poeticcannon

[poeticcannon]

#parahumans #man #really starting to dig themes of identities #falsehoods and truths

[poeticcannon]

“Does Oshi no Ko NEED the reincarnation aspect to work” is a sentiment I’ve seen a lot lately, especially on the subreddit (which I still check regularly despite what it’s devolved into) Personally, I think that’s the wrong question, you should be asking “WHY is the reincarnation aspect present.”

First, let’s talk about parasocial relationships. The idol industry is built upon them, more-so than any other industry. Idols are supposed to be the ideal -yet unattainable- partner to fantasize about, to the point where they’re forbidden from having those kinds of connections in real life without facing scrutiny.

Ai Hoshino is the “Ultimate” idol. She doesn’t have ANYONE she has those genuine connections with, even her fellow group members hold her at the same untouchable distance that her fans do. She became an idol in hopes of loving others, and recreated the motions so perfectly that her lie became all anyone wanted from her. To the point where her true humanity was rejected, like by Nino in 45510.

Enter our protagonists (Layer One)

Sarina Tendouji is a hospital bound fan of all of B Komachi, but especially Ai. She idolizes her for being a girl her own age with a pretty face and incredible singing and dancing skills. This especially resonates with Sarina who’s studied B Komachi’s choreography non stop, but was tragically not able to dance herself due to her condition.

Goro Amamiya is an OBGYN in a small town that became a diehard fan of Ai after Sarina’s passing, superimposing the two in his head as he described it. When he met Ai in real life and became her doctor during her pregnancy, he found her off camera personality charming and internalized her philosophy about lies.

Then of course, after his death they were reincarnated as her twin children. During that time they saw her in a much more human way, worrying about money and providing for her family, harboring insecurities, being the best mom that she could be despite her circumstances.

They saw the way she gets treated by the industry and public she came up in as well, her parts cut out of her first drama due to corporate politics, her being speculated on and called a whore for just talking to an old classmate, and especially how her death was received. By this point, their relationship with her is much closer than the parasocial place it began.

But has it?

Enter our protagonists (Layer Two)

Sarina Tendouji was a girl rejected by her mother as her condition got worse. She loved her mother deeply and wanted to be just like her when she got older.

In the last few years of life she never even saw her mom, that void filled with the presence of a doctor loitering in her room to slack off work, and the idol she watched. What she wanted more than anything though was for her mother to come see her again.

Goro Amamiya was a boy born from a woman who hid her pregnancy and died in childbirth. That death painted the entirety of his life going forward.

Even then he’s haunted by his feelings of helplessness when he loses the child patient he had befriended early into his residency. He’s become a passive person, following the whims of others because of his perceived helplessness.

Both of them take these complicated feelings into their next life, and it paints their relationships with Ai after her death.

Ruby wants to follow in her moms footsteps once again and be just like Ai, to the point of naming her idol group B Komachi. Ultimately, I think she mostly takes positively from her time as Ai’s daughter, and looks more to Ai’s life rather than her death.

Aqua on the other hand, witnessed his mother bleed out in front of him in almost a metaphorical recreation of his first mother’s death, and this has shaped him irreversibly. Except this time there’s an object for his hatred other than himself. This time, his mother was murdered. He could do more than follow in the motions of preventing it from happening to others. This time he could get revenge.

Now “Why is the reincarnation aspect present.”

Ai Hoshino was never understood by anyone, her parents, her idol group, even her trusted adults. But two people, born with traumas and biases that paint their perspectives, were both brought into this world with their goal to try.

Aqua more investigatipvely, tracking down loose ends from her past, holding onto people with the ability to profile her from videos and images. Whereas Ruby is on a more personal journey of understanding her, recreating the steps of her journey more directly and coming to her own conclusions about it.

This leads us to the 15 Year Lie, the potential climax of the series as a whole, and the event referenced from the prologue chapters. The movie that began as a documentary meant to tell the true unfiltered life of Ai Hoshino as she always wanted. It had even made some headway prior to her death, but it’s hard to say how much.

This movie finds itself as the roadmap of both twins journey in understanding. Aqua now has the resources and connections to speak to anyone from Ai’s past, her mother, her fellow idol members, and likely more. But by this point, Aqua also knows the name of the man his tunnel vision hatred is focused on. And hatred is seeping into this story down to the script itself

Ruby is also now in the position of very literally playing Ai, the arguably highest point on her journey to walk in her mother’s shoes. Compared to Aqua, I think she’s getting much closer to her goal.

Of course, it’s still too soon to say how that will go for her, I expect her journey of understanding will continue for the entirety of of the movie filming process. There’s still the entirety of Ai’s relationship with Hikaru and her children as well as her death to be covered and I’m sure Ruby will have plenty of challenges and breakthroughs with those too.

In conclusion, not only is the reincarnation aspect needed, I think it’s crucial to what the story is trying to say thematically. If they were just children who lost their mom young and tried to understand her it would be compelling, but thematically it wouldn’t carry nearly the same weight as fans pulled across the parasocial line with their own projected baggage.

Remember, being ‘reborn as an idols child’ is inherently a parasocial fantasy.

#oshi no ko

[poeticcannon]

Homegrown

Thistle and Delgal - Dungeon Meshi, Ryoko Kui

^ Fernando Pessoa / Killing Flies, Michael Dickman / A Brother Named Gethsemane, Natalie Diaz / Antigonick, Anne Carson v Oats We Sow, Gregory and the Hawk

#dunmeshi #dunmeshi spoilers

[poeticcannon]

#angel

[poeticcannon]

I want to Goncharov Shining Virtue Angelic Heart so badly.

#A Little Vice

[poeticcannon]

Starting to realize I have a thing for characters who assume one or more roles so thoroughly that they couldn't find their true selves behind the mask if they tried.

...

#a little vice

[poeticcannon]

Boobs comfort

#hsr

[poeticcannon]

Hexweaver witch, unmasked

#witch

[poeticcannon]

The Devil x Buckshot Roulette.

#homura akemi #pmmm

[poeticcannon]

Final Victor lightcone but make it SO much worse

#aventurine hsr #dr ratio hsr #gallagher hsr

[poeticcannon]

Robin is autistic and hyperfixated on Clockie. Excellent.

#angel

[poeticcannon]

Gallagher: I’m a murder, I am literally Death

HoYo: healer

Gallagher: I killed 3 five star characters and deceived all of Penacony

HoYo: four star

#gallagher hsr #hsr 2.1 spoilers

[poeticcannon]

[in between big wet heaving sobs] h… he love she…..

#dunmeshi #marcille dunmeshi

[poeticcannon]

Saw riku's fucked up finger in kh2

[poeticcannon]

What do you think of Nasu basically spoiling Mahoyo 2 in FGO, even though Mahoyo 2 doesn't exist (yet)?

lol

lmao even

I will make an even better call.

He did not stop at spoiling Mahoyo 2, a VN that doesn't exist in any way, shape, or form yet. No. In fact, Nasu has gone above and beyond, also spoiling a critical new story element for the Tsukihime Remake's Red Garden, hidden inside the Mahoyo event.

Why do I say this? There's a scene in the collab event where the gang discusses the matter of reviving the dead. Aoko's little incident at the end of Mahoyo inevitably gets brought up, but Alice shuts down the notion that Aoko can revive the dead, because what Aoko does is time fraud, essentially running a scam, and therefore does not count.

If you are killed, but Aoko makes it so you don't die, she does so by taking the time you were killed and propelling it into the far future, way after you would die of old age anyway. In Mahoyo, Touko is aghast at the methodology because messing with time would absolutely incur some kind of terrible debt to the fabric of reality that will have to be paid eventually, while in FGO, Alice believes it doesn't count as reviving the dead, probably because you never died (because the time that you died is far, far sway).

What does this have to do with Tsukihime?

Now, in the original Tsukihime, Shiki was basically a dead man walking; his body was animated by Akiha's life-force / soul after saving her from an inverting SHIKI, and while it's never explained beyond "Akiha has powers no one else in her oni family has", no mage has been able to revive the dead, or keep a body that can no longer live on its own moving by making it a parasite on their own life. Others that cheat death such as Touko or Roa (or Meltryllis in FGO) move bodies instead, they cannot save a body that has been damaged beyond saving.

Only Aoko and Akiha have done that.

Now, we know due to some bad ends in the Tsukihime Remake that Shiki is still unknowingly dependent on Akiha, because she's able to control his life and even make him pass out by cutting him off (at least until he gets possessed by Roa), BUT we don't know if the accident with SHIKI was the only thing that happened in the past.

The Tsukihime Remake no longer takes place in Misaki town like the original did. This means that Shiki no longer encounters Aoko walking around her home town. She would have had to go to a hospital in Souya town, and coincidentally run into 9 year old Shiki terrified of seeing death everywhere.

I don't buy that their meeting was a coincidence anymore. I think Aoko knew he would be there.

There is now an unexplained gap between when Roa was Elesia, and when he was SHIKI. In the original timeline, Elesia would have been born around 1975 and fully overwritten by Roa when she was 16, or at 1991. If Arcueid killed her quickly, Roa would have had to find a new host fast, and the incident with SHIKI happened in 1992, 8 years before the events of Tsukihime. No gap.

But now, Arcueid defeats the possessed Elesia in 2001, and the incident with SHIKI doesn't happen until 2006 (8 years before the events of the Tsukihime Remake in 2014). There's now a 5 year gap.

Now, Nasu might just be really bad at mathing out his timeline, but based on entirely no evidence whatsoever, I'm gonna say the 5 year gap between Roa's victims is intentional.

Roa had one more victim in between Elesia and SHIKI, which would be Shiki himself, way before Shiki would gain the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

Roa got confused. He meant to target Tohno SHIKI, heir to the powerful Tohno family, and instead got Tohno Shiki, their child slave whose family name got replaced. Roa goes wild inside a Nanaya's body, but ends up running into Aoko (who we know due to Melty Blood Type-Lumina that she has orders from the Clock Tower to defeat and interrogate Roa), who gives him the fuck you laser and incinerates Roa in an instant. Roa gets told by Dr Arach (who is obviously a fucking vampire) that he had the wrong Shiki all this time, while Aoko uses her bullshit to restore Shiki himself.

Unlike with Ciel, whose soul is now "Roa" and thus became immortal because she cannot die while Roa is still recognized by the World as alive, Aoko's method of reviving the dead doesn't heal them of death, she just magics all that shit away.

This makes Shiki avoid the magic loophole that Ciel gets trapped in, becoming an ordinary boy again with no vampiric connection (because Aoko made the whole incident never happen).

That distinction is important, because not dying when being killed is why Shiki has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception in the first place. He experienced death and his mind now comprehends its true nature. Aoko reviving him doesn't trigger it because like Alice says, Aoko doesn't revive the dead.

Akiha on the other hand, triggers it because Shiki was mortally wounded and his life can no longer move his body, instead relying on Akiha's life force to survive. This makes Shiki dead but functionally alive, manifesting the mystic eyes of death perception.

When Aoko heard that the little boy she unkilled somehow managed to die again just a little later only to reawaken at the hospital, she had to come and see him for herself, leading to that fateful meeting outside the hospital.

TL;DR - Mahoyo event spoils that Roa in the Remake timeline switches it up, possessing Shiki first before ever touching SHIKI, which Aoko deals with.

_____

I have zero proof about any of this by the way which is why it sounds like complete bullshit, because it is. I just saw an opportunity to post Tsukihime Remake speculation on a barely related topic and ran away with it.

BUT, consider this: I correctly predicted that in the Remake Arcueid route, Roa would see a skull staring at him when he finally realizes Shiki is "Death". I know what Nasu plans for Tsukihime, it is all revealed to me in my dreams.

#mahoyo

[poeticcannon]

I need to rant about the Fallout show

Because this is the person I am. Full spoilers, so I’m putting it behind a Keep Reading:

I’m a huge sucker for Fallout (yes even 3&4). And I went into the Fallout show with some… trepidation. Amazon has been a mixed bag on adaptations, we could have been blessed with a Good Omens, or cursed by a Rings of Power. But early buzz and reviews seemed positive, so I slammed the whole thing in one night with my spouse (we were staying at my in-laws house and they have Prime. Time was a factor.)

And y’know? I was really enjoying it! The characters were fun, the plot was engaging enough, and the costumes and visual design were extremely on point. There were some minor lore quibbles to be had: Ghouls needing some kind of medicine to not go feral. Really, more Enclave holdouts? Timeline and date whoopsies. Wait are they in California? Where the hell is the NCR?

I made a face at Shady Sands being bombed and the NCR collapsing. But I wasn’t completely out of the story. Based on what I had seen so far, I thought it was building to a reveal that the Brotherhood had done it. That the more zealous turn they took in Fallout 4, which has clearly carried to how they are portrayed in the show, lead them to bombing the NCR. War never changes, as they say. Maximus even says when asked what happened to Shady Sands: “The same thing that always happens.” Yeah, it leans into Bethesda’s weird desire to keep the Fallout world in a state of perpetual wastelands full of raiders and no civilization, but it wasn’t so terrible that I couldn’t still enjoy the show.

But then.

BUT THEN.

Episode 8, and the reveal of Vault-Tec apparently being the ones who dropped the first bomb in the Great War.

I was surprised to hear that some fans have apparently been debating over who fired first? Some even asked Tim Cain about it?

That’s really odd to me because, in the games, there is already a pretty definitive answer to which side sparked the Great War:

Who fucking cares?

The world ended. What does it matter who shot first?

There is no China, no United States, no communists or capitalists left to fight about it. 

It's a powerful little bit of lore.

For all the posturing, all the promises from each nation that their way is the true way, all the nationalism, the militarism, and blind loyalty to flags over humanity, they both lost. Everyone lost. All that remains of the ideologies and nations that were so important to the people of 2077 is faint echoes over vast expanses of radioactive ash.

Who started the end?

No one knows. No one cares.

It only matters that their conflict was so bitter, so all-consuming, that one of them dropped their bombs, and the other dropped theirs in return.

The truest legacy of the old world is the devastation left by their final, most horrific war.

Can we do better?

Then the show says "Nah, Vault-Tec did it. It's not a commentary on human nature and the futility of self-destructive conflict, it was actually these guys, these mustache twirling villains huddled in a darkened room literally plotting to end the whole world so they can rule what's left."

And I can see the attempt to make this a critique of capitalism. I actually paused the show to praise a bit of writing when Coop is talking with Charlie before the war, when Charlie tells him that the “cattle ranchers are in charge” to illustrate how capitalism and corporations hold too much sway over the government, it felt very in line with how in New Vegas one of the recurring critiques of the NCR is that all the real power is in the hands of the “brahmin barons.” Nice parallel, spot on!

But “we’ll set off total thermonuclear war so we can rule the ashes and have a True Monopoly” isn’t capitalism. It’s just dumb “we’re the baddies” writing.

And then Shady Sands was also Vault-Tec?! Forget any meaning in the NCR falling to the same corruption and/or factional fighting that consumed the old world, they were literally just bombed by the evil shadow conspiracy that apparently also killed the old world. Hank gives this speech about factions fighting and the futility of it all while we see the Brotherhood fighting Moldaver’s NCR remnant, and like, no! You can’t say that when you’ve made it so neither the old world or the NCR fell to war with another faction! It was you! You and your band of cryogenic supervillains!

I don't care that they changed it. Timelines and dates and little retcons don’t bother me all that much. I care that they changed it to something so much worse.

#fallout show

[poeticcannon]

Princess & the Pawn (Full Comic) An ActiRanger Adventure!

(Bonus page and additional info after the jump)

More info about the ActiRangers/Gambit Gang here and here. Be aware that most of my Actiranger stuff is Adult themed and NSFW!

#actirangers #reminder the blog has sexy stuff