Event for Newbies (Ikemen Genjiden)
I love Genjiden so much… It's done with such love… Incredibly authentic game design, cute animation, very beautiful characters and stories… the language is so complex that the translator is constantly stuck (obviously in awe).
But today I wanna tell you a little bit about the event for beginners. Yes, they have it too.
Above all… you can easily find it (finally) on the main page. It's this cute fan with the turquoise ribbon on the right.
And yes, each fan represents a different event. It's so convenient…
There is even a very clear explanation of how to work with story events… These chibis are so cute…
And this event probably split in two again, because there were only 6 characters. I still haven't memorized their names, so I'll continue to use the nicknames I mentioned here (I'm sorry, guys, someday I'll memorize all of you).
We have these pairs at event:
Little Nobunaga (slash) Zombie
Japanese Yves (slash) Yoichi (yes… I'm playing his route so I memorized his name. First achievement unlocked!)
Big Fox (slash) Black-tits demon
Each story is very different, but they all somehow revolve around a blooming cherry tree… Sometimes there is even an animation of falling petals… a little, but still very cute.
So… I didn't actually tried to finish this event with all endings, I was just curious to see at least one in each pair.
Little Nobunaga vs Zombie
MC came to the festival to see a cherry blossom and… randomly meets a Little Nobunaga and Fluffy haired. Little Nobunaga was the guest of honor and behaves accordingly… all smiles and talking. But it turned out that there was another guest of honor… and… surprise surprise, it's Zombie.
Now I deeply regret calling him Zombie. He's so handsome and... ahhhh... how pretty his hands are… Where have you been all my life?!?
Turned out there is a killer at this festival who only kills single women. And Zombie came to find him and put him on trial. MC volunteered to play the victim, but before that, the boys pretend to be in love with her and compete with each other a bit.
And at some point a question appear…
The answer was obvious…. How can I NOT choose you?..
The last part of the story makes me believe that MC and Zombie are already in a relationship. Which is new. Usually, an event for beginners is about to "getting to know each other"
Japanese Yves vs Yoichi
Japanese Yves came to MC to thank her for helping him. And as a reward she asked him to indicate (I emphasize, she only needs hints) the best place to observe the cherry blossom. And he answered he WILL GO with her tomorrow. Ooook…
And at the festival, MC randomly meets with Yoichi, who was… where… I didn't catch the reason. But he participated in shooting competitions and was with a child for some reason.
It was a rather strange competition between old friends and suddenly there was a question…
I'm starting to think that I just chose the one who asks me question… I mean… Obviously, I like Yoichi more. He wears all my favorite colors… orange, yellow and green… I know him better for an obvious reason. And… I can almost see his chest (outrageous!). But still… I'm plagued by doubts…
And finally...
Big Fox vs Black-tits demon
MC went on a house call with Big Fox. The boy feel unwell, but there were no visible problems. From a short conversation, they find out that the boy just misses his dad, who is now abroad. They have a tradition of attending the festival and watching the sakura blossoms (I use this term at least ones). But this year, due to heavy rain, the cherry trees do not bloom, so there is no festival.
MC decided to look for a blooming tree and bring a branch to the boy (a vandal). So… on the way to the forest, a demon suddenly appears and… just for fun, he suggests a competition. Whoever finds the blooming tree first will get MC's time as a reward.
Until the very end, I didn't know who to choose. A cute caring kitten… sorry… fox or a rude and always in a bad mood demon… They remind me of someone… Hmmm….
But…. as expected… I chose a demon. Because I remember who he reminds me of… Silvio.
He probably meant "can be attacked"... Or I'm completely missing the point.
Why do I like grumpy characters so much?.. a rhetorical question…
So… I choose only rebellions and don't feel sorry at all. It was fun.
If (or, more likely, when) I finish the second part of this event, I'll write about it.
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I have a question regarding the new viper adaptation in the streamer Enid au. This is inspired by some of the online response I’m seeing of a show I’m watching.
So, it’s established that the original adaptation was really bad, and fans of Wednesday’s work didn’t like it (especially Enid). Of course this leads to the new adaptation spearheaded by Wednesday herself. Now, with every adaptation comes tweaks and changes to better fit the medium of film, meaning not everything is translated one to one. With every fandom comes diehard followers of canon, some being more vocal than the rest, which can lead to complaints about every change and how things aren’t exactly right.
Which leads to my question(s), what are things that certain fans complain about? And how does Enid in particular feel about those vocal few? I assume Enid knows that any change that occurs is needed and that Wednesday knows what she’s doing, but perhaps it’s one of those things where sometimes all the nice things can feel overshadowed by a few negative comments.
Sorry for the long one, just a bit frustrated is all. I am curious though on audience reaction to the new adaptation in general, because sometimes “fans” have very absurd opinions on adaptations, even when the author is directly involved in the process.
Probably? The fact that everything is gay asf. I was going to say lowkey but the tension is way too obvious that it's highkey instead
In the books, while obvious in writing, can easily be brushed off by most to simply Viper missing Helios and vice versa. It makes sense after all, it's not the first time Helios dissapeared and Viper panicked
But in the show? It's show not tell and Wenclair really be showing how affected they are by the loss of the other
It's been talked about before that Wednesday has been accused of queerbaiting imperial gold (the ship name between Helios and Viper) because it was never confirmed that they were dating or in love but there was a shit ton of subtext that say otherwise.
So Wednesday took those criticisms and decided to show how in love they are in the show
Because they are.
Both in the books and irl, Wednesday just didn't see the point in saying those three words when there are others ways that she has done so
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No pressure, but if you want to, Wars getting stuck in a place where no one can understand his signing in the disability au?
this got out of hand I'm sorry I hope you like it
supposed to be seen, supposed to be heard
Gen, 4k words, Warriors-focused. Others are there but at the end. A little angst, but ends on a good note. AO3 link here!
It hurts, a little. He's the captain, the Hero launched into fame, the face of the entire war. Sometimes going into towns in other eras feels like a step backwards, like he's fallen down the steep slope he's been climbing.
Like sliding down a steep slope, barely controlled, with dirt shifting and rolling under his boots, Warriors feels time itself move around him. He's grown accustomed to the feeling, much as he dislikes it. He resists calling out, and reaches for the person nearest—it's Twilight, this time—but feels his fingers close on nothing but the detritus of the timestream.
He feels weightless, nothing on him or around him. Air slips into his lungs like silk. It barely seems to exist, and briefly, Warriors can't get enough.
The fall stops, and discarded equipment rolls around Warriors's feet as he tries to regain his balance. His stomach stops a moment after he does, twisting and churning in currents that make him a little nauseous. He stands on unfamiliar rocks, at the bottom of mountains he doesn't particularly recognize. That's not unusual, though. He barely recognizes his own mountains, for all that he's been staring at them his whole life.
Warriors puts a hand on his sword hilt and turns in a circle, looking for any immediate threats. Upon seeing that he's alone over here, he lets his hand fall, though his guard stays up. No monsters appear to be aiming to make him their next meal, but there are no brothers to share the burden of observation with, either.
He crouches with his knees rather than bending with his back to pick up the things that fell through the portal with him. Luckily, he has his own pack, with everything but his shield. That's all right, though, he can use Twilight's until they meet back up. They've found that all their equipment comes through portals, but usually with whoever they're closest to at the time, not necessarily who it all belongs to. Warriors has Legend's broken cane and one of Wild's jars of lotion, too. He twists the top off to see which kind—oh, yep, definitely a hot one. It smells like peppers and lava. The light burn scars on Warriors's hand almost seem to tingle at the smell.
After stashing away what he can, Warriors slings Twilight's shield on his back and looks around a bit better. He doesn't… he doesn't see a castle. Odd. That's usually the meetup spot, since it's pretty obvious in every era except for Wind's and Sky's. This isn't Wind's time, though Warriors can see the sea off past the fog, and it isn't Sky's, since there are definitely towns down there. He wonders if the castle is just hidden, somehow. Hyrule’s world has multiple castles, and none of them are in obvious places. Perhaps it’s something like that, here.
Well, nothing would happen if he just sat there frowning. Warriors picks what he hopes is the best path down to the valley and starts down, one step at a time.
It feels a little strange to be alone. Warriors has always had some sort of battalion at his back, soldiers or brothers, or at the very least, a fairy. He misses Proxi something awful. Her help translating his signs aloud had been essential once he'd stopped speaking entirely, before anyone else knew the language. She'd always been just the right combination of scolding and comforting, too. He could probably use a little bit of both at the moment.
The voices and noise drift to Warriors on the wind, so he hears the wagons long before he sees them. He finds a conveniently large boulder to hide behind as the group rattles around the bend—four large, colorful wagons pulled by horses. Warriors watches for a moment, counting perhaps eight men, five women, and one boy learning to drive the wagons. Lucky for him, the horses aren't too temperamental. They're big animals, with long hair and hooves the size of the boy's head.
One of the men walks alongside the front wagon where the boy is, one painted with pinks and greens and flowers, making comments about driving. A sturdy woman drives the second big wagon, leaning back and chewing on a piece of wheat. A man plucking a guitar's strings sits next to her, in front of a stylized painting of a sun. It looks like the third wagon is painted with an autumn theme, and the fourth is covered in the delicate blues of winter. Quaint.
There may be more people in the wagons, Warriors thinks, but he has no way of knowing. The rest of the people he can see mill about the wagons, staying clear of the wheels and the animals. A few have instruments, like the two young women playing some sort of game involving chasing each other and smacking the side of a wagon with the tambourines they held. They're pretty girls.
Well, this troupe doesn't seem like a threat. Warriors has been known to be burned by assumptions like that before, but he decides to go with his gut this time. He steps out from behind the boulder and watches the spring wagon pass.
One of the more energetic women spots him first, a redhead with a sultry aura and a form-fitting pink costume. She calls out to him—"Link!"—and smiles with white teeth when he looks over on reflex. In a matter of seconds, she has his hands in hers, the tambourine girls have begun a complex rhythm, and the redhead is pulling him out onto the road.
"Dance with me," she demands, and what can Warriors do but smile back at her and do his best?
He doesn't really know the dance, but the woman doesn't stumble as she pulls him around and around, between wagons. Someone laughs at them, and the tambourines grow louder and softer. A woman pulls out a flute to accompany the tambourines, and Warriors can hear the guitar start up. His feet move like they're possessed.
"You've forgotten the steps," the woman says, her voice clear but quiet beneath the impromptu music. She looks a little sad. Warriors wants to tell her that he never knew them to begin with, that he's not the Link she probably knows, but there's no time to let go of her hands, or to even try to speak. He just laughs and tries his best to step in time with the rattling tambourines.
Warriors keeps to his toes, and the impacts of his feet shudder his bones. His veins pulse with the guitar strings, and his breath follows the flute. It's heady, a sort of intoxication that Warriors hasn't really tasted before. The dances he's familiar with have a similar way of holding hands, but they're more structured and less… well. This dance is like a fire. It spreads, spurring more people on to join them.
"Ah, so you aren't the Hero I know," the woman says as the dance brings them close together again. She doesn't seem upset, at least. "Still. You're doing a wonderful job."
Warriors's next try at spinning her includes a sweep of his arm that could be interpreted as a thank you sign.
The dance does have to stop at some point. It slows, and people laugh as they return to walking. Warriors gasps for air, losing it just as fast in short laughs. He bows to the woman who'd dragged him into this, and she bows extravagantly back. Her hair is too red to be truly natural, but it fits her sharp expression.
"Well, I'm impressed, stranger," she says, fiddling around with her golden jewelry. The wagons continue to move, and she walks with them. Warriors follows. "Or perhaps not quite a stranger, hm? Where did you come from? It's a long way to the nearest town."
Warriors hesitates. Perhaps… He raises his hands to sign. 'What is your Link like?' he asks.
The woman gives him the Look, the one that's caught between confusion and apology. It tells him that she knows that signs can be a language, but that she doesn't know it, herself. She doesn't call for anyone, either, which means that there's a good chance nobody in this troupe knows sign language.
He nods to himself, then pulls his bag around to his front to rummage inside. He knows he has a notebook in here somewhere…
"What's wrong?" someone asks the woman, whose face has turned a bit redder to match her hair.
She shrugs. "I don't think he can hear."
Warriors sighs and glances up, but doesn't catch anyone's eyes to tell them that yes, he heard it. He emerges triumphant from his bag with a notebook and a pencil (that he should really sharpen, how had he been letting it get so dull?) that he immediately uses to write a note. He uses good handwriting, instead of his usual scrawl, then offers the book over to the woman.
I can hear, I just have trouble speaking. You can call me Wars, I'm a bit lost. I'm looking for Hyrule Castle.
The woman squints at the writing, and for one heart-stopping moment, Warriors thinks that she can't read it.
But she nods, and looks up at him. "Oh, that makes sense. Hey, Wars, nice to meet ya. I'm Din."
Warriors blinks at her, and his question must be clear on his face, because she smiles again and hands the notebook back.
"I'm not the goddess, no. I'm just her oracle. So, you're on your way to Hyrule Castle?"
He takes the notebook and keeps it ready, but he doesn't have to use it for a simple question like this. He nods in confirmation.
She snorts. "Well, then you've gotten real turned around, pretty boy. The castle's a couple days away, at the least. We're headed to the Hyrule border, though, you're welcome to join us until then. Strength in numbers, all that."
They aren't in Hyrule? Warriors rubs at his chin in thought. This oracle seems friendly. Warriors knows that none of the goddesses are actually evil, even the one whose champion usually turns out to be. He doesn't feel unsafe walking next to her, though being in such a large, untrusted group makes his neck itch. Still. He's in an unfamiliar land.
He writes another note. I'd appreciate that. I can pay you for your troubles, and contribute to any manual labor or guard duty. He pauses, then adds a little more. Your Link wouldn't happen to have pink in his hair and a prickly attitude, would he?
Din takes a moment to parse through his words, nodding along. "Sounds like you know the brat." At his nod and rolled eyes, she smiles her sharp smile and continues. "Come on, let's introduce you to Jovan, since you'll be here for a little while."
---
Jovan is an affable man, a bit pushy, but every good leader needs to be a little annoying. He's all too happy to accept Warriors's help with guard duty. When they stop for the evening, Jovan's son Rishu scrambles out of the wagon driver's seat to show Warriors his swordplay.
Warriors can tell that the boy learned a little from Legend. He can't exactly tell him what to change, but Warriors does his best to correct Rishu's feet and show him how to swing for more control. He's not sure the lessons get across very well, but he tries.
A few more kids crowd around as the adults start to make dinner, dying for sword lessons, too. Their parents shrug at Warriors as if to say that he's welcome to entertain them for as long as he can. He's not exactly a child whisperer, and he can't lecture them without a clear voice—oh, how he wishes he weren't alone—but once again, he tries. He steals some sticks from the path and puts them in the children's hands, adjusting their small fingers and helping them hold the sticks straight out as if they were swords.
When one of the little girls asks why he doesn't speak, Warriors taps his throat. It doesn't give any kind of answer, but at least one of the kids thinks it does, and they start to concoct a story about how he sailed across the sea to rescue his true love. He doesn't quite hear the entire story, but he gets the gist—there were sea monsters on his journey, and an underwater Zora witch who took his voice, and now his true love is in Hyrule for some reason. He seems to be a good distraction, though. It's a bit overwhelming, but the kids stay with him until the adults call them over for dinner and for bed.
As it turns out, nobody but Din the dancer can read Warriors's writing. Apparently his language is just different enough that it doesn't translate to whatever these people can read. With Din distracted by musicians and rehearsals, Warriors is left without a way to communicate, short of charades or pictures drawn. That can get battle plans across sufficiently, at least to soldiers who know the symbols he uses, but it's useless for contributing to conversations.
The troupe asks him a lot of questions, at first, but his answers don't satisfy, and they have to redirect their attention. Laughter ebbs and flows around the few campfires like the ocean, and voices twist around the music practice like leaves on the wind. It's comfortable, but loneliness presses up against Warriors's heart like it hasn't in months, all the stronger for its long absence.
Even if he tried to speak, Warriors doesn't think anyone would understand him. He knows that it takes effort and practice to hear past the shaking gravel in his voice. Knowing that he can't communicate, even if he tried, is worse than just pretending that he's keeping silent on purpose. He doesn't have a choice. The laughter muffles in his ears, and Warriors's smile becomes harder and harder to prop up when someone looks over at him. He can feel the black hole of involuntary alienation pulling his posture down, down, down.
Instead of giving in, Warriors stands up and leaves the friendly warmth to relieve the guard sitting up against a barrel. He's an older man, and not paying much attention as a guard ought to. He takes Warriors's silent offer of a relief far too easily, but Warriors isn't too mad about it. They're just a group of performers, after all, and he doubts a guard is really necessary. From the way that oracle spoke, she could take things in hand if she needed to.
Still, it's nice to feel useful. Watch duty is something Warriors knows how to do. He physically taps his chest to dispel the black static there, the hollowness in his shoulders that threatens to put tears in his eyes. It works. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that the voices behind him belong to his brothers. But closing his eyes is not watching, so he leaves them open.
He faces the valley, with the wagons stopped just off of the road and in the shadow of the mountain. The sun dropped behind the range long ago, and the moon casts her early blue light over everything Warriors can see. It's quite lovely, actually, the way the lights in villages sparkle like a reflection of the stars.
Warriors turns to the mountain to look it over, his eyes trained to spot irregularities and moving silhouettes. He doesn't see any, which is a good sign. He still makes a lap around the exterior of the wagons, mentally marking a perimeter. Lanterns hanging outside the wagons glow softly, quieter than the campfires. A few insects buzz around them. Warriors's boots make crunching noises on the rough dirt, but he's quiet enough that nobody really notices him.
It hurts, a little. He's the captain, the Hero launched into fame, the face of the entire war. The popularity of sign language grew exponentially because of him, making the world just a bit easier on him and the many other people who preferred to communicate with their hands rather than their voices. Sometimes going into towns in other eras feels like a step backwards, like he's fallen down the steep slope he's been climbing.
The others, though… they understand him, most of the time, and Sky even speaks up for him. He knows they value his opinions and thoughts, knows it through hard-won confidence from dozens of reassurances from all his brothers, who actually noticed that he's prone to feeling ignored and overlooked.
He's supposed to be seen, and he's supposed to be heard, so his chest aches a bit when he isn't.
Warriors makes it back to his original spot overlooking the valley, and stops there. It's a bit elevated from the rest of the camp, so he feels pretty comfortable staying there to watch. He doesn't think the troupe has much in the way of a formalized watch rotation, but one of the women comes over to tell him to wake her up in a few hours, so he won't push himself too far making sure they're safe.
As the last fires retreat into embers, sleeping as much as their tenders, Warriors pulls out his ledger to review. The moon lights the pages enough to read. He already has so much trouble keeping track of the Chain's inventory and maintenance needs, it's going to be awful trying to catch back up. He wishes he had Wind's pirate charm to at least see the others and know where they are. Just because he was dropped in a peaceful place doesn't mean they were. He'll be upset if someone manages to suffer an injury due to snagged chain mail because he wasn't around to nag them into repairing it.
Sometimes, yes, Warriors does wish the Chain acted more like an organized group of soldiers. They need to learn to report truthfully and thoroughly, to follow orders, to keep clean and organized. But at the same time, it's that lack of following orders and doing things their own way that makes them so effective as Heroes. He likes them just the way they are, really. He also likes keeping track of things. The ledgers and calendars and maintenance logs help him feel like he's contributing, and that this crazy adventure of theirs has some form of structure.
Warriors slides the ledger back into his bag and makes sure everything he needs is still in there. The only things that don't exactly belong are Wild's lotion and Legend's cane. Sky was planning on repairing it; Four had an idea about paper mulch and glued wood that Sky seemed excited to try. Warriors smiles to himself and sits back. He hopes the others are okay, but there's not much he can do about it until he finds them again. Knowing them, they will be.
---
It doesn't take long to find them, in the end. The portals never dropped them off too far from each other, thankfully, though Warriors thinks that this may be one of the greater distances. He'll need to record that. Records are essential to making predictions, and thus, making plans.
He's busy helping to tie down a tarp over the autumn wagon, as the sky has darkened with slate-blue clouds that hang heavy with rain, when he hears voices near the front of the group.
"—don't happen to have seen a blond idiot with armor and a blue scarf, have you?"
Warriors smiles, but it looks like Din heard that voice at the same time he did. She perks up from near the summer wagon, and smacks the guitarist on the shoulder as she runs past. He dutifully starts up a tune, and Din drags another Link into a dance with nothing more than a demand.
"Dance with me!"
"Din! Wait, there's not even any mus—oh." Legend comes into sight, around the side of the spring wagon, with Din clutching his arm and dragging him into the dance. The tambourines start up again, and this time, so does a set of drums hanging out of the winter wagon, played by a very enthusiastic, talented teenage girl.
Warriors watches for a moment, concerned for Legend, but it looks like it's a good day for him. Legend seems a bit hesitant, but his eyes widen when he notices Warriors peeking up over the autumn wagon. Din pulls Legend around, and since they're stopped, more people begin to join the music or the dance. Legend relaxes, and when the entire rest of the Chain comes to investigate, he manages to drag them into the dance, too.
It's far more chaotic than that first one Warriors participated in yesterday. Legend knows the dance, but none of the others do. Warriors doesn't know it, either, but he runs up to grab Hyrule's hands before the poor kid can throw himself or someone else off the cliff on accident. The chorus of greetings he gets as they notice him—"Wars!" "Warriors, we found you!" "You okay?" "You're okay!" "We were worried!"—fills up that hollow bit in his heart nicely. He laughs and spins Hyrule around, careful to keep them well away from hitting anyone.
Four parks off to the side before very long, and Warriors briefly considers going to check on him. But he knows that Four really is the sort of person to enjoy watching more than participating. He's over there laughing as Din launches into an acrobatic maneuver that Legend shouts at her for, but he flows along with it like he's done it a million times before. Warriors foresees some sharp complaining about joint pain tonight, but Legend can make his own choices.
Twilight gives up on trying to follow the dance and starts doing one of his own. Wind somehow ends up on Twilight's shoulders, laughing and occasionally kneeing Twilight in the face on accident. One of the tambourine girls takes it upon herself to personally show Wild a bit of the dance. She's definitely flirting, and Warriors isn't sure if Wild realizes it, but he's definitely flirting back. Time appears to sort of know what's going on, and Sky just looks delighted anytime he finds himself near someone playing an instrument.
This dance is objectively worse than the first one Warriors participated in with the troupe, full of missteps and overbalancing and a few discordant chords. But there's more music, more good-natured cursing, and Warriors isn't alone. He misses a lot of cues hauling Hyrule around, but Hyrule laughs with abandon every time Warriors spins him around.
The drums echo off of the rocks. Time takes a shot playing with the musicians, using an ocarina that Warriors hasn't seen before. Twilight almost drops Wind. Four picks up singing the predictable chorus of one of the songs, his voice not bad.
The rain breaks them up, but not before everyone gets soaked.
---
Later, Warriors rants a bit to Sky at a speed nobody else can follow, and gets some very validating empathy. Sky admits to feeling the same way, sometimes. Warriors is willing to bet that they all do, one way or another.
If everyone's greetings filled up that dark space in Warriors's heart, then Wind's tight hug and Legend's casual elbow on his shoulder overflow that space until it heats his fingers and his toes. Wild makes Warriors's favorite tea—he makes everyone's favorite teas or cocoas, for the rainy day, but it strikes Warriors deeply that Wild didn't just notice which he liked, but made it just for him.
In the absence of anything else to do, Four and Sky start on repairing Legend's spare cane. Wild is glad to get his jar of warm lotion back, and makes sure that Legend gets some, after all the dancing they'd done. Twilight and Warriors switch shields and compare notes on weights and shapes. Warriors catches up with whatever inventorying he has left to do.
He's very, very glad he's not alone on this adventure.
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Wukong was always the villain? I read in a comment that he was the villain in everything and that he's like the Joker but with powers so i have this doubt now...
Ps: Sorry if this is ignorant btw
Hello anon! So while keeping in mind that I'm in no way an expert on how the Monkey King is perceived the world over, my general impression is that while Sun Wukong being portrayed as solely a villain is pretty popular in the east and increasingly so in the west, that's FAR from the only way that he's been portrayed. He is after all literally worshiped as a god in a number of places, and is even often considered to be a protector of children! It also can't be forgotten that he saved many, many individuals from everything from demonic goldfish to drought over the course of Xiyouji, and that at the end he becomes the Buddha Victorious in Strife. And that's to say nothing of his clear love of his monkey family, and that many of his actions are driven by his desire to keep them happy and safe. In any case, from the yaoguai perspective he seems to have done so much for them at one point that they were all 100% behind him when it came to waging war against heaven.
I think that perhaps a lot of the understanding of him as solely a chaotic villain is due to the fact that Journey to the West is some 1,400 pages long and a lot of it is about Sun Wukong's slow transformation from a violent yaoguai to a buddha. It probably is more exciting too to focus on the fact that he spent centuries as a literal yaoguai warlord, and that he waged his havoc in heaven as well as told Tang Sanzang that he had literally killed more people than he could remember during his warlord era. Of course, it can't be forgotten that this killing of countless individuals is explicitly said to be true as well of the lauded Tang emperor, but that's a contextual detail that can be easily missed. I personally think that a lot of Xiyouji brings up (although never specifically answers) many discomfiting questions about violence and power in the shaping of a society and to what extent religion might be able to alleviate (or even exacerbate!) the resultant suffering, and that Sun Wukong's actions are one of the main ways these questions are raised.
I bring this all up to say that the neat thing about Sun Wukong is that he is a very complex character who nevertheless does a lot of heinous things, but then again he's doing that in the context of a lot of other beings, both yaoguai, human, and even god, doing the same in the name of pursuing their own desires and ambitions. But this complexity often means that retellings--which by their nature of their length have to be a LOT shorter than the og classic--won't balance all of the parts of the Monkey King's character out because to do so sufficiently honestly requires a lot of context. So in the end we get a lot of flanderization of the Monkey King into either a cheeky and loving SWK or an ultraviolent unrepentant SWK (or the retelling will veer off into another direction of a quite popular brooding asshole SWK lmao). In the west specifically, however, this sort of simplification and flanderization seems to often translate into a "uwu dumb chaos monkey" version, so that even if SWK is well meaning he'll just commit one doofy blunder after another or go ignoramus murder on the situation. Hence the association with the Joker, who if my understanding of that character is right just does what he does because he wants chaos.
In all honesty though, I think this association is a big misreading of SWK's character. Besides Xiyouji making it obvious that SWK rarely starts any of the fights he gets into (never mind starting fights just for shits and giggles) and that he is very content to live in relative peace with his monkey family, he pretty much always has a very clear reason for committing the violence that he does, even if that reason is sometimes some version of "I want the thing and will beat you up if I don't get it." To give but a few examples: SWK commits his first murder in the book because his opponent the Demon King of Confusion had been brutally attacking the Mt. Huaguoshan simians and kidnapping their young; he DID steal a lot of stuff from heaven but only goes to war with them when the deities are literally breaking down the Monkey King's door and threatening his home; he murders over a thousand human hunters because they had been relentlessly hunting his monkey family; he burns down a Buddhist monastery because the monks conspired to kill Tang Sanzang and steal his robe; and he kills the Lady Bone Demon because she wanted to eat Tang Sanzang. These are just a few examples throughout the course of the work, but you can see how in each one it isn't a case of the Monkey King crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war as it is someone trying to hurt or kill someone under SWK's protection and him responding in like. There is no doubt that SWK can be a very destructive and impulsive monkey, but he also seems equally if not more likely to have thought a situation through and gone with violence anyway because the situation wasn't going to resolve itself any other way, and indeed he often only goes ahead with violence after giving his opponents the opportunity to stop and give up.
That said, I'd be willing to bet that an awareness of Xiyouji Sun Wukong's very deliberate decisions to kill and threaten are one of the main reasons behind the popular presentations of him as solely a villain, especially since the context behind his reasons for violence can be very easily lost. As it is, the Monkey King has been described by some as Xiyouji's first villain, and there are numerous reasons for thinking this is true. After all, no matter your reasons killing so many people you can't remember them all is still killing so many people you can't remember them all.
I hope you find this useful anon! Again I'm no expert, and if I'm missing something people should definitely feel free to point that out. And as always it needs to be noted that @journeytothewestresearch has kindly provided FREE pdf copies of the Anthony C. Yu English translation of Journey to the West on his website, so if you have the time and desire to do so you can flip through that and come to your own conclusions on what's going on with the Monkey King.
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SLBP Write-up Masterlist
Do you love Samurai Love Ballad Party but wish you could read more of the official content?
Did you miss a story event of your favourite character, or just want to reread their content without using your precious love passes so you can get their voice right for a fanfiction?
Well, do I have the masterlist for YOU!
Under the cut is a stupidly long post of about 2 years of my collecting story events, main stories and various special bits, all written up in Google Docs and now open to your wonderful eyeballs. Some notes are also there if you care, if not just click some links and enjoy, send this to someone who might find it useful and/or check out my fanfics (sparkletwink on AO3) if you want to support the ridiculous amount of effort I put into it. Thank you.
Mid-way through my SLBP play I’d started writing a load of fanfic for it and wanted references, so started this collection with the vague intention of eventually sharing it with anyone who might have missed old story events, or for having to enjoy when the servers eventually go down. I don’t write up everyone any more, because it takes a LONG time, so I’m sorry if any of your faves are missing.
If you have any epilogues that you’d like to donate free free to send me a link and I’ll tack them on when I have time. An asterisk in the title of the Doc means I have the epilogue but haven’t written it up yet.
[Ep] refers to a story event including its epilogue, [POV Ep] includes an epilogue from the lord/ninja’s point of view. My MC is called Arekkusu Yuri. I adjust the spellings to British English for my own sanity (sorry ‘Murica) and fix any obvious errors in the writing, but leave any indecipherable nonsense from confusing translation. However, if you notice any mistakes other than that, just leave a comment in Docs to let me know.
(Note: I won’t be giving trigger warnings for questionable behaviour from the characters because I just don’t have the brainpower to check every single story for potential triggers. If you’re in the fandom you probably already know the writing can get dark, e.g. abusive/controlling relationships, death of loved ones, lack of informed consent, unchecked mental illness. Go into anything you read carefully and don’t hurt yourself for the sake of a dumb story.)
NOW. LET THE LIST BEGIN.
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Nobunaga
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Heat Wave
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
Noble Hearts Exposed
The Promises of Stormbound Lovers
Tributes of the Divine Bride
Mitsuhide
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
My Love was the Summer
Noble Hearts Exposed
Tributes of the Divine Bride
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Yukimura
Permanent
Main Story [Act 2]
Main Story [Act 2] (Fates Ending)
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine
Heat Wave
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
My Love was the Summer
Noble Hearts Exposed
The Promises of Stormbound Lovers
Tributes of the Divine Bride
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Saizo
Special
Birthday stories
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine [POV Ep]
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
Noble Hearts Exposed [POV Ep]
The Promises of Stormbound Lovers
Tributes of the Divine Bride
Masamune
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
Noble Hearts Exposed
The Promises of Stormbound Lovers
Tributes of the Divine Bride [POV Ep]
Kojuro
Event Stories
Anarchy of the Divine
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
Lovers Vibrant as Storms Broken; Bound in Rain
Noble Hearts Exposed
Tributes of the Divine Bride
Hideyoshi
Event Stories
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Celebrations of the Divine Bride
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Heat Wave
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
Secrets of Desire
The Lovers of Nagahama
Toshiie
Event Stories
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Celebrations of the Divine Bride
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire
Love as Sweet as a Fevered Kiss
My Love was the Summer
Secrets of Desire [Ep]
Ieyasu
Permanent
Main Story [Act 2]
Main Story [Act 2] (Exalted Ending)
Event Stories
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Celebrations of the Divine Bride [POV Ep]
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Secrets of Desire
The Misrule of the Broken
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Mitsunari
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)
Event Stories
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Celebrations of the Divine Bride
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire
Heat Wave
Secrets of Desire [Ep]
The Lovers of Nagahama [Ep]
The Misrule of the Broken
The Vows of Stormbound Lovers
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Kenshin
Permanent
Main Story [Unification]
Main Story: [Unification] (Divine Lover Ending)
Main Story [Unification] (Noble Hero Ending)
Special
Kenshin Interview
Event Stories
Claim Me at Last
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire [POV Ep]
Celebrations of the Divine Bride
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Secrets of Desire [Ep]
The Vows of Stormbound Lovers
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Shingen
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Destiny Ending)
Event Stories
Blossoms Borne of Sorrow
Celebrations of the Divine Bride
Cherished in Love; Blossoms of Desire [POV Ep]
Hearts Made Fools by Radiant Grace
Heat Wave
Secrets of Desire
The Misrule of the Broken
The Vows of Stormbound Lovers
Young Love for the Festival of Dolls
Nobuyuki
Special
Birthday stories
Shigezane
Event Stories
Heat Wave
Kageie
There’s nothing here. :(
Jinpachi
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Divine Ending)
Event Stories
Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain
Sakuya
Event Stories
Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace
How to Love a Ninja
Longing for Moonlight
Of Snow and Moonbeams
Secrets of the Heart [Ep]
Sins of Eventide
Sasuke
Event Stories
Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace
How to Love a Ninja
Of Snow and Moonbeams
Secrets of the Heart
The Moon’s Holy Kiss
Yearning for Moonlight
Hanzo
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)
Main Story [Act 1] (Shadow Ending)
Special
Birthday stories
Event Stories
Along Moonlit Paths; Where Shadows Lie
Closely Guarded Secrets
Consummate Moonlight
How to Cherish a Ninja [Ep]
Moonbright Tales
Of Steam and Moonbeams
Tempted by the Moon
The Moon’s Holy Kiss
Upon a Moonlit Night [Ep]
Yearning for Moonlight
Genya
Event Stories
Closely Guarded Secrets
Consummate Moonlight
How to Cherish a Ninja
Moonbright Tales
Of Steam and Moonbeams
The Moon’s Holy Kiss
Yearning for Moonlight
Hotaru
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)
Special
Birthday stories
Event Stories
Along Moonlit Paths; In Love’s Embrace [Ep] [POV Ep]
Consummate Moonlight
How to Love a Ninja [Ep]
Longing for Moonlight [Ep]
Of Snow and Moonbeams
Secrets of the Heart [Ep]
Sins of Eventide [Ep]
Tempted by the Moon
Kyoichiro
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)
Event Stories
Closely Guarded Secrets
How to Cherish a Ninja
Of Steam and Moonbeams
Sins of Eventide
Yearning for Moonlight
Kaede
Event Stories
Closely Guarded Secrets
How to Cherish a Ninja
Longing for Moonlight
Shima
Permanent
Main Story [Act 1]
Main Story [Act 1] (Light Ending)
Event Stories
Of Steam and Moonbeams
The Moon’s Holy Kiss
Yoshitsugu
Special
Innocent Hearts; Hidden Encounters
Event Stories
Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain [Ep]
The Lovers of Nagahama [Ep]
Kanetsugu
Special
Innocent Hearts; Hidden Encounters
Masanori
Event Stories
The Lovers of Nagahama
Kansuke
Event Stories
Hearts as Tranquil as Sunlight Rain
Split Routes
Event Stories
Finding Love on Paths Divided
Ieyasu/Kiyohiro [Ep]
Kenshin/Kanetsugu [Ep]
Nobuyuki/Jinpachi
Love’s First Kiss
Yukimura/Saizo
Masamune/Kojuro
Nobunaga/Mitsuhide
Oh Brother!
Kanetsugu/Yoshichi
Masamune/Kojirou
Toshiie/Toshihisa
Yukimura/Nobuyuki
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1. Kelly and Penelope are in Bahrein with Max.
2. People that are on the Ritz hotel there spotted Kelly and Penelope at the pool
3. Some of you really are idiots. We couldn’t have known sweet P was in Bahrain with Kelly because she never posted anything until today. It’s obvious it was all a lucky guess but you trolls overanalyze everything because you hate her.
Those are 3 exact (copied and pasted directly from the original posts in the order they were posted into this one)anons that have been submitted the past couple of days and I just wanted to point some things out. When the first one was submitted the only “evidence” we had of Kelly’s presence in Bahrain was that she posted the weird hugging pic with the white heart. Then there was the second anon that says Kelly and P(presumably Max) are staying at the Ritz. At the point in time those two anons were posted there was literally zero evidence of P being in Bahrain so we have a psychic among us or it is Kelly. I also checked there was no posts on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr(except here), and even reddit that mention Kelly and P being in Bahrain, let alone knowing the hotel they are at. And I’m sorry but this is a new low for Kelly to tell a bunch of strangers on the internet the hotel her and her child are staying at to prove what? That she is with Max and that they’re a happy “family”. Now for the third anon. I’ve submitted about this before but Kelly has a very peticular way of speaking and typing. Read any of her interviews or look at videos of her talking, even the dm conversation between her and fan account, she speaks in this particular way. That third anon is exactly how she speaks and as someone pointed out nobody, not even her fan account, would call P “sweet P”! Which it a huge self snitch to say sweet P like how drunk were you Kelly? Also its very obviously damage control, saying it’s a lucky guess and that “trolls” are over analyzing? Umm no Kelly you outed yourself and are trying to dismiss it all because you realized you fucked up. Now for the big thing I wanted to bring to your attention was that when writing this I noticed that the first anon spelled Bahrain “wrong”. Then I wondered how or if Bahrain in Portuguese was maybe spelled differently. And guess what? Bahrain in English is Bah-rAin but Bahrain in Portuguese is Bah-rEin. I was actually going to say that first one wasn’t K because there’s not way she spelled Bahrain wrong but she didn’t spell it wrong she just spelled the portuguese way! Steppy let me tell you when I put “Bahrain” in to translate it to Portuguese and it popped spelled the way the first anon wrote I screamed. You can’t make this shit up! Now the third anon which just happens to be the damage control anon has it spelled the English way. Maybe Kelly realized that fuck up too and thought nobody else would so she just switch to the other spelling. But Bitch I noticed! This was a lot of typing and I probably missed something or messed up something so I may wrote in again to correct or elaborate! -👁️ anon
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thinking abt jin rusong again. specifically his death. sorry songsong
there was this person who argued that it was shown in an obvious manner that jgy was the one who killed jrs, because jgy explains that the dagger’s blade shows the faces of people it killed -> qs looks at it --> suddenly grabs the knife and kills herself, the obvious interpretation being that she saw jrs’s face. and it’s plausible! especially if you consider that jgy’s feelings towards his son were, shall we say, conflicted, and that he as a weaker cultivator would probably have a harder time resisting the dagger’s Murderous Aura. it would have been enough for jrs to accidentally wander into the secret torture room!
but personally i have 2 problems with it, namely
That’s Not What Sect Leader Yao Said!
jgy’s fear of other people.
ehhhhh
1) in itself is uhhh problematic because sect leader yao is not the most reliable source of information etc etc. at the same time, i feel like wwx, who managed to figure out the thing with the soul-eating goddess statues and well as everything about jgy post-guanyin, wouldn’t just miss something as obvious as this.
i’m talking about the fact that according to sect leader yao, jrs was poisoned. not stabbed. last year i made a post about it based on cql subtitles, but i checked both the japanese translation and the original novel text, and indeed: 毒殺, 毒害.
of course, one could argue that wwx doesn’t really give a fuck about jgy and the whole case is just an interesting puzzle to him. well, sometimes he goes “oh yikes”. he would have no reason to care about how exactly jgy’s kid died, whether by poison or a dagger. but again, after the events of the guanyin temple he talks about jgy’s mother, even though with his current knowledge of jgy having done It All Some Of It, it would be perfectly understandable if he gave even less fucks, bye everyone, the bushes are waiting.
2) is... slightly complicated, but basically it just doesn’t work for me characterization-wise. jgy says to nmj in the stairs conversation that he’s scared of everything -- not only the heavens, but also people. obviously, that applied to nmj in particular, but also there’s jgs, who holds jgy’s life in his hands, there’s madam jin with her less spectacular but no less painful physical abuse, there are people in general, powerful cultivators or not, who wouldn’t bat an eye before tearing him down one vicious rumor after another, and finally, there’s everyone in that he just doesn’t feel safe. he doesn’t trust anyone not to turn away from him, not to withdraw their friendship and affection when he’s not convenient or helpful to them anymore. according to his words, the man is in a state or perpetual paranoia and insecurity.
he doesn’t even tell his future wife that they’re siblings! i’m firmly in the camp They Were In Love -- otherwise why the fuck would they fight for the marriage to happen -- so imagine the state of mind jgy must have been in to hide something like This from the woman he loved. from the woman that loved him first! and fought people to be with him!
why am i talking about it? because people like to call jgy an expert manipulator, and i’d like to call bullshit.
an expert manipulator probably should not be shaking like a chihuahua for every single moment of their life. some ways of manipulating people, crowds in particular, are easy -- you don’t need to be a genius to carefully drop a few allusions to the yiling patriarch and how dangerous he might be, etc, etc, and Just So Accidentally end up with an angry mob. but i feel it it significantly more difficult to get a specific person to do exactly what you want, in particular when that person is in a state of extreme shock. you’d have to feel confident that you can predict all their reactions, and this is not something jgy would say about himself.
because... qs says she wishes she’d never met him. she slaps him. who’s to say that she wouldn’t grab the dagger and stab him? or even -- if she couldn’t bring herself to do it -- scream and say what she saw reflected in the blade? jgy knows why wwx&co are there, and he knows that another accusation wouldn’t help him. out of possible outcomes, there’s one that ends badly for qs, silencing her forever, and at least two that end badly for jgy himself. and if anything can be said about jgy, it’s that he does everything he can to survive. i just don’t think he’d risk that! also -- others could look at the dagger too, and confirm that qs said the truth, and while technically jgy could say that wellll yes, the murderer killed a-song with this dagger... it really falls apart quicker than a wet tissue.
so: either jgy is scared of everything and everyone all the time, OR he’s a skillet skilled manipulator. if he was a skilled manipulator, he would’ve avoided many unpleasant things, having manipulated people out of hurting him. he would have manipulated the jianghu into thinking he’s the best dude ever, lxc into never ever ever doubting him, and qin su into... that as well. she’d get the letter and her first thought would be ‘my a-yao would never...! someone is trying to frame him!’ and poor bicao would be dead fifteen minutes later.
(bonus: re: sending jzxuan after jzxun, i’m... not quite sure. of course, it would be perfectly valid of him to want to kill two annoying peacocks birds with one yiling laozu stone; i think the fact that everyone kissed the ground jzx walked on when he was an awkward mess at best and a pompous asshole at worst, when jgy wasn’t even the son you push into the background but a literal servant doing the dirtiest, most humiliating and unpleasant jobs, was already infuriating enough to warrant wanting at least one person dead.
still: as jgy said, he couldn’t have predicted that things would go this bad, and i choose to believe him. it would’ve been bad enough if wwx had lost control and made wn fight, not kill or injure but just fight jzx -- that would show everyone present that he’s not harmless at all, and the lanling jin sect is doing a good thing by seizing his superweapon and dealing with him. and the fact that wwx helped their case so much, well. shit happens?)
finally, 3) or my personal thinky thoughts:
if he wanted to kill jrs, thinking him an abomination, why wait? why allow him to be born at all, if he could have slipped qs appropriate herbs into her morning tea many, many times? okay, technically she could have gotten over losing the first pregnancy and asked him to try again -- but he could have refused and given her many arguments, including but not limited to “i’m still grieving what could have been”, “i’m scared it’s my fault”, or even “sooo there was this night hunt and uh. my dick doesn’t work anymore :-(”. jl was already the heir, and jgy wasn’t everyone’s favourite, so it wasn’t like it would be a huge disappointment (or a surprise) if he and qs had no children.
and like. yes, i guess “only son dying tragically as a toddler/child” would traumatize qs more, but there’s still no guarantee that she wouldn’t eventually ask him for another child! it’s a Very Weird way of purposefully making sure you never have to bang your sister again, is what i’m saying.
finally -- okay, suppose that that one sect leader really was stubborn and bitchy about the watchtowers. why doesn’t lanling jin, the richest of the sects, simply pay him to shut the hell up? i’m not saying jgy is the most logical of men, but surely that’s easier than fabricating a whole murder and killing a whole sect as punishment.
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Fanfic for DR2 ships, but from Ibuki’s PoV
Ibuki knew that none of her friends thought that she was particularly smart. Ibuki didn’t disagree. The word smart had many definitions, but Ibuki wouldn’t consider herself excelling in any of them. She wasn’t good at school. I mean, maybe she could be. She never listened long enough to test it. She wasn’t really good at problem solving such as murder cases (Ibuki didn’t know where that one even came from. Weird example). Yeah, Ibuki certainly wasn’t super smart. But looking at her friends right now, Ibuki could swear she might as well be… umm… she couldn’t think of anyone known for their intelligence off the top of her head, but she might as well be that person compared to how stupid her friends were being right now. It was obvious they were in love, yet none of them seemed to realize it. Who was Ibuki talking about? How about basically half of them?
Let’s start with Peko and Fuyuhiko for example. Oh did you guys think they were together? No sir no. She finally accepted that she isn’t a “just a tool” (with that body, the only think Ibuki could compare her to would be a highly explosives and devastating bomb attached to two other bombs but whatever), and they finally accepted they were personally close. So you would think after making so much progress, they would also realize how they are in love right? No sir, Ibuki couldn’t believe it herself. Ibuki had heard Fuyuhiko chasing Soda all over the island because he commented that Peko’s boobs were bigger than him. Which is not true btw, Fuyuhiko is actually 4 and a half times bigger than her breasts, but who is counting right? Wait what was Ibuki talking about? Oh yeah, basically, Peko and Fuyuhiko are both in that, will they won’t they phase that TV shows love so much. They’ll probably finally come together at the end of the season. Although Ibuki doesn’t know how end of a season translates to real life yet.
Then there was Gundham, Sonia and Kazuichi. Notice the number of participants increased? Yeah that is the main problem here. Ibuki couldn’t actually tell if Sonia and Gundham were together. To be honest, Ibuki couldn’t tell a lot of things when it involves Gundham. But Ibuki could certainly tell that whatever their situation was, Kazuichi certainly didn’t get the memo. Ibuki once watched a 3 hour long tragedy movie once. She missed like half of it, but she did see enough to understand. It was the saddest movie she had ever seen. It had a bunch of dead puppies, dead kitties, dead a lot of offsprings of animals basically. Yet Ibuki would argue she still had never seen anything sadder than the Kazuichi desperately trying his chances with Sonia while Gundham was around. Ibuki even made a whole song dedicated to Kazuichi called “The tragedy of a third wheel mechanic trying to find his place in the relationship of a dude who loves pets and a hot princess”, but she wasn’t sure he understood what she was referring to. Hopefully one day he would. Or maybe he will when Gundham decides all the demons around Sonia are finally gone and they can safely kiss. At this point, Ibuki wasn’t sure even that would convince the poor man though.
And then there was Hajime and Hajime’s boyfriend. Oh, I mean Nagito. Sorry, Ibuki is too used to calling him that in her head that Ibuki sometimes forgets his actual name. Well that and other nicknames. Hajime’s boyfriend, The weirdo who likes Hajime, The boy who needs more sunlight and Hajime in his life, the guy who looks like a corpse who is in love with Hajime… stuff like that. Ibuki didn’t dislike him though. Ibuki just wouldn’t want to meet him in the dark is all. But he was a good person. Being weird is not a sin. Would be weird for Ibuki of all people to say that right? But Ibuki had to admit out of all the names Ibuki mentioned so far, Nagito was the one who actually knew he was in love. Now the way he decided to show that love was questionable… attempted murders, insults, tauntings… Ibuki guesses some of these could be considered flirting if you leave the definition very loose… The kid was trying at least.
Hajime though… Wow. Hajime was Ibuki’s bro. Ibuki loved him dearly. But Ibuki had never seen a person be so smart, yet so stupid at the same time. It was actually a miracle how oblivious that guy can be. He was like a harem MC without a harem. Also Ibuki was the MC, but he would make a nice Co MC, Ibuki wouldn’t mind that. But yeah, once, Nagito told him to come to his bed and sleep with him, and Hajime took it as an insult about his sleeping habits and didn’t talk to him for a week. Once Nagito told him how beautiful he is. Although Ibuki wasn’t sure if he said that. He might have chickened out and said something about the hope in him being beautiful, whatever that means, but it means the same thing. Anyway, he said that, and Hajime said thank you and looked confused. Then Nagito threw his underwear at him and ran away. Maybe that last part went a bit different, Ibuki might have forgotten it. But it was close. And Ibuki knew for a fact that Hajime liked the walking talking restraining order in the making, because whenever they had a weird misunderstanding, he would come to Ibuki and tell all about it all angry. Last time he even had tears in his eyes. Although Ibuki wasn’t sure if it was cause of sadness, or because they had been head banging for over an hour. But he was definitely sad, Ibuki could tell.
Well no more. Ibuki had a plan. Ibuki had sneakily invited all her friends to a concert she was planning. She would give them the greatest love song ever made, and if they didn’t get the memo by then, Ibuki would throw her guitar at them. She hoped it wouldn’t be the case for more than one of them though. Ibuki only had one guitar to throw.
XxXxXxX
Ibuki stared proudly at the result of her efforts. Her concert was over. Her precious guitar still in one piece. And she could see three pairs of her friends making out. Ibuki had been worried about the lack of subtlety of including their first and last names as well as their specific feelings for the other person as part of the song’s lyrics, but Ibuki figured that this was the only way to keep her guitar safe. Ibuki had been worried too when during her song, they were all heatedly arguing with each other (and Kazuichi was screaming like he was being stabbed for some reason, Ibuki didn’t get that one, but she liked Hiyoko’s cheering at least), but then the three pairs started making out one by one by the end of the song. It was a job well done.
Now Ibuki just had to do something about Kazuichi, who had stopped screaming about her songs, and now was screaming about something completely different. Sighing, she took her guitar again. She had adjusted the lyrics to make it more clear, and uplifting. It was time for the final rendition of “The tragedy of a third wheel mechanic trying to find his place in the relationship of a dude who loves pets and a hot princess”.
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I’m sorry if you’ve already talked about this, you have a lot of plot analysis posts 😅
i’m rereading black butler
This is from mangadex but in my paper version (french) the italian’s dude name is Claus (without the h), also I enjoy knowing that Ciel not growing is actually an important factor in the series
What i wanted to know your opinion about was the interpretation of this, well, not interpretation since I already read some of your mother3 predictions but like… idk? Enjoy this hidden baiting about the upcoming from the very first chapter, here they were talking about the mouse3 game that Claus brought for Ciel and now, ciel says in my version that he will reward Claus for the game if the game is worth a reward (this reminds me of that chapter when ciel and sebastian settled the conditions for the contract and ciel said something like “it’s normal to pay for things”), what Claus says is not that “kids can handle” he says that for Ciel “games don’t last long” and then he says that Ciel has grown the biggest toy company which is impressive for his age (toys - games, you see the correlation) but this will probably end up badly
In french he uses the verb for eating (even though there’s another verb like gouter which is more about tasting)
Also this, the theme with eating has been pretty obvious, even in the anime where Senastian was cooking fancy meals every day (the ost started to play inside my head)
Ciel loves sweets and Sebastian never shies (shy?) away from expressing his desire to eat Ciel’s soul, and now my question
What’s your opinion (personal and mother3 if they differ) about Ciel’s past actions (I’m really sorry if you answered this already 🙏)
Is Ciel’s soul this alluring for Sebastian because he is rotten for choosing to be selfish? Or he’s rather brave and we’ll know in the future the whole meaning behind the boy’s actions and thoughts?
Wow 😮 they really let you send long asks now. 😅
Why our earl's soul?
I think that's the main question here, but correct me if I missed something.
My opinion about this differs from Mother3 theory, but not entirely. First, I'll get Mother3 out of the way: (shy, nervous) Lucas and (dead, reanimated older mirror twin with all the confidence in the world) Claus compete over pulling up needles, and it's King Porky who has pitted the two against each other. But the Magypsies tell Lucas this is all fulfilling a prophecy, and that whichever one wins will determine the fate of the world. If Claus wins, they say the world could cease to exist, due to Claus being heartless: he has no heart to give to the Dark Dragon when it wakes up. Now in Black Butler, we definitely have a demon contract, and that's how real Ciel (dead, reanimated, all the confidence) lost his soul (like being heartless). The existence of a prophecy is up in the air, but if there is one, it would be known by someone -- like the superiors who control the reaper organization -- and instead of calling it prophecy, they might simply say they can see it in the future, since the reaper organization seems to have some sort of future knowledge. Eventually, I'm half-expecting a reaper to talk about something along these lines: prophecy or fate or whatever. Specifically about the Phantomhives, maybe even specifically about our earl and his older twin. The reapers are the best parallel to the Magypsies, after all! Sebastian already devoured real Ciel's soul, but now he needs our earl's soul, otherwise the demon's reaction (to being denied his long-awaited meal) could be devastating.
Beyond all my Mother3 musings, I think Sebastian seeks out souls that will give him "flavors" he's never experienced before. So, that translates as experiences and emotions. Their souls are their "hearts", the emotions they have experienced due to their memories of the things they've learned and been through. Or more like the core personality one has built-up as a direct result of all of those experiences. (Bizarre Doll Ciel has emotions, despite having no soul, but there's something forced and superficial about those emotions now.) Our earl's soul should end up being a complex combination of "flavors" that Sebastian has never really had before. Definitely not this particular combo and likely never this intensity.
Our earl says he's selfish and made the contract for selfish reasons, but we know he made that contract out of love for his brother (and parents, but mostly his brother). He cannot bring them back, but his feelings and desire for revenge are not purely selfish. Sebastian calls our earl kind, but when the kid says that's not true, Sebastian says it is... but then says he could instead call his young master a coward -- that's regarding the grave for Mary Jane Kelly and then about how our earl hesitated earlier and didn't shoot his own aunt. And Undertaker takes note that our earl is quite different from his predecessors; I believe that's when our earl protects Harcourt from the bizarre dolls of Arden's friends. So, he's showing kindness again. Likewise, after Soma hits him and Sebastian knocks Soma out, our earl says how they should have heeded his warning and left before something like this could happen. There's also a fair amount of greed, particularly in how our earl runs his business, buying out other companies and expanding his Funtom Co.'s operations, as well as competing in a curry contest to help expand into the food industry (beyond confectionery). But looking at how he gave Mey-Rin glasses as a gift (Jane says that's a rare thing for an employer to do because it's so expensive) and how he hosts events for orphans, etc. there's also generosity and hospitality. Our earl's soul should contain a combination of emotions that Sebastian is all too familiar with (like greed, anger, cowardice, and selfishness) but also emotions the demon says he's not too familiar with, like love and a sense of loss. His diet has also probably generally lacked in the "flavors" of kindness and generosity.
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Hey, I've seen ur Italian Literature recoms. and it's really helpful. Do you, by any chance, read French Literature too? If so, can you suggest some?
hi anon, sorry for the lateness but I'm going to give this a crack - ofc for obvious reasons as in I'm italian and not french I'm entirely less familiar with french lit that you'd study in school than with italian ones and my knowledge of contemporary french lit is subzero so I can only help you with classics but
I'm going to go straight for it and start with the 19th century novelists for reasons sorry if I go like not in chronological order but
as alexandre dumas wrote my second-favorite book in existence (the three musketeers) and is also one of my favorite writers ever I'll recommend you the d'artagnan romances (musketeers, twenty years later and the viscount of bragelonne) which are long but are all very easy to go through - honest the best thing with dumas is that while he's everything but synthetic you don't feel it, do start with musketeers because it's honestly out of this world good
also honest dumas hasn't written a book that's not entertaining but do read the count of montecristo you really really do want to it's amazing and my second-fave of his after the aforementioned d'artagnan books
talking about 19th century novelists... I mean you really wanna read victor hugo, mind that you have to be in the mood for it because most of his stuff is heavy/long but it's also incredibly well-written and you breeze through it if you vibe with it - maybe you can start with his theater and in that case anything is good though I'm partial to le roi s'amuse for obv reasons (as in they got rigoletto from that plot xD), but wrt novels I'd go with notre dame de paris, les miserables and the man who laughs first, starting with notre-dame because it's shorter and you get a better idea, but my friend les mis is just... I mean I honestly think if you don't read that book you miss out on some of the most amazing literature that ever was so there's that
and going back to another of my fave books ever, do try stendhal - my favorite is the red and the black which has honestly the most delicious terrible amoral protagonist ever and I just really love it, but the charterhouse of parma is also p. great
discussing the other heavyweights of 19th century french novels I personally did enjoy what zola I read more than I enjoyed what balzac I read but I also have no idea what's translated in english or not since not all of them didn't get translated in italian anyway but like if you want to give it a go wrt what you can expect from it with zola I'd go with therese raquin and with balzac either eugenie grandet or lost illusions (?? idk the english title)
meanwhile moving wrt flaubert you really wanna read madame bovary
also alexandre dumas's son - who has the same name as the father so you'll find him as alexandre dumas fils - has the dame of the camelias/la dame aux camelias which is where they took la traviata from and T__T I love iittt
and to finish with 19th century people, you want to try out maupassant too - any short story collection will do you good I think but if you want to try novels I'd go for bel ami
that is to say I haven't touched 19th century genre fiction but I mean... jules verne is a classic™, try out around the world in 80 days, journey to the center of the earth and 20000 leagues under the sea first and then if you like them you'll probably enjoy everything else
talking about classics, another one of my favorite books ever™ is laclos's dangerous liasons which is previous century but like... go for it
for more modern novels I do like a lot radiguet's the devil in the flesh and camus's the plague, there's other stuff I've meant to check for a while especially genre but I haven't gotten around to it yet :(
aaand I mean.... if you're very daring and you're into it I mean I feel bad leaving marcel proust out of a post about classic french literature recs because like in search of lost time is a... founding thing in french literature but like it's the kind of thing that you should read a) when you have a lot of time b) when you're in the mood c) when you're already familiar with most of ^^^^ the above stuff because otherwise it would just go over one's head and it's like seven books so I'm mentioning it because I have to and it's a great book but like if you aren't familiar with previous french literature I'd advise starting from something easier XD
now that was what I can give you for the novels but for everything else:
theater wise you're good with anything by moliere - any play of his is good, I can give you tartuffe, don juan, the miser and the misanthrope to have a few titles but most of his stuff is good
voltaire's work is in general a+ from philosophy to anything else and he's also very accessible, I'd start with candide if you want one thing
if you want to try more philosophers montaigne's essays are great, pretty accessible and have influenced also english writers and so on so he's the one I'd go for
(do not for the love of yourself ever read rousseau DON'T DO IT ANON DON'T DO IT THIS IS AN ANTI-REC)
wrt poetry I mean... if you want to go back to medieval times you can have a knock out of the chanson de roland for like EPIC POEM TIMES - I enjoyed studying it in high school admittedly but I guess it's not fundamental™ unless that's what you're interested in but as half of the few poets I actually do like are french...
my favorite of them is paul verlaine - I checked wiki and in english you can find not all of them but like do try fetes galantes, songs without words and poems under saturn, then there's charles baudeleaire for which you can get les fleurs du mal (I SHOULD hope there's a decent english translation around at least), and then arthur rimbaud, personally I just got a book with his full works and it worked great for me but for specific ones, a season in hell is his most famous, and like I have no idea if they translated verlaine's les poets maudits into english but it could be a good start for that whole branch of poetry
aaand I mean... that's what I feel comfortable recommending but if any of my french followers/french speaking followers who know more about this than me would like to chime in do feel free to! :D I might tag someone in the comments when my brain like starts working because I've been copying notes for the entire afternoon while writing this and I'm braindead but if any of you finds it before I tag you really go ahead XD
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Hi sorry what do you mean with your tags between a rock and a hard place everyone's saying cryptic stuff i dont understand anything :(
So 'between a rock and a hard place' is a phrase in English that basically means you have to make a difficult decision and neither of the available options are very good. My apologies if that doesn't translate well across culture or language barriers. I was intentionally being vague about what I was referencing, just because I've gotten roasted on here for sharing my thoughts before, but since you asked I'll elaborate a bit.
I’ll put the rest under a cut to save your dashes.
Depending on the translation you read, Namjoon said something in his acceptance speech along the lines of 'soon we'll have things sorted out and we'll be able to be more honest with you/show you our true selves'. Several of the members made comments during the infamous Festa Dinner about wishing they could be more honest/tell us more, despite the fact that we learned SO much more during that hour than we've heard them say pretty much ever. Clearly there is more they’re not sharing, but I think they’re also being intentionally vague. The BTS guys are all so conscious of what they share with the world, I feel like they wouldn’t keep making comments like that without knowing we’d all likely try to figure out what they were referencing. We’re all just trying to read between the lines here, most of us are probably wrong, but it’s hard to resist trying to solve the puzzle even if you know there are missing pieces.
At the surface level, they are seven completely different men who have all grown and worked together for a decade. I do think they all get along and have a good working relationship, but have you ever had any friend or co-worker that you agreed with on literally everything for ten years straight? Imagine seven people? I’m sure they have had some differences with each other, with big hit/hybe over all kinds of things. Song choices, schedules, creative direction, endorsements, enlistment, solo releases, branding, the list goes on. It is impossible that all seven of them and the label have had a hive (hybe lol) mind and been on the same page for strategy of all of this for years on end. We’ll never know what is he referencing being ‘honest’ about in that specific speech, but given how little they’ve said about any of those things it’s fair to assume there has been a lot that hasn’t been shared with us. It has to be immensely difficult to be trying to work through huge hurdles like enlistment and the future of the band, and then have to constantly get in front of the public and pretend that everything is great and no one has ever disagreed. Imagine if you had even a petty fight with your friend over something stupid, and then you had to go to an award show and do interviews, perform with them, play nice and hide how you’re really feeling. For a decade, and I’m sure they have disagreed over things bigger than dumplings.
It seems obvious that there are bigger things going on, especially that we now know that they were planning on taking a break after their 2020 tour. The Festa dinner made it seem like they have been doing short term plan after short term plan for two and a half years thinking that a post Covid tour and/or enlistment were around the corner. Having no long term plan with a tour and/or enlistment looming for years now sounds so mentally exhausting. It seems like they’re finally at a point where they can’t just keep putting off these things. They’re at peak fame, the entire world is watching to see what actually comes next and is bound to have an opinion on it. Enlistment means not fully cashing in on all the money on the table, exemption can mean a lot of unfavorable things for them as well. Rock and a hard place, neither option fully desirable. Right now, it seems like that some hybrid not-really-an-exemption solution is being negotiated where they ‘serve’ but also still do concerts....I haven’t been following it super closely but it does seem like it’s been dragging out forever.
What is Namjoon looking forward to being more honest about, who knows. Is it the future of the group, solo launches, how much they might hate certain endorsement deals, the enlistment situation, the Busan concert drama, their hiatus/non-hiatus announcement, whatever the hell ‘Chapter 2′ is or was supposed to be, thoughts on their musical direction the last couple of years, label disagreements....could be all of this or none of this. They have a lot of big stuff going on, we see very little of it, and what we do see is curated so we only know the good parts and the final outcomes. Like I’ve been saying since the infamous Festa dinner came out, I just really hope what plays out is what the guys want. I’m apprehensive that’s always the case because you know, capitalism and the history of pretty much every boy band that has ever existed. What I think about it really doesn’t matter, I just know they’re in a tough spot and whatever happens next is going to upset some people no matter what it is.
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Thank god is not just me who mourns the loss of flavor to Emmet's dialogue. I too love how short and choppy his sentences are, to the point, no words wasted, a fantastic contrast to how comparatively wordy Ingo is. Which makes sense, as they're mirrors of each other in many ways! iirc in Japanese Ingo is also very formal while Emmet is much more casual in the way he talks, which I think translated to English pretty well, although obviously some nuance is lost because we don't have different formal levels built in like Japanese does.
I think you captured that well in oop too, as Emmet lacks the level of politeness that Ingo has, and he's a lot more blunt. It's well matched to how you've written Emmet in the first arc too, with his near single-mindedness in finding Ingo, and how it puts characters like Rei and Cyllene at ease. I've always kind of thought that the blunt way he talked, his blatant honesty and confidence without any frills, was what got Cyllene to trust him. She's very similar in that regard, which I think is probably part of what made Rei trust him so fast in turn (well, that and he's a kid who is floundering and desperate to have an Adult take charge and give them direction, especially an adult who showed him kindness and care in the way he righted Rei's rails when he started to panic)
YEAAH YEAH okay i am also glad this is not just like... a me observation. like i don't play ex so i hadn't really looked at the quotes before now and... why did they do that to my man... it feels so wroooong
and re: what you were saying about translations, yeah, maybe the ex voice is the more accurate translation, i. would not really know, but like. rip to japanese players for missing out on emmet's incredible eng bw cadence if it's true. it's simply the far superior version... i'm sorry...
+ the thing abt him having an opposing voice to his brother!! like yeah, imho you REALLY lose that contrast in ex because english just does not have the same kind of obvious registers for formality. the bw dialogue is sooo much better in terms of making a really clear contrast btwn them... and also i know i said it before but the eng bw voice is just like. better? more interesting? it has more Character in it? im tryna sound objective and all here really what i mean is i love it and am obsessed with it.
ANYWAAAY waaah yeah!! like i said idc what they do with emmet in newer games they can pry his bw cadence out of my cold dead hands. and i'm REALLY REALLY GLAD it comes across in oop... i think i've said before that he's one of my fav characters to write bc he is just so unique in the way he talks and just sort of. his character generally. in such a perfect way. he's blunt and direct and incredibly purposeful and. with all of the careful hop-stepping and social maneuvering and mind games going around in pla it is SO fun to write a character who actively refuses to fuck around like that even a little bit. and yeah!! i think it can be both very disarming and very reassuring to people.
like cyllene you are exactly right!! they only spent a very brief time together but i REALLY love the idea of them interacting anyway. cyllene i think is someone who has a very specific way of reading and interpreting others, and to her it just came across so strongly how much emmet meant what he was saying, and how driven and simultaneously caring he was, and. like i said. both disarming and reassuring. i think she likes and trusts him an inadvisable amount already.
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sun kisses;
words count: 639
pairing: soobin x gn!reader
genre: friends to lovers, fluff
song. rec.: hikaru utada - one last kiss
The sky is so pretty and so blue today, it feels so nice when the spring days are warm and sunny. You lay on the grass watching the sky and sometimes closing your eyes due to the brightness of the sun. The light wind graced your face when you closed your eyes one more time. It feels so nice to lay here without anything to burden your mind and enjoy the warm kisses of the sun rays and wind.
You found inner peace to the point that you almost fall asleep, but suddenly some dark shadow hangs over you and you open your eyes instantly. The figure was your adorable bunny-like best friend named Choi Soobin. “Huh? Y/n what are you doing here?” he questioned you looking at your face curiously. “Nothing, just resting and enjoying a nice day,” you replied and shifted your gaze from the boy’s face to the sky. “Hm..but what about the project we need to do? You said we should start it today.” he pursed his lips cutely and you can’t help but smile. “I remember Binnie. It’s just..the day is so good, I feel like I can’t lose this opportunity to rest a bit under the sun. And you too!! Come lay beside me, let’s enjoy it together and then we will go to the library I promise.” you pleaded with your eyes and Soobin can only give up, he can’t say no to you, especially when you look at him like that.
You felt his body right beside you within a few seconds and so you turned your head to him smiling contently. “What?” Soobin turned his face to you too, confusion written on it. “You look cute under the sunlight. Your blond hair itself looks like another sun,” you giggled and turned your full body to him. You feel the need to ruffle his soft, to your surprise, locks. Your hand wandered from his hair to his soft features, you trailed your fingers around his cheeks and to his chin. Then you booped his nose and cupped his cheek while your thumb grazed his soft skin. “You look pretty, Soobin” The boy was like under some sort of spell cause all he can do is wander his eyes around your face and never leave it. Both of you lay silently looking at each other. The only sound that could be heard were birds chirping and the light rustle of the leaves on the trees. It’s like both of you are in your own bubble where no one exists except for you. Soobin was the first who moved, he closed the distance between you two, and his nose was already touching yours when he suddenly jerked back as if he were struck by the lightning. “Uh..Y/n sorry I probably shouldn't be this close… I almost kissed you, gosh what I even think about-” You cut him off by pressing your lips onto his in a rushed but sweet kiss. You pull back and lock your eyes with Soobin’s shocked ones “Did you think I will miss the opportunity to kiss you? No way! Actually..I thought that my feelings for you are quite obvious” You pouted and diverted your gaze to the side. Soobin giggled at you “I thought the same but..seems like both of us were oblivious this whole time” He found your hand and took it in his while looking at you with admiration. “Yeah..maybe you’re right” Then you pecked his lips again and giggled. You always loved the spring season when everything is blooming around and the weather gets warmer with each passing day. This season feels like the start of something new and this time it means a new start in your relationship with the boy whom you cherished a lot.
Reblogs and likes are highly appreciated <3
Do not - steal / copy / repost / translate any of my works !
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(About the Hebrew in the Good Omens comic) Also, Idk if this was intentional or not, but the specific phrase you used for heaven––גן עדן––literally means "the Garden of Eden" which is a nice touch, given Aziaraphale's (and Crowley's) history.
It was kind of intentional but kind of not! I was trying to do some research because initially my idea was just to have heaven and hell on either side of the coin because they’re... two sides of the same coin. ;D
But for some reason I couldn’t find a way to write Heaven in hebrew without it meaning Garden of Eden... I ended up going with that word because I also liked the implication. :)
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Yes, that was me! I can definitely expand on my thoughts re: how Madam Yu’s behaviour reads differently to me due to my traditional, Chinese upbringing.
There is a lot of subjectivity as to whether Madam Yu can be read as abusive, and this reading is often influenced by culture—hence you often see completely off-base takes floating around. However, to me, the way that cultural context influences the reading will actually change depending on the relationship, so I will discuss each one separately. Most of the culturally insensitive takes are about her being an abusive or uncaring mother (she’s not), or that she’s a spurned woman (it’s more complicated than that), so you can skip down to the JC, JYL, and CSSR sections for that.
Madam Yu and Wei Wuxian
As a trend, I think western fandom tends to simplify Wei Wuxian’s dynamic with the Jiang family into an entire adopted family. Consequently, Yu Ziyuan gets perceived as this two-dimensional, evil stepmom figure—but I think this doesn’t capture the truth.
There’s a bit more variability among Chinese audiences when they read the Jiang family dynamic, partly due to our deeper familiarity with wuxia tropes, but mostly because there's a mediocre Netflix translation colouring the western interpretation. Though many Chinese fans do view them all as a sort of family unit and read Madam Yu as a stepmother, I do not. To me, Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli view Wei Wuxian as family—but Madam Yu does not. Madam Yu views him as a servant, a disciple of the sect, and an outsider at the dinner table—and it’s not wrong for her to do so. It’s not gracious, but it’s not unfounded. I don’t think Wei Ying ever gives any indication that he views her as a mother, either.
If you agree that they don’t have anything like a mother-son relationship, all these insults/complaints that Yu Ziyuan levels at him—that he’s the “son of a servant”, that Jiang Fengmian is weird for openly favouring Wei Wuxian over his own son, etc.—these start to make sense? Like, it’s shitty to listen to, but none of it is wrong. Suddenly it reads less like pointless insults and more like actual points.
Additionally, if we consider that Wei Wuxian is a disciple of the sect who goes around and raises the ire of the Wen clan, corporal punishment suddenly looks very normal (again, within the culture). Hence, when I watched the donghua and CQL, I hated seeing Wei Wuxian getting whipped, but I didn’t perceive this as abuse—especially because of the political nature of the decision.
But it is definitely still possible to mistreat a disciple.
In CQL, you see Madam Yu throwing an unnecessary amount of vitriol at Wei Ying. In the novel extras, it's revealed that she regularly whipped him but never whipped the other disciples, indicating that it wasn't normal corporal punishment. She also whipped him for absurdly stupid reasons. To me, this signals that she tended to abuse her authority over him. Even if you don’t view her as an abusive mother to Wei Ying, it's fair to read her as an abusive authority figure.
Importantly however, "abuse" is a loaded word suggesting a violation of social norms, and again, the situation is complicated because the social norms of the setting don't match those of the modern world. Madam Yu is not overstepping her bounds as master of Lotus Pier—hence, people do not think very much of this treatment in-universe, including Wei Ying himself.
Madam Yu, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli
Okay, when I first watched CQL, I cringed when Madam Yu started dragging her family because she sounded like My Actual Chinese Mother. I felt for a second like I had transmigrated into Jiang Cheng’s body and I was experiencing his agony firsthand!
Madam Yu reads very realistically, and I think this is why it gets personal for a lot of Chinese people when this fandom discusses her character. Yes, she belittles and hurts her children for their perceived failures, but many Chinese people can tell you that this is just a common parenting style. And while it might look like bullying to an outsider, this behaviour is usually motivated by love. It is often also motivated by fear that the child’s future will be substandard. This is textually obvious when you consider what exactly Madam Yu yells about:
She snaps at Yanli to stop peeling lotus pods, because she shouldn’t act like a servant. If Yanli keeps behaving so passively, what kind of role is she going to fall into in the future—especially given that she is not a cultivator?
She berates Jiang Cheng for always being inferior to Wei Wuxian no matter what he does. If Jiang Cheng is constantly overshadowed by Wei Wuxian, what will that mean for his future as sect leader? Or his future status and reputation among the sects?
I can do these Chinese Mom Translations because parents in real life will actually say things like this out of concern for their children (insults included), in an attempt to motivate them... and it really does light a fire under our asses. I attribute many of my personal successes to this parenting style. Thus, when I see posts like “Madam Yu didn’t show any sign of caring for others” or "Madam Yu was a purely selfish and arrogant person" or “Madam Yu is an abusive mother and nothing else"—well, I can tell most of these people are not Chinese, or if they are, then they likely did not have a traditional upbringing.
While I don't think these uninformed readings of Madam Yu are necessarily racist, I do think they they are unpleasant for Chinese fans to constantly see. For those of us in the west that had this type of upbringing, we often struggle with trying to frame and process our relationships with our parents. For me, this was partly due to the emotional baggage of my upbringing (Jiang Cheng winning!!!)... but it was also because white society kept telling me that my parents didn't give a shit about me when obviously they did. That’s fucked up to experience. It reeks of cultural imperialism. Thus, when I see Chinese people getting annoyed at these Madam Yu takes, I’m not surprised. This is unfortunately a fictional discussion that very much resembles a real one for us.
Yu Ziyuan, Jiang Fengmian, and Cangse Sanren
A lot of people view Madam Yu as a spurned woman and assume that is her motivation for constantly antagonizing Wei Wuxian and her husband. But because I assume that a lot of her chaotic yelling stems from her concerns as an Actual Chinese Mother, my take is different.
Remember the scene where Madam Yu catches Jiang Fengmian scolding Jiang Cheng just after praising Wei Wuxian? She drags Jiang Cheng up to his father and, in both CQL and the donghua, says something to this effect (paraphrased from memory):
This is your son, the future master of Lotus Pier! Even if you don’t like him because he was born to me, his surname is still Jiang!
And in CQL, she also says this right after berating Jiang Cheng for not measuring up to Wei Wuxian:
But it’s not your fault. Your mother is no match for his mother.
Yu Ziyuan isn’t angry about Cangse Sanren because she’s jealous; she is angry about Cangse Sanren because she thinks Jiang Fengmian’s feelings for her are jeopardizing his competence as a father to Jiang Cheng. Viewed in this light, it also makes sense why Yu Ziyuan is hostile to Wei Wuxian in a way that alienates him from the family—constantly calling him the son of a servant, pointing out the rumours about his parentage, etc. She’s not doing this because she hates Cangse Sanren or Wei Wuxian; she’s doing it because Wei Wuxian’s presence in the family is threatening Jiang Cheng’s future in her eyes.
Bonus: Did Yu Ziyuan love Jiang Fengmian?
Yes! In both the donghua and CQL (I ashamedly admit I don’t clearly remember the novel), I thought their final moments made it quite evident that they cared for each other. They fought together, died together to protect their home, and reached out to one another in their final moments.
But when I rewatched Madam Yu’s scenes in CQL and the donghua, I realized we got other hints that westerners probably missed. I'll focus on CQL:
Right before Jiang Fengmian sets off with Yanli for Lanling, Madam Yu sees them off. She gives Yanli some snacks and then—without making eye contact with Jiang Fengmian—says that she’s also giving them medicine in case someone gets a headache. Jiang Fengmian pauses, because it’s obviously for him.
This is recognizable behaviour for a lot of Chinese people. I can’t tell you how many times my mother got apoplectic at me, and then the only follow-up was her going out of her way to make me my favourite meal. The chaotic yelling you see between Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan is also pretty typical to many Chinese parents, and again, the follow-up in my household was often one of them going out of their way to do something for the other.
This is just how the culture is in a lot of families. “Sorry” isn’t expressed in words; it's expressed in actions. “I love you” isn’t expressed in words; it’s expressed in actions. In Chinese culture, the dominant love language is acts of service. It's fleeting, but we get glimpses of that kind of love between Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian.
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The Beginning of Heatstroke, aka Red's Villain Origin
* crashes down from the ceiling * I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED ONE OF MY 5+ CURRENT WRITING PROJECTS! BEHOLD, A WRITTEN VERSION OF THE 'Red's Villain Origin AU', also known as RVO / Heatstroke AU
To summarize the AU for SPBNR for those that don't now it:
“Who'd be the biggest conspiracy theorist out of the M!Ninja? The one who drinks 5 hour energy at 3am and spits off the craziest theories and then actually gets it right but nobody gives the theory any merit because the rest of the theories are too crazy?”
The answer: Red / M!Kai
Red: Okay hear me out: Smith is actually an alternative version of one of us sent here from another dimension.
The other M!Ninja: You’re just saying that because Smith’s cool and you want him to be your counterpart
Based on the M!ninja making red cork boards trying to figure out ‘What Is Up With Smith’: Red gets increasingly accurate and nobody will believe him (all pre shogun reveal) and he eventually snaps and takes up a secret villain persona to fight Shogun like 'if they won't believe me I'll do it myself' and it gets awkward when he accidentally does too much damage and catches not only Shogun's attention like planned, but also the rest of the Ninjaforce, and now he has to keep his own identity a secret
So, without further ado, I present... Heatstroke
------------
Red blamed the 5-hour energy coffee blend at 3:00am for this.
It was no surprise that between ‘Operation: What’s Going on with Smith’ & the sudden appearance of Shogun that the resident Bounty red-stringed ‘joke’ cork-board doubled in size and seriousness. It also was no surprise that Red had a corner all to himself and that his theories were… in the words of the others, ‘wildly inaccurate and implausible’.
But this time, he was sure he’d gotten it right.
Smith is Shogun sent here from another continent/planet/dimension with the goal of protecting Ninjago City.
The latest string of laughs and scoffs at his theory was the last straw. He’d show them. He’d prove it!
Which was why he was currently standing on the roof of a noodle house, awkwardly adjusting the spare motorcycle helmet he’d ‘borrowed’ from Nya and painted black and orangey-yellow (red had seemed too obvious). He’d exchanged his Ninjaforce outfit for a soot-burned cross between a bomber jacket and a leather jacket. Down his back jutted a row of flames like the spines of a monster, courtesy of one of Nya & Jay’s unfinished inventions Red had modified- surely nothing bad would come of that!
For tonight, the Red Ninja was off-duty. For tonight, it was Heatstroke’s turn.
He fiddled with one of the weapons he’d ‘lent out’ from Master Wu. It resembled a small arm canon, like a smaller version of the Ultimate Weapon. The plaque under its post had read ‘Elemental Focuser’, which, in cryptic Wu speak, probably translated to ‘you can use an elemental power like something out of Avatar: The Last Airbender’. So far he’d only figured out how to activate a focused jet of fire. Well, at least it was on brand. He hoped it would help him catch Shogun’s attention so he could unmask him.
He’d tried confronting Smith at school, of course. But there were only so many ways of saying ‘are you the new vigilante helping the ninjas’, and Smith has a genuine talent for dancing around the topic. Red could confront him with the name Shogun to get a proper reaction, but that would mean explaining how he knew the name and outing himself as the Red Ninja.
So fake villainy really was the only way.
His plan was to use the Elemental Focuser to cause some minor petty damage, just enough to attract the new vigilante. Perhaps set a trash can on fire, block an alleyway with rocks (if he figured out how to change the setting from fire to earth), small things that could easily be repaired.
Of course, plans were never actually stuck to. One way or another, something was always improvised.
Red’s improvisation just happened to involve him accidentally setting the entire alleyway on fire.
He’d only been aiming for one dumpster, honest! And maybe he’d spotted a couple fliers for a SoG meeting on the ground and happened to burn those too. And a newspaper article blaming Lloyd for the recent Garmadon attack, again. And an article about those ‘Damn Ninja Menaces’ by a S. Sonah Sameson. And-
Okay, so maybe Red had aimed the fire at a few small targets. But just a few! And with good reason and good care, but…
Well, fire liked to burn. Give it enough kindle and it’ll continue to grow, stretching like reaching branches towards each other to join in a massive bonfire.
So now the entire alleyway was on fire, and Red was panicking.
He’d luckily chosen an abandoned part of town near the beaches where Shogun sightings seemed most frequent, but with the stupid Elemental Focuser not switching from fire mode to water mode or ice mode or something that didn’t have the potential to burn Ninjago City to the ground, Red had no way of stopping the flames.
And more flames meant more destruction which meant a bigger audience.
Which was why his previously muted comm suddenly flared to life, the only warning Red had before Nya’s water strider mech slid around the corner.
Red scrambled onto a roof as the mech drove past, spraying water at the bonfire to dose it. His sigh of relief was just as quickly dosed as Lloyd’s voice came over the comms; “Status, Grey?”
“Flames are out,” Nya replied. “Pursing the joker that set it ablaze.”
Uh oh. Red took off across the roof, leaping from building to building. Tiles creaked, pebbled and dust scattering underfoot. The sounds of the mech’s engine roaring behind him echoed through alleyways below to create the illusion the mech was everywhere at once.
As the chase grew on, more mechs started to join in. Red ducked into a narrow avenue to avoid Zane’s tank, then under a cafe overhang to throw off Jay and Lloyd. His heart hammered in his chest and he groaned, filling the inside of the motorcycle helmet with steam.
Saying this was going ‘bad’ would be the understatement of the century.
What had he been thinking? Oh wait: he hadn’t. Seriously? ‘Oh I’ll just pretend to be a villain real quick, that should get Shogun’s attention and not the attention of literally my entire team of fellow ninjas!’ Stupid, impulsive, this was why everyone was always calling the red ninja the ‘hothead’ when he really tried not to be-
Lloyd’s voice over the comms snapped him from his thoughts. “I can’t catch them! It’s like they know our every move!”
Red winced as he climbed up a banister and leapt from balcony to balcony. Sorry, Lloyd.
He didn’t miss how the others asked Nya where Red was. And how she made up excuses the others bought so easily- granted, he’d told those excuses to his sister before setting his plan into motion, but still, ouch. They acted like he was simply being at best too busy and at worst lazy and selfish.
He just wanted them to know the truth! Why couldn’t they at least try to believe him when-
Of course, that was when Shogun dropped out of the sky and tackled him.
Red shouted with surprise as he tumbled down from the second floor, slamming into a few softer bags of garbage to break his fall before rolling and slamming into the unforgiving concrete. A crack formed in his vision as the visor of his motorbike helmet smacked into the concrete ground. One of the fire jets on his back sputtered and sparked, sending a thin wisp of smoke into the air.
Shogun pinned his wrists to the ground and growled. “Who are you?”
Red tried to break free, agony turning his muscles and bones to fire with the movement after his fall, but the vigilante was too strong. Damn, how often did this guy train?
“Who am I?” Red said, a nervous tinge to his voice. He quickly smoothed it over with faked confidence. “Who are you? Who are all of us, really?”
Shogun narrowed his eyes behind his hood. “Did Garmadon send you? Or someone else?”
Red sputtered. Really, the nerve! Garmadon? The thought turned his insides to disgusting mud. “Nobody sent me!”
“Then why are you here?” Shogun spat.
“Why am I here?” Why was he here again? Oh right, the bright idea on how to reveal that Shogun was Smith. “It’s, uh… a valid reason! That I don’t have to tell you!” He tried for a villainous laugh. Stay in character, don’t blow your cover, you got this!
Shogun was unimpressed. “Nearly burning down my home was a valid reason?”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to set everything on- wait, WHAT?” Uh oh. “You LIVE here?”
Now it was Shogun’s turn to look uncomfortable, though the expression was quickly wiped from his face. “Nothing wrong with this district.”
Red nodded. “‘Course not. Uh, sorry about that… wasn’t my intention, I swear.”
Shoot, he could hear Jay’s jet getting closer. He had to get out of here, but Shogun, annoyingly, didn’t seem to be in the mood to simply let him go. “Then what is your intention?”
“Well, for starters, it’s getting out of here. This really isn’t going to plan and I’d rather just be home right now, or even inventing a time machine like in that book ‘Hands of Time’ to slap my past self in the face for even thinking about this stupid idea in the first place-“
Jay wasn’t the only one that could ramble under pressure, it seemed.
Shogun leaned closer. “What idea?”
Red shrugged as best he could with how he was pinned to the ground. “Well, for starters, I just wanted to prove to my friends that you’re Smith, and things just kinda escalated from-”
The words were out of his mouth before he realized what he said.
Shogun lurched back, letting go of him. His eyes betrayed a kaleidoscope of emotions; surprise, worry, suspicious, hurt, fear, realization.
“…Kai?”
Well, f!ck.
“I-“
Red was about to badly attempt to bullsh!t his way out of his identity reveal before it suddenly dawned on him that Shogun had not denied his theory.
Which meant Shogun was Smith.
And it also meant Smith instantly recognized him as Kai, which, considering his disguise, was aptly concerning. Sure, he was the first one in his group of friends people would think to do something this extreme but give him some credit! Zane was a regular detective, he’d do the same if it meant answers! Or, well, at least something similar. And Nya could be an adrenaline seeker. And Lloyd- well, maybe not Lloyd. Or Jay, either. Cole had his head just enough on his shoulders that he probably wouldn’t do this either.
But come on, instantly guessing it?
Well, at least Smith/Shogun didn’t know Kai was the Red Ninja. That would be a catastrophe.
Right. Back to the current catastrophe at hand.
Shogun- Smith- still had a look as if he’d been slapped, and Red hated it. He hadn’t meant to hurt his friend. Shogun… Shogun hadn’t wanted them to find out his identity. And then Red had gone and done it, just to prove that he could be the smart one, or a leader, or the protector so they didn’t get hurt, or literally anything but just the ‘hotheaded one’.
…And he’d done it in the most hotheaded, impulsive way possible.
He really was an idiot.
The cracked helmet hid the look on his face, a twisted mess of distraught and shame. But it didn’t help hide how he took stumbled to his feet and away from Smith, nervous that any second he’d spill another mistake and mess up again, like how he always freaking messed up on everything. Don’t pick this fight, interject there instead, no, not there, idiot, there, FMS why are you so useless-
Focus, focus.
Lloyd’s voice, sharp in the intercom and full of static from his tumble, snapped him from his thoughts. “Anyone got eyes on the arsonist?”
Red caught Smith’s eye as he raised his hand to his own communicator. He was so screwed, so busted, so doomed… Smith would report it, and the others would know, and they’d think he was just messing around in an alleyway with some stolen devices and weapons out of curiosity or rage, - and-
“None yet, still looking.”
…What?
Smith stared at him, gaze searching. He looked shaken, more so than Red- who’d just taken a fall from a second story, mind you, it was a miracle he wasn’t more injured than a couple small scrapes and some future bruises-, yet everything from the set of his jaw to the softening of his furrowed brows suggested a change in emotions. Well, not quite change; more like repress and replace.
“You wanted to prove yourself, didn’t you.”
Red flushed, hand instinctually clamping into a tight fist at his side. The still-working fire jets on his back ignited without him pressing any buttons; faulty activation from the fall or something.
Palms up and hands raised, Smith silently asked to defuse the situation. “Didn’t mean it as an insult. This wasn’t about venting some anger, was it.”
Red’s lack of response only confirmed it. Smith continued. “I won’t say anything about this if you don’t tell anyone my identity. Deal? I know finding it out was important to you, but-“
“Deal,” Red interrupted. Guilt ate away at his core, like a wave of water dousing a candle. “Smith, I-“ He swallowed hard and stared at the alley floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… to…”
Smith’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder and he flinched before relaxing as Smith didn’t move further, nor did the grip tighten. “I’m a little hurt, you’re right. But I’m not mad. And I won’t tell the others, so you can relax. But you better get out of here and get yourself an alibi. We can talk at school or something.”
Wow, he was handling this rather calmly. Red was struck by the sudden memory of- what did Jay call the word? Right. Compartmentalizing. That… wasn’t healthy. But at the roar of Lloyd’s mech somewhere nearby, he didn’t comment further. Instead, he shot Smith a grateful nod and ran down the alley, sticking to the shadows and blind spots of the flying mechs and the tight alleyways where the land mechs couldn’t reach him.
When he got home, miraculously without further incident (though Shogun leading the others on a wild goose chase over the comms certainly helped there), he ditched the outfit in a bag hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the shed. He’d return the weapon to Master Wu’s ship later, and… well, hope Nya never searched for the missing supplies. There wasn’t a way of fixing it without involving her or Jay, and neither was an option.
Heatstroke was back off duty, and so was the Red Ninja.
For now, he could just be Kai Smith. And there wasn’t any issue with that.
…
Right?
—————
yooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
THIS IS AMAZING REHJJGFHDESFXJVZ
and ah yes, good ol trauma and compartmentalizing, we love to see it
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