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sungbeam · 1 year

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𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐖 — 01

part one: heaven only knows where you've been

nonidol!lee sangyeon x fem!reader

2.1k words, est. relationship au, fluff, romance, swear words, low-key just ooey-gooey, proposal au; sangyeon knows that you're the one, and he's ready to run headfirst into forever with you.

a/n: this was supposed to be a full oneshot LMAO but i'm trying to see if people like it enough for me to continue (_ _;) the motivation has been very low lately y'all

IT was the summer after his senior year of university that Lee Sangyeon knew he was going to marry you.

He was among the few out of your big group of mutual friends to graduate this year, and instead of a high school-esque grad party, all of you decided to book rooms at one of the fancy ass hotels downtown and live like royalty for a weekend.

It had been in the maknaes' room that everyone gathered round to play a game of One Night Werewolf, armchairs and desk chairs and pillows dragged over toward the couch in the living room of their suite. Jacob's phone sat in the center of the glass coffee table, silenced now that the round had ended in an explosion of disbelief.

"NOOOOO!"

"I knew it! I fucking knew it—"

"I cannot believe she pulled a Chanhee."

All of the commotion was directed toward you, who sat innocently on the couch, squeezed between Jacob's and Younghoon's partners. Your cheeks were flushed and your skin glowed with a beautiful, warm flush, your grin lighting up the room. Victory sang loudly in your eyes, and goddamn, if Sangyeon didn't find you so alluringly attractive even if you just fooled the entire group to win the game.

You could only shrug, fiddling with your Tanner card. Even your inherent modesty couldn't suppress the smile on your face. You tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. "Look, you guys know I can't lie to save my life," you said, "so this one's on you for just assuming I was a werewolf."

Sunwoo and Eric grumbled their reluctant agreement, followed by everyone else.

Sangyeon didn't know what it was about you tonight—or rather, you every night, every minute of every day—but if he could spend the rest of his life chasing that beautiful smile, then he could die a happy man. There was something so attractive about the simple, yet genius way you knew how to manipulate your own weaknesses into a strength, to wield it like a blade. It was effortless.

Changmin was groaning again, bickering back and forth with Chanhee about "influencing your tactic", mainly because Chanhee had committed a similar act to you in the very first round (except, Chanhee was actually a very skilled liar, unlike you). Somebody was going around collecting everyone's cards to shuffle up and start up a new game, and in the midst of all the madness, you felt a pair of eyes on you.

You turned your head, mid-laugh, and met Sangyeon's pair of shining crescent moons. Your posture and gaze softened, but your smile widened. It had been three years (and counting) since he first asked you out, since he asked you to be his. He'd been relatively quiet this round, and so you mouthed to him with your head tilted to the side, 'Everything okay?'

A smile pressed into his cheeks. 'Everything's perfect.'

It wasn't until two years later that Sangyeon announced to Jacob and Kevin that he was going to propose. The three of them had been hanging out at Kevin's place watching a baseball game on TV, their bodies lounging on recliners with drinks in their hands.

Kevin fell completely out of his chair at the news, while Jacob's eyes went comically wide. "FINALLY!" Kevin squawked from the floor, grunting as he hauled himself back up into his chair while massaging his sore backside with a grimace.

Sangyeon raised his eyebrows, reaching up to cup the back of his neck. "What's that supposed to mean?" He laughed nervously. Had you said something to Kevin before?

Kevin deadpanned at him. "Dude, respectfully, if you weren't going to wife her up anytime soon, I was gonna do it for you!"

Sangyeon's mouth opened to retort, quite furiously, he might add—but Jacob wisely put both his hands up to physically step in for damage control.

"What he meant to say," Jacob said with a pointed look at a sheepish Kevin, "was that we are very happy for you, hyung. When's it happening?"

Ah. Well… Sangyeon winced to himself, knocking back a bit of alcohol. "Okay, I don't have all the details worked out—"

Kevin slapped his hand to his forehead. "You don't even have the ring, do you?"

"No—"

Even Jacob covered his mouth. "He doesn't even have the ring."

With a melodramatic whimper, Kevin shook with a feigned sob. "If you liked it, then you should've put a ring on it."

Sangyeon sighed, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. To be honest, he thought telling Jacob and Kevin first was the smart choice, but then again, if he went to any of his friends and told them that he didn't have the ring yet, then he'd receive reactions similar to this one. Even if he went to their partners, he might get smacked around. It was simply the fate of being the eldest.

Moreover, he had only just decided he was going to propose to you. You graduated a year after him, and now you both had stable jobs. The two of you had moved in together awhile ago, but it was only at this very moment that Sangyeon let his mind wander to the "next step". Coming home to you every evening and waking up to you every morning had become his status quo, one that he was infinitely blessed with. He couldn't imagine starting and ending his days with anyone else, and perhaps both you and him had been so busy lately that neither of you could really sit down and talk about beyond.

Sure, the topic of marriage and kids had come up at some point. Sangyeon had even seen a glimpse of your wedding Pinterest board once, and you even knew the exact way he wanted to renovate your future home together. And two kids—you both wanted two kids and a dog.

Okay, so maybe the topic hadn't just come up. But it was about time that the ball kept rolling, no matter how much Sangyeon wanted to take his time with you. A part of him couldn't wait to get to 'forever' with you. No, all of him couldn't wait, not anymore.

The next day, Sangyeon went ring shopping with Kevin and Jacob in tow. Both of the latter's partners were also told to be close to their phones to give their opinions on each design choice.

Sangyeon had never thought about the ring. There were vague options that cycled through each imagined proposal concocted in his head, but none of them had stuck. It had to be perfect, though, that was all he knew and the very thing stuck at the front of his brain as he and his friends hopped from jeweler to jeweler.

Three hours, six shops, and two iced Americanos (each) later, Sangyeon hunched over a case of diamond-topped white gold bands. He wasn't very optimistic at this point, and even Jacob and Kevin had wandered over to a different section of the store to try on bracelets.

Sangyeon's eyes swept over the vast sea of sparkling jewels, each more radiant than the last. They were all either too expensive, too cheesy, or just not the one. There was also the option of going with a rock that wasn't diamond, but Sangyeon always drew himself toward the diamond section, unwilling to look anywhere else.

From his pants pocket, his phone buzzed the familiar ringtone he had set for your specific call. He dragged a hand down his face, but he couldn't help the soft, happy sigh from his mouth as he picked up. "Hey, baby. What's up?"

He nestled his phone between his ear and shoulder as he continued to judge the rows of rings in the case below.

"Love, I'm picking up dinner!" Your voice came out in sharp, strained huffs as if you were running and trying to catch your breath. "Almost missed… almost missed the train! Whoo—holy shit, I'm out of shape," you hissed.

Sangyeon chuckled when he heard you curse again and yell at someone to hold the door for you. Only when you were safely on and vocally announced that you had your butt in a seat, did he reply. "Glad you made it."

"Me too," you panted. "This is why I don't go to the gym; this is so embarrassing."

"I thought you don't go to the gym because you'd just stare at me the whole time," he teased, the corner of his lips lifting into a smirk.

You stammered on the other end of the line. "You're—you can't just say that to me in public."

He laughed a little more at that, eyes flickering around him to make sure no one was giving him a glare in the quiet shop. His attention swiftly went back to the jewel case with his eyebrows creased together. This time, however, his eyes caught the glint of one ring in particular. It was one of the many diamonds seated upon white gold bands, but this one was cut in a marquise style: a slim oval at the center with smaller diamonds branching out to create a sort of floral shape around it. There was something so simple, yet elegant about its look.

Sangyeon felt his heart leap in his chest. This one. This was the one.

"—Sangyeon? Honey, you there?"

He cleared his throat, his eyes searching the store for a sales clerk and curling his fingers toward him to signal him to come over. From the corner of his eyes, he spied Jacob and Kevin catch on and begin to make their way over, too. "Yea—yeah," he grappled, "sorry, babe, thought I saw something. What were you saying?"

He licked his lips, straightening, and grabbing the phone with his non-dominant hand so he could point out the ring to the three others surrounding him.

Jacob and Kevin could hardly contain their squeals as they grinned at each other, their hands slamming together so they could grab each other and shake the other's body.

"Oh, uh, nothing. You were just quiet for a bit… where are you, by the way? Should I wait to get dinner?"

Sangyeon mouthed, 'This one' to the sales clerk, furiously jabbing his pointer finger down at the glass case. "Uh," he winced, palm coming to his forehead as he racked his brain for a sensible answer, "I'm out with Kev and Cobie right now, but I'll be home in time for dinner. I'm okay with anything you're craving."

The sales clerk quietly retrieved the ring from the glass case, the diamonds glinting like rainbows in the shop's lighting. Sangyeon's eyes went wide as he gently took the ring in his fingers and inspected the piece.

It was gorgeous. Holy shit.

"Kev and Cobie?" You parroted. "Oh, say hi to them for me! And I'll just grab something from the Thai place down the street."

"Sounds great, baby." Sangyeon bit down hard on his lower lip as he broke into a wide, almost hysterical grin. He mouthed to the jeweler your ring size, a number he had memorized for an embarrassingly long time now. After handing the ring back over, he turned slightly away from everyone so he could finally focus on you. "Sorry, I've been a little distracted, but did you have a good day?"

He could hear the sounds of the train's robotic lady voice announcing the stop for home. Shuffling from your end, then, "That's okay," you chirped, your voice growing soft as you walked further away from hustle and bustle, and closer to the quieter street your apartment complex was on. "I know you were probably busy when I called. My day was okay, but I just—" you sighed as a door thumped closed, "—I'm just happy to be home now. Can't wait to see you."

Sangyeon could feel the tug in his chest, as if the connection between you two was pulling him, urging him home to you. "Can't wait to see you, too, Yn," he replied softly. He knocked his knuckles against one of the glass cases. "Tell you what? If you place the order, I'll just pick the food up on my way home, how's that sound? You should just rest, love."

There was another door slam on your end. "I love you," you breathed in relief.

His heart sputtered in his chest, a small laugh falling from his lips. "You know I love you more."

He could hear the smile in your voice. "This isn't a competition, Mr. Lee."

"Who said I'd ever want to compete with you?" He mused. "But just so you know, I do love you the most."

tbz m.list | possible part two?

permanent taglist: @crazywittysassy @seomisaho @stopeatread @enhacolor @rnjfy @jaehunnyy @kpopjackie @spiderrenjunfics @soobin-chois @stayarmytinyzenmoa-l @mingiholic @ja4hyvn @vatterie @yogurteume @hyunjaespresent-deobi @justalildumpling @hongyangi @pxppxrmint @nerdypastacalzonespy @jcmdoll @zhaixiaowen @wtfhyuck @winterchimez @sodafy @fluorescentloves @tinkerbell460 @kflixnet

#kflixnet #deoboyznet #the boyz x reader #lee sangyeon x reader #sangyeon x reader #the boyz drabble #the boyz oneshots #the boyz imagines #the boyz fluff #the boyz scenarios #the boyz fanfic #lee sangyeon oneshots #lee sangyeon imagines #lee sangyeon drabbles #lee sangyeon fluff

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morally-grey-girlbosses · 10 months

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The top two characters will be eligible to proceed into the bracket!

Propaganda under the cut.

Dahlia Hawthorne:

did a lot of murders and poisonings but they deserved it imo so she’s ok

She has committed so many crimes. And in an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place on Barbie at that. She’s the DEFINITION of girlboss, and she can poison me any time.

Aura Blackquill:

her brother got framed for the murder of her wife and she became bitter and evil because of it. this led to her holding an entire space center full of people hostage to get him a retrial

So she may have a robot army to take a couple people hostage, and blamed an 11 year old child for killing their own mom (who was her work partner and maybe sort of girlfriend), but in her defense her brother was about to be executed for a murder he did not commit and there was definitely some evidence that pointed towards the 11 year old being the culprit. So what else was she supposed to do? Just sit by while another important person to her is taken away and the real killer gets to go free? She tried to do things right and go through the police but that didn't work, and sometimes when you run out of options and run out of time you have to use unconventional methods. And in the end it worked and the execution was cancelled and the real killer was found (it wasn't actually the 11 year old child, now 18, but that's beside the point), so in the end things were ultimately better as a result of her actions so you can't exactly say she shouldn't have done it. So she did some things wrong but they are also understandable. I don't think she's a bad person deep down, she just got screwed over by the broken justice system.

Kidnapped a bunch of people but it was like. So the courts would do a retrial for her brother because she believed he was innocent (he was) a day before his execution, and so who she believed the true killer was (she wasn't) would take his place (she didn't) Also a lesbian <3

Franziska von Karma was submitted without propaganda, but I know AA well enough to attempt to write my own. She is obsessed with the idea of crafting the "perfect case" and goes so far as to hide evidence, manipulate witnesses, and also physically assault everyone with a whip in order to achieve it. However she was only doing it to avenge her adopted brother and at the end of the game she comes around and ends up delivering the crucial piece of evidence to save the protagonist's assistant from being killed by an assassin.

Dee Vasquez was submitted without propaganda. My attempt: She has ties to the yakuza and blackmailed one of the actors at her studio into basically being a slave to her. When he gets fed up and ends up trying to kill her she kills him in self-defense, making her one of the few "true culprits" in the series who would actually be found not guilty in an IRL court of law.

Ini/Mimi Miney was submitted without propaganda. My attempt: She was overworked to the point that she accidentally killed about a dozen people by switching their meds while sleep-deprived, then felt so bad about it that she got into a car crash, stole her sister's identity, and pretended she was dead for years. Then she killed a guy because she was worried about him revealing her secret.

Jezaille Brett / Assa Shinn:

prime example of god forbid women do anything. like cmon she just killed a bunch of people and left no trail behind so masterfully she up and haunted the entire goddamn narrative. her name is mentioned in secret messages in streets in papers in fear in mystery and we don't know her motivations still; why does she do what she does we do not know, and will never find out. fucking girlboss she's there for one case then the next we see her she's dead. what is up with this woman and why is she so important despite not seeming so ever.

Olive Green:

She qualifies as after her fiancé died from gas inhalation, she had questions about his death and suspected one of his fellow tenants to have murdered him rather than it being an accident. She consequently attempted to murder him. She rocks because we have to stan a vengeful woman!!!!!

Iris Hawthorne / Sister Iris Hazakurain / Sister Iris of Hazakura Temple:

well she’s more morally ambiguous than her sister!!!! she covered up a lot of crimes and lied about her identity to her (long series of hand gestures to indicate how complicated the boyfriend status is) Sorta Boyfriend for. like nine months i think. and she would have gotten away with it too if not for her co-conspirators fucking everything up

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scarletswarmhktheorizer · 8 months

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The Moth, The Wyrm and The Centipede

The Higher Beings in Scarlet Swarm.

Most events in Hollow Knight can be traced back to the actions of a higher being. The Pale King created the vessels. The moth tribe and the infection were born from the Radiance. And the mission goal of the Grimm Troupe centers around the Nightmare Heart (NH).

This is also true for the Scarlet Swarm AU. Though things a slightly rearranged but more personality and motive is put on the 3 central higher beings in this universe. This includes: The Radiance, The Pale King (PK) and The Nightmare Heart (NH).

The Pale King is currently the least developed higher being on the list, or we have yet to know more about him yet. In Scarlet Swarm the Pale King more serves as a narrative tool, as opposition to Grimm and to create the main vessel characters: Vestige and Fervid (Ardentia). His main motive - much like in the original game - is to keep his kingdom standing. Though in this timeline is to save it from the destruction of Grimm instead of preserving it away from the Radiance. We have yet to know his association with the Radiance and NH in this timeline.

The Radiance is the most disconnected from the Scarlet Swarm story so far. Or at least we don't know her purpose yet. Though she seems relevant as she possesses her own page on the Scarlet Swarm wiki - though we don't have a design for her just yet. Just like (assumingly) in the main game, The Radiance is the God of Dreams and is in full control of her domain, the Dream Realm. She can also enter the Nightmare Realm, though seems to avoid that as much as possible (The Nightmare Realm seems to be an entirely separate Realm in which the Radiance has no influence). In terms of personality she is described as “strong and arrogant”.

We question if the Radiance is going to be involved at all in Scarlet Swarm. At present does not seem to be involved in the war between Hallownest and Grimm. Though she may still hold grudges against the Pale King (and passive dislike of NH). We have no evidence to prove otherwise that the event of the Pale King convincing the Moth Tribe to leave the Radiance from the original game didn't happen in Scarlet Swarm. This can suggest the Radiance could still have negative intentions or a grudge against the King of Hallownest. Maybe she may even not provide assistance to the King when Grimm comes along to start a war or she may even help Grimm destroy the kingdom. However, this would put her old people in danger and at risk. And in addition to that the Radiance seems to dislike the Nightmare Realm and avoids it, suggesting that maybe she could not work with Grimm.

The Nightmare Heart is the centre point of the Grimm Troupe’s life. The heart is at the centre of it all (excuse our pun, very much intended). Though it may not be fully the case. From the wiki, we learn that the Nightmare Heart is actually quite a passive deity and doesn't fully approve of Grimm’s violent misdeeds. However, they make no effort to correct the behaviour due to indifference or maybe lack the power to do so. The Nightmare Heart is the other side of the coin from the Radiance, sporting an opposite personality: “humble and quite disposition” which is said to “clash” with the Radiance’s “strong and arrogant personality”. But no conflict seems to be created by the two gods of sleep and they seem to passively avoid confrontation with each other. It seems the Nightmare Heart Will also not be majorly involved in the conflict between Grimm and the Pale King due to how indifferent they seem to act with Grimm’s pillaging. Though the Radiance could be a bridge between the Pale King and the Nightmare Heart for communication during this scuffle or even Vagrant as we have speculated before could be a pale being much like PK. Perhaps multiple attempts were made by the Pale King to contact the Nightmare Heart to stop Grimm’s War on his kingdom.

#hk scsw #hollow knight #hollow knight au #hk scsw theory #hollow knight scarlet swarm

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funyarinqa · 2 years

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ive cracked the code of what type of characters i like

mafuyu and sora are closer loners than they are manipulative because its like, their driving force? mafuyu feels like she has to lie in order for her parents to love her, making her feel like no one would love who she truly is, which is someone she herself doesnt even know. sora manipulates a lot of characters throughout the series, but he does so because he wants to win the game in a world where he feels like he can thrive in,unlike his previous world where unwritten rules led to him and his sister becoming ostracized to the point they became shut-in NEETS

while izaya and ayanokoji are closer to manipulative than loner because its how they deal with any problem first, ayanokoji manipulates everyone around him for the sake of obtaining freedom, all while not knowing how to genuinely connect with other people while izaya manipulates people in an effort to protect his heart all while finding doing so very fun, leading other people to see him as trash.

light, kei, and akechi are all in the center but are closer to what i think motivates them more, kei for being alone, akechi for anger, and light for manipulation. since kei’s desire is to be alone so no one can hurt him again, akechi does everything he did for the sake of revenge, and light sees peoples lives as something he can easily discard for the sake of his justice

belial and akane are solely in manipulation because anger and loneliness arent things that they really have/are affected by- akane is alone, but shes not lonely because she only cares about her goals, she was the one who abandoned aoi and junpei for her plans to save humanity and she is very comfortable with lying to other people something she did during all of 999. belial manipulates for the sake of lucilius’s goals since he loves him, but doesnt do so out of anger or a feeling of loneliness

hakuryuu and frank are just in anger because while hakuryuu uses a djiin to brainwash people, he himself isnt skilled at manipulating people even though hes tried in the past, while frank is someone whose very aggressive he isnt known for manipulation either- hes more of a stab first ask questions later kinda guy neither of them are lonely because although earlier in their stories they were loners - hakuryuu has judar, and frank has the rest of legion

char, dabi, and ramuda are angry and manipulative- char and dabi willing to sarcfice the people around them for their revenge, and ramuda is someone who conceals his true nature and is actually very aggressive when he's himself

vanitas and felix are angry and loners- felix is someone who doesnt open up to his childhood friends and isolates himself, and vanitas is someone who never had anyone in the first place during his entire "existence" and was just treated as a weapon

and eugeo is eugeo

#matu mutters #im not gonna tag the charas/series bc i did this out of fun and dont wanna clog up their tags since large fandom posts where my fave is #tagged annoys the hell outta me

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star-going-supernova · 3 years

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So. Madison Russell. Godzilla vs Kong. Welcome to my ted talk.

From a writing perspective, they totally wasted her character. She, Josh, and Bernie were almost exclusively used just as a method of showing the audience what was happening "behind the scenes" at Apex. Pouring the whiskey on the computer was about the only thing of note they did, and even that didn't do much. Mechagodzilla was only slightly hindered by it, and if they'd just written Kong and Godzilla differently in the fight scene, they could have skipped the whiskey part entirely. They could have done so much with having people "on the inside" but Monarch as a greater organization barely had any presence at all, which negated the need to have people on the inside.

Maddie's steadfast insistence that Godzilla wasn't a bad guy at the beginning had so much potential, but it became the conspiracy thing instead. It felt less like she wanted to prove Godzilla wasn't turning against humans, and more like she and her new conspiracy friend wanted to crack open a shady organization, which was frustrating. If they wanted to depict her as someone who was forced to become competent at a young age, which was part of the serious, intense vibe I got from her, instead of the inexplicable personality shift, they should have showed her doing something to help. Getting in contact with her dad/Monarch, giving them evidence to begin a city wide evacuation outside the Apex Hong Kong HQ, messing something up or making it harder for the Apex people to get Mechagodzilla up and running—just, anything.

The fact is, we had Maddie being very proactive in KotM. Stealing the ORCA was the game changer. Instead of taking that to the next level in GvK and giving her an opportunity to continue that aspect of her character—that is, being someone who refuses to sit by when she can do something to help, even if it’s dangerous—they rendered her obsolete.

The movie wouldn't have significantly changed if you took her character out. If Bernie went by himself and ended up in Hong Kong, nothing would have changed, because Maddie didn't do anything of personal importance. She went from being an active character in KotM to being a passive one here, which are a pet peeve of mine. If you saw my post about what I liked and didn’t like about Godzilla (2014), that might sound very familiar.

It would also have made so much more sense if she developed a love for studying Titans instead of focusing on conspiracy theories. Plot-wise, it would have given her claim to her dad that Godzilla was being provoked more credence, and could’ve opened an interesting dialogue between them to reinforce that she knows what she’s talking about. Monarch was obviously still a big part of their lives, given that Mark had rejoined, so it would’ve been the perfect opportunity for Maddie to pursue a Titan-related future.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved Jia, and wouldn’t want to take her out of the movie or even diminish her presence in it. In fact, I think they should have focused on Jia, and only on Jia.

Hear me out: Godzilla vs Kong should’ve been split in two. A Part 1 and Part 2 situation.

For Part 1, we keep a lot of the GvK canon, especially the Kong-centric stuff. Include even more scenes showing us that he’s protective of Jia, don’t just have Dr. Andrews say that he is. Have him defend her from something dangerous, maybe even from some humans. Include their backstory, how he saved her during the storm. And start it even earlier, before Godzilla attacks Apex the first time. Keep the whole Hollow Earth plot, keep the fight scene in the ocean, keep the discovery of the temple and the axe.

And on the Godzilla side of things, start earlier on that as well. Keep the other Titans in, have humanity tentatively believing that a time of great peace is upon them. Their mere presence is restoring the planet. There was an emphasis of nature, particularly in relation to the Titans, in KotM that I really think they should have included more of in GvK to better tie the two movies together, if only they hadn’t swept all the other Titans under the rug. They wanted a movie about a fight, not about the Titans. So, undo that. Show us a little of what Mark does, do a sweep of the other KotM cast (cameos at the very least) to show how they and Monarch are working to uphold that peace post-Boston. I’d also have loved to see Boston itself, too, five years later.

Instead of giving us a Generic High School scene, show Maddie learning about the Titans alongside the experts. Bring back the wonder and amazement she had when she saw Mothra for the first time, when she reached out and touched her. She’s second generation Monarch, make that mean something. When Maddie took the ORCA to Boston, she had a conviction. She couldn’t not have. She was there in part to lure Ghidorah in, but I can’t even pretend to believe her plan ended with that. She knew Godzilla would come.

That sort of belief is hard to kill, and if death via Ghidorah wasn’t enough to scare her off, no way anything else in those five years afterwards did. Her belief that Godzilla is good survived to GvK, and should’ve been a main focal point of her character. Godzilla attacks Apex—she and every other Monarch person who has spent years studying the Titans knows something is up.

Keep Mark’s character development regarding his opinions on Godzilla. He believes Maddie when she says something has to be wrong, not just because he trusts his daughter, but because he looked into Godzilla’s eyes and saw more than just an animal.

They’re in Part 1 only minimally, just to establish their presence and how they feel about Godzilla destroying Apex. The focus is clearly on Jia and Kong’s side of events.

Sorry, but I’m leaving Josh out and seriously dialing back Bernie’s role. Instead, the character we follow inside Apex is Ren Serizawa. We see his motivations, his ambitions, and he becomes a character with more than just a few lines. Does he resent Godzilla? Or does he resent his father, too? Serizawa’s sacrifice was willing, after all. He was no accidental casualty.

Part 1 ends in the Hollow Earth, with Ghidorah taking control of Mechagodzilla on the surface. Alter the timeline just enough so that Godzilla has only just arrived to Hong Kong, and Kong’s still in the Hollow Earth. The final scene is Mechagodzilla emerging into the city as the sun rises. The post-credits scene is our KotM cast in the Argo, location unknown, watching a screen with Mechagodzilla on it.

Part 2 begins with a reveal: Ren Serizawa isn’t dead.

Backtrack. This part focuses more on the Godzilla side, and Monarch. It’ll have flashback scenes from the five years between KotM and now, showing exactly why Monarch as a whole firmly believes Godzilla is reacting to something instead of being anti-human all of a sudden. The Titans are not inherently malicious; destruction is a side effect of their size, no more, no less. He earned his title of King in KotM—make it mean more than just trying to make Kong “bow.” Make him a protector, a guardian. He’s nature’s balance. By definition, he must protect humans as well.

What Monarch needs to figure out is this: what is he trying to protect them from?

They investigate Apex in search of the answer, but knowing from past experience the sort of things Godzilla gets proactive about—the MUTOs, Ghidorah—Monarch mobilizes. They prepare for another fight, at Mark’s instructions. He witnessed both San Francisco and Boston firsthand, even if the former was from a civilian standpoint.

Godzilla has more hunt scenes. He targets a second Apex lab after his ocean fight with Kong, telling Monarch that they’re on the right track.

Maddie, being a minor and not dragged into the thick of things (yet), has to stay home. Remembering the podcast she sometimes listened to, when the topic was focused on the Titans, she tracks Bernie down, and he tells her about what he saw: the eye.

The two of them go to the ruined Apex building and discover the eye is gone before getting caught. With Monarch currently breathing down their necks, they recognize Maddie to be Mark’s daughter and take her to Hong Kong. Sorry, Bernie, but that’s mostly as far as you’re involved. Timeline-wise, this is roughly when Kong puts the axe in the temple floor and Godzilla blasts a hole to the center of the earth. Monarch is following Godzilla, but they’re behind a bit thanks to the tunnel shortcuts. They’re still unaware that Maddie has been kidnapped and is en route to Hong Kong.

This is also when Mechagodzilla gains a life of its own. Walter Simmons is killed and Ren Serizawa becomes trapped in the link to Mechagodzilla, serving as the bridge between the robot and Ghidorah’s mind. Ghidorah is essentially controlling MG by controlling Ren, who is controlling MG. Make sense? He’s the puppeteer’s puppeteer.

We reverse some things. Godzilla fights MG first, gets beat around but not as much as in GvK because he isn’t fresh out of a different fight. Kong returns to the surface through the tunnel Godzilla created, having carried the one remaining HEAV out himself, because Nathan Lind has never flown one before and doesn’t know how they work. Kong wants to protect Jia, and Ilene Andrews and Nathan Lind are very lucky that Jia likes them.

Mechagodzilla sees Kong and takes off, and Kong decides now would be a great time to fight Godzilla, who’s having a pretty bad day. Monarch arrives, and half of them split off to follow MG while the rest stay to try and deescalate the situation. Other than Godzilla faring slightly less well, the fight goes mostly the same as in the movie, except for one big difference: one of the Monarch crafts pick up Jia and Co, and she’s able to get Kong’s attention from the back of an Osprey well enough to tell him to stop fighting. There’s a bigger threat out there, and Godzilla definitely needs to be okay enough to fight it. Either they work together, or they reschedule.

She’s very stern about it, and though no one’s really sure what the two Titans decide on, they stop fighting. They leave together to go after Mechagodzilla, who is currently being slowed down by Mothra, because she deserves to be in this movie. The other Titans basically hinder Mechagodzilla as much as possible as it rampages, telling Godzilla where it is. Monarch finally figures out that it’s heading for the nearest entrance to the Hollow Earth, right around when they also figure out that Ghidorah is involved. With Dr. Andrews and Nathan Lind’s input, they theorize it intends to take more of the power source down there to further strengthen it.

They do their best to clear the cities in its path, evacuating as many people as possible. It’s all they can do. As in the past, they must trust Godzilla to do the heavy lifting. Around the same time, an assistant tells Mark that some guy named Bernie called and is asking for him. This is how he finds out Maddie was taken to Apex’s Hong Kong location.

Meanwhile, the Apex guards and Maddie finally arrive to find the facility abandoned and damaged, MG gone, and Simmons dead. The guards more or less split, leaving her there alone. Maddie, being Maddie, goes deeper until she finally discovers Ghidorah’s skull and Ren Serizawa inside, trapped in his own head with Ghidorah. It’s killing him.

He’s aware enough to have a conversation with her. They argue about the Titans. He wants Godzilla destroyed out of anger over his father’s preference for Titans, rather than his own son.

(“You’re not the only one with ghosts!” she yells at him. “You’re not the only one who resents a parent for putting Titans ahead of you when you needed them!” He chokes out, “I do not resent my father—” “Coulda fooled me. Why else would you be spitting on his sacrifice like this? Who are you trying to help, huh? All the other kids out there who are losing their moms and dads because you let Ghidorah out? Sorry, mister, but the last time someone did that, your dad paid the price.”)

Ren is getting worse. He’s going to die if he stays in the link much longer, but he can’t disconnect. Maddie, looking around, gets to work on something. The camera slowly pans around to show that there’s a second pilot seat, back-to-back with Ren’s. It would allow for seamless switching between pilots without MG ever not having someone at the controls.

Even with the other Titans’ help, Godzilla and Kong are unable to stop MG from going through the tunnel and into the Hollow Earth. Monarch is unable to follow, because of the gravity issue. They’re both tired from the journey and their fight, especially Godzilla. This is their last chance. If Mechagodzilla reaches the power source, it’s all over.

The fight doesn’t go in their favor. They’re both bad at working together, so their attacks are uncoordinated at best, actively hindering each other at worst. Kong gets flung off a mountain and MG pins Godzilla. Even thought he caught himself, Kong isn’t going to make it up in time to help him.

Maddie puts on an identical pilot setup, and with Ren’s instructions, switches the link over to herself, freeing Ren. He collapses forward, immediately falling unconscious from the release of the strain. Fighting past the pain and overwhelming presence suddenly in her head, Maddie does what she does best: she causes Ghidorah problems.

She screams, and it echoes like a roar through his skull.

In the Hollow Earth, Mechagodzilla stumbles.

It’s the beginning of the end. She can’t control it or even really stop Ghidorah, but she gets in his way as much as possible, giving Godzilla and Kong the edge they need to finally get their act together and use some teamwork to take Mechagodzilla down. They destroy it and return to the surface before parting on amicable terms.

After too long, Mark arrives at Apex with a whole team of people. Ren Serizawa is found comatose but alive, and he’s quickly removed for medical attention. Though Maddie’s also alive, there’s something else clearly wrong. She’s still wired into the piloting gear, stiff and unseeing, as if she’s frozen. Her eyes are open but distant, pupils virtually gone from how constricted they are, and her jaw hangs open slightly. Despite how tense her body is, she’s limp. Nothing they do wakes her up, even after getting her out of the skull.

They wheel her out on a gurney to where a handful of Ospreys landed, but as they leave the building and step out onto the roof, they find Godzilla has returned. He watches them, and he’s exactly as aware as Mark remembers.

(“She tried to help you,” Mark calls out to him. No one knows exactly what happened in the Hollow Earth, during the fight, but the scene in Ghidorah’s skull was telling. “No, she—she did help you!” For the second time in her life, Maddie put herself in Ghidorah’s path and, ultimately, won. Only this time, her victory came with a price.)

Godzilla snorts before leaning over the roof’s railing, moving toward the gurney. The humans all back away, even Mark, though he doesn’t go far. Spines humming, eyes flaring blue, Godzilla rumbles deeply.

On the gurney, Maddie stirs.

Later, much later, after Maddie and Jia have met—heaven help everyone else, honestly—they sit together on the edge of a pier over the ocean, Jia leaning comfortably against Maddie. It’s quiet. They’re alone, watching the sunset. A heavy footfall behind them, the feel of the vibration trembling through the wood, makes them turn around. Half concealed in the brush at the edge of the island’s foliage, Kong stands, facing them.

They both wave before standing. They sign goodbye to each other, then part ways. As Maddie walks away to a waiting Osprey, we see behind her as Kong crouches to allow Jia to climb into his palm before vanishing into the forest.

The Osprey takes off over the calm ocean. It has a different design than most, with a large door set in the side instead of at the back, more like an ordinary helicopter. It’s open as they go, Maddie secure inside as she stares out. A smile spreads across her face as jagged spines slowly breach the ocean’s surface, easily keeping pace with the Osprey, which lowers to be closer to the water.

For just a moment, in the fading light, Maddie’s eyes almost shine blue. The screen goes black to the sound of Godzilla’s roar.

#GvK Spoilers #whoops this got long #long post #Star's Stories #kinda #Star's Thoughts about Stuff #life and times of star

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fightabear · 3 years

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so some time ago, someone asked me to do meta about a scene in Injustice and i wanted to revisit that scene with the scene from Year Zero in mind. and then i ended up getting deeply into injustice damian, his relationship with his two awful dads, and it’s kind of a mini character essay?

so! here’s a warning for: tyrannical totalitariam regimes, child abuse, abusive fathers, emotional manipulation, evil superman, character death & also random he-man. please note that this is entirely about injustice and its characters, which are not a reflection on their mainstream counterparts.

there’s tension between damian and bruce from the get-go in injustice, and we’re never really told why. if we take cues from the game (though that entire scene doesn’t make sense) then it’s because bruce didn’t save jason, which fits in with my reordered robin theory in which tim and jason were switched, and jason has only recently died.

now, we don’t know whether jason is running around as red hood right now or not. but i’m inclined to say he isn’t, as his injustice 2 ending makes a big deal of him becoming red hood. and damian is close with jason in injustice 2, close enough that jason listens when damian tells him that he’s a lot more than bruce thinks he is and drops the shitty batman costume. close enough that during the (extremely weird, extremely out of alignment with the comic) scene in injustice 2 where damian betrays bruce for clark, jason is the name damian throws at him with the most vehemence. regardless of the robin ordeer, bruce’s failure to save jason is seems to be an incredibly sore point between them.

so it’s interesting that bruce is already counting damian out before injustice even starts. he’s comparing damian to jason - someone who he apparently no longer considers part of his legacy.

the kicker is: damian in injustice is actually probably the most morally centered version of himself. he shows open compassion and care for other people more often than he does in most of the mainstream runs. damian’s sense of right and wrong is solid, but what he wants is to break the cycle that gotham is trapped in. which from his perspective, is something bruce doesn’t seem to want to do.

injustice’s version of bruce is someone who truly believes that the ends justify the means - which means he’s apt to do some heinous things to people until they see his side of things. he seems to view people questioning as an act of betrayal, so instead of ever explaining himself he resorts to things like installing viruses in cyborg, kidnapping hawkgirl and replacing her, beating allies within an inch of their life - all of it is fine to him so long as they’re not dead.

but it’s not fine to damian. damian is constantly horrified at the lengths bruce will go to.

damian is afraid of his father.

so, this is about a specific scene. let’s get to that scene. its just important to note the difference between them, and emphasize that he’s not going with any intent to fight. if he was going to do that, he wouldn’t be doing this:

or respond like this:

or this:

he’s there to make amends, or at least try to. he still loves his father and he wants to be forgiven, and this is something that will carry on ten years later in injustice 2. damian made the choice to oppose bruce’s controlling nature but damian didn’t choose to abandon him and the bat family permanently. that choice was made for him. damian wants to come home.

and he’s terrified of his father. i cannot stress that enough. bruce at this point has already shown that he knows how to hurt his closest friends if they oppose him.

damian is a highly trained fighter, but he’s also a thirteen year old boy who knows he can’t overpower a man twice his size and weight.

and bruce?

bruce’s entire argument really hinges on ‘you, my thirteen year old son, didn’t take my side in this argument’. because, i have to put this in bold, the league was not executing the criminals they were removing from arkham. they were just transferring them to a more secure facility. something which is actually sorely needed, especially given what has just happened to metropolis. arkham isn’t fit to house them. and as far as damian sees it, bruce doesn’t like it because it’s removing an element of his control.

now, bruce isn’t wrong about how things will escalate.

but damian’s not wrong about his motivation here. i think there’s a conversation to be had about how bruce’s methods in trying to stop the regime actually drove it to further and further extremes. bruce never tries to talk to clark - or anyone, really. he just starts playing mind games to make them do what he wants.

it harkens back to the conversation bruce and dick have in the batplane. that bruce doesn’t talk to people, he doesn’t explain himself. he’s either right or you’re wrong and he won’t explain his stance. there is never room for debate. he’ll just stop talking and leave until you agree. there is no option where he sits and listens to an open and honest dialogue, no scenario where he entertains that he might be in the wrong or maybe things aren’t black and white.

and that’s why injustice bruce is not a good guy.

even on prime earth, damian had to bend over backwards to prove to bruce that he wasn’t a monster. it was damian who spent months digging through the sewers for martha’s pearls. damian who had to prove he was capable of loving titus. damian who constantly had to show that he was capable of empathy and thinking of others - bruce did none of the heavy lifting in that father-son relationship, he made damian climb the entire hill and still continues to put little effort into it.

and injustice bruce is even less empathetic and expressive than prime bruce.

which is why you get a confrontation like this:

this goes beyond dick’s accident and ties back into what clark said about bruce not tending to his son’s who are grieving because they lost friends in metropolis. damian’s fed up with never meeting bruce’s expectations. but more than that, he’s fed up with his feelings coming second to bruce’s.

bruce has already made a judgement on who and what damian is. damian has the potential to be dangerous and requires work to fix, and so he’s not interested in getting to know him beyond that. he tells dick that he’s “worried about damian being seduced by darkness” but never talks to damian himself with him about it.

but clark has looked at damian and and decided that damian is good. damian has problems, clark can admit that and does, but damian is good. like bruce himself.

and ultimately why when dick dies, clark is the one that reaches out to him because he sees damian for what he is: grieving child who just made a terrible mistake. it was an accident. damian didn’t mean for this to happen. meanwhile, bruce feels as though he was proven right. damian was dangerous and now his real son is dead. bruce will later admit, once he stops trying to manipulate damian, that damian was dead to him the moment dick died.

going back to year zero for a minute, they subtly show that damian is doing his best to be like bruce. baby damian idolizes his father. so i imagine a lot of bruce’s own feelings towards damian stem from self-hatred. from bruce seeing himself in his son and not liking the reflection it forces him to confront. injustice bruce projects a great deal of his own insecurities and shortcomings onto his youngest. damian is his worst what-if.

even though damian doesn’t deal with his grief the way bruce does. there are similarities, he puts his feelings into his fists and hits. just like bruce. but unlike bruce, and most likely because of dick, he does try to communicate. come injustice 2 he even talks about his feelings.

that doesn’t justify any of the violent outbursts. and he has a lot of them. he has significant issues with controlling his anger and struggles with lashing out, verbally and physically. it both worsens and improves as he gets older.

damian knows that he’s more than his grief, his loss, his anger. he’s also compassionate and capable of incredible feats of kindness. we see that in the flashback chapter in injustice 2. people aren’t pawns for damian, they aren’t a means to assuage his own guilt and validate himself as a good person. he wants to be good for those people.

damian’s relationship with heroism isn’t built on an intrinsic need for control or power, nor is it a means of validating his self worth.

people just need him. they’re suffering. and he wants to be there for them.

but again, we’re not there yet.

so, alfred reaches out to touch damian. damian asks him repeatedly to let go. when alfred doesn’t, damian tries throwing him off, not realizing how much strength he now possesses.

damian has a thing about being touched when he’s wound up tightly. it almost always ends with him lashing out at someone. which, tying back into why he felt comfortable coming back here, probably goes into his expectation that he’s going to get the lights knocked out of him. because again, damian did not go to the cave to fight or hurt anyone. the pill is entirely for his own defense.

from what we know of damian’s childhood in both prime and injustice, violence is the expected retaliation for misbehavior. toeing out of line is grounds for getting the shit beaten out of you, and while things should be different here....

from how bruce reacts he’s not wrong to expect it. note that bruce dodesn’t run to alfred to see if he’s okay, he goes after damian for hurting him. it’s damian who runs to alfred after he’s thrown bruce away from him.

( granted, yes, he threw bruce into the penny and it almost crushes alfred )

damian apologizes and he means it. alfred’s first question is to ask for bruce.

“”hawkgirl”” intervenes to try to end this fight before it can escalate further.

damian deduces that this isn’t hawkgirl and blows some stuff up. bruce calls after him probably - not to have a serious heart to heart with him about what just happened, or what happened in arkham, but to try to manipulate him into taking bruce’s side or in the very least stop his ruse from being uncovered.

this is a theme moving forward. bruce will dangle forgiveness in front of damian, but only when it benefits him and can be used to control him. eventually he’ll stop and will use the guilt he knows damian feels to wound him.

and here’s the second theme it introduces: damian is scared shitless of his father. he’s not afraid of bruce’s violence, as after this he charges straight for him time and time again, but he is utterly terrified of the lengths bruce will go to get his way.

this is also where he takes dick’s suit. i think this was his way of telling bruce that he didn’t deserve to use dick’s memory the way he uses his parent’s death - as justification for what he does. this comes up in injustice 2 later down the road, damian will bring up that bruce uses his pain to justify how he brutalizes the people around him. damian does the same thing -- but we also see damian grappling with his conscience about it. he wants to be better. he doesn’t want to be all his violence and loss.

back to the topic at hand, damian doesn’t do anything with dick’s suit. unlike bruce, damian doesn’t wear his grief and guilt in plain sight. he puts it in a box and doesn’t look at it, he covers the wounds with anger and as he gets older, develops a death wish and basically begins seeking a noble death in order to make up for what he’s done. it isn’t until dick passes the mantle to him in an attempt to steer him back on the right path that he even looks at it again.

damian isn’t the one that ended his relationship with bruce. bruce did. damian is very willing to reconcile if bruce genuinely wants it, but bruce doesn’t bother with damian outside of combat or when he needs something. damian actually keeps up visits with alfred, he gets him birthday presents, they meet up often and despite their opposing viewpoints, they get along just fine. damian even listens to what alfred says. he still loves his family.

damian himself is a mess. this line resonates because damian, too, is afraid. afraid of bruce, afraid of being what bruce thinks he is. there’s only so far he can bury it under the anger.

by the next issue of year one, after the confrontation at the manor, damian’s discarded any notion that bruce is a good person or justified in anything he does. everything he says on this page is true.

he’s not wrong. he’s more than bruce has even given him credit for being. injustice bruce sorts people into boxes impossible to climb out. damian made his attempt at reconciliation and instead, found out that bruce has kidnapped and replaced one of his friends to spy on all the rest. in that split second when bruce came at at him, he saw the disgust and anger in his eyes. he’s seen how bruce sees him and wholeheartedly rejects it.

he doesn’t want to be bruce. he will not be bruce.

batman was supposed to be better than the league. it was supposed to be a new way. instead he just found a new, different means to brutalize and control, and a new way someone justifies causing harm. and he doesn’t want it.

this isn’t to say that damian is a saint. he’s a very flawed, very broken person. he went from one abusive parental situation, to another, to another, and has the damage to show for it. he’s got bad habits from all of them, many of which he isn’t aware of or doesn’t think are a problem.

but unlike his two dads, damian doesn’t close himself off to what he’s feeling completely, nor does he decide to rush towards external solutions for his pain. he’s, again, very aware that something is wrong. he doesn’t hold to his convictions the same way bruce or clark do, he questions. he’s deeply unhappy with who he is and what he’s doing.

but damian is seeking answers using a very limited toolset, and there’s a very limited pool of people he can ask that won’t give him a biased answer or try to manipulate him for their own means. one of the people he confides in does just that.

the other gives him the honest truth.

his relationship with selina is fraught and she’s often one of the very nastiest people towards him, but it’s because of that he ends up opening up to her. she isn’t going to bullshit him and just say what he wants to hear.

and this is what makes damian different from them. both of them.

because he stops, because he questions, he’s still connected to reality. to his own humanity.

injustice’s bruce is a bruce that has quietly let his humanity die. he’s completely given over to the cold logic of batman and the idea that whatever he does to the people around him, no matter how morally dubious, is justified so long as it means protecting lives. he might not kill, but he really stops just short of that. he just doubles down on his beliefs and takes anyone who doesn’t agree with him as a traitor. he will go out of his way to rationalize how a largely guilty person is innocent (harleen) and how a largely innocent person is guilty (damian). and so he uses damian’s “betrayal” - ie, damian standing with clark instead of him - as justification for icing him out. that way he can ignore all the people who have reminded him time and time again that it was an accident.

bruce also can’t stand that damian won’t do what he says. bruce will ignore damian unless it benefits him. bruce will go on to frequently weaponize how badly damian wants forgiveness against him. there are multiple instances where he says “just do as i say and i’ll forgive you, son.”

and then in the next breath, he’ll tell damian that he “can’t forgive the deaths”, all the while he has harleen as his new sidekick. it’s fine that harleen helped with the scheme to blow up metropolis, killed jimmy olsen, and countless others. it’s not fine that damian did something he did all the time to dick - something dick himself shrugged off, because the expectation for this behavior was that dick would catch the baton - and it ended in tragedy.

because harleen listens to him and damian doesn’t. bruce cuts damian neatly out of his life and only really cares about him again when he’s a corpse.

damian, meanwhile, never stops trying to earn bruce’s forgiveness. in the canonical bad end (or well a comic offshoot of the canon ending) damian essentially dies begging bruce to forgive him, admitting that he always cared. he launches an absolutely insane rescue mission to save his father from clark’s torture and it costs him his life.

( but it’s worth mentioning - it takes damian showing bruce an image of kara for bruce to acknowledge him. )

even before this, damian was looking out for bruce in other ways. he was the reason selina got involved with the regime. because he offered her the chance to join and save bruce. damian’s anger towards bruce is less that he wants him dead, and more that bruce won’t stop unless he’s killed.

and damian is willing to kill him if bruce poses a threat to his ‘new’ family. he’s not going to watch bruce hurt the people he loves.

but his new father sucks just as much as his old one.

talia and bruce were more obviously abusive parents. they were controlling and sometimes asserted that control and obedience using physical violence and intimidation. in obvious ways you can point to and see abuse.

damian doesn’t recognize clark is using him until he sees clark discard kara, who should be everything to clark and is someone important to damian. before that, he has inklings that they’ve gone too far, but clark has been such a paragon of good that when he tells damian not to worry about it, he doesn’t. he hides all his darkness behind that smile and tells damian he’s good and worthy of people loving him, that they’re saving people and they won’t let another metropolis happen. clark talks to him and still (seems to) accept him even when they disagree.

damian misses clark’s equally as abusive tendencies because they hidden under the guise of a fatherly concern.

clark is manipulating him into divulging more than he wants to. a boundary damian set is being broken without damian even realizing it. damian’s uneasy. his body language goes from very easy and relaxed to overtly uncomfortable and almost submissive. it’s also very subtle but clark actually rises higher off the ground to intimidate and loom over him.

damian, who has only known bruce’s stormy silences in moments of disagreement, doesn’t recognize this for what it is. clark doesn’t take the slight out on him. clark doesn’t stop talking to him because he dared to question.

instead, he loops an arm around damian and praises him, rewards him for being honest and makes it seem like this is an open dialogue and not an interrogation. which it is. i wouldn’t call it gaslighting, but i would call it lovebombing. damian doesn’t realize that there was anything off about the encounter, or if he does, he’ll tell himself he’s just being paranoid.

after all. this ended amicably, not with him standing alone wondering what he did wrong, or being thrown across the room. clark basically stops just shy of ruffling his hair and calling him sport.

he was rewarded for honesty. and so any discomfort he felt was imagined.

i think a thing that a lot of fans miss is that injustice’s damian is a forthright person. he doesn’t lie or deceive much, and later on it will bother him that he’s keeping secrets from kara for ‘the greater good’. he loathes that bruce does it and works hard to not fall into that trap. he wants to be honest. he’s glad when he’s rewarded for that honesty.

because injustice’s damian doesn’t want to be batman. he wants to be superman. he wants to be good.

but injustice’s superman is not a good man.

clark keep secrets, many terrible secrets, and often hurts people and justifies it to himself. he just hides it far better than bruce does. clark is even more controlling and cruel, but he leans harder into his humanity and emotions to hide it. it’s easier to see bruce being cold and calculating and miss the way clark subtly uses what you want to get what he wants out of you. and you never really see it coming when he lashes out. he’ll apologize for it, of course, and if you’re not dead you’ll forgive him, because it’s clark. he didn’t mean it. right?

bruce manipulates overtly and grandly using intimidation, clark manipulates subtly using emotion. damian only recognizes one of these things when they happen.

so clark gives damian what he wants - a parent who loves him, someone he can talk to and even show a little vulnerability with - and then uses that against him.

the worst thing - the very worst thing - is that bruce and clark love damian. he knows this. both seem to genuinely consider him their son. and he knows this.

in injustice vs motu, bruce snaps fully into awareness just as diana snaps damian’s neck. he’s awake just in time to watch his son die. and when clark is brought onto the scene, clark falls to his knees and mourns damian and laments his role in driving him to this.

but they weaponize this parent-child bond he wants against him and each other. frankly, neither of them were very interested in him for who he was. nor for helping him be better and master his anger. damian’s body isn’t even cold before bruce uses it against clark, failing to acknowledge his own part in damian’s all too early demise.

he’s another chess piece on their board. one clark can use to wound bruce. one bruce can use to wound clark.

the person damian is when away from both of their influence is a more complete damian. he’s the very best of both of them.

the damian here is still curt and sometimes rude, but he laughs and bonds with the people around him. he values people’s freedom and seems to strive for honesty and communication. meaning no one is in his war to reclaim the world doesn’t want to be, and he makes no move without everyone knowing.

when he recruits adam, he tells them their story and what they’ve gone through and gives adam the choice to join them or stay in eternia.

anyway, all of this is to say that even all these years later, i continue to be so sad about injustice damian wayne.

edit:

now, there’s actually one other thing i want to bring up because i totally forgot about it.

so. issue 8 of injustice 2.

if we’re going with the idea of the reordered robin theory, which is what makes the most sense to me considering jason’s age and the friction between bruce and damian, this before jason dies. and if i’m wrong and the robins don’t have a different order, then this is before some enormous event that broke the slowly building trust.

there’s none of the undercurrent of hostility and distrust that shows up in year 0, which is immediately before year 1. we’re not given a timeframe for when this occurs, either, it’s just happier times.

but what’s really hard to ignore is that the dynamic between bruce and damian is completely different here. maybe tom taylor’s just settled more into writing the two of them, but i don’t think so. year zero comes after this.

he even acknowledges damian’s anger earlier in the chapter. but it’s less of a condemnation of his character and more a concern that he might not be ready to be on his own. alfred is the one advocating for caution, asking if he’s ready, bruce is the one saying yes, he is.

it’s a complete reversal.

and his trust is rewarded with a night of damian abandoning the “”mission”” he was given (get home from the furthest point of gotham in three hours) to help everyone along the way. which was the real goal all along, it was a test to see if damian’s compassion would win out over his want to win. and it does. bruce is proud of him.

so... what happened between them? what caused that shift?

i’m kind of worried we’re never going to know. like, i’m so glad that tom taylor is dc’s new golden boy and they’re just letting him build a million different aus. i buy every book he writes.

but also i’m dying because IJ2 was clearly planned to go on a lot longer than it did and i have questions that i know netherrealm doesn’t care about answering.

#damian wayne #injustice #bruce wayne #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #jason todd #clark kent

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piracytheorist · 3 years

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Since the first thing that strikes me about re8, story-wise, is that it seems to be all over the place? Again, I’ve no idea how it ties to previous games but it feels like this parental/mother-child theme is just hanging there with no resolution at all? I mean yes, Ethan saved his daughter, presumably breaking some sort of abuse cycle, yay, congrats, but what about his wife/gf? Isn’t she supposed to be like the main protagonist of the story of a mother bereaved to the point of tyrannical madness

Or rather, this specific story is not the right choice for his character since there’s SO many ethical and philosophical issues and questions implied but never properly explored because of Ethan’s ‘fuck you, idc’ attitude (which is completely understandable in those circumstances but adds virtually nothing to the plot and arguably even ruins it a bit). Heisenberg could’ve been an excellent ally with fascinating grey morality (provided the writers wouldn’t push him to the point of absolute insanity and let freedom, not power-hunger be his main goal and motivation for rebellion).And again, aren’t the lords supposed to represent child development stages? In which case Ethan what? Kills the possibility of some evil version of Rose? Or his own chance to experience fatherhood throughout all of those stages? Either way, it seems a bit… weird to have a Parent destroy multiple people whose main relevance to the plot is that they’re children of an abusive antagonist in a storyline so extremely focused on parent/kid relationships.

I feel like the main theme of re8 is not just parenthood/motherhood, but the relationship itself of the parent to the child. There's a lot of mentions to "children being used". Miranda kidnapping people, experimenting on them and mutating them and then treating them like they're her kids; Miranda kidnapping and practically killing Rose; Dimitrescu making daughters out of reanimated corpses she experimented on; Heisenberg wanting to use Rose's powers, etc etc.

And it's important that Miranda is at the center of this. There's something very interesting she says to Ethan in her boss fight:

"Why do you interfere? Surely you have no need of Rose now, so close to death?"

And that's where her mistake was. Ethan wasn't doing all that because he needed Rose herself. He was doing it to save her, fully aware that he wasn't going to be a part of her life cause he knew he was dying. Miranda was way too dependent on her love for Eva - and like, I honestly get it that losing your child can devastate you (if anything my fear of that is one of the reasons I don't want to have kids) - so much that her life literally revolved around her child. Once Eva died, Miranda wanted to die. Once she found the Megamycete and discovered she maybe had a chance to bring Eva back, she dedicated her entire life and ruined multiple others to do just that. Her one and biggest need was to get Eva back. It wasn't a simple want or wish. It was a need. She'd get her child back, damn everyone else - including other people's children.

Miranda had no-one to blame directly; Eva had died from the influenza, it wasn't like she had any chance to change things. Ethan's case was different; he had people to blame, particularly, the one who kidnapped Rose and dismembered her, and her lackeys who kept said parts and fought him for trying to take them back.

So on one end, you have a parent who lost her child due to a tragedy, and ended up destroying other - innocent - lives in order to get her back. On the other, you have a parent who lost his child due to a crime, and ended up going after the criminals responsible in order to get the child back. Like, it wasn't even revenge, and it wasn't that he "needed" Rose in his life. He simply wanted to save her and ensure she'll be alright.

I fully agree it could have been Mia as the protagonist in re8, and that it was a wasted opportunity to simply fridge her and have her in the sidelines angsting over her husband. But whether it was Mia or Ethan as the protagonist, I feel like the theme that I explained above does offer a resolution, showing the opposites of Miranda and Ethan, and ending Miranda's tyrrany of her "need" to have her child back through Ethan's determination to ensure his child's safety and happiness - even if he doesn't get to be a part of any of that later on. Miranda showed obsession; Ethan showed dedication.

And this is how I see the abuse cycle breaking and the resolution is reached; an obsessed parent hurt a good parent's child to bring their own child back - the good parent's dedication stopped the former, allowing the former's tyrrany to end and their child to grow up safe.

Seeing as this is a horror game, I don't tend to focus on the morality issues (if I'm interpreting your second message correctly). Like, the developers are making a grant effort to put us in Ethan's shoes, first-person POV, plain character protagonist and all; our child got kidnapped and practically murdered, and we have the chance to bring her back. We'll absolutely raise hell to the people who are responsible for it and we will get our child back, fuck any moral dilemmas we might have. When someone is threatening your life, you have the ability to kill them to defend yourself. In the case of a caring parent, that ability may multiply by a lot when the threat is towards their child. And I feel that this is what the game explored in the end. Though the whole survival issue is taxing on Ethan, he doesn't give a damn about who he has to kill if it means saving his daughter - but again, it's only the responsible parties. We see how watching all the people at Luisa's house die affected him, and even before Elena died, he wanted to ensure her safety before he went searching for Rose; he is sympathetic and morally rational, but also capable of cold-blooded murder if someone is threatening his child. To a lesser extent, we saw that in re7 too. With his life on the line, he killed Jack (multiple times) and Marguerite, and at the end he recognized how they were actually victims of Eveline. But they were still actively trying to murder him so he wasn't given the chance to help them. With Zoe, he promised to send help, and he did, even wanting to talk to her once she'd been rescued by her uncle and Chris. The same applies to re8, but as I said, it's multiplied since it's his daughter who's in danger, and the end of re8 proves he cares for her safety more than his own.

Now, all that said, I think it's important to note how it's stil a Resident Evil game. I haven't actually played or watched any playthroughs of other games, but the basic concept in these games, from what I understand, is that the player shoots zombies; ex-human beings who have lost any human mentality and will just come for your throat if you don't kill them first. They're not humans anymore, they can't be reasoned or sympathized with. It's not really an issue of morality, ethics or philosophy. Your life, and the life of your child in the case of re8, are in danger. You don't give a shit. You just start shooting and hope for the best. Again, I don't know if the morality issue is explored in other RE games, but to be honest... Resident Evil doesn't sound like the kind of franchise that's thematically into going super deep into the morality of shooting zombies to save your life.

I have to admit I haven't thought of the Lords being representative of child development stages. I think they could be put as Moreau being a toddler, fully dependent on their parent - funnily enough, the Greek word for baby is "moro", pronounced almost exactly the way "Moreau" is pronounced in the game - Donna as a child, Heisenberg as a (rebellious?) teenager, and Dimitrescu as a late teen/young adult (if anything, Dimitrescu seems to behave like the eldest child of the bunch). But I'm not sure the connection that has to Ethan as a father, if anything because the bosses are fought in complete random order of age, if my analysis is correct. Like, I understand the symbolism behind the Lords' behaviours, maybe as you said they represent the obstacles Ethan had to overcome. In one single day and with his life on the line, instead of in the course of Rose's entire childhood and adolescence, but that's exactly why he hated being a protagonist of a horror game, lol.

Anyway, yeah. All in all, I don't think Resident Evil is a franchise where we should expect to sit down afterwards and ponder whether we were right to shoot the zombies that were trying to kill us. Again, I'm not the right person to ask this, since I don't know anything about other RE games, but that's the conclusion I'm making in a meta-thinking way.

#Resident Evil #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil 8 #Ethan Winters #Mother Miranda #re meta #anonymous #ask and ye shall receive

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sophieakatz · 3 years

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Thursday Thoughts: Marvel What If’s Women Problem

Welcome back to the feminist rant!

I really didn’t intend to spend three weeks in a row writing about the Marvel animated series What If…? But I wanted to see this through.

Last week we talked about this show’s abundant use of the “fridged woman” trope. However, a show doesn’t need to kill its female characters in order to fail them.

Remember that time I made up a feminist movie test? I call it the “Want Test.” You can read the full explanation here, but here’s the summary:

This test requires that a film (or, in this case, an episode of a TV show) has at least one named female character. After watching the show, ask, “Does what the named female character want matter to the plot?” Then, score the movie based on the answer to this question.

If the answer is “Yes, what the named female character wants matters to the plot,” then give the movie a checkmark!”

If the answer is “Yes, AND this is true of multiple named female characters,” then the movie gets a check-plus. If these characters help each other get what they want, the movie gets a check-double-plus!

If the answer is “Yes, BUT her wants are an obstacle to a male character’s goal,” then the movie gets a check-minus. The woman may matter to the plot, but her importance is centered on her relationship to a male character and how much he matters to the plot. Often movies with a check-minus involve a male protagonist actively trying to stop a female character from getting what she wants; while she has an impact on the world around her, the movie isn’t rooting for the woman.

If the answer is “No, what she wants doesn’t matter,” then the movie fails the test. Give it a minus.

Okay, now let’s talk about Marvel What If. Once again, there are spoilers for the first seven episodes of this show below the cut, and some discussion of the plot points in the movies these episodes are based on.

When I compare the first seven episodes of What If to the Want Test, they each barely scrape their way to a check-minus (though after my rant last week, I’m tempted to edit my test so that a show that fridges a female character automatically fails). In summary, it does not matter what most of the named female characters want. Each episode has a single woman whose wants do affect the plot, but what she wants is always some kind of obstacle to a male character’s goal. Even when the women of What If survive the episode, the male characters’ feelings are the primary engine of the show.

As I neared the end of Episode Six, “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” I said to myself, “Well, at least Pepper and Shuri aren’t dead.” But then, in the last minute of the episode, Shuri and Pepper meet and state their intent to take down Killmonger. And I said to myself, “Okay, so why didn’t we get THAT episode?”

Sure, it’s cool to see two smart girls teaming up, but they don’t get to do anything! This episode repeatedly puts Pepper and Shuri down. Every time they express suspicion of Killmonger, someone contradicts them. What they want does not matter. They are obstacles to the men, and they are easily pushed aside, and so all they can do is stand in the background and watch while the boys run around and play war games.

If your named female characters only matter in the last scene of the show, then they don’t really matter. This episode wasn’t about the women at all. It was about the men killing each other and making each other sad.

I really don’t want to say much about the seventh episode, “What If… Thor Were an Only Child?”

What I will say is, “Why, why, WHY is Dr. Jane Foster more concerned about hurting the hot guy’s feelings than she is about how the hot guy is about to cause the end of the world?”

And I will also say, “Why does Captain Marvel need to be nice to Thor at the end of the episode after he spent the entire episode being a jackass to her?”

And I will end this section of the blog post by saying, “Frigga deserves so much better than any man in her family has ever given her.”

The second episode of this show, “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” might be my favorite episode. Mainly because it’s the only one I genuinely liked while I was watching it. It was fun, and I was happy to hear Chadwick Boseman’s voice one more time. Overall, it’s a lovely tribute to both the actor and his character.

But, for me, liking this episode required ignoring a big problem: Nebula and Thanos’s relationship.

We don’t know exactly when in this timeline T’Challa met Thanos and convinced him to give up on the “murder half the universe” plan. But we do know that even before Thanos collected the Infinity Stones, he was roaming the universe slaughtering millions. We know he committed genocide against Gamora’s people the day he “adopted” her, and it’s safe to assume he did the same to Nebula’s. We know that he raised Gamora and Nebula to fight each other, and every time Nebula lost a fight, he replaced a part of her body with cybernetics, constantly torturing her.

What If never tells us that that Thanos did not abuse his daughters. It never tells us that he did not slaughter millions, including his daughters’ birth families. But it does tell us that Thanos is Nebula’s father. And he wouldn’t be her father if he hadn’t been roaming the universe killing people.

In this episode, we see an adult Nebula who seems to think her dad is annoying, but any feelings she might have about how genuinely terrible he is – feelings she was freely willing to admit in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies – go completely unmentioned.

Thanos and Nebula’s relationship is played for laughs, like they just need to get over their past and hug it out. That bothers me a lot. It’s like the show is saying that Nebula’s pain doesn’t matter. What matters is that Thanos is sad she doesn’t want to hang out with him.

I should also point out that in Avengers: Infinity War, Gamora gets fridged. Her feelings are unimportant to the plot; her stated desire to die before she can be used as a part of Thanos’s plot is mocked and discarded. When she is murdered, the moment of her death is all about how it would hurt Thanos to kill her. Gamora’s death also serves as motivation for Peter Quill to sabotage the other heroes’ efforts to stop Thanos.

Gamora is nowhere to be seen in this episode of What If. The women that Thanos abused really don’t matter here at all.

I’ve been putting off talking about this show’s pilot episode, “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” This episode was… You know, it was fun, in a very similar way to how the Star Lord T’Challa episode was fun. I can’t lie and say I didn’t like seeing super buff Peggy Carter beat the crap out of Nazis. That was a lot of fun.

But the thing I couldn’t stop thinking while watching was, “This isn’t Peggy’s story. It’s Steve’s!”

Peggy Carter may have gotten the super serum in this reality, but Steve Rogers is still the main driving force of the plot. Peggy goes to Germany to save Steve’s best friend. She works with Steve’s allies, the Howling Commandoes, instead of finding her own. Steve’s issues and emotions are central to everything Peggy does; she may say in dialogue that she wants to end the war, but what we see is that Steve is her motivation. In fact, he’s everyone’s motivation – in the scene where Peggy, Bucky, Howard, and the Howling Commandoes decide to go take down Red Skull, they all go around the table and say that they’re doing it “for Steve.” Not because ending the war is the right thing to do, not because they care about the millions of people murdered and tortured by the Nazis – but because they care about Steve.

When I first heard about this show, I thought that Steve was going to die, and that would be why Captain Carter would exist. The interesting/ironic thing here is that the episode pokes at the idea of fridging Steve, but it doesn’t quite have the guts to go through with it. Everyone thinks that Steve died on the train, but then they find him in Red Skull’s castle, and he’s totally fine! Killing off Captain America would have been an interesting, powerful new direction to take the story. But this episode doesn’t seem interested in taking new directions. It seems more interested in showing how things would stay the same even if Steve didn’t get the serum, even if Peggy switched careers from secret agent to superhero, even if Bucky never became the Winter Soldier, even if Red Skull decided to open a portal to tentacle hell. Things just stay the same.

And I don’t get the point of presenting us with a show where there are “endless possibilities” if things are just going to stay the same. If Peggy Carter will still be a side character in Steve Roger’s story. If Hank Pym’s grief still matters more than Janet and Hope Van Dyne’s lives. If Thanos will still never be held accountable for abusing Gamora and Nebula. If Doctor Strange is still an arrogant jackass. If the only realities we see are ones where men get to act and feel, and women get to be plot devices.

The truth is that the Watcher just isn’t interested in showing us realities where women live and thrive in their own right. For all its emphasis on how different decisions can cause dramatic changes to reality, the creators of What If have no real investment in making different decisions in how they portray female characters. It’s just more of the same.

I’m done thinking about this show. Let’s talk about something else next week, okay?

Be good to yourself, be kind to each other, and you’ll hear from me again soon!

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teamfreehoodies · 3 years

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teamfreehoodies masterlist

The Witcher (TV)

See below the readmore to find links and summaries for all the fics I’ve written to date in this fandom.

and we will be elided by the people that we love most

de-aged!Jaskier, hurt!jaskier, hurt!yennefer, exploration of motherhood, families of choice, panic attacks (jask)

“What did you give me?” he growls, burying his fear beneath a burst of anger. The room around them splinters, making gravity an uncertain principle: vertigo makes him drool and he spits, falling over, digging his fingers into the ground in a futile effort to make everything just stop spinning. “Oh fuck, wha’ ‘id you do t’me?” he slurs out past a suddenly numb tongue. The icy burn has spread out from his throat and chest to take over his whole body, sending lightning strikes of pain zinging up and down his limbs.

“You’ll find out soon enough, I think.”

Yennefer is healing after Sodden, trying to pull her chaos back inside herself. She doesn’t actually have time to chase down wayward bards, much less take care of the child-sized version of one she’s never particularly liked all that well. She really is quite tired of being forced to save this fool.

darling, dearest, don’t you see (voices left inside of me)

follow-up to ‘elided" above: After the events of and we will be elided, Loretta writes Jaskier a letter. How do you forgive the kind of betrayal that’s made to save another life? How do you learn to live with the ways your family has hurt you? How do you heal without betraying yourself?

idk man, read the fic.

the heart electric (beats a half-time measure)

Jaskier drops the torch and the dagger, rushing forward to fall to his knees next to Geralt. The light sputters briefly but holds, and Jaskier curses himself even as he hesitantly reaches out to try and wake Geralt. The leather armour of his shoulder is cold under Jaskier’s palm, and weirdly tacky with something; arachas venom pings in the back of his mind like a warning, and he hastily wipes his palms off on his already ruined doublet, reaching forward to cradle Geralt’s face instead. “Geralt?” he whispers; the horrifying truth of Geralt’s stillness catches in his throat, preventing him from being any louder than that. “Geralt?”

It’s not that he hadn’t thought it possible… but Geralt was a witcher. No one had ever mentioned that witchers could die.

Five Times Jaskier Thought Geralt Was Dead, Plus One Time It Was Reversed

this life that we’ve created (inundated with the fated thought of you)

Gods, but this is very nearly intolerable. He’d been ready to forgive him, even then, waiting for Geralt to take it back, for him to turn around and apologize; and he’d been ready to forgive him two years ago, if only Geralt’s path would cross his again, one year ago, traveling slowly from town to town, chasing whispers of the white wolf in between his bardic circuit. He does not know if his heart can take it again, if Geralt once more decides him too much of a burden to bear traveling with. Injured, now, needing to be saved, he could not have engineered a worse reunion had he written the fates himself.

if you could let me inside your heart (could I be enough?)

Post-coital realizations should never be had alone. AKA Jaskier questions his place between these two powerful, immortal, destined-to-be-together beings, and he finds it hurts to be just… human.

this our winter of love (a gift from one above)

“It’s weird but I don’t think it’s witcher-weird.”

“Oh, it’s witcher-weird, alright.” Lambert interrupted, pulling up something on his phone. It was one of those ‘smart’ phones, paper thin, supposedly able to think for itself; seemed like more trouble than Geralt cared to deal with, but Lambert was half in love with the damned thing. “Look,” he said, thrusting the lit-up rectangle in Geralt’s face.

Geralt had to pull comically far back to actually look at what Lambert wanted him to see. The screen showed a small parcel of people milling about a city center. They were all dressed like either they had walked off of a movie set, or they were genuinely from the 1200s. There was even a bard, holding a lute. A distressingly familiar bard, for all that Geralt hadn’t seen that face in eight hundred years.

i carry your heart (i carry it in)

Witchers don’t have soulmates. That’s been true for as long as Geralt’s been alive, a necessary sacrifice for a life spent on the Path. There’s no place for the attachments that humans define themselves by.

It may not be worth it to Geralt, but love has always been the single most motivating force in the world for Jaskier. Unrequited or not, he’s a bard, and there’s a story to be told. He’ll be the one to tell it.

(Who’s the more tragic figure here? The loved or the unloving?)

Jaskier and Geralt are soulmates, bound by the Red String of Fate. But just because it’s written in the stars doesn’t mean it’s an easy path to tread, and it takes more than a nudge from fate to make a soul-bond work. Between the way Geralt feels about destiny, and the trials and tribulations of the path they have to trudge, it’s going to be one hell of an adventure.

the prairie is vast (the train is quicker) | Into the Jaskierverse, pt. 14

Geralt and Ciri are still trying everything they can to find Jaskier. After… a traumatizing split, they come back together in a new universe entirely. They’re offered a chance to distract themselves from their worry over Jaskier, and the perilous journey they’re on, by helping a female version of their favorite bard steal a wagon, rob a train, and, just maybe, come to terms with a worry that’s been plaguing her.

Featuring; much talk of guns, someone getting shot (on accident), a murder! (on purpose), Jaskier the Horse!Girl, one (1) dissociative episode, one (1) panic attack (though not the same character), and just enough fludd and banter to even it all out.

if i loved you (could you stay?) | QF1

He knows the way to Jaskier’s lodgings, knows by heart how to find the tiny row of cottages reserved for the professors and their families, knows too that Jaskier might not even be there; he’s not heard of anything from the bard in months, not since—

He shakes himself, turning away from the uncomfortable memories. What’s done is done. He only hopes he isn’t too late.

A love confession gone wrong leads Geralt to try and fix his relationship with Jaskier.

Go Get Your Mage | Yennfri promptfic

When Yennefer portals into Blaviken instead of Geralt, a more… mutually beneficial arrangement is made.

fate makes fools of us all (she plays the longest game) | QF2

It’s not that she’d meant to become a witch, but… well.

Sometimes these things just happen.

a willing ear (a hand to hold) | QF3

A little town in the mountains calls for the aid of a witcher, and Geralt and Jaskier take on a contract that’s more than it first appears to be.

Even the divine have friends, strange as it may seem.

breathe with it (bleed with it)

Fringilla was the first. She flexes her hand, feeling again the phantom tendrils of chaos crawling up her veins as her arm had turned to dessicated ash and bone in recompense for her glory. That was what being noticed got you. That was a lesson learned in blood and pain. That was a lesson learned hard and fast and once.

a Fringilla Vigo character study; “There is no such thing as dark or light magic. Nothing in this world is as simple as that.”

#amber writes fic #posting for posterity #this also exists as a page on my comp theme #but now it shall exist as a pinned post on my mobile theme as well #witcher fic #fandom creators make some noise ayyyyy

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moiloru · 3 years

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About the so-called "Third-Case Syndrome"

I've been in the Ace Attorney fandom for a few years now, and there is a story I've heard more times than I can count: the story of the "Third-Case Syndrome." After joining the Danganronpa fandom, I realized - not without surprise - that a similar "Third-Chapter Syndrome" had admittedly cursed the series. However, I do believe that, in both cases, it would be wise to exert caution: things are never as simple as they seem. Now, even if this seems evident to me, I'll say it just to be sure: this is only my opinion. You might disagree, but please do not be toxic about it.

Before we proceed, I'd also like to warn you all: spoilers ahead for the entire Danganronpa and Ace Attorney series (even the Investigations and DGS games). Now, let's begin.

Ace Attorney:

AA1 - Turnabout Samurai:

To start off, we have 1-3. I agree with most of the fandom that it is slightly too long and the investigation segments drag out. Going from Studio One to Studio Two, to the Detention Center, etc. is quickly boring. However, its cast is solid (especially Powers and Oldbag), Dee Vasquez's motive (self-defense) is original, the Steel Samurai's theme slaps, and Edgeworth gets the first bit of his character development! I believe it outweights the negative aspects of the case and make it enjoyable. I believe it is far better than 1-1 and 1-2 (with its obvious twists and rushed ending), although it doesn't compare with 1-4 and 1-5, of course. But it's definitely not the case that people point the finger out when arguing about the "curse."

JfA - Turnabout Big Top:

I'll definitely be playing Devil's advocate on that one, but I like 2-3. Of course, the whole "love triangle" thing was shit, but the rest of the case was fine! Regina sucks, that I can agree with, but Moe was funny (in my opinion), Max got some quality character development in the end, Ben & Trilo were a nice duo, and Acro... Acro is one of the best culprits in the series, hands down. His theme is amazing and he is one of the most tragic characters in the series. Knowing that he unknowingly killed the person who had helped him is just sad, and his motive for trying to kill Regina, while not excusable, is understable. Losing the two people he was closest to, and him explaining that he couldn't "up and leave" (literally, too) before Bat had woken up was just sad. Also, while 2-3 isn't amazing like 2-4 (my favorite case) is, it's miles ahead of 2-1 (which objectively sucks) and 2-2 (which lasts for hours with an annoying and predictable culprit). Besides, the plot twist at the end with Edgeworth appearing sets the tone for the upcoming final case. In my opinion, Turnabout Big Top gets some undeserved hate.

T&T - Recipe for Turnabout:

3-3 is really good, no questions asked. The mere fact that it's better than 3-2 (predictable culprit, forgettable victim...) is obvious to me. But it also features the return of Maggey, and the first (and only) appearance of amazingly comical characters like Furio Tigre and Victor Kudo (who both have amazing theme songs). The victim might be a little forgettable, but he at least gets some development, unlike Bullard in The Stolen Turnabout. Of course, Tigre is obvious as the killer, but he's meant to be this way, and the way you corner him is amazing. The reveal that Godot can't see red on white matters in 3-5, and the case is hilarious. Special mention of Viola Cadaverini, who's underrated by the fandom, in my opinion. 3-3 is probably the strongest third case in the Trilogy, and it is definitely not the worst case in T&T.

AJ - Turnabout Serenade:

Okay, this case sucks. I dislike it very much and I can't find anything that would redeem it. The victim is boring, Daryan is obvious, Valant isn't good enough, the mini-game is tedious, and the "Phoenix saves the day" thing is repetitive. However, 4-3's biggest flaw is the defendant, Machi Tobaye. Lamiroir is an enjoyable character, and the plot twist surrounding her eyesight isn't bad, but it doesn't make Machi good enough not to ruin the case. This case is the weak point of a great game, but fortunately, 4-4 more than makes up for it.

DD - Turnabout Academy:

Dual Destinies is my least favorite game in the main series, but it has some solid cases, 5-3 being one of them. The trio of Juniper, Robin, and Hugh is amazing (even if the twist around Robin was pretty obvious), the WAA trio works very well, and we even get a chance to see Klavier again (his objection clip sucks, though)! It is definitely a strong case, even if Means was a bit obvious, and while it doesn't hold up to the great ending of DD, I do believe that 5-3 is better than 5-1, 5-2, and maybe even 5-4.

SoJ - The Rite of Turnabout:

Maya's comeback makes this case good, albeit not great. It is better than 6-1 for sure (drags on too much for a tutorial case) and probably 6-4 and 6-6, but it pales compared to 6-2 and 6-5, of course. Nayhuta is the weak point of 6-3, but everything else about this case is pretty good! The "new" Maya is a right balance of her former self with some more maturity, Datz is funny, Beh'leeb Inmee was a really emotional character, and while I don't like Tahrust too much, the plot twist around his death was pretty cool. Also, this case also makes it clear why Phoenix did what he did in 6-5 when Inga blackmailed him: he can't lose Maya. It could have been better, but this case is solid, and definitely not part of a "curse" of any kind.

AAI - The Kidnapped Turnabout:

Unfortunately, AAI kinda sucks. The first three cases aren't that good, and while I1-3 is probably better than I1-1, I'll admit it's terrible. It's long, the Amanos sucks, Lauren Paups isn't that great, and if it wasn't for Kay, the case would probably be the worst in the series.

AAI2 - The Inherited Turnabout:

Is there anything bad to say about I2-3? I mean, you play as Gregory freaking Edgeworth, so what more do you want? Ah, yes, it also has DL-6 development, the exceptional Katherine Hall and Jeffrey Masters, plot twists, flashbacks done right (!), and while the villain isn't great, he is satisfying to catch, and he matters in I2-5. Honestly, this case would probably be enough to prove my whole argument.

DGS1 - The Adventure of the Runaway Room:

After a somewhat disappointing second case (in my opinion), DGS1-3 is really good! Megundal (I'll use the names from the fan translation, since I'm used to them and like them better) is quite the interesting character, and the Engarde-like plot twist surrounding him is amazing. His death in the final cutscene is also good and ties in nicely with the final case. Ryunosuke's first trial in England gives him cool development, and damn it, Barok van Zieks! His legslam, glass throw, and objection clip suffice to make him an amazing character, and there's more to him that just that. This case is better than DGS1-2, DGS1-1, and maybe even DGS1-4 if you don't consider its link to DGS2.

DGS2 - The Return of the Great Departed Soul:

While not as good as the two following cases in my opinion, this case is definitely above-average. Gina's comeback is just great, and her new mentor-protégé relationship with Gregson is nothing short of wholesome. Enoch Drebbler is one of the best culprits in the duology, and Courtney Sithe's character is very good, too. She gives a confident vibe that really serves the case. Benjamin Dobinbough (because his canon English name is one I refuse to acknowledge) is a great clueless defendant, and his relationship to Barok is quite nice! It definitely makes the case trickier! Rozaic has a really mysterious and enjoyable atmosphere surrounding her, and finding Herlock standing like statue at the wax museum was amusing. Of course, the best thing about this case is Asogi's return. It is handled well by the game that doesn't try to cover the obvious plot twist.. The final cutscene is just *smooch*. I also can't forget the Joint Reasoning with Herlock when looking for Enoch. Again, this case is definitely not part of a "curse" of any kind.

Overall thoughts:

I don't think the Third-Case Syndrome holds for Ace Attorney. Some third cases weren't good (4-3 and I1-3) but most are either good (1-3, 3-3, 5-3, DGS1-3) or excellent (I2-3 and DGS2-3). I know Turnabout Big Top traumatized most of the fandom, but I don't think it's that bad, and definitely not bad enough to start a curse revolving around third cases.

Danganronpa:

Trigger Happy Havoc:

Chapter Three of THH is... good enough. The pointless argument between Taka and Hifumi is annoying, to be sure, and Celeste did us a favor by getting rid of them. And her plan wasn't bad, either! It could have worked if Makoto and Kyoko had not been there. However, I do believe that this chapter is too boring before the first murder. The motive is also... meh. The plot twist oh Hifumi waking up and remembering Celeste's true name was enjoyable, though. 1-3 isn't amazing by any means, but I think it's better than 1-5 and 1-6, but it stands no chance against 1-2 and 1-4.

Goodbye Despair:

Well, this one sucks. I think it's the only DR chapter that literally has a plot hole. The "Despair Syndrome" motive is probably the worse in the series and this case pretty much ruined Mikan's character. Her execution is lame, Ibuki shouldn't have been a victim (seriously, why?), the culprit is obvious, and the timeframe to execute her plot doesn't work if you aren't Sonic the Hedgehog. Also... that attempt at fanservice was cringe, and it almost killed Hajime. The only thing that redeems this chapter a bit is the name "Titty Typhoon" but that's it. This one definitely alimented the "curse," and rightfully so. In-between two great cases, 2-3 doesn't make a good impression.

Killing Harmony:

3-3 is a chapter I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, the atmosphere was excellent and fitting of the killer, and Kokichi's prank had us all freak out at first. I don't like neither Angie nor Kiyo (sorry, Kiyo fans), but somehow, it didn't make the chapter worse for me. On the other hand, the Necronomicon motive sucks almost as much as the motive in 2-3. It could have worked in DR2 considering the Killing Game happened virtually, but in V3, the motive was just an outright lie from Monokuma, so it doesn't work. Also, Kiyo was a bit too obvious: the music, the theme, his sudden importance in the plot, the séance... it was just a bit too much not to make him suspicious. Finally, this chapter's major flaw, which I can sum up in one word: sister. That, was traumatizing. Without even going in details, everything that happened after Kiyo's "sister" appeared during the Class Trial ruined it. I'm also curious to know if the writers at Spike Chunsoft are mentally stable, considering Kiyo's relationship with his sister and the fact that they ship Monotaro and his sister Monophanie in the next case. It's not a bad chapter at all, but it has its flaws, unfortunately.

Overall thoughts:

While I wouldn't call it a "curse," it's true that third cases in Danganronpa aren't amazing, especially in DR2. You'll also notice that I didn't mention UDG simply because it's too different a game to be compared to THH, DR2, and V3. If we ever get another Killing Game, I hope that the third chapter will be better, because we've yet to have an awesome Chapter Three so far.

Final thoughts:

I don't believe there are curses revolving around third cases/chapters, neither in Ace Attorney, nor in Danganronpa. However, it's true that in the case of Danganronpa, on average, third cases are the weakest, while Chapters Four and Five are almost always great. Third cases in Ace Attorney definitely get an unfair treatement, though.

Thanks for reading, and I'm open to discussing all of this if you disagree!

#ace attorney #danganronpa #headcanons #ace attorney spoilers #danganronpa spoilers #dai gyakuten saiban spoilers #the great ace attorney spoilers #ask if you want something tagged and I'll add it

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dakotafinely · 3 years

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Mud dogs find out about some off the smol's powers (like 3llies weapon summoning, marie's feral/demon form, ect.) What kind of chaos ensues?

(also thanks for answering my first ting!)

Of course! Sorry it took me so long to answer this one! I’ve been... existing... but I finally have enough time and motivation to answer this! So let’ s go!

3llie: Weapon Summoning

The first time 3llie summons a weapon it’s when the gang is running from the police.

The smol’s weren’t supposed to be there, but Loathsome noticed that they always found a way to show up. But his mind wasn’t on scolding them right now.

It was on escaping the barrage of bullets and keeping the smol’s out of the line of fire.

3llie had begun panicking. Especially after Mickey actually got hit. Letting out a curse as he gripped his side. He lagged behind on accident. 3llie looked back. The police were gaining on him. She had to do something, anything.

She didn’t hear Dastardly scream at them to come back as she charged toward Mickey in a blind panic. The desire to keep him safe the way he would them to strong to resist.

Mickey had flinched away. Eyes closed tight as he saw a police officer charge at him with no mercy. Intent to harm clear across the yokai’s face. He fully expected a hit or another gunshot.

There was a beat of nothing. Mickey’s eyes snapped open. Staring at the large aqua green shield being carried by a very tiny child. 3llie looked back at him with tears in their eyes. Clearly scared and relieved all at once.

The shield was large. Looking similar to that one show Mickey began putting on for the kids whenever it was snack time. What was it called again? Steven Universe? No, that didn’t seem right. Whatever, he’ll think of it later.

Right now he scooped up 3llie, slithering away while 3llie tried her best to just keep the shield up.

Marie: Demon form

Loathsome was just out shopping. Marie wanting to get out of the house, joined him.

He was to busy worrying about keeping her safe. After the incident with 3llie’s reveal of powers. He was afraid people might start hunting down the kids with intent of using them for their own gain.

But he was fairly sure Marie didn’t have anything like that. Which is what worried him the most.

If the girl can’t defend herself against any yokai, then he had to be at the top of his game.

There was this guy, someone forgettable to Loathsome. Though the feeling was not mutual.

He approached in the market place. Seeing Loathsome hand Marie a brightly colored lollipop. The yokai thought he had the perfect leverage.

Marie yelped at the rough tug. Lollipop falling right out of her hand at the tight grip. She probably would’ve been calm had she not seen the panic on Loathsome’s face.

Loathsome never panic’s, time to scream bloody murder.

No one else cared, used to many different types of screaming children in the market place. Believing it was just another child having a tantrum.

She began crying as the stranger scooped her up. Running off before Loathsome could take her back.

There was a chase. Marie crying and reaching toward Loathsome the whole way.

The yokai eventually found a dead end in an alleyway. Begin to foolish to truly look where he was going. He ran straight into the wall.

A yelp and a curse as he dropped Marie. The man broke his nose. Badly

Blood dripped onto the girl as she tried to resist the smell. She’d gotten pretty good at it but the adrenaline rushing though her veins had other plans.

Loathsome arrived a second to late. Watching Marie tear into the man. Leaving nothing unscathed as she ripped him open. The demon side of her eating till it was satisfied.

When Marie was licking her arms clean is when Loathsome finally snapped back to reality. This was a child who at any moment could’ve killed him.

Yup, this was fine.

Hey, at least it eased his worry about her not being able to defend herself.

Zoe: Weapon Summoning & Telekinesis

The boy’s knew in advance about Zoe’s weapon summoning. After Loathsome returning from the shopping he asked all the kids to tell him if there was any powers they had.

She had genuinely forgotten to tell them about the telekinesis

Maybe it was because they never truly had the hang of it. It was pretty easy for Zoe to practice weapon summoning with 3llie during playtime. Though that had to be stopped because it was “Too dangerous” Dastardly said.

Telekinesis was something she never often used or thought about.

There was a rival gang. Out for revenge. Not against the mud dogs, something none of the group would’ve even cared about.

Dastardly was just trying to get the kids home. Walking them home from the park.

The building next to them exploded. Sending the smols far enough off that they were safe from debris. Plus Zoe and 3llie summoning protective armor for the group instinctively.

3llie had begun corralling the others to a tree nearby for Dastardly to find them at. Already knowing Loathsome and Mickey would be on their way. The explosion close enough to the house it would make them come to check on the group.

Mia was checking for injuries, having begun carrying around band-aids just in case. As none of the adults were ever good at remembering at one particular item no matter what.

Zoe was looking around for Dastardly, the yokai having not been flung as far as they had. Still within the derby. Her eyes caught him barely crawling away from a large chunk crashing down near him.

He didn’t see the one flying straight toward him, even larger than the first. It’d kill him instantly.

Zoe called out to him, urging him to move. But the rat’s ears were still ringing from the explosion. Body still sore he was mentally debating just laying there. Until he realized Zoe was yelling, running toward him.

He tried to tell them to stay put. But he couldn’t even hear his own voice.

He noticed the shadow getting larger above him at a rapid pace.

Whole body turning as he watched the boulder come down toward him. Eyes shutting at the last second. Simply praying his fate was quick.

Nothing, slowly the ringing stopped as he heard the cackles of flames, just tiny enough to make him slowly open his eyes.

It was inches from him, barely hovering above him that he could reach out and touch it.

“D! Get out of there!” “Come on!” “Are you okay?”

The voices made him whip back to reality. Looking over to his kids. Most standing by a tree far enough from the disaster he felt a piece of relief over him.

Then there was Zoe.

Hands up braced, face scrunched up in concentration, staring right above him. Fully focused on the debry that was seconds away from killing him. It took a moment to click. That she was the thing holding it up. He scrambled out from underneath it toward them.

As soon as he was safely out from underneath it. Zoe dropped their arms with a relieved sigh. Looking up at Dastardly with concern. While Dastardly looked back down at her with amazement.

This kid just saved his life.

Mia: Nothing, just a sneaky little thing

The boys sat in a jail cell. Not really caring about their predicament or what punishment would await them for their most recent failed heist.

No, their minds were on the kids.

“What do you think they’ll do?” Dastardly finally spoke up. Finally looking up after staring at the stone floor for hours. Loathsome shrugged

“They’ll make it I’m sure. They survived without us before.” He tried his best to keep a calm form. But his insides were completely jumbled. He was an anxious mess, just hoping the kids would find someone kinder, safer then they had been for the group.

“But, they shouldn’t have to,” Mickey spoke with a bite in his voice. Something rarely heard by the other two. They perk up. Mickey was curled up, anger clear in his eyes despite the fact he didn’t meet their stares. He was glaring at a corner, as if it was the corner’s fault the kids were now alone.

“No kid should ever have to...” Mickey trailed, Dastardly and Loathsome sharing a glance. All of them knowing exactly what was on the Eel’s mind.

“Well, then let’s find a way outta here,” Loathsome said, trying to get the trio’s confidence back “we’ve done it before!”

Before the other two could protest. A grate popped out from above them, falling in the center of the floor.

A tiny head with long hair pops out. Grinning at the group.

“Come on! We gotta get outta here before the poice realize what’s going on!” Mia speaks with mischief in her eyes.

“Kid, what’re you doing?” Dastardly asks, standing up. Just in case Mia falls straight through.

“Breaking you out! Silly!” Mia can’t help but giggle a bit at the question. Unaware the trio was having a silent panic about the kids while being.

“How’d you even... I thought you said you had no powers?” Loathsome said confused, remembering Mia telling him she was the only one without any special powers. Could she have forgotten hers like Zoe had?

“What, I don’t,” Mia said with the small shake of her head “Cops are just dumb and these vents are easy to navigate with a map!” with that, Mia put a hand out, unfurling a map of the vents above them.

“Though it’s pretty yucky in here,” Mia comments as the trio looks at the map in surprise. Now she slowly pulled herself out, the trio all moving to stop her from hurting herself. Dastardly gently placing her on the floor.

“Where are the others?” Loathsome asked as she walked over the cell door. Pulling out a hair-clip and a nail file. Beginning to fiddle with the lock.

“Marie is distracting the entire group of dum-dum’s with this realllllyyy lonnnnng story,” Mia spoke absent mindlessly “3llie is sitting in the ice cream shop with Zoe down the street. We stole some of your money to get some by the way.” Mia comments looking to them to give a tiny shrug. The trio looked at each other as Mia popped open the cell door.

“I- how do you know how to do that?” Dastardly asked with concern, none of them taught her that. Mia shrugged.

“Got bored, learned it on YouTube.” Mia states, before gesturing for them to come along with her.

“I think we’ve got...” Mia thought for a moment “3 more minutes before Marie will be done with her story. Come on I think the map showed an exit this way.” Mia lead the trio out the back door.

They went around the building, blindly following Mia in a state of shock as she brought them to a small ice cream shop. The joyous shouts of Zoe and 3llie waking them from their state.

“I... how’d we end up picking the weirdest kids off the street?” Loathsome leaned over to Dastardly as the group of smols talked excitedly with Mickey. Marie having joined them not moments later.

“Not sure,” Dastardly replied “but I think we’d be the ones lost without ‘em” he jokes.

Not me taking this to the absolute extreme. I hope you liked it, I had fun writing it! I think I had the most fun with Mia’s though not gonna lie just “this powerless child, but not weak child” is my fav kinda thing to do. Thanks for the ask! Sorry again for taking so long to answer it.

#rottmnt #rot tmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt mud dogs #mud dogs #rottmnt loathsome leonard #loathsome leonard #rottmnt malicious mickey #malicious mickey #rottmnt dastardly danny #dastardly danny #rottmnt ask #ask #ask response #thanks for the ask!

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broken-clover · 3 years

Text

Bedman and Ramlethal as Narrative Parallels

So here’s another overthink-y post that I’ve nonetheless been thinking about for a while now. While there’s definitely a visible contrast in Xrd between Ramlethal and Elphelt Valentine as the newly-introduced deuteragonists in their personalities and viewpoints on the world, but after looking at all of Xrd’s new characters and what their respective roles are, I’ve found it interesting that Bedman and Ramlethal share many narrative traits and could be read as narrative parallels of one another in terms of how they progress as characters and where they ultimately end at the conclusion of Xrd. So I wanted to outline it a little!

Initially, both are depicted as unknown and mysterious. Ram, by and large, is stoic and apparently emotionless, and few people are able to know who Bedman is or what his personality is like since he’s comatose and can’t communicate normally. But both still show little remorse at first, either due to pride or because they simply don’t care about the consequences. Definition-wise, they are both murderers, with Ramlethal nuking an entire city and Bedman operating as a contract assassin.

However, once there is more of a deep dive into each respective character’s psyche, it is clear there is more to them both. I find there’s an interesting contrast in their initial motivations. Ram expresses no remorse because she feels no reason for it; while she does have burgeoning emotions, she shares a similar viewpoint to her ‘mother,’ in that humans are worthless redundancies. Meanwhile, though he shares a similar condescending attitude towards those who he perceives as ‘beneath’ him, Bedman is still shown to have empathy and a value for human life, in how he uses his Backyard-enhanced intellect to remember and ‘save’ the people he kills, with the intention of using his ideal ‘Absolute World’ in order to resurrect the people he killed in the process of creating it, and becoming immensely distraught once he realizes that is not actually possible, while stating “do you know how many people I’ve killed?” (Interestingly, Ramlethal ultimately does not show a sense of remorse in Xrd, simply recognizing the value of life in hindsight)

A major aspect of their respective stories and character development is learning the concept of friendship. Both of them come from lonely, friendless backgrounds- Ram was created for the purpose of being a killing machine, and as a child Bedman’s only friend was his sister, Delilah- consequently, ‘friendship’ is something neither of them really understand. Ram is befriended by Sin and her sister, and learning friendship and the value of life is what causes her to open up. Meanwhile, Bedman finds a sense of friendship with his contractor, Ariels (at one point literally stating to her ‘I think I’ve started to understand friendship’) and arguably later with Axl in Revelator. It is not something that comes naturally to either of them, but Ram is in an environment where she is allowed to safely express her feeling and learn, while Bedman is unable to and has to learn it himself (which, in a sense, indicates/foreshadows how his ‘friendship’ with Ariels isn’t truly genuine)

The scene where Bedman teaches Ramlethal the meaning of ‘replacement’ by killing her dog and giving her a new one, while the main focus is Ram learning about loss and grief, is actually a learning experience for them both, and is one of the major keystones in their character changes. Ram truly begins understanding the value of life and her value as an individual. Meanwhile, Bedman begins to question his work and his motives, as he was unable to kill what he saw as a young girl, not unlike his own sister.

Lastly, both of their respective conclusions in Revelator center around reunion. For both of them, that has been their goal for at least an entire game, and a main focal point of their motivation. While both occur during/at the end of one of the major fight scenes, Ram’s reunion is undeniably positive and happy, with them embracing joyfully after Elphelt is rescued, all of Bedman’s efforts were ultimately useless, as he dies before the ‘Absolute World’ can come to fruition. He never gets closure, and Delilah only finds him after his death. Ram accomplishes her goal surrounded by family (despite the circumstances and everything still going on around them) while Bedman dies alone after being betrayed and abandoned by one of the only people he saw as a friend.

And, while this is a small detail, I also find it interesting how their designs have a sort of parallel to them, too. For both of them, their actual body isn’t the main focus of their design. They’re both equipped with massive pieces of weaponry that overshadow them, which they use as their main tool for fighting in gameplay.

Likewise, they contrast in terms of their animal motifs. While Ram, Bedman, Elphelt and Leo were all new Xrd characters with animal motifs, their animals stand out in how they ultimately contradict/contrast their personality. Cats are often stereotyped as asocial, abraisive, and solitary, but Ram learns how to be warm, emotional, and surrounded by caring people. In contrast, sheep are incredibly social, needing to live in herds, and operate best as a group of equals, while Bedman works by himself, and operates mainly based on the orders of an authority.

#this is probably super disjointed but w/e #I feel very passionately about these two #sue me #guilty gear #guilty gear Xrd #Ramlethal Valentine #Bedman #analysis #long post

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autisticsupervillain · 3 years

Text

Queen of the House

Theme: The House Always Wins ~ The Stupendium

Oh my, how I've been looking forward to this. Vriska Serket is basically a rorschach test applied to an entire fandom in mass. Between all the potential character flaws, interpretations, and sympathetic qualities I could use to make her evil, I almost had too much to work with. Well, make her evil-er at any rate. Or, at least, make her the main antagonist. Because, with the way this is going, I might just make a few sympathizers out of you guys.

So, how does Vriska Serket, fandom darling and author's pet extraordinaire, become the big bad of the story she insisted that she was the hero of? Well, crank up Megalovania, ladies and gents, because you're about to find out~

When the story ended, Vriska had everything she ever wanted.

She had mended her relationship with Terezi and gotten to pursue a proper friendship with her. She had gotten the praise she always thought she deserved, as a savior and a Goddess to Earth C and it's people. And, she'd finally gotten a taste of that little paradise planet that John had given her a glimpse of.

And Vriska found that she really wasn't enjoying it.

There was the part of her that missed the old rivalry that she had with Terezi. The endless cycle of revenge, as destructive as it was, was one of the things the kept her motivated and happy, in a strange way. There was the part of her that felt she didn't deserve all the praise she'd gotten, the part she'd revealed to John after she murdered Tavros. The guilty, humane part of her. And, there was the part of her that didn't enjoy Earth. That didn't want to live a subdued peaceful life. Not when there was adventure to be had and treasures to be won. The bored, bloodthirsty side of her.

Vriska wasn't the other side of Terezi's coin anymore. Vriska's recklessness and selfishness weren't being counterbalanced by Terezi's brilliance and sense of ethics because the two just weren't the same people they were back then. The dynamic was just... off now. Now, Vriska was the coin. Two conflicting sides of pride and guilt that she didn't really know how to address.

See, the Gods put some rules in place to keep themselves from interfering to much with the lives of consorts and carapacians. They're more like celebrities than rulers, the citizens of Earth C are mostly just left to rule themselves. So, whenever a war picks up or politics get divisive, the Gods stay out of it.

Vriska really wants to get involved though. She feels like these opportunities are the best chances that she'll get to work out all of her conflicted emotions she has about her new life. It satisfies that growing itch for adventure and conflict that she has, that bloodthirsty boredom that misses her life on Alternia and her life in the game. And, it also appeals to that lingering guilty side of her. If she really wants to be a hero, really feels guilty about what she did, shouldn't she prove? Shouldn't she step in and earn all the praise she'd been getting? Actually become a hero?

Of course, every time she does bring up getting involved, she gets shot down.

The reasoning given is that, well, they're gods. If they step in to solve tge people's problems, the people will become reliant on them, which is a bad thing when they're arguably not qualified to do. They're not professionals, they're just traumatized teenagers with no real adult guidance. Winning a war is one thing, but solving poverty? Getting involved in politics? Preventing those wars to begin with? That's not something they have the life experience to do, and, if they get involved and start solving people's problems for them, it's what they'd be expected to do, which is a bad combo.

Dirk, Rose, Karkat, even Vriska herself. They're all people who thought they could handle the weight of the world on the shoulders and, when they couldn't, it had disastrous consequences.

Vriska always grumbles, but she concedes the point. Instead, she tries to find other ways to scratch that itch. She tries to go hunting and adventuring with Jake, but finds she can't stand him. He's far to cheerful, chatty, and oblivious, but, worst of all, there are those things about him that remind her just a bit of John and Tavros. Things that she can't quite put her finger on about him but make her uncomfortable none the less. She quickly stops attending these little hunting trips with him.

Vriska then tries to go to Aradia. She wants in on those little multiverse adventures that Aradia had been going on with Sollux, but Aradia slams the door in her face before Vriska can get three words out. Vriska makes a scene and pounds on the door for half an hour before Aradia opens up again.

Aradia explains that, no, she doesn't hold a grudge against Vriska for what she did. Sollux does.

"iit wa2 2uch a 2pur of the moment thiing for you, wa2n't iit? makiing me kiill her. iit wa2 a petty, iimpul2iive act of 2piite, ju2t liike everythiing el2e you do. ii don't thiink you even thought twiice about kiilliing aradiia untiil 2he beat the 2hiit out of you. but me?"

"ii heard her voiice. and ii heard iit on repeat iin the back of my thiinkpan every niight after ii kiilled her. every niight... untiil 2he came back..."

"2o, no, vrii2ka, ii don't forgiive you, and ii don't know or want two know about whatever bull2hiit you hammered on our front door for. now get out of our hiive."

As Vriska sulks her way out of their hive, she again feels those two conflicting responses coming from her pride and guilt. One part of her is indignant. Because it had been just another night for her. It had been just another shitty thing she'd done to someone who pissed her off. Who was Sollux to complain? She was the hero, she saved the day, it should be water under the bridge. She didn't save everyone by being nice, now did she?

But, then her guilty side speaks up. No. She hadn't saved the day like that. But Tavros sure did.

That thought just leaves her feeling more conflicted, bitter, and guilty than she ever did before. In a huff, she storms over to John's house.

Vriska had been expecting, partially even hoping, for his house to be in ruins. In her mind, John's life before the game had been the ideal human life. She thought a lot harder about how John's life turned out compared to how her life did than she'd like to admit. John was one of the few people who could break through her stubborn egotism, after all. So, she'd assume he'd be pretty tired of this new life too, seeing how it effectively stole his old "perfect" life from him.

But, she doesn't find that. Instead, she finds John... perfectly content with his new lidmfe and completely uninterested in finding new adventures.

John had friends. Close friends who knew what he was going through and understood how hard on him everything was. Jade, Dave, and Rose always took time out of their days to check on him, talk to him, be there for him. Even Karkat did his part to help John take the enormous weight of the world off his shoulders, help him settle down and start over so he could be happy again.

Yes, John was nice enough to take Vriska to some dark part of the multiverse if she asked, but she didn't want that. That ugly, prideful part of her was upset that he wouldn't have to rely on her, yes, but mostly, she just didn't want to be pitied. For John, who'd found happiness, family, and love in this new 'boring' world of theirs to tear himself away from all of that to just give her an adventure, would be nothing more than an act of pity. And, in Vriska's eyes, she just couldn't use him like that.

So, Vriska collapses onto her bed that night, and dreams of a way she could easily fix these weird, conflicted feelings she has. Vriska never knew who she was, that's why she was so bad at confronting herself.

But, she knew who she wanted to be, and that person was Marquise Spinneret Mindfang.

And that's who Vriska saw standing before her as she woke up in the dreambubbles.

Vriska fangirls at the sight of her and Mindfang basks in all the attention. Vriska even lists off exact feats Mindfang performed in her journal, leading her Ancestor to boast that she's preparing for an even grander adventure. One that could decide the fate of Paradox Space itself.... and she wants Vriska to join her.

This is everything that Vriska could dream of. At this exact moment, all that inner conflict melts away. Mindfang, the Dreaded Spider of the Sea herself, the person who Vriska centered her entire life around, is offering Vriska the chance to join her. In that moment, both sides of the coin are satisfied.

Vriska gleefully accepts the offer.

Mindfang explains the problem, stating that the battle against Lord English had left a tear in Paradox Space, a wound that threaten to grow until it ripped Paradox Space apart. In order to combat it, she needs to find some Rogues of Life to heal the wound and seal it back together. Without any way to control where she's going in the dreambubbles, Mindfang wouldn't be able to find any without a lot of luck... which is where Vriska comes in. Mindfang never got the chance to unlock her aspect like Aranea and Vriska did, she never got a copy of Sgrub, so she needs her descendant.

Vriska is both ecstatic to be so important and disappointed about not being called on to battle some powerful supervillain or something. Mindfang reassures her that she'd be more than happy to take her to fight a few dangerous villains after the important quest was taken care of, all while heaping on the praise. I wouldn't waste your time with some 8ooooooooring healing quest. I've seen what you can do. I know my descendant deserves 8etter than that."

So, Vriska uses her luck powers to lead Mindfang to several Rogues of Life, whom Mindfang mind controls each time. Vriska questions this, but Mindfang insists it's more practical to just ensnare them and apologize later than try to convince them to tag along. Vriska accepts this, even as the guilty part of her points out how that Tavros did a much better job at getting people to join him just by talking to them.

After Mindfang decides they've gathered up enough Rogues of Life, Mindfang uses the Rogues to reassurect herself and them back on Earth C, allowing Vriska to wake up and meet up with them. Once that's done, Mindfang takes Vriska aside and thanks her for being so helpful.

Before decapitating her, stating that Vriska wasn't needed anymore.

While Vriska is resurrecting, Mindfang orders the Rogues to drain the life out of Earth C and funnel it into her, killing countless thousands before Vriska recovers and attacks her. Mindfang is amped enough for Vriska to be forced to use her Ancestral Awakening form to defeat her, all while she tearfully demands to know why Mindfang has done this. As Mindfang glares up at her descendant with a look of bloodparched rage, she spitefully spits out her motivation for her actions.

What you need to remember is that Mindfang was just a version of Aranea who grew up in a more hostile, deadly environment, where all her character flaws could fester. In effect, she has Aranea's ego dialed up past ten.

While Mindfang was content to be dreaded, terrifying pirate in life, it wasn't until her death that she saw the true nature of the multiverse.

She saw Vriska's adventure, watched her life from beginning to end, and realized how insignificant her own role was. Vriska was saving the multiverse, traveling between timelines, battling demons. Vriska became a God, one who was worshipped by an entire planet. All while Mindfang held no real relevance. She wasn't even a background character, she was a backstory character. A means of giving Vriska motivation and nothing more.

Mindfang was a dreaded pitate, but only on one planet in one timeline. Which is hardly as speck in the vastness of the multiverse. And Mindfang felt entitled to more.

The problem is, she's effectively Aranea, but worse. While Aranea tried to make a story that didn't involve her all about her, Mindfang decided that a story that didn't involve her shouldn't exist at all.

Mindfang was going to suck all the life force out of Earth C, before using the absorbed energy to destroy the Alpha Timeline. With no Alpha Timeline to hold it together, Paradox Space would fall apart, erasing everything that ever was. It would be the most important act ever committed. No one could be more important than Mindfang if no one else existed.

In that moment, Vriska Serket died.

Vriska Serket, the one who paralyzed Tavros. Who blinded Terezi. Who murdered Aradia. Who created Bec Noir. Vriska Serket, the egotist, the murderer, the manipulator, and the abuser, died.

Every reason that Vriska had to exist was glaring right up at her, wallowing in a defeated pile of spite, pride, and ego.

Vriska stared blankly as Mindfang died, completely lost. Vriska didn't know who she was or who she wanted to be anymore.

Vriska walks the desolate Earth, the lost Rogues trailing behind her now that they had no where else to go. With so much of their energy wasted on amping Mindfang, there's little they can do to repair the damage done to Earth C.

Vriska searches desperately for her friends, to no avail. Most of them, she can't even find the bodies of. In some cases, such as with Sollux and Aradia, that gives her hope. Maybe they weren't on Earth C during the attack, maybe they're alive. Most of the time, though, it just serves to make her feel more hopeless.

Vriska never finds out if Terezi survived or not.

Vriska does find John's body however. Several months into her search, she found John, Dave, Jade, Rose, Jane, even Karkat inside a run down home. Vriska remembered being surprised at how lively it was once.

The bodies are to rotten for the Rogues to heal in their current state, but at least Vriska knew John died happy. The rotting birthday cake on the table was proof enough of that.

Vriska would never find any surviving Gods. But she would find survivors.

Eventually, after several years of searching, Vriska and the Rogues would stumble across a small town of consorts, slaving away at all hours of the day in mines and farms. They were being exploited by raiders, forced to provide for their ever growing gang or be killed. So Vriska decides to confront them.

The raiders are awed to see one of the "Old Gods" still alive and kicking, but they do not back down and bow in reverence as Vriska would partially expect. The world has turned into an empty, rotting place, so everyone is operating under the idea of kill or be killed. While the raiders are clearly intimidated, they're not going to give up without a fight and they make it clear that they will fight Vriska and her group to maintain control of what little resources they've managed to seize.

Vriska could crush these raiders easily. In the past, she happily would have. But now? She just doesn't want to kill what little life is left on Earth C, especially seeing how they'll likely need every hand on deck if Earth C is ever going to be habitable again. She wants to better now. She wants to do good.

So, Vriska challenges them to game. She makes up a card game on the spot and challenges them to it. If the raiders win, Vriska and the Rogues leave, allowing the Raiders to go on as normal. If Vriska wins, she gets control of the settlement, with the Raiders becoming her muscle. The Raiders agree, seeing it as a better alternative to a fight they knew they couldn't win, and they inevitably lose when Vriska rigs the game in her favor with her luck powers.

Vriska spots an opportunity to rebuild Earth C and, using the raiders as her enforcers, sends her forces out in search of more resources and settlements. Her goal is to unite Earth C under one banner so that everyone can pool their resources into making the world habitable again. As such, all settlements found are immediately "persuaded" to join and those that resist are dealt with by Vriska herself, using that same card game scam.

It takes several decades, but Vriska gradually unites the world and makes it livable again. However, she has no interest in returning Earth C to the way it was, as a bunch of different countries with their own worldviews and opinions. She remembers how often wars broke out and how she wanted to get involved but couldn't, so she decides to sude step that problem entirely.

She creates a new world order, centered around the card game scam she used to conquer the world to begin with.

How it works is that, when people get out of school, they immediately go into the work force in order to get enough money to participate in the Gambler's Den. Those who win big in the Den get House Dollars, which is the currancy that allows people to buy their way up into the world. But better homes in nicer neighborhoods, where food is cheaper and taxes are more lax.

Those who manage to get to the top of the Gambler's Den have to challenge Vriska to the game. If they win, they get let into the House. A paradise eerily similar in aesthetic to John's old neighborhood, wherin the citizens have Vriska's ear, meaning they get some say in how Earth C is governed and run. If they lose, they go right back to the bottom again.

Naturally, the whole system is rigged. Not only can Vriska simply decide wether or not she loses with her luck powers, she has the game's rigged. If someone gets far enough to catch Vriska's attention, she had them spied on and looked into. If Vriska likes them, she has the automatic game machines rig the games in their favor and send them straight to her so she can decide whether they go in the House or not. As "Queen of the House", the Housr and the Gambler's Den are rigged in her favor on every level.

Thing is, Vriska isn't trying to be an evil dictator here. She genuinely thinks this is a step up, as it's what the people themselves seem to want. Of course, the people aren't going to argue against anything she does because she's literally their only remaining God and she rebuilt civilization, so it's not like she's a good judge of that. Basically, her two halves are finally working in tandem. She's soothing her conscience by finally giving the people what they "want" and she's appeasing her ego by rigging everything in her favor and convincing herself and the world that she's doing what's best for everyone. Her compassionate side is leading the dance for once, sure, but that's still leading her down the same path.

The two sides of the coin are identical. It's a rigged coin. And both sides lead to Vriska justifying her own despotism.

Of course, she's not stopping there. Vriska wants to protect her people from all threats, just as she did when she was rebuilding Earth C. By rigging the Gambler's Den so that her most ideal subjects are forced to join the military, Vriska is able to create an army that she uses the conquer the universe. Meanwhile, the Rogues are sent into the dreambubbles to try and find the ghosts of her dead friends so they can revive them or, failing that, find other God-Tiers who can join their cause.

It's a few years after Vriska discovers a way to cross into other timelines and decides to start preemptively conquering the multiverse that she finds her friends again. The Rogues immediately bring John back to life and Vriska enthusiastically hugs him. The two embrace for a solid minute before Vriska decides to bring him up to speed.

John is... horrified.

After he finally managed to reunite with most of his friends in the dreambubbles, they'd heard tell of an evil empire born out of the main timeline that had begun subjugating the multiverse. John and friends joined the resistance against it... but they never thought Vriska was the one who created it.

Vriska tries to justify herself, but it just leads to an ugly, tearjerking arguement.

"I'm doing this for you! 8ecause I want to 8e like you! 8ecause I want to live in a world like yours. You showed me that I could 8e happy, good even, in a more caring world. It's not my fault the things I have to do to protect this stupid paradise planet! I want to 8e a good person, John! ....8ut... I have to 8e a hero...."

John teleports back to the dreambubbles, distraught that Vriska won't see reason. Vriska, meanwhile, readies her armies for war.

They'll see reason. They all will. Then... they can be friends again. They can be happy... in way Vriska was never allowed to be. But, until then, she had duties to attend as Queen of the House.

#villainstuck #vriska serket #queen of the house #john egbert #terezi pyrope #aradia megido #sollux captor #marquise spinneret mindfang

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outbythehighwind · 3 years

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The Misconceptions of FF7: A Cloud, Aerith & Tifa Analysis Part 5/5

Link to all parts: https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640347336477966336/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Having examined the misconceptions around Cloud’s character and his relationships with each heroine, I want to focus on the roles Aerith and Tifa have on FF7′s plot. FF7 is often called one of two stories – “The Story of Cloud Strife” or “The Story of Aerith Gainsborough”. Both of these titles are undoubtedly true. At the same time FF7 is also, and no less at all, The Story of Tifa Lockhart.

As noted in my chapter-analysis posts on the game as a whole, Cloud is the primary protagonist and hero of the overall game: he is the one to defeat Sephiroth externally; and he is the one to defeat Sephiroth internally. He is not the hero of either of the game’s two plots, however. Aerith is the heroine of the external plot (Aerith saves the Planet); Tifa is the heroine of the internal plot (Tifa saves Cloud). And both heroines are equally important to FF7. In saving (and fighting beside) Cloud, who ultimately defeats Sephiroth, Tifa enables Aerith to stop Meteor; in stopping Meteor, Aerith in turn saves Tifa and Cloud from death. The external conflict cannot be overcome without the internal.

The climax of both Aerith and Tifa’s arcs is presented in a choice under parallel circumstances.

Cloud has just given Sephiroth the Black Materia (at the Temple with Aerith; at North Cave with Tifa).

Cloud has suffered mental collapse (he is frozen in doubt and afraid of himself after the Temple events; his psyche is completely shattered after North Cave).

The Planet is in urgent need of help against Sephiroth (the Planet is crying out in pain with Sephiroth’s plan – Meteor – brought to light; Sephiroth’s plan is executed with Meteor hurtling toward the Planet).

The choice is this: to either leave Cloud in the care of someone else and attempt to save the Planet, or leave the Planet in the care of someone else and attempt to save Cloud. The women make opposite decisions, both out of love, and both in carrying out the roles they alone can fulfil.

Aerith can only indirectly try to help Cloud – she cannot reach the ‘real’ Cloud; she cannot save him from his internal struggle. She is the only one who can answer the Planet’s cries and directly, definitively help in praying for Holy. Therein lies her choice; Aerith has to save Planet – for Cloud, for the party, and for all life. And therein she is established as the heroine of the external plot, leaving Cloud with one last message: “Cloud, you take care of yourself. So you don’t have a breakdown, okay?”

Tifa can only indirectly try to help the Planet (by defeating Sephiroth which would free Holy – yet she is unaware of Holy at the time). Cloud has lost his entire sense of self – the self directly linked to, motivated by, and reciprocatively (though she does not yet know it) in love with Tifa. Her reason for fighting, as she openly reveals to the party in that moment, is the choice she makes: Cloud – therein establishing her role as heroine of the internal conflict (saving Cloud).

There is one last misconception that I wish to examine in brief, and that is the bond between Aerith and Tifa.

Often misunderstood as ‘mere rivals competing for Cloud’ (which is again, utter nonsense), the two girls share a profound and understanding friendship. And this friendship, though not as dominant in the plot and narrative, is far too often overlooked. In fact, for all the depth in Cloud and Aerith’s bond, I would argue that Tifa is the one who truly understood Aerith best. Before that, though, I would like to point out that in every – every – instance where the party is hanging around between plot events in a new place (and they are not in the immediate player party), Aerith and Tifa are found together.

Tifa, despite usually being hesitant to act, shows exasperation at multiple points to save Aerith from Shinra – even to the point of snapping at Barret on the stairs. Tifa is the one to exclaim that the party go after Aerith when learning she has left for Forgotten Capital. And she shows a desperation to do so immediately, even though Cloud has just awoken in a shocking mental state.

Aerith exchanges her own life for Marlene’s safety – the little girl she knows only as someone precious to Tifa.

Tifa, out of everyone, excluding Cloud who’d known Aerith the longest, takes Aerith’s death the hardest. She is so distraught, in fact, that after shifting Aerith’s hair out of her eyes, she runs off, refusing to comfort or seek comfort from Cloud (who would surely have welcomed it, shown by his reaction with Yuffie).

And here is what consider the most powerful statement regarding Aerith’s death. When the party contemplates the memory of Aerith on the Highwind, Tifa privately ponders her life and kindness. The rest of the party thinks about either her returning to the Planet or their regrets on never getting to do the things they wanted to do with her (Cid wishes he could have taken her on the Highwind; Nanaki wishes he could have apologized for scaring her when they first met.

Tifa is the only one who thinks about Aerith’s feelings, how Aerith would have felt – from the tragic life she never wanted to burden the others with, to her excitement for the future, to her moment on the altar while she was praying.

Tifa does not spare a thought for herself or her own regrets and wishes for the time they could have had together. She thinks solely of Aerith, putting Aerith’s thoughts, feelings and motivations at the center. And that, to me, is the true mark of friendship.

When Cloud brings up Aerith’s ‘intended self-sacrifice’ for the Planet, Tifa disagrees, saying that Aerith intended to come back to them all along, having always spoken about a “next time”.

Not only does Aerith’s zeal for life and strive to keep living make her death all the sadder (in addition to setting her apart from the sacrificial savior trope) – we are shown an invaluable friendship and empathy between two characters who are so oft, for the most shallow reason, polarized by players.

Despite Aerith’s irreplaceable bond with Cloud, despite her having visited him in his dream upon heading for Forgotten Capital – where her last words to him were, directly stating that which he fails to grasp, “I’ll come back when this is all over” – it is truly Tifa who understood her best. And I think that’s beautiful.

#ff7 1997 #tifa lockhart #aerith gainsborough #friendship #cloud strife #cloti #my analyses #analysis

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retphienix · 3 years

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youtube

Alright, this is gonna be tough because I desperately want to say so much for the game's sake and my own, but it's just so much.

At least the playthrough as a whole exists to show a lot of those things, and there's no shame in some of the impacts the game had for myself going unsaid :)

LONG POST INCOMING, NO 'READ MORE' BECAUSE IT'S RELEVANT TO THE POST AND NOT AN AFTER-THOUGHT

CLICK 'J' ON YOUR KEYBOARD TO SKIP. (Sorry mobile users)

8:48 - Do you have any idea how good a step forward it felt to smash the repressing bulb?

9:50 - So I'll get ahead of myself because this fight shows a lot of the visuals that play into this: Something being the manifestation of guilt for Mari is so incredibly visualized.

Between the base 'Something' being extremely close to the shadow she cast and including the one visible eye that bore down on Sunny and Basil after the hanging, to the stairs incorporating into the design.

The seaweed and spider are more general anxieties though they do circle back to Mari since she saved Sunny, but those two forms don't feel as directly related as the stairs (heights) and base 'Something' forms and what they represent for his repressed guilt.

Could be wrong ;) Tell me what you saw in the forms of 'Something' if you'd like to expand on them :)

12:39 - Just to prove the point before you get to fully see the truth- Something morphs into the figure of Mari hanging. It doesn't fully demonstrate the "eye" aspect yet, but still I just wanted to say kudos on the way 'Something' is shown visually. Formless for a reason, and that form becomes more defined as you understand what it is, exceptional damn thing.

15:43 - Basil's part in all of this makes me so damn sad. Plenty to say later (obviously), but he harbors so much guilt, wants forgiveness so much, and is so (not shown yet) desperate to believe in Sunny's innocence while knowing but not comprehending the truth. The fact he harbors his own 'Something' due to the guilt of all this is heartbreaking, these kids endured a hell no one should. Losing someone so important to you and harboring the guilt and fault of it when nothing of the sort was intended. A childish fight with raised emotions got out of hand and all this came of it.

Hell.

16:30 - I absolutely adore how the photo album is used for this reveal.

Absolutely incredible execution that's specific to this story and its characters and makes piecing (literally) this together tense and grim.

22:27 - I NEVER SPOKE TO OR INTERACTED WITH THE THING IN THE CENTER OF THIS ROOM AND I'M A NORMAL AMOUNT OF UPSET ABOUT THAT >:( lol

29:41 - Okay.

So this reveal as a whole is so unbelievably well paced and incredibly hard hitting.

All game long there's a weight of having lost Mari. Repeatedly it's told that she killed herself and no one can understand why and everyone (MYSELF THE PLAYER INCLUDED) is looking for meaning in little moments, seeking out hints that maybe she was suffering or depressed or this or that.

And while that has gone on FOR THE ENTIRE GAME there has also been this uneasy weight surrounding Sunny/Omori. Visions of Mari twisted and deformed into phantoms of horror.

For the most part I assumed it was just him coping with having lost his sister and maybe a dialogue on how when she was alive he was in her shadow (in his mind) and now that she's gone he remains there?

That was the best I could figure, more or less. But it continued to seem more and more malicious in design and MUCH more 'heavy' in how it's presented as a shadow behind Omori/Sunny throughout his adventure and life.

The weight and 'overshadowed' looks of the scenes felt more and more foreboding and less like a simpler "I'm living in her shadow" story, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Then these pictures come out and piece things together.

The final result:

Sunny and Mari fighting. (Context appears to be his growing disdain towards playing. It's stated he loved playing, but it's also shown that he begins to dislike how much Mari is dragged away for classes and the like up to and including playing. So my read was that Sunny was upset that their fleeting time together was dedicated to the recital and broke his violin in an emotional blur and the fight occurred.

Alternatively it was accidentally broken and both of their emotions were running high as it happened)

Mari falling to her death.

Sunny and Basil carrying her upstairs and tending to her.

Sunny breaking down as it sinks in.

The visions having Basil say "It's going to be okay" by the bedside. (I perceive that as a memory of what Basil was saying as he tried to manage his emotions during the event)

Sunny and Basil carrying her back downstairs and to the backyard.

The makeshift noose.

And finally the sight that burned itself into Sunny's eyes of her hanging after it was all said and done.

Just holy shit to it all in how it's revealed and handled.

Stories have twists all the time, and I ain't gonna make some bold claim like "Most unpredictable!" "Best twist!" "What a twist!" or whatever, though that'd be funny.

I just want to say this twist worked BEFORE the reveal as a foreboding sense of unease and curiosity- it lent itself to intentionally vague and easily misconstrued explanations, basically- instead of it outright misleading you beyond the characters that believe the lie repeating the lie, it allowed you to mislead yourself.

It did the twist the right way! And well! YOU trick YOURSELF! The people repeating the lie are being lied to or have motivation to repeat the lie! The GAME isn't lying (as so many twists handle it) the game is giving the world reason to mislead and allowing you to be mislead!

Now am I yelling affirmations for the way things SHOULD ALWAYS BE! YES! BUT THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S NOT AS NORMAL AS IT SHOULD BE! lol

31:40 - All the "You will really miss them"s hurt :(

33:25 - Right out the gate, a spoiler for what isn't here:

I looked up the alternate endings of the neutral route and my heart hurts to know Sunny doesn't stick around and Basil dies :(

34:00 - BASIL BEING OVERWHELMED WITH DENIAL AND GUILT AS HE ATTEMPTS TO MENTALLY PROTECT HIS VIEW OF WHO HIS FRIEND IS BY INVENTING A SECOND PARTY THAT DID THIS IS SO FUCKING REAL AND AMAZINGLY DONE.

And it explains the name behind the 'Something'.

'Something' behind you did it. There's 'Something' behind you, isn't there.

'Something' all around us, that potentially being the truth comin' in.

When 'Something' ruined my photos, Basil repressing protecting Sunny by destroying the proof.

Just expertly done.

'Something' being repression of the memory and impending guilt. Dannnng.

36:26 - It's 24 hours after I beat the game as I type all this so here's a gag.

Here's the part where Basil beats some sense into his friend, because after this Sunny gets knocked out and wakes up 200% improved and ready to save Basil from his own guilt by releasing them both from the secret.

So basically Kel dragged us out of bed, then a couple days later Basil beats us up, and that's how Sunny gets better :^) Game Over.

38:46 - This fight made me feel utterly terrible, a highlight being the energy bar saying "Everything is going to be okay".

or at 40:17 - when Basil pokes out Sunny's eye and the screen does this? That's an underutilized but always awesome visual.

41:12 - I THOUGHT I WAS DEAD AT THIS POINT :)

Because just before entering Basil's home on this night you see his Grandma's ghost here. So seeing Sunny here told me "WELL. YOU FUCKED UP!"

42:25 - Like I said, beat some sense into Sunny.

Here's the mental side of things where Basil's beatin' told Sunny to go remember the good times and confront his inner self and I'm being partially facetious because there's plenty to say about what's coming up.

43:15 - Goosebumps every time due to the sincerity and hope of this.

43:40 - Hug for anyone needing that.

51:11 - I could cry again and I just might before this post is done being put together.

This accident was never meant to be.

55:09 - Timestamp is arbitrary, I won't go over every flashback but I do want to say what a beautiful way to use these photos. To relive the memories? To find the strength to overcome and all that? After all these years of suppressing memories? DANNNG I love this game.

1:04:09 - I stepped in poop.

1:04:15 - Barefooted.

1:04:22 - I embraced my failure.

1:12:00 - The violin.

1:13:00 - "The anxious feeling-" "They believed in you" "No matter what you didn't want to disappoint them" I'm filled with love and gonna cry about it.

1:14:00 - So an important theme in the game, as if it has just one, is Sunny suppressing emotions and demonizing himself.

Obviously the ending shows him breaking free from both but I think it's important as hell to look at how he builds up to being able to.

After all the dark moments show him as a bloodied monster, demonstrate a perceived lack of remorse for what he's done (as in he sees himself so poorly that he says "I must not have felt bad about it, I'm a monster", not that he actually doesn't feel bad about it, that he thinks he shouldn't because he's bad), have him stab dream Basil to protect his repression of the memory, the build up to breaking free from that is him remembering the good in him through the lens of his friends.

Both in the real world and in revisiting the memories within the photos.

He hears about the good in himself that he has pretended isn't there and finds the power to overcome this deadened shell he's made.

He learns how to forgive himself by finally remembering he's worthy of forgiveness and is more than his mistake, that even the person he grievously harmed would want him to forgive himself and would understand the mistake didn't define him.

1:15:15 - Just because you did something bad doesn't make you bad, to put it more eloquently than my rambles. He had to learn that.

1:19:20 - I've done this fight 4 times.

You may be wondering why 4 times, it ain't like I replayed the game a ton or anything.

The short of it is:

1) For the good ending :)

2) To see what happens if you go "up" in the hospital- it's a dead end- I assumed it'd be a bad ending. So I got the good ending again :)

3) For the bad ending.

4) FOR THE GOOD ENDING TO WIPE THE HORRIBLE FEELING IN THE PIT OF MY STOMACH AWAY FROM THE BAD ENDING :)

In doing so I did get one layer deeper on the BG of Omori in the fight, here it is:

And I learned on the fourth run that the fight is simpler than I gave it credit lol, Cherish refills your juice, so there is no reason to use Encore. You can get to the end (and deeper more easily) by just using the triple attack and Cherish and Calm down when necessary.

1:29:00 - A summary of the fight is that it's extremely impactful emotionally, but very obviously isn't a "Fun fight". It's great mechanically and story wise for what it's trying to do :)

I'll just say it here: I'm surprised there wasn't an end-game "Omori" fight, you know, in dream world? Because combat is SO good in this. I am lead to believe that the Omori route where you never go outside in the real world has more bosses and zones and would fill what I just implied I wanted- but you're also railroaded into the Neutral endings which are both sad :(

And honestly? That makes sense and I applaud the decision :) Embracing the fantasy world for more 'fights' isn't exactly the path to recovery. Also and I know someone will be bothered I say this because *I'm* bothered I'm saying this- it makes sense since a big predecessor did the same thing lol.

Undertale Genocide has new bosses and a harder end game challenge (Sans) while being the worse ending, while the good ending has a flashy and story/emotionally impactful final fight that isn't as challenging because challenge isn't the point of the morals being explored.

I just bring it up because it's interesting, has a parallel, and after fighting Omori 4 times I really REALLY wanted to do an end-game fight in Dream World.

1:30:00 - forgive me as I cry again. goosebumps and more.

OH NO~!

DRAT!

So I use a cheap video editor and I use the free format of it which limits to 720p and I didn't think twice of it.

I recorded at max, but downgraded after editing.

At 720p you can't see the detail that made me break down crying!

At 1:31:55 Sunny's eyes go wider as he sees Mari as they finally get to experience the duet in this dream state (White Egret Orchid, this is real and happening, I'm taking this to my grave :'( ) he sees her smile and that smile made me break down, but in the 720 it's blurry :(

That's on me, I could have posted the scene raw in HQ but I didn't know it'd compress just enough to be invisible :(

still. that duet scene can make me cry on command. just because of that alone, but also the entire thing.

1:33:42 - Sunny breaks from his shell and feels his emotions again.

1:37:07 - I wish every game would end with a mirror to see yourself.

The 'Despite everything, it's still you' vibe just cements all the growth and experiences that have happened as so much more real when that happens. Bonus points because mirrors in Omori are a time bomb where you can be reminded of the guilt following you- and this one is safe. This one is pure and clean. You did it.

1:37:50 - As I said earlier, going up does nothing. Dead end.

1:39:00 - I have to tell you something.

Simple ending. And yet slams me like two trucks. I'm so proud.

1:41:00 - Post credits scene.

This is so heartwarming and their smiles are the purest thing in the entire world.

1:42:50 - BAD ENDING RECORDING.

All I'll say on that is the bad ending made me feel terrible inside. Give up, live in your bubble, and subconsciously end it all so you never have to confront reality again.

My gut felt heavy to be honest.

And the fact that THAT is when Bo En Time is played is INCREDIBLE.

Having the sky shift like that gave goosebumps and cemented my dread.

Just seeing it now has me feeling very poorly.

Okay. Video done.

Now for general thoughts.

First off this White Space cycle has been going on for YEARS with Sunny only getting worse as he suppresses things more and more and the reason he found the strength to overcome is because of his friends and I'm gonna yell about it.

THE REASON SUNNY IS BREAKING FREE CAN BE DIRECTLY POINTED AT KEL THINKING "FUCK IT, I'M ABOUT TO LOSE A FRIEND, AND I DON'T WANT TO"

And I just think that is sweet as hell. The strength was inside himself, but the problem itself caused Sunny to demonize and not trust himself- he needed someone to break him free and help convince him that he's not irredeemable. And boom.

The way this game handles Denial and even gives it physical form with the 'Something's that both Sunny and Basil harbor is just awesome.

I touched on it but combat in Omori is very, very good.

I've said it here and there as I played and I feel like going at length in the finale post is pointless because this isn't a review but to put it concisely.

Types changing mid-combat, the character archetypes being so well defined, the follow up system, combat in Omori is some top notch turn based RPG stuff.

Like up there with the greats, the timeless masterpieces. This is GOOD fighting. So it was surprising the good ending didn't emphasize it- I explained why that makes sense, but even still! It'd probably be lesser for it (as explained previously) but it's interesting they practiced that restraint for the message they wanted to send.

Repeatin' that Mari's smile in the recital made me cry. Burned in my brain.

I'm still surprised I got the post credits scene because I DID water the plants a lot but when the game showed me them all dead I assumed that was the fail condition.

I genuinely do want to try the Omori route some time down the road. I hope I get around to it.

I am slightly dissuaded just because the Omori route only gets the neutral endings which are not Good To Be Blunt :(

But I want to see what dream content there is and I hear there are other bosses!

Other small bits from my notes:

Replacing denial (the black bulb) with hope (the white bulb) was good as heck.

The imagery of the 'Something' is so top notch- using the shadow of her body combined with the piercing gaze of her single eye- MY GOD.

The fragility of life being so present- between memories of near death experiences, to the way in which Mari dies, to the ease at which either Basil or Sunny can end the game. It's tense and heart-wrenching.

The way the 'Something' behind Sunny almost always shadows over him like an ever present weight.

Tearful, hopeful, pure, kids enduring a guilt metric tons heavier than their bodies could ever handle and finally, finally moving beyond it.

I said more in a personal post, and I'll reblog that.

Honestly, just timestamping through the video took it out of me and got the point across.

Omori is a wonderful game.

It's definitely a favorite for me, high up there on my list.

Between the themes, the gameplay, the humor, the ending.

This is a good one.

And now I get to end having experienced all the care and love in this title, that's such a sweet thing.

Now I know this finale post is a mess, illegible even. I have gotten sloppier as I've begun embracing just 'experiencing and rambling' and perhaps my formatting with change yet again until I find something more easily shared.

Despite that. I want to thank any who popped in on this playthrough.

This was a good one, a highlight of the blog for sure- and I'm always happy when I see some people enjoying the absolute mess I toss online when I do one of these :P

So thank you for your time, and thank you to any ridiculous enough to read my nonsense here.

Have a good one :)

And just as expected I feel I've said nothing and barely touched the surface as the post-game-head of mine does a poor job lol. Even still :P

#RetPlays #Omori #Spoilers

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