it’s just become his personality.

3. Having said that, Phillip grew up in an environment where acting nice was more important than being nice. Who cared what you did behind closed doors, so long as you put on a presentable front? He’s extremely charming and sociable in big social events, often making on-point jokes and contributing in a seemingly meaningful way. In fact, he’s arguably even better at it than his two older siblings, since they have opinions of their own and aren’t just a mindless robot for their parents to interject their thoughts and opinions to. Phillip is very good at regurgitating what he’s been told, and has a very flawed and honestly nonexistent sense of self because he has never had the freedom to make his own opinions. Or rather, he was told how to act and feel, and he never had the strength that his siblings had to make his own opinions on what was being taught to him.

4. Phillip wears a fancy bowtie and he refuses to take it off for unexplained reasons. There’s no deep reason to it, I just like bowties.

5. Phillip believes that both of his elder siblings are more adept and intelligent in every aspect. He respects his parents authority over the kingdom and part of why he acts like a jerk is because he legitimately has no idea what he’s doing and would rather die than inherit the throne. He knows nothing about politics, despite his entire life being politics (in more ways than one). The good news is that it seems like if something happened to both his elder siblings and his parents, it would probably go to the next sibling below him, even if they were still under 10 at the time.

Character 3: Glitch

1. Glitch REALLY needs a new name but I’m currently trying to come up with an idea of how Glitch could mean something different in their world (Majjikku, I should clarify), but right now im empty-handed and please help me.

2. Glitch is blind, or at least has significant sight problems. I think. I dont know, I really need to develop Glitch more. Maybe he just needs glasses like I do and without them everything is hella blurry but at least he can get around.

3. Glitch’s species is often used as horses in the Halcyon army due to their obedient nature and high intelligence for a species that generally isnt considered “sentient”/having human intelligence (I know sentient isnt the right word, hence why I clarified). Glitch’s species does have human-like intelligence and capabilities, having the capability for empathy and compassion and self-realization just as much if not more as other Majjikku species, but they generally lack in vocal and academic intelligence. Glitch is unusually vocal for his species, a mutation that comes up in packs of the sauropod-like species every now and then. Because of this and his sight problems, he was put in the same “lesser” squadron as Phillip, instead of the same training the other young from his herd were given.

4. Having said that, “unusually vocal” for his species is still very quiet most of the time. He has a strong understanding of the words of those around him, stronger than most of the rest of his species (although they can comprehend language, just not as quickly) and can articulate full sentences in a reasonable amount of time, he just prefers not to. He also can’t go on half-an-hour-long rants about things because he would run out of words and brainpower very quickly, which god I wish that were me because I will talk until my mouth falls off and its 3 am i s2g im not even exaggerating.

5. Glitch has no understanding of the war but as his herd is encouraged to help the war effort, as opposed to being forcibly taken (which was outlawed and deemed unethical when more and more offspring like Glitch started popping up), he supports his side and would gladly die for it. Also he loves his friends, even Phillip.

Character 4: Aquarius

1. I love Aquarius!!! Somehow she became my favorite Majjikku character and idk why. She’s got cool pants, thats probably part of the reason. Anyways Aquarius is Marble’s best friend in the series; they become fast friends on the train to their squadron when they begin talking about their similar experiences in being dragged away from their families and forcibly enlisted in the army. (Is it horrible to enlist 13 and 14 year old kids in the army by force? It absolutely is, that’s the point; I dont take my characters being young teens like most stories abt young teens do, I’m well aware they’re going to be fucked up as fuck and I’m exploiting that for all its worth.) Aquarius came from a big family of 5 with an absent mother and a nonexistent father, where her elder sister raised herself and then raised her. Unlike Skift, Aquarius became very close with her eldest sister, although they both share a resentment for their parents because of their shit awful parenting. Aquarius was forced to join the army because her three younger siblings were too young for the army, and her eldest sister had to stay behind and work a job and care for the younger kids, something Aquarius knew she wouldn’t be able to do.

2. Unlike all the other characters I’ve mentioned so far, and hell probably all the characters in Majjikku in general lol, Aquarius actually supports the Halcyon for what they stand for. Obviously with her absent mother and father, Aquarius and her siblings needed a lot of financial help. Thankfully that’s what the Halcyon system was built around, and the government was able to get Aquarius’s eldest sister a stable well-paying job and the entire family enough money to get a decent place and pay for food for a while. The government still monitors their family regularly to make sure they arent squandering the money and that everything is going okay, but they did far, far more good than harm. Aquarius believes that this is the best form of government; a form of government that on a very personal level cares for its members and helps them through hardships, and forces them on the right path. In our world, she’d be a socialist through and through, if not a straight-up communist. (Having said that, I do believe Aquarius would have different political opinions if she grew up in our world. The difference between our world governments and the Halcyon government is that the Halcyon government…actually gives a shit about people. Most of the people who work for the government are volunteers, who at best get a small place to stay and some food. Like, the Halcyon actually help 99% of the poor population in the Halcyon city. The amount of financial aid given outside of the city significantly drops, but in their city, being homeless and poor is illegal but instead of throwing you in jail for it they’ll help you get out of it. If you squander it then you’ll end up in jail, but still. Idk what Aquarius would believe in differently if she grew up here, but I dont think she’d be a straight-up communist because we have too many failed communist governments in our history.)

3. Aquarius and her family’s coloring is very odd for her species. The bear-like species that her family is made up of is generally brown, red, yellow, orange, tan, white, gray, black, ect - normal-ish fur colors. Blue, at least to the extent that Aquarius and her family have is nonexistent. It is likely that she and her family have a small percentage of an aquatic species’ DNA, such as a crayking, in them.

4. Aquarius loves being supportive of other people and listening to and relating to their struggles. She’s actually a pretty good motivational speaker and is a pretty great friend. She’s great and I love her. Also the pants.

5. Aquarius clashes a lot with Shade, another character in her squadron. I’m not giving Shade his own section but the reason is that he’s an overly negative character, constantly throwing shade at the Halcyon side and complaining about training. However, once she realizes the reasons for his dissatisfaction with his current situation, she stops calling him out when he says stuff against the Halcyon side. She does start to debate her own opinions a bit after that, and has a lot of long conversations with Marble about it in their shared bedroom. (If anyone’s interested in Shade feel free to send me another star asking about him, or reply to this post or w/e! otherwise ill just keep it a secret lol)

Character 5: Grace

1. Thank god, a character that isn’t Majjikku-related lol. Anyways Grace is the embodiment of a rebellious teenager. She doesn’t listen to any authority, goes out of her way to do bad things, and will purposely disobey what you say even if she doesnt want to do the thing she’d have to do by disobeying you. The whole reason she gets involved in Spirits’ plot is because she knows taking money from a stranger to play with the laws of science and reality would be firmly in her dad’s list of things she can’t do.

2. Speaking of her dad, he’s a little bit of a dick. He’s the reason she’s so disrespectful towards authority. He’s basically just a stereotypical religious nut; anti-gay, anti-transgender, anti-atheist, anti-anyone who isnt christian, anti-drugs, and he even enforces some form of gender roles. And he’s very vocal about these things. He tries to be a huge helicopter parent, but Grace can and will avoid him, ignore his punishments, and stay out so late that her parents cant yell at her for disobeying them. Her father is very vocal about his displeasure and downright hatred of Grace sometimes, and ever since she started questioning his words when she was a young girl, he’d yell at her for it. Her older brother isn’t too great either, but he’s more of an annoying slouch who plays video games all day instead of working than a legitimately bad guy.

3. Grace believes she’s straight because she has no interest in being sexual with a woman, but she’d be totally down with kissing and cuddling and being romantic with a woman, hence why I identify her as a biromantic heterosexual. She’s also the most sexually active of all my characters, which no I will not elaborate on that, not because I dont feel comfortable with it but because I dont know how the fuck that works. (Also side note, I headcanon things in my own stories so I like to headcanon that at some point Grace and Shawn get together and they can be all romantic and mushy n stuff together but Shawn’s totally okay with Grace going out for one night stands with guys so long as she stays safe. Obviously they talk everything out to make sure everyone is safe and okay with the relationship, but Shawn’s pretty okay with it; she’s pretty used to Grace having sex with no romantic attraction involved, and ofc Shawn isn’t into sex so she doesn’t feel like it’s a problem.)

4. Grace is closer with her mother than her father, but although her mother is very much a mediator and acts very kind and forgiving to Grace, Grace still kind of despises her. Just because Grace’s dad is a dick doesn’t mean she isn’t too.

5. Grace’s spirit form is a bloodthirsty wyvern with major anger problems. Each of the kids’ spirit forms have a slight personality outside of the kids themselves, and Grace’s is bloodthirsty and destructive - not intelligently so, but still. Most fo the kids’ spirit forms are pretty mindless and just mindlessly destructive, except two.

#thank you for the ask!! : D #stormy answers #majjikku #skift #prince phillip #aquarius #glitch #grace

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