#and i could be wrong bc of lack of context and knowledge

[m1d-45]

SPOILERS AHEAD

okokok cool bc we know now that the gnoses are essentially the stolen power from the dragon sovereigns right

imo in the context of sagau, this further validates the concept of celestia booting the creator when they initially invaded/being able to convincingly place an imposter in teyvat and then something something most people don't recognize the true creator

and also neuvi is confirmed the incarnation of the hydro dragon so i imagine bc he doesn't have the full dragon powers that's the reason he'd be unable to recognize the creator

AND THEN ALSO furina is now confirmed to not have the hydro gnosis so even more running theory is that we may be having another akasha situation here where the oratrice is powered by the gnosis so what if because of that...reader is put on trial and the final verdict is instead guilty because of the gnosis and its connection to celestia?

ooh the imposter!au crumbs are delicious

i'll think of something for the fortress of meropide later

someone help me orz

- death loop anon

alright so admittedly my opinion about the sagau version of genshin lore has changed pretty dramatically, and it all centers around celestia. speculations below the cut. be warned this is mostly stream of consciousness.

oh, and here’s my previous post for some ground knowledge.

alright so it’s like… literally all but spelled out that the “primordial one” is celestia. they came, took over the world from the dragon sovereigns, and… the ‘second who came,’…. my mind says it could be intended to be the abyssal twin and or the travellers together, but that’s a problem for later when it’s actually confirmed. for now, the second is us, the creator.

this changes the timeline quite significantly, so here’s a new one. you create teyvat and it’s realms, as well as the seven sovereigns. you’re satisfied with your world. you move on to somewhere else, promising to visit as you do with all your worlds, or at least the ones with sentient life.

for the sake of everything, we’ll assume “the primordial one” (because it’s unclear if it’s the Sustainer (it probably is) or the body of celestia as a whole (unlikely)) was one of your prior creations. how they got to teyvat is unclear, but the point is that they Did, and overruled the sovereigns. whether or not this is when gnoses are created is blurry in canon, but for our purposes we’ll say it is.

(note, minor: celestia taking the authority of the dragons likely weakened them, making them more susceptible to things like forbidden knowledge or Dying. i say this because there’s no way one (?) guy could just topple 7 elite gods with the power of the world at their claws.)

blah blah lore. why celestia did this we don’t know. call it greed. istaroth happens and i still don’t know why. when you come back, horrified by what teyvat has become, you try to fight back. whether weakened from exhaustion caused elsewhere or overwhelmed by grief, you lose, and celestia solidifies their place as the head of teyvat. off you go to your ‘earth’ to rest.

from now on, everything that goes wrong is celestia’s fault. the forbidden knowledge, the abyss, the archon war and the fatui—all of it stems from their lack of understanding as to how to rule a world. they tried to cheat by handing out the gnoses, but they were poorly made, eroding the archons they gift them to. the greater lord’s death, the cursing of dvalin, the entirety of khaenri’ah, all of that can be blamed on celestia.

in canon, characters—even and especially archons—express negative emotions toward celestia. zhongli said that his gnosis was a fair trade for the tsaritsa, who is now vindicated. she leads the nation of love, and out of love for her god, she will not allow celestia to rule any longer.

this swings quite nicely into an imposter au as well. people can Tell celestia is incapable, so they make their own god, one to rule the people while celestia rules the world.

lore over, addressing your ask now.

re: your point about neuvi not recognizing the creator: i see that as very unlikely. though he doesn’t have his full authority, he still can sense the waves in the water, and was able to tell when the primordial sea sluice was about to break.

(the primordial sea itself is a talk for another time. maybe when fontaine is finished i’ll address it again?)

re: your point about the oratrice: this one could go either way. on one hand, in my version as i’ve written it here (which is always open for changes or other opinions) gnoses are essentially bottles. the power inside is the sovereigns, and hence loyal, while the bottle itself is made by celestia, and is hence disloyal. depends on your variety of sagau, i suppose.

finally, none of this is set in stone. i’m partial to the archons having memories of the creator—arguably could be from their gnoses, but that’s an angst for another time—as well as a few other tropes that don’t entirely align with this version of lore. this is… say, the “official” version i have in my head, and my fics are small alterations to this “official” version. additionally, just because its my “official” doesn’t mean it has to be yours, and i’m open to any suggestions or feedback.

#m1d : [chats] #death loop anon #4.1 genshin #4.1 spoilers #4.1 archon quest #cause god knows i wouldn’t want to be spoiled for this myself #….this. the parallels between this and…….. #guy who only thinks about his ocs: getting a lot of oc vibes from this…

[utilitycaster]

#this is SO real#wbn#there's a strange determination to sort everyone into either witches OR wizards and not just. townsfolk. people.#and to a degree that is where the story has led us (ame has been leaning much heavier on the spirit side of her communication role)#but the mortal world is just as complex and deserving of attention and sympathy as the spirits#and it's almost bizarre to treat everything suvi says as empire fodder rather than legitimate frustration and confusion at a world that#has been closed off to her#'you get what you get' has been taken so far out of the context in which she said it for example#yes I believe she has the incorrect viewpoint imo but there is so much nuance in how suvi doesn't want people to be hurt and wants to-#be able to control that. and how the spirits represent an absolute lack of control with the ability to do whatever they want#(for the most part)#and her fear and even occasional disdain of that is from a further place than empire propaganda#it's from her desire to have control and knowledge of her surroundings. to be able to Know everything#and the spirits laugh in the face of that very idea#and it's not entirely invalid of her to be frightened of that!!!#it's the wizard the witch AND the wild one!!#suvi would not be there if her viewpoint was not valuable if very very flawed#her end goal should not be to become ame because like she said. she's a wizard and she Knows magic!#there is virtue is her strategy and determination and logic#but people seem to favor ignoring that to smooth over the nuance and hope for her to realize her wrongs soon#sorry this was a giant ramble lol

@thespoonisvictory (not putting this on the post bc it's already a long one) Yes to all of this! Like, I think first and foremost people are ignoring that she is a 20 year old whose parents died for the citadel when she was a very young child and that this has been her only home since then and if she did a sudden about face "oh I was wrong about everything" it would be just as fragile and biased as her current worldview; while epiphanies and turning points are real, true and lasting change is ultimately a process and I don't trust an ideology that is adopted as a rapid about-face rather than an ongoing exploration.

The firesides make it clear that she and Ame are in fact very similar people; both will often ultimately do what they want despite personal danger or dangers to others in the party, both genuinely do care a lot about common people but both are at times deeply ignorant of the privileged positions they have held from a very young age (even though Suvi will throw her weight around, the realization that Galani would not have been given the same second chances has absolutely rocked her); and both are extremely out of their element in this story! I think it's also worth keeping in mind that we're in the "so wizards have really fucked up badly here" arc. There's plenty of time to explore the idea that, for example, one corrupt witch could do some pretty significant damage. The main thing that divides Suvi and Ame is what they were taught, and yeah, Suvi is frightened and unsettled by the world of spirits that Ame has been taught to respect and understand and that she never has. I think it's also really worth keeping in mind that Suvi knows that Eursulon's life here is in part because she broke rules she had no possible way of knowing, and I can't imagine she - a person who is all about knowledge and rules - has truly found a way to live with that yet.

For what it's worth I find it fascinating that the meta about Suvi is by and large fairly harsh criticism, and the meta about Imogen is "how dare you speak ill of my 28 year old baby daughter", and also that meta about the imperial wizards in WBN is largely "fuck them bitches, they trapped a god and everything they do is wrong and bad" but there's plenty of meta about the imperial wizard in Critical Role that goes "well he sucks as an individual but his plan is pretty cool actually" because I see a lot of parallels and I know there's overlap in fandoms. It does genuinely feel like people just see the word "god" or "empire" and react without actually listening to the other thousands of words surrounding it.

#for reasons of honor i cannot publicly provide my other thought here re: imogen and suvi but check back on sept 9 #or dm me #anyway. i love suvi very much and a lot of the meta about her is like. i don't care if you criticize her #she is a lot of negative things she is impatient and arrogant and unwittingly uncaring and yeah she supports an imperial force #but so much of it is just suvi empire so suvi bad be like ame. like it's not even good anti-imperialism bc it's so shallow #wbn spoilers

[raayllum]

Something I’ve been mulling over bc it also stuck out to me when I first watched the season, took the symbolic reasoning, and then didn’t think too much over it. However, I think I do know the in-character / story reasoning after some time & reflection, so let’s talk about it. Or rather, let’s try to answer

Why didn’t Callum figure out the mirror?

Simply put: because he didn’t, Narratively, need to. 

Let me explain. 

What’s the Point, really, of Callum being interested in the mirror? We know it’s in character because he’s always in curious about magic. We know it’s in character because he already has a tendency to fixate and attach meaning to objects. And we know it’s doubly sound in-universe given that Callum knows from Rayla’s binding and the Storm Spire archway that elven stuff is hardly ever meaningless or without a deeper meaning underneath. 

From a symbolic standpoint, of course it’s meant to show his parallels to Viren, even if his and Viren’s personalities and circumstances are wildly different. However, Callum has even less context for the mirror than Viren did. All he knows is that it’s something Viren has had and is seemingly elvish in design. He doesn’t know it was in the lair of the Dragon monarchy or any hint at all that it’s connected to the archmage mentioned in his father’s letter / that he has a somehow related Key. 

One of the main reasons I thought Callum might go after Rayla into Xadia from a storytelling structure was because 1) we need humans in Xadia as an audience surrogate (hi all the kiddos just going into Xadia with Zubeia and Rayla to provide just that) and 2) I always thought they wouldn’t have the time for Callum to have a full fledged arc with mirror Aaravos the same way Viren had and that it could end being too similar to what had come before. (Turns out I was right because the plot didn’t have time lmao! But I digress)

Don’t get me wrong, Aaravos manipulating Callum through the mirror in terms of conversations could have worked (and I’ve written a few here and here pre season release) but that always felt like it might infringe a bit on Callum’s character for two main reasons

1) Besides Rayla being gone, he has virtually everything he ever wanted; helping his brother, a powerful mage, getting to pursue more magical resources etc. Viren only went to Aaravos out of outright desperation because he believed that had “nothing left to lose” and because he had goals he was chasing. Until Aaravos possesses Callum, Callum is a hot mess, sure, but he’s not particularly desperate. There’s no tangible way in - Callum was offered unlimited power back in 2x08 and still turned down being a dark mage. Just something nondescript wouldn’t really work this time either

2) Callum is skeptical as hell and is accordingly slow to trust, and even barring Rayla’s absence, he still had a support system of people who cared about him at the castle, particularly Ezran and Soren (and even Bait) who would keep an eye on him. Callum can be reckless and let his curiosity get the better of him, but he still listens to his instincts (2x03 with Soren and Claudia) and the people around him.

The main information Callum could’ve gotten from Aaravos, if the Startouch elf had been 1) willing and 2) truthful would’ve been details of his backstory - well before his imprisonment, as everything else (the fact that he is imprisoned, the lack of knowledge about where he is, who put him there, etc.) are all things we really knew. So it’d require more of a switch from Aaravos than Callum in a lot of ways too - elongating and stretching things out, and not necessarily giving Callum a segue into an arc where he’s actually able to start processing his feelings. And again, no desperation as a way in

But with all that out of the way, why have Callum be more obsessed with the mirror beyond the initial scene in 4x01? Why not have him investigating the cube because it’s also related to Aaravos and could communicate the same purpose? Why have it be the arguable C-plot of 4x02 at all if he’s just going to be interrupted? 

Like I said, there’s the very blatant symbolic reason of Rayla’s entrance being what deters Callum from getting too close to the mirror, her halo’d by the moon figure representing the other path he’s going to choose away from the more blatant visible path of darkness (black dark magic eyes, gazing upon a fallen star, “what if i’m on a path of darkness” etc etc) in the end. I do think that’s the Surface Level reading we’re meant to have as a takeaway, kind of similar to when Rayla spares Marcos in the forest in a moment of emotional illumination. Another path.

However, I think it actually goes deeper than that:

Which is to say, step out of the narrative / audience mindset, and look at it from Callum’s perspective. 

You see the six primal sources Rayla has drawn after the craziest night of your life and think of something exciting and familiar. The cube in the Banther Lodge. Conveniently on the way and free of humans. You have to go get it. 

You give up on having it when shit hits the fan. You just want to make sure everyone, especially Rayla, gets out safely. You completely give up on the cube. And even though she’s pissed at you, she tosses it into your lap anyway. 

It turns out that, of all the possible things and secrets your stepfather could’ve given you that you might have missed out on, he intended and left the Key of Aaravos to you. It soothes the ache in your chest. It feels like destiny, especially after a week of being lost and magic-less

You bury yourself in your work to soothe another heart break. You hate the bulk of what you’ve inherited from your predecessor. You learn how to translate runes. But no matter how much you learn, you can’t translate the mirror. The gleam routinely catches your eye. You hate a riddle you can’t solve

You have a feeling the mirror is related to the evil returning to the world due to Ibis mentioning the Fallen Star; the same way you had a feeling that the cube could help you. (A feeling that Rayla couldn’t be trusted, a feeling that the storm made you feel like it did when you cast fulminus.) 

Then you cannot feel anything except numbness as your limbs and mouth move beyond your control and it’s worse. It’s so much worse. 

You worry you’re on a path of darkness, that you will inevitably, accidentally, play into his hands because you almost have three times before without even realizing.

You cannot let go of the cube. 

In every adjacent encounter, Callum has had a step of separation from Aaravos. He thinks and behests they make a heartfelt detour so he can go get the cube, but Rayla is the one who finds it. Before he can even know the cube is more special than it seems (although he already thinks it’s more special than Rayla does and certainly not worthless), Harrow is granting him key ;) information. He didn’t find the mirror, Viren having already stolen and hauled it back into Katolis, as the last thing Runaan ever saw. By the time Zubeia tells him what it is, it is too late.

In so many ways this exemplifies how even before Callum knew it in 1x01 for a decent chunk of the episode, the events that would radically transform and destroy his life had already taken place in more ways than one: assassins spotted, egg stolen. Harrow dead just as the narrative truly begins. 

The cube is his part of the puzzle to decipher, not anyone else’s. Claudia, Viren, and Callum are all needed as equal parts of Aaravos’ plan for his pawns. For Viren, it was the staff and the mirror; for Claudia, it is the quest; and for Callum, it will likely be the cube. This is shown even in 4x01 when the two times Callum is talking about the mirror, he is Interrupted by either the guard coming to fetch him on his brother’s behalf or by Soren messing with the cube, and Callum is interrupted again by the cube glowing and then Rayla’s arrival, literally turning away from the mirror for each. 

The point of the mirror and Callum’s obsession with it wasn’t to solely highlight how he’s like Viren, necessarily (otherwise they could’ve just kept throwing in the same parallels they have from the very beginning), but to show how his agency has been undermined from the very beginning and will be to the end (of S6 at least), that he and Viren are tethered by the same thing that is Worse than Death, and that while more cognizant of it, by the time Viren realized Aaravos was using his Power and that Callum was entangled, it was already, as Harrow says

If Callum had figured out the mirror and that it was a prison or even communicated to Aaravos on his own, he would be able to look back and see and know all the places he could’ve stopped, all the places he actively chose to wander down. But even that is taken away from him. Even with delays, even with self-preservation, even by both repeating and rejecting Viren’s mistakes, it adds to Callum feeling like his destiny is already written, that this path as a pawn is inevitable. That no matter how different or similar he is to Viren, there’s only one way this can end, that there are no divergences, there are no other choices - there are no safe choices except to take him out. That he will continually come back to Aaravos regardless of if he knows it or not, that his own wishes will hook him right back in, that his fate is already sealed. That it’s written in stone. 

Callum has chased agency (magic) his whole arc, wanting to be able to protect his loved ones and make something of himself. However, he’s also had more agency than he was giving himself credit for even in S1, stopping Claudia from going after them, having the final say about going up to the tower or not. Thus S1-S3 is largely Callum deciding who he wants to be with the agency he has and recognizing his strengths, building his confidence. He hasn’t struggled with concepts of agency more than he has since S2, which is one of the reasons S4 mirrors S2 so heavily in how its emotionally structured for the main cast in particular. Realizing that the ability to fully commit to the choices he wants has been within him all along; that’s why he narratively gets the Sky arcanum. So of course an external factor reaching inside him and taking control is the most bone-chilling inversion of that possible.

If he went the Viren arc as a slowburn in S4, we would get the Viren S4 resolution, of Callum unknowingly giving away his agency until he has basically nothing left. If he was driven to figure out the mirror for it or his own sake, we would see him being having Claudia’s arc, falling further and deeper in with a devastating relentlessness. 

Instead, we get that lack of agency on speed run to give Callum the opposite arc of having agency brutally ripped away from him, only to open up a path for him to take it back stronger than ever before. In many ways, Callum has more to lose and more at stake, the fact that he can be possessed an even greater blow now than it would’ve been in Arc 1. 

Arc 1 for him was about acclimating and adjusting to Power. and believing in his own Potential .This first portion Arc 2 is about how much of a say does he have in how he uses that power, now that he’s no longer a child; now that he’s no longer free.  

Callum doesn’t typically worry about making the wrong choice, however. Most of his anxiety tends to stem when he feels like he has no choice. Thus, it sets Callum up to have a really interesting arc of reconciling these dualities rather than just retreading old steps. Viren had full agency when chasing after Aaravos; as Soren says to Claudia, “Dad is dead; you don’t have to do what he wants anymore,” believing that Claudia is merely picking up where Viren left off, not that she’s steamrolling their own father into it in order to save his life. 

It’s one of the reasons that of all characters, Callum arguably also parallels Zym a great deal as well. Like Zym, he’s being treated like a thing and a weapon more than a person. Like Viren believed of Zym, Callum worries he may be forced into a terrible destiny. That:

Callum being possessed is still a form of manipulation, if not also a misdirect, forcing him into a desperate position that makes him even more vulnerable to Aaravos than he ever could’ve been otherwise. But it’s a different form of manipulation than how Aaravos lured in Viren, and a different form than how he’s manipulated Claudia the past two years. Aaravos is terrifying because he knows what strings to pull, not because he’s pulling the same strings every time. For a character with such a strong breath / mouth / freedom motif, being choked / being robbed of his voice / and of his freedom is the absolute biggest smack in the face. I’ve long mandated that the worst possible thing that would rattle Callum the most would be feeling like his mind was unsafe because of Aaravos, not his body. 

Callum seeking Aaravos out in S4 of his own accord is thematically / narratively opposed to the possession plot line. The possession plot line is the ‘replacement’/subversion chosen, but it’s not a bug; it’s the feature. 

It also sets Callum up to have a really interesting arc of battling for control, eventually winning it (S5 and/or S6) but still losing to Aaravos, making the wrong choice or call or being forced into something anyway while he’s cognizant enough to make a choice at all, anyway. It’d be empowering and demoralizing all at once.

But still not without any hope, since, after all: 

Nothing is truly inevitable. Nothing is written in stone. It is never wholly too late, not for anyone. Aaravos just doesn’t know it yet - but Callum will be sure to show him, by S7 at the very least if not sooner.

#tdp callum #4x02 #s4 #arc 2 #analysis series #establish theme series #analysis #mage boy #callum #i cannot tell if this makes any sense but #callum not figuring out the mirror before the rug gets pulled out from under him #is the whole reason he's so freaking Paranoid in the first place #if this was the third time you'd found this kind of connection you'd be freaked too #you cannot have callum figuring out the mirror And the possession plot line for him as a character #bc it'd get too thematically cluttered #however the mirror does help set up callum's connection with aaravos later so it comes less out of nowhere and #gives us that sense of dread / curiosity #but yeah it's not a plot hole or even a bug #it's the whole Point tbh #tag ramble #insp by talks with some of my fandom friends

[eggsaladstain]

Hey, it's me again! Bc I loved how insightful your posts about Olek and Ling Yi were, showing you clearly think deeply about the show, I would like to ask you something outside the couple, if that is okay! So, I was rewatching Ep 3 (I have a severe case of brainrot for the two lovebirds) and something that Eyk said about the ships messed me up. He said the company bought 3 German ships. We have Kerberos and Prometheus, but who do you think is the third? I almost lost it. Could it be important?

@inferubim hello hello again, i'm so glad we are all still foaming at the mouth over this show.

i don’t know if the third ship itself is important, but the fact that there are three ships is important, and that importance is twofold: first, it continues the show’s central theme around triangles, and second, the ships themselves serve as a clever bit of foreshadowing for the plot.

triangles are obviously a huge part of the show, both literally and metaphorically. you have the ship company’s logo being the triangle with the line through it (the alchemical symbol for earth) and that symbol is repeated throughout the show in the set and costume design. we see the symbol tattooed behind elliot���s ear, and later on in the “present,” we see it tattooed on maura as well.

the characters are also grouped into sets of three, but never equally. there is an imbalance in each trio, and while that is certainly just a fact of human relationships, given the context of this show, i think it’s an intriguing detail we can’t overlook. maura’s first family unit is with henry and ciaran and her father prefers her to her brother. her second family unit is with daniel and elliot - she doesn’t remember either of them and the two of them are working together to change the simulation, and henry later tells elliot that daniel will always pick maura over him. maura has a love triangle with daniel and eyk and while she is married to daniel, she arguably has a stronger connection with eyk. speaking of the captain, he has three daughters but nina is clearly his favorite as she’s the only one he calls out to by name over and over again. clemence is married to lucien but has an instant connection to jerome and jerome and lucien have a shared history and secret from the war. krester, tove, and ada are siblings with krester and tove being much closer in age to each other than they are to ada. ramiro and angel are lovers but angel is tempted by krester. ling yi and yuk je are both employed by and at the mercy of virginia wilson. i could keep going but i won’t, and i should mention that of all the main characters, olek is the only one who doesn’t have this dynamic. he does have a brief scene with the two stokers, but that’s really it. instead, he has two strong duos - his partnership with jerome and his relationship with ling yi. this may or may not be significant, but when you take a step back and see all the other trios happening on the ship, olek’s lack of one really sticks out even more.

there’s also the fact that more or less everything significant to the plot is presented in a set of three. the three items that can alter the simulation - the pyramid, the remote control, and the lockpicking bug (alfred, you’re doing amazing sweetie). the three distinct time periods - 1899, the 70s/80s look of henry’s office, elliot’s bunker, the soundtrack, etc., and 2099. the three times we see the words “wake up” - on the memorial cross, on the stone pyramid, and on the toy pyramid. and of course, the fleet of three ships that started it all.

which brings me to my second point - the ships and their names directly tie into the events of the first season. prometheus is a titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, giving them knowledge and technology, and it’s only after discovering the prometheus that maura and eyk gain the knowledge that there is something deeply wrong about both ships and their entire reality. kerberos is a computer protocol that provides authentication and allows a server and user to identify each other and it was named after cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld. many of the passengers on the kerberos are hiding their own and discovering each other’s true identities, and in the last episode, the remaining survivors end up in an afterlife of sorts in the graveyard with all the other failed simulations. i love little details like this when you reach the end of a story and then realize all the breadcrumbs the creators left starting from the beginning. and fun fact, in episode 1, we learn that the prometheus had 1,423 passengers, and in episode 2, we learn that the kerberos has 1,612. which means the kerberos has an additional 189 passengers. i know we’re missing a whole digit, but come on, what a great detail!

i’ll end with this - cerberus’s three heads are said to represent the past, present, and future. you have prometheus as the past, kerberos as the present, and the unnamed third ship as the future. but is that a happy future where everyone is free of the simulation or is that future simply a return to the beginning of the loop as the cycle begins anew? despite ciaran welcoming maura to “reality” in 2099, the fact that they are once again on a vessel named prometheus also with 1,423 passengers should at least make us consider the possibility that they have simply traded environments, swapping a steamship for a spaceship. so perhaps we end at the beginning where the future is the past. after all, a triangle can always fit a circle inside it and vice versa.

#1899 #1899 meta #maura franklin #eyk larsen #olek #daniel solace #ling yi #meta #answer

[abyssmalice]

// 4.2 story genshin spoilers

(alright everyone...................... time for my story Thonkies)

(so overall: it was a p good story, i feel like it wrapped up fontaine's overall story well enough.

emphasis on "well enough" bc i do feel like some parts of it were very, uh, how do i put it. "bullshitty" is a harsh word but there were def moments, especially when it was dropping exposition, that felt like the writers were kinda just pulling things out of their ass in order to explain things and therefore come up with a solution to conclude everything. in the vein of "X thing exists!! we're just telling you it exists Now, like 5 mins into the finale, without almost zero buildup to it" sort of vibe.

at least, i think i need to go over the prophecy and the heavenly principles stuff with a fine-toothed comb again later........ because the exposition on that felt very "just take us at our word for it" like when you think about it, How does the heavenly principles actually enact the prophecy? especially when the story outright throws a "the root of the prophecy's effects is the whale"?? the implication is that the prophecy and all it entails is "fated", and thus, it's not that the heavens literally orchestrated the whale and stuff (well unless they want to prove me wrong on that in the next couple of AQs) - but that they have the ability to manipulate or enforce "fate". the "law" of the world and all that bs essentially. and fontaine's fate was meant to be that prophecy, leaving the finer details up to whatever actually happens.

BUT THIS STILL TAKES A BIT OF THINKING TO FIGURE OUT AND ALSO KINDA FEELS WEIRDLY OUT OF NOWHERE AND ITS LIKE, AS A WRITER I THINK IT'S COOL BUT ALSO GOD DAMN DID IT FEEL LIKE IT CAME OUT OF JUST NOWHERE-

anyway, this isn't to say the AQ was bad. no, i honestly think it was really good, i genuinely liked it, even if i feel like the execution of some parts was. weird. essentially lmao

.

ANYWAY THATS MY ONLY REAL MAJOR GRIPE, LET ME GET INTO THE STUFF I ENJOYED THE HELL OUT OF:

aka fuwina........... ;A;

like ok girl, you win, ill roll for you. i am so fucking rolling for you once i have the primos-

the entire "acting" scene by scene.......... oh my god, it was so good, you really feel for her. i was utterly bawling my eyes out the entire time, personally. also idk about the other languages, but jp furina takes the fucking cake for me - all of her dialogue where she isn't putting up a front is voiced so softly, almost childishly—it really hammers in the point that furina really was, as focalors put it, "naive and inexperienced as my first day as a human" when first created - she was split into existence and purposefully left clueless on some knowledge (like focalors' plan for the prophecy) and lacking in any magical powers that could be considered godlike, hence human, and not-all-knowing or all-powerful as a god. a true human, a newborn young human.

in essence, a child thrust into the role of acting as something more than that, with dire consequences if that role was not played to perfection, with seemingly no end; any normal person would be crumbling under such weight, and furina more so as someone who, in the context of her own situation, didn't even know what the "plan" entailed besides what focalors' said - all she had was pure turned desperate belief that it would turn out okay because the other-her said so.

(i can already hear tonitoni awkwardly trying to share a juice box in the back of my brain.............. something something the solidarity of young girls thrust into positions of power without quite knowing what they were getting into years down the line but they knew there was something on the line and they would do what they can for those they loved and a god looked upon them and said, follow what i say, and everything will be well-)

anyway i havent played furina's story quest yet so thats all the fuwina thonks i have, but i sure hope it doesnt make me bawl again........

.

my other big thonks def have to do with the whale and the events around it (of course they do, what kinda blog is this again? tonitoni blog? yes and no)

i think the fight was pretty cool, tho i want to know why the actual hell we fought. that thing. inside the whale. besides the rule of cool factor. like is there a reason that was in there in the first place?? also why do some of its aoe attacks look like vishaps are trying to attack you.................... hey, what's going on here man......................

also the way skirk tosses not just choldee but also the whale into an abyssal-looking crack. like, ill get to childe in a second, but let me focus on how she actually just sucks the whale into a suspiciously quantum-looking ball before tossing it aside. (please tell me we're getting a quantum element. bc. maybe. that. that means. i-imaginary element.................. PLEASE I WANT TO GIVE MY TONIS AN EXCUSE TO SECRETLY HAVE EITHER QUANTUM OR IMAGINARY AS ONE OF THEIR ELEMENTS PLEAAAAAAASE-)

and skirk herself is still a pretty mysterious character, despite all the lore dumping she did. p much the only primary things strictly related to her character is that: 1) she has her own greater-scope master 2) is very much strength-focused (300 million swings........... yeah, i see where childe gets it now), 3) and bc of said views on the strong and the weak, she will only consider others her equal (and therefore, humor them at all) if they display truly exceptional strength (see: "without using powers from beyond this world")

(this also makes me think skirk would not even bother to blink at smol toni, but may in fact consider tol toni at least somewhat "an equal" due to that toni surviving millennia in the abyss due to a mixture of insanely stubborn determination + her actual elemental powers come purely from the leylines/irminsul and nothing else, so any honed skill is both technique and teyvat-related power. thooooo, considering the lore also says that the primordial one created the human realm and its leylines (which should implicate the irminsul too, considering it's also found in the abyss aka beyond the world itself??), well....... god fucking knows on that one really.

FUCK I WISH THE LORE ON LEYLINES AND IRMINSUL WASNT SO MESSED UP IN LOGIC!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS MESSING ME UP AS SOMEONE WHOSE MUSES' LORE RELIES ON THIS!!!!!!!)

anyway, i really want to know the logic behind her just. throwing childe. into the hole along with mr whale in a ball. im guessing, the implication is that it's just like, a random abyssal portal that will presumably spit out the whale into an abyssal garbage dump while childe will be sent somewhere he can be retrieved (and taken back to snezhnaya, thank god, tonitoni would never let him hear the end of it if her brother got thrown into ANOTHER unreachable destination after two AQs of being thrown into jail and then into a sealed sea).

still a weird jarring moment though, i agree with everyone on that........... really weird.

BUT HEY, AT LEAST WE HAVE WORD FOR WORD DIALOGUE SAYING CHILDE IS SUPER STRONG AND FOUGHT THAT STUPID WHALE FOR AGES ESSENTIALLY, i want no more complaints on how strong and cool he is (i am saying this bc toni will never say it but i know she'd want to say it but would hate saying it so im saying it for her)

.

there's some more stuff i wanna say, esp re: the third descender and the gnosis stuff, + some extra thonkies about "fate" esp in the context of my tonitonis. and with the fontaine AQ wrapped up here, i can probs start to safely figure out the full fontaine timeline for smol toni - but ill leave all that in a separate thonkie post)

#ooc | (written and loved and forgotten); #genshin spoilers #(this got. very. very long. rip lmao) #(also utterly incoherent)

[robthegoodfellow]

I think I finally put my finger on why aspects of the Mike/El relationship bother me, and it’s pretty much summed up in this video I watched years ago about the longstanding sci fi trope wherein an utterly naive yet powerful female character meets and ultimately falls for an average Joe male character who must teach her how to human (and also inevitably how to romance).

The video brings up how in almost every one of these stories, there’s a scene where the ingénue, so innocent of social conventions and norms, strips or almost strips off her clothes in front of her later love interest and must be instructed on the proper way to behave. Of course, in most sci fi stories intended for adults, this scene is presented in a titillating manner that is meant to play into hetero male fantasies—but basically the PG version of this scene happens almost immediately upon Mike, Lucas, and Dustin finding El in the woods and bringing her to Mike’s basement: Mike offers El dry clothes and El stands, reaches for the hem of her shirt, and the boys recoil in horror; Mike then teaches El the notion of “privacy” and directs her to the bathroom. I’m not saying this scene was presented in a creepy way—but it is very much part of long tradition related to this trope of establishing very lopsided power dynamics between the main romantic couple of the narrative.

I only remembered that scene when rewatching the video essay just now—at the time, it didn’t strike me anything noteworthy aside from highlighting El’s total lack of socialization. In context of the rest of the show, though, it does inform why the dynamic between El and Mike in season 3 REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. Because narratively, El is so naïve and so lacking in basic communication skills that she and Mike might be similar ages, but El is operating from a place of HUGE disadvantage re: her knowledge and familiarity with human society, norms, agency, language, etc. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but Mike’s developmentally a middle schooler, and El’s developmentally a fair bit younger.

(Not blaming Mike in all this... he’s a kid. On top of which, it’s unreasonable to assume a character knows what genre trope they’re in. This is a storytelling decision I’m taking issue with!)

On top of that, the show presents El at the start of the season as incredibly isolated and very much dominated by the two men in her life (who are apparently the ONLY people in her life?), and Hop mentions to Joyce that this has been the state of affairs for months. So for months, El has been totally dependent on Hop and Mike as her windows into the human world—the former a controlling father figure (sorry Hop, but you were such an immature ass that season) and the latter a boy who wants to make out with her. And I gotta say, I really, really did not like that. El’s superpowers do not even scales in this regard—they hold all the cards re: her socialization (other than the TV, I suppose?), and have far too much sway over how she therefore views the world and herself.

(You could argue that her socialization occurs piecemeal off-screen/during the clusterfuck Secret Sister ep, and/or during her months hiding in Hop’s cabin, but... that doesn’t cut it for me.)

Obviously (thank GOD), Max intervenes and plays a major PLATONIC role in El’s growth for the rest of season 3, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that having El involved in any kind of romantic relationship so early in her relative development is… dicey. Obviously, I don’t wanna deny her the agency she does have, and if she wants to date Mike, great. But she’s been fixated on the literal first non-lab boy she’s ever met. And a part of me wanted her to have some space to figure herself out a bit more.

Idk if the move to Cali helped with this, any—but I was kinda relieved at first that she was getting away from Mike and Hop for a while (bc obv Hop wasn’t dead dead). And then s4 happened, and the booster shot I got yesterday is kicking my butt way too much to parse all that.

#mike wheeler #jane hopper #el hopper #what are we calling her on here #eleven #el #dunno if this has been discussed before #i'm newish here #and avoid character tags like the plague #because that's where the drama lives #very open to disagreement! #please make this less creepy for me #Youtube

[iamanartichoke]

Cut for Dr Strange spoilers?/negativity + MCU negativity + images/screenshots

Sharing this here not bc I have any particularly strong feelings one way or the other about Dr. Strange 2 (I don't), but bc I found this post really interesting, in that the person who posted it is a published author, but while she's got sort of a cult following (of which I am part), her books were published in the 80s/early 90s and are mostly out of print, and I don't believe she writes anymore (or, at least, if she does, she's not publishing/advertising) - which is also why I blocked her name out, to be on the safe side.

Regardless of the success, or lack thereof, of her books, though, I've always admired her writing style. And I found this discussion interesting bc she and her commenters touched on a lot of things that I also feel about the MCU as a whole and why it's been nearly impossible for me to work up any interest/enthusiasm in anything Phase-4 related (aside from Loki and Thor 4) - mainly, that the story has gotten so convoluted that you need so much background information and context and prior knowledge to even understand what's happening at this point, and it doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

I'm already lost at this point, tbh. My friend wants me to go with him to see Dr. Strange next weekend, and I'm just like, ugh, if I must, I guess. He's already seen it once, and I told him, all I care about is if Loki shows up or not, feel free to spoil me (and apparently Loki does not show up, which I was expecting, but at the same time, how you gonna make an entire tv series to set up the multiverse, the rules, the TVA, the concept of "variants," etc, and then not include any of that in the big multiverse movie asdhjdsahj like could you just not afford Tom Hiddleston or ). But I'm lost, and I'm not invested in any characters outside of the Loki 'verse (ie, the characters from the series + Thor and whatever Thor gets up to), so it's like - I'll see it but I don't expect to get anything out of it.

And it just makes me sad bc it didn't used to be that way, I used to get so excited about the films and have all the feels, and I liked crossovers but that was because I was invested in the characters individually, so I was interested in how they'd all interact with one another, and it never felt gratuitous the way it all does now. I guess it just doesn't feel like there's stakes anymore - like, as a viewer, it's just ... why should I care about any of this? What's at stake here? Where's the heart?

So, yeah, idk, I'm just venting at this point but yeah, seeing this post from someone whose writing I admire made me feel some kind of way, I guess? I'm not saying this person's opinion is the be-all/end-all or anything (re: whether or not DS2 is a good film), as I think she's a bit more scathing about it than perhaps is warranted, but at the same time, it's very easy to get caught up in the tumblr echo chamber, so it was interesting to me to see a discussion "in the wild" that echoed my own sentiments about the MCU in general.

Edit: I'm sorry if the screenshots are obnoxiously big, in my draft of this post I have the second/third ones side-by-side but when I save the post, they're not like that, so fml just more shit wrong with my post editor.

#dr strange mom spoilers #dr strange multiverse of madness spoilers #ds2 spoilers #not sure what tags people are using #mcu negativity #mcu critical

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

a playlist for piandao! annotations under the cut:

this is probably the playlist that needs the annotations the most, just because piandao's backstory is not in canon and while you might know it from following me it's not like, common knowledge, and i've had to fill in the gaps with headcanons. while all the playlists are chronological to some extent, this one and aang's are the most direct.

1. take me to war - the crane wives

all the fire i have swallowed / all the sparks that went dark in my gut / i am always burning up

young piandao is far from the calm, confident master we meet in canon - he was abandoned by his parents for being a nonbender and grew up in an orphanage, feeling unvalued and anxious and angry at a world that abandoned him. "all the sparks that went dark in my gut" - his inability to firebend.

and his ticket out of there, and an outlet for his rage? well. the war. he thinks if he can make it in the military, he can prove his worth, rise above his circumstances.

this decision will haunt him for the rest of his life.

2. phenom - thao & the get down stay down

first of the secondary class-class-class / you know i don't trust you, what's the catch-catch-catch / don't you fucking touch me i will gnash-gnash-gnash

along the same themes of ambition and anger, but when he's slightly older, having joined the military. he's determined to 'pull himself up by his bootstraps', and this makes him a terrifying force on the battlefield, makes him terrifyingly determined to be a master at whatever he sets his mind to.

3. king - florence and the machine

i need my golden crown of sorrow / my bloody sword to swing / i need my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology

here, we foreshadow his future as the revered mysterious swordmaster ("grand self-mythology"), but the ambition and drive of this song are still young piandao, particularly the musings on the value of art (we'll get to that in the next song). this also serves as a nod to the trans piandao headcanon - he is underestimated not only for being a nonbender with no parents, but also for being perceived as a woman. his desire to prove himself as a warrior is also about proving his masculinity.

4. working for the knife - mitski

i always thought that the choice was mine / and i was right / i just chose wrong

piandao eventually regrets joining the military. there are lines in this song like "i wish i was making things too" and "i used to think i would tell stories", about having given up creative, artistic dreams in pursuit of "working for the knife", and that's very much piandao, the kid who was taught art to cope with his anxiety but who left it behind to join the military. he feels this real pain of lost time, and there's very literally a possibility of "dying for the knife".

5. live by the sword - dorian electra

you wanna hit like this? you're gonna hurt like this / you want to live like this? you're gonna die like this / live by the sword and you die by the sword

piandao realizes he needs to get out of the military. yeah, this is the title of the playlist, but honestly i wish there was a better lyric with sword in it to sum him up bc living by the sword in this context is not a good thing.

6. rootless - marina

running with my roots pulled up / caught me cold so they could cut / what there was left of love

he doesn't really know what to do with himself after he leaves the military. he cuts off a lot of his old connections, and he doesn't exactly have a home to go back to. he reflects on how the military preyed on his rootlessness, lack of "family tree", so to speak, made him believe that it was the answer and then made him do cruel, heartless things in its service. he travels the world for a while, not really knowing where he's meant to be.

7. home - ellie goulding

wash the dirt, a hard day's work / know my place / on my own / no poison in my bones / on my own / this is where i build my home

piandao works as he travels, ideally something in a blacksmith's shop but it varies. he's having to start over, work hard and pull himself up for the second time. but it's better than it was. his home is his own body, but it's better to be alone than be part of an organization like the military.

8. i am a rock - simon and garfunkel

i've built walls / a fortress deep and mighty / that none may penetrate

9. johnny - sarah jarosz

when he comes back to the fire nation, having saved a fair amount from his travels, he is fairly distant and secretive. he slowly builds up his teaching business, slowly grows wealthier, enough to buy the castle he lives in when we meet him in canon. but people don't know his past when they seek him out for training, they just know his reputation, and he doesn't share. he keeps everything he learned on his travels, his membership in the white lotus, his troubled childhood, all tight inside, and as we see in canon, he's pretty selective about who he lets in.

you might not get what you pay for / you know that nothing's for sure / and an open heart looks a lot like the wilderness

i've discussed this before bc it was my #2 most listened song of 2022 but i also want to add that the "open heart" line reflects this recurring theme of closing himself off, not admitting weakness, etc. it's unfamiliar, uncharted territory for him, but he gets more open later in life, after he and sokka adopt each other as father and son and he wants to be a good parent to him. them <3

#piandao #my playlists #nina's personal log #Spotify

[evanescentjasmine]

Writing Egypt and Egyptian Characters: Rusty Quill Gaming Edition

I’ve finally caught up with the Cairo arc of Rusty Quill Gaming, which I was anticipating and dreading both. Fiction set in my country usually reduces it to a caricature of itself, especially when it takes place in the Victorian era, but considering everything they’ve said in their metacasts I was hoping Rusty Quill Gaming was the exception.

It wasn’t. 

I’m aware the game world plays fast and loose with history and setting, but the problems in this case are more than just inaccuracies. However, because I want to help fic writers and artists be able to portray Hamid and his family well, this resource will be split into two parts. The first part will tackle details I’ve been asked about with regard to the setting; it may touch on things RQG went wrong, but I’m writing it primarily as a resource for artists and writers. The second part will be my criticism of RQG, and why I found the Cairo arc actively harmful. This includes discussions of Orientalism and some racist text.

I should also preface this by saying I’m not a historian. Everything I say in this resource is a combination of what I grew up with and what I remember from school, supplemented by Google and guesswork. I’ll be explaining my thought process throughout, which can help you see what’s actual history and what’s my extrapolation.

Part One: On Egypt

Historical Context:

Figuring out the history of Egypt in RQG terms is a bit complicated, so bear with me because this will take a while. 

In real-world history, Egypt was a Roman then Byzantine province from 30 BC to around the mid 600s AD, at which point the Arab conquest swept through and Egypt became Muslim. 

What this means is that when the Meritocrats took down Rome and took over the world, Egypt was still a Roman province. That gives us a several hundred year gap before the Arabs that may have maintained the same culture? Or morphed a little back to some pre-Ptolemaic Ancient Egyptian, given their Meritocrat, Apophis, is named after a great Pharaonic serpent?

Either way, given Hamid’s name and the fact they live in Cairo, the city built by the Arabs, we can assume the Arab conquest still happened somehow, despite having a Meritocrat in Egypt. Maybe a Meritocrat out there is Arab and settled in Egypt for a bit with or before Apophis? Maybe it took a couple-hundred years for the Meritocrats to get all the previous Roman areas under control? Maybe there was a whole war and the Arabs won and settled and eventually they got to a truce or got absorbed into Meritocratic lands?

Many Muslim dynasties ruled throughout the period from the mid 600s to the 1500s. Given the lack of Islam in this world, probably the Arabs were unified by some Pre-Islamic deity/deities and brought them over as well, because I refuse to just sweep everything under the broad Greek God rug. 

In the 1500s, another Muslim dynasty took over--this time, from outside of the country, which is why it’s considered separate from all the rest. At this point, Egypt became part of the Ottoman Empire until the 1800s, which is when the Mohammed Ali dynasty started to try and secede and rule independently. And there was a brief blip of the French occupation for two years around then as well.

And, of course, we can’t forget about British colonisation, which started in the late 1800s with a veiled protectorate.

Presumably, since France and Britain are also Meritocratic and it seems like Apophis is currently ruling, we can disregard everything from the Ottomans onward. This changes, or should change, a ton, because Ottoman rule informed a lot of things from fashion to slang to nobility and so on. 

What we’re left with is most likely a Cairo that is still Arab but with much more Pharaonic influence, as Apophis is in charge, as well as continuing Greek influence due to the Gods. I am not a Coptic Christian, so I cannot speak to how these changes in history and religions would affect the Coptic language and culture, but no doubt it would still be around.

There would also be a bigger, more long-standing connection to other Meritocratic countries. This explains why Hamid was British-educated and so many people speak such good English without a British occupation to create the power disparity that would make that necessary to rise in Egypt and such a mark of status. 

However, this presents several confusing and contradictory aspects of the world building:

Why doesn’t this go both ways? Why aren’t there people in England and France who know Arabic or are influenced by Egypt? All we get is that the Tahan family are big. That’s it. If these countries are equals, it sure doesn’t look like it.

If Apophis is pharaonic and Ancient Egyptian culture and knowledge are so ubiquitous...why would they hollow out a pyramid to put a bank inside? It’s a tomb. It’s made to bury dead kings in a way that follows possibly still-existing cultural and religious beliefs. It’s the equivalent of someone building a bank inside a mausoleum. It’s bizarre.

Relatedly, if Ancient Egyptian culture and knowledge are so ubiquitous, why is Carter mentioning the Rosetta Stone? Why would the knowledge necessary to translate hieroglyphics have been lost? 

I mention these questions so fic writers can keep them in mind while writing and, of course, it’s entirely possible to create a workaround. For example, maybe the Rosetta Stone is supposed to be translating something else, like an ancient hidden magic?

Describing Cairo:

I want to make one thing very clear: Cairo is not, despite Alex’s description, like Vegas. While we do certainly have hotels and casinos, to reduce the city to only that is very harmful for reasons I’ll go into at the end of this resource.

Cairo is a very old city with a mix of architectural styles and is very heavily Muslim in real life. In Arabic, its tagline is often “city of a thousand minarets,” so clearly RQG Cairo will be fairly different. Given Apophis’ influence, Ancient Egyptian styles might be more prevalent in Cairo, but very likely not in the form of pyramids unless those pyramids were for the dead. In real life, some buildings do incorporate Ancient Egyptian flavour, usually just in the form of lotus columns or hieroglyphs. These would only be found in public institutions, however,  or, frankly, tourist-bait. 

Residential buildings tend to be clustered very close together and, since it’s an old city, streets are crowded and winding as the city keeps building on itself and spilling out of its previous bounds. Estates do, of course, exist, but I’d suggest against using Bryn’s example of Alhambra as a setting for the Tahan home. Alhambra is a palace fortress in Spain and, although it’s Andalusian and therefore influenced by Muslim architecture, it’s very different than anything in Egypt. It’s as absurd as saying a posh British character lives in a house that’s basically Versailles and leaving it there. I’ve included images of some Egyptian residential estates below, all from the 1800s to early 1900s.

And here are some photos of Cairo in the 1800s:

As you can see, not quite Vegas.

A fic set in Cairo can certainly still have the Cairo strip with all the casinos, since that’s an aspect of canon, but a place like that would probably be geared more to tourists and foreigners than locals. So long you’re aware of this while writing, and that Cairo would exist beyond it, you should be fine. It might also be worth having characters explore the actual city.

Weather:

The stereotype is that Egypt is just hot and sand year-round. It isn’t. The further south you go, the hotter it will get, so that Upper Egypt (which is in the south, yeah), is hotter than Lower Egypt, which is where Cairo and Alexandria are. Alexandria, by virtue of being on the Mediterranean, has fairly cold (for us) and rainy winters and mild, humid summers. Cairo gets very occasional rain and has harsher summers but is also dryer.

And, of course, a thing to remember is that even in the depths of the desert, the morning might be quite warm but the night will be quite cold as well.

Sandstorm season (called khamaseen) takes place from April - May but in the middle of Cairo it’s more of an annoyance than anything else.

Language:

Since they speak Arabic, it’s important to note that spoken Egyptian Arabic is very different from written Classical Arabic. Egyptian is a mishmash of Arabic, Coptic, a bit of Greek, and a bit of French (and, in the real world, some Turkish too) all smashed together. Accents differ from city to city, and Cairene Arabic is best known for the fact we pronounce the letter jeem as geem (so all soft Gs are turned into hard Gs) and tend to replace the letter qaf with a glottal stop.

This means that a Cairene wouldn’t be called Jamal, they’d be Gamal. A Cairene would pronounce burqa as bur’a.

Since religion plays a big part in language, RQG Egyptian Arabic may be a bit different. For instance, the greeting most people associate with Arabic is “Assalam alaykum” but that’s very specifically Muslim or at least associated with Islam, and might not have been as wide-spread given...y’know, that Islam doesn’t exist. I’m not saying it’s incorrect to use, just explaining the context.

Alternatives could include “Sabah/masa’ el-kheir” which means “Good morning/evening,” and “Naharak/Naharik saeed” which is, “May you have a good day.”

Fashion:

Although this didn’t really feature in RQG, I’ve received a lot of questions about the period’s fashion and honestly it’s my favourite thing ever so I probably would have touched on it anyway. I’ll only go into broad strokes, as there are plenty of regional variations and, again, I’m no expert 

Women

Egyptian women covered their heads and sometimes their faces not out of religiosity but out of a cultural expectation of modesty. This may well have come about as a result of the Arab/Muslim cultural majority, as to my knowledge this wasn’t the case in the Greek and Roman periods, but women of all religions covered their heads so that would likely still be the case in RQG’s Arab Egypt.

This isn’t with the hijab we know today. It may have been a cloth or kerchief tied over their heads and then the melaya laf (which is larger cloth, almost a sheet) that they wrap around themselves and over their head, as follows: 

The black face-covering was called a burqa or bur’a (not the same as a Muslim burqa, which serves similar modesty functions but is a separate thing) or a yashmak and may have been opaque black, white, or netted, such as in this picture:

Underneath the melaya they would be wearing a long, loose, patterned dress:

Upper class Egyptian women tended to wear Western dresses with a white yashmak that covered their faces and heads. A yashmak is Turkish, however, and without Ottoman influence this style and name might not have caught on in Egypt.

Men

While the melaya laf and yashmak have disappeared from Egypt, the traditional men’s gallabeya and ammama, or turban, are still seen widely today. The gallabeya (or jellabiya, outside of Cairene Arabic) is a long, loose garment with wide sleeves and no collar. It’s in muted, neutral colours, usually lighter ones like white or beige in the summer and navy blue or grey in the winter. You’ll have seen examples of it in the pictures of Cairo above, and here’s another one: 

Middle to upper class men and civil servants, however, tended to wear English suits with a tarboosh, or fez. Since fezzes were also a result of Ottoman rule, RQG Egyptians might not wear them.

And yes, impressive moustaches were also very much the fashion.

Names:

The running joke is that Hamid’s name is unnecessarily long, but my name is longer, and I don’t think that’s particularly unusual. We don’t usually go around introducing ourselves with all of them, admittedly, and I’m not sure whether Hamid does this as a way to indicate he’s overly fancy or because Bryn doesn’t realise it, but four names is not long. My ID boasts five, and I know of at least one more.

Arabic naming conventions use patronymics for all children, regardless of gender. What this means is that my name and my brother’s name is identical except for our first. 

Mine is Jasmine + Dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name

And my brother is also First name + Dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name.

Egyptians do not typically have last names, but an important family may all choose to identify under a name and use that as their last, such as the Tahans. In my case, I use my fifth name as my last name and introduce myself in everyday life as Jasmine Fifth Name. Notably, my brother does not, and goes by First name + Dad’s name instead. This isn’t unusual. On paperwork, however, we still have the same name.

Additionally, Egyptian women do not take their husbands’ last names in marriage, nor do children take any of her names. 

I’m not sure why, according to the wiki, Hamid’s sisters seem to have taken their mother’s name. Following Arabic naming conventions, they would all be First Name Saleh Haroun al Tahan, and their father would be Saleh Haroun al Tahan. A possible workaround might be that halflings have their own naming conventions that mean daughters have matronymics and sons patronymics. 

A note to podficcers: please google name pronunciations beforehand because Alex and Bryn’s are actually often wrong. Ishak, for instance, is not pronounced Ee-shak. It’s Iss-haaq or Iss-haa’, because of quirks of the Egyptian accent I mentioned earlier.

Part Two: Criticism

I understand it can be difficult to portray a country different from yours with accuracy. I understand the RQG crew will not have had the perspective on Egypt and Cairo that I do by virtue of living here. I do also acknowledge that I’m sure none of this was actively malicious or on purpose.

But it doesn’t have to be on purpose to hurt, frankly, and given how often the RQG crew have talked about their responsibility with a game that’s intended for an audience, I expected better. Bryn has spoken about not wanting to fall into stereotypes for Hamid and, to be fair, by being a non-religious fancyboy Hamid does neatly avoid the religious zealot and the noble (or ignoble) savage routes. Unfortunately, he falls into another, which was hammered home by the portrayal of Cairo and the Tahans as a whole.

Our first glimpse of Cairo, after the sandstorm clears, describes it as “basically Vegas,” with hotels and garish casinos catering to the rich all along the “Cairo strip.” From then on, our only other images of Cairo are vast estates and a pyramid in the desert. 

The only named Egyptians we meet are the Tahan family, who are introduced through an absurdly lavish estate compared to the palace fortress of Alhambra, a gambling problem that apparently runs in the family, murder, and corruption, as the head of the family who has already covered up a crime for one son then turns himself in to protect the other.

Then, to top it all off, Hamid is apparently utterly incapable of understanding why letting his brother get away with murder is an issue until the paladins point it out.

Do you see the pattern, here?

I understand this was aiming to be a criticism of the rich and powerful, but the fact remains that the Tahans are the only representation of Egyptians we get. While this may not be harems and hand-chopping levels of Orientalism, the image presented is of Cairo as a den of excessive wealth and vice, and Egyptians as corrupt and immoral.

This isn’t new.

The Middle East and North Africa (as well as India and China and everywhere else considered “the Orient”) has often been tied to images of wealth and overt splendour, usually hand-in-hand with the Oriental despot and corruption. This view went beyond just fiction and influenced the policies with which we were ruled. 

Cromer, Consul-General of Egypt, wrote books called Modern Egypt. He had this to say about us:

“The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. . . . They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth.”

In his opinion, our inability to follow logical reason led to us being inherently untruthful and, therefore, immoral. Similarly, British statesman Balfour was of the belief that:

 “Lord Cromer’s services during the past quarter of a century have raised Egypt from the lowest pitch of social and economic degradation until it now stands among Oriental nations, I believe, absolutely alone in its prosperity, financial and moral.”

Egypt was under British colonial rule from 1882 - 1952.

You can see, I hope, why a storyline focused on an Egyptian family’s corruption in an Egypt characterised almost entirely by its casinos and one lavish mansion was very uncomfortable. The fact Azu was one of the people trying to explain morality to Hamid keeps it from sliding into a clear East vs West dichotomy, but the fact remains this is a British show featuring British players and this is the story they chose to tell. 

The rest was just salt in the wound, really. 

I expect mispronounced names and pyramids and jokes about camels in most media, but rarely do the makers of said media then go on to pat themselves on the back for doing their “due diligence” on a metacast about sensitivity.

I see weird naming conventions and mispronounced names and “basically Vegas” and “crocodile steak” and “camel’s milk froyo” and I do not see due diligence.  

I see a setting that barely looked past Cleopatra and I do not see due diligence.

I see a storyline that shows only excess and immorality and corruption and I do not see due diligence.

I see a disregard for me and mine, and I do not appreciate it. 

Literature I’ve referred to in writing this criticism:

Orientalism (1978), by Edward W. Said

Orientalism in the Victorian Era (2017), a paper by Valerie Kennedy

Orientalism in American Cinema: Providing an Historical and Geographical Context for PostColonial Theory (2010), a thesis by Samuel Scurry 

Popular Culture, Orientalism, and Edward Said (2012), an article by Robert Irwin

#rusty quill gaming #rqg #hamid saleh haroun al tahan #resource #criticism #orientalism #representation #long post

[juni-ravenhall]

the page of runes in the mistfall trailer are the christian “lord’s prayer” (pater noster) :O

... probably partially anyway!

(link to the video here!)

i’ve only transcribed the RIGHT page, because it had more legible text than the left one, so i just ignored that one.

IMPORTANT NOTE: i may be wrong about some things (but i dont think its much!) and you are ABSOLUTELY WELCOME to make additions to this post or msg me with ur own analysis and input!!! this isnt about “being right” but about finding the answers as a fandom bc we r nerds!! 

each row on the right page goes like this (from what i can tell):

1: nama (cama?) . tilk [covered] mm [covered] t rikiæ . sk 2: [covered] b [covered] rdaina (rdæica?) [covered] 3: [covered] aR [covered] R [covered] 4: n [covered] [5, 6: covered] 7: þi [covered] 8: mmalan [mmalac? mmanan?] so [covered] 9: faþæR uoR som [covered] 10: malan [manan?] so oh boior d [covered] 11: R uoR som æ(?) [unreadable] himlym [covered] 12: a . tilkomma [unreadable] t rikiæ . skiæ þ [covered] 13: malan [malac? manan?] so oh boiordænnæ . fo [covered]

notes:

the runes here, as far as i can tell, are a bit mixed from different runic alphabets but mainly using medieval scandinavian runes

ᚳ or ᚿ? unclear whether handwriting or different runes.

ᛦ could be y, R, z... but it makes most sense as r here.

þ is pronounced like th, still in modern icelandic f.ex.

æ is representing a sound close to modern scandinavian æ / ä as well as short e.

capital R here represents an old sound close to r and z.

there are more unclarities, feel free to share your opinions!

TRANSLATIONS:

so this is the most interesting part ofc - but all that i can make out from this text, (as a person speaking modern swedish who has knowledge about nordic language and old norse etc), is the parts that seem VERY close to some broken sentences from “the lord’s prayer”, aka “herrens bön” or “fader vår” in modern swedish.

the first hint we get on row 1: “nama, tilk [...] mm [...], rikiæ . sk”. compare to the 1917 version of the lord’s prayer:

Fader vår, som är i himmelen Helgat varde ditt namn. Tillkomme ditt rike. Ske din vilja, såsom i himmelen så ock på jorden.

the next one, which is hard to dispute, is on row 9: “faþæR uoR som“...

Fader vår, som är i himmelen 

it helps here to know that “þ” (th) in many cases evolved into the letter “d” in modern svandinavian language, and that the “æ” (”ä” in modern swedish) sounds very similar to a short “e”. (the sound here written as R is an old norse and european sound that was near both “z” and “r” and appeared mainly at the end of words, where we in modern norse languages mostly have the letter “r”) so while “fader” and “faþæR” may look different if u dont know a lot about the topic, they really arent very different. 

for “uoR”, the sounds are quite similar to “vår” when you pronounce it although ofc lacking the sharpness of the “v”. (”å” is pronounced similarly to the short “o” sound in modern swedish.) looking at the context of the word before it, and the word after it which is spelled the same in modern swedish (”som”), it becomes reasonable to interpret this word as “vår” despite the spelling differences. 

on row 10, i’m curious if the “boior” could be “bojor” (chains), and what the sentence around it would be.

row 11 and 12 are very clearly the same part of the lord’s prayer repeated again:

11: R uoR som æ(?) [unreadable] himlym [covered] 12: a . tilkomma [unreadable] t rikiæ . skiæ þ [covered]

Fader vår, som är i himmelen Helgat varde ditt namn. Tillkomme ditt rike. Ske din vilja, såsom i himmelen så ock på jorden.

EDIT TO ADD LIKE 1 MINUTE AFTER POSTING: 

this sentence that also seems to repeat through the text:

13: malan [malac? manan?] so oh boiordænnæ . fo [covered]

is also part of the prayer!! its just written together in a weird mashed way. split it up to “-malan so oh bo iordænnæ” and we are very close to:

Ske din vilja, såsom i himmelen så ock på jorden.

this shows that we basically have the first part of “the lord’s prayer” in swedish repeating throughout this page.

---

thats all for now, hope u enjoyed :D i could talk more about this if anyone has questions, and like i said, everyone feel free to chip in with ur thoughts and analysis!

#sso #sso mistfall #mistfall #star stable online #starstable #star stable #runes #runic #futhark

[pumpkinpaix]

once again, please do not reblog this or take this personally, it is a vent post and I need to just be really unkind in a public space for a second. i love you.

god i swear every single time I think I’m getting better at not letting myself be swept away by an all-consuming rage over an inconsequential bad take, someone manages to prove me wrong, and then all the floodgates go crashing open and suddenly it’s summer again and I’m being called a race traitor, white apologist, mandarin supremacist as if i am not orders of magnitude more familiar with racial conflict and identity trauma the fucking gall of it “u know mandarin supremacy is like a big deal right, my family speaks dialect first and mandarin is violent” oh PLEASE tell me fucking more!! TELL ME MORE!! about how it’s mandarin supremacist to use a mandarin romanization system for a source material that is fucking, get this, in mandarin

tell me, someone who has lost no fewer than FOUR FUCKING DIALECTS in just two generations of my family history. tell me about the trauma of not being able to communicate with your own family, tell me about feeling untethered, tell me about your suffering all while dismissing the inherent complexity of my lived experience and invalidating my knowledge of my own language because I was born in the US. wow thank you so much for confirming that you ARE one of those people who think i am a hollow, rootless thing, that water cannot run through me, all while I am smiling and gritting my teeth and trying so fucking hard to be gentle when you will not grant me the fucking courtesy of considering me a fully realized human being. choke on it assholes.

it’s so fucking unfair that you attacked me personally and then had the audacity to be pissed because “how were you supposed to know” when I tried to be transparent about it. and then to be so self-important as to think that we make policy decisions as “revenge” against “POC”? why do i bother, why did i bother, why do i ever try when it takes less than an hour for people to tell me how much they missed my point every single fucking time oh im sorry you think i’m assuming that people know less than they actually do? maybe i wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been spouting clear misinformation about a job that i am currently doing as if you were some kind of authority on the matter. you think i’m assuming malice when there is none? fucking check my goddamn mentions. you think i don’t understand what happens when a non-white person talks about racism online? check my fucking mentions you stupid fuck

and all the while, there’s just this constant stream of self-aggrandizing fake-woke bullshit that could not have more obviously come from a shallow, young euroamerican leftist take on intersectional praxis that is so self-deluded they think they can cast themselves as w/wx, a righteous hero standing up to popular, immoral opinion all while demonstrating that they have completely and fundamentally misunderstood his character due to their utter lack of cultural context. i keep thinking i’ve seen the worst of it, but you all just find new and awful ways to surprise me. sure, say some angry shit and people will eat it up bc everyone seems to think that anger is an indicator for validity. thanks! i love experiencing relentless racism from both sides of the equation and then being told i’m the fucking problem. wow! revolutionary! it’s not like i’ve been experiencing this my whole life, but sure, go off i guess! demonstrate to me every day that actually, maybe i shouldn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore! show me that compassion is worthless! do it! fucking do it!!! show me that i’m the stupid one for expecting anyone to approach me as an equal because who goes back when they keep getting burned when am i going to fucking learn

#cyanide #upset gurgling intensifies #cyanoupdates #im really serious like don't. take this to heart #im feeling toxic and bad and that's where this is coming from

[gayregis]

tbh as a polish person genuinely vibing with any kind of mostly english speaking witcher fandom is kinda hard bc theres just. so many small mistakes and just a feeling of Wrongness in the translation that couldve been fully avoided? like using womanizer instead of whoremonger for dandelion or saying comrade instead of friend etc and like im mad bc with some more effort it couldve been done way better and actually carried over more of the og atmosphere for international readers And It Didnt

i agree with you from the ‘can only read the english translations’ side. i feel like definitely the official UK translations shifted a lot of the meanings, of course i do not know how it is in every single scene, but from the lengthy posts i’ve read on reddit, some posts i’ve read on tumblr, and conversations i’ve had with mutuals over discord, plus just generally reading the books and saying to myself “wait, this doesn’t sound... cohesive?” i agree that are are a lot of changes that shift the perspective. 

one part of this is the deliberate mistranslation of general vocabulary used with the intention (i think) to give a more “medieval-ish fantasy” vibe to the work. i feel like david and danusia really went for some british slang that gives it a more “english medieval” feel (or at least, how medieval england is conceived of in the modern english-speaking imagination), when more widely-known words without such specific connotations (for the speaker and for the subject) would be more appropriate. 

for example, i have heard that a lot of the translations of “maiden” or “wench” are more akin to “girl/woman” in the original text. another example is “comely lad” VS “pretty boy,” two translations (the former official, the latter fan-translated) that mean the same thing essentially but the former one is “brit-ified” (to me, at least). and i know that sometimes the translators chose specific words to keep a “peasant-speak” vibe with the usage of specific language, for example, with milva, but instead of being confined to peasantry, it extends across a lot of characters. 

another part is figures of speech that don’t translate over due to being polish-specific idioms, or being reliant on the polish grammar structure. imo the translators are too eager to replace these with english figures of speech/idioms. a lot of the time when polish fans have pointed this out and said, this is different in the original text, the original idiom is so-and-so, which basically means this-and-this, i am able to understand the translated idiom, when it is in context. 

for example, i believe that in the english version of baptism of fire dandelion says to regis, “was it just you and your shadow?” and regis replies, “worse, i don’t even cast one.” but in the original text, the exchange goes something more like “were you drinking to the mirror?” “worse, i don’t even show up in mirrors.” the idiom “drinking to the mirror” meaning drinking alone does not exist in english, but it would have been at least a little obvious to me as a reader what the meaning of the idiom is. i suppose it is up to preference, but i would prefer to have the original figures of speech kept intact, with a little footnote at the bottom included for explaining context / what its meaning is.

another part is cultural references and history that end up getting lost. references to other works, etc. 

an example is in the edge of the world when torque says “good night” at the end to geralt and dandelion. without knowing the phrase, “where the devil says goodnight,” this is completely meaningless. and context about polish/broader european history is mostly also lost on a non-polish audience, because it is not something that is basic knowledge.

it doesn’t just extend to polish references, for example, regis quotes cicero quoting one of the seven sages, “omnia mea mecum porto,” basically “all that’s mine i carry with me,” which ig is a nod to how regis is a philosopher and lives simply, is a humanist, etc.

and this isn’t even beginning to touch all of the arthurian stuff he put in there.

mostly, i end up being clueless because i do not know what the original text was, and i know that if i could see the original text, i would not understand it and would need it explained to me. 

i guess a positive side of this is that i like uncovering what was originally said and hearing it explained, scouring the internet for someone who has addressed a specific passage or something... it helps foster some conversation, kind of like two kids comparing christmas presents - what’s in your translation? what’s in your translation? what’s in the original text? - it is fun to see everyone start posting pictures and screenshots of their books, like trying to unravel a mystery as a group, and i enjoy that, especially when there are more international translations than just polish original and english translation, i like seeing the czech, russian, spanish, french translations and then learning things from these languages/cultures/countries because they showed up in the text.

on the other hand, it hinders discussion because if people are operating on different translations, they will have widely different perspectives of the characters based upon what the characters said or how they were described. you are not the only person i’ve heard express this sentiment, and agreed that it’s difficult to “genuinely vibe” across language barriers regarding the series. polish geralt is a totally different character from english geralt, from what i’ve heard, to summarize it.

and even if you do research as an english-speaking person to find out the mistranslations, the meanings behind certain phrases or references, etc., you still will probably never understand it fully, nor will you uncover everything there is to uncover. 

i dislike leaving it like this, but it kind of “is what it is” with the language barriers and translations. a lot of the original atmosphere wasn’t and possibly will never be fully translated over (in some cases, it may be impossible). i would say don’t feel like you “have” to engage with every fan of the witcher books, if you feel you don’t vibe with english speaking witcher fandom that is okay and i hope that no one would judge you for it, everyone should hang out and talk with who they want to hang out and talk with. but i also get the disappointment because you want to connect, but there is just a lack of understanding. it shouldn’t be the burden to fall on you to be like, hey guys actually in the original text this scene is different / you’re misinterpreting this-- but if you ever want to say or make posts like this, i think this would be great and a contribution to the community. i would also say idk if it is possible if the interpretations are extremely different, but some broader themes like family, love, humanity, etc. imo do join the fans of the books in some way or another, big or small, despite how wonky the translations get. and finally, i want to say i am not here to give advice or consolation, because i certanly don’t know what can be done about this, i just want to respond to this and say that you’re not alone.

#it must be extremely frustrating and i think a lot of eng-speaking fans come into the fandom thinking the official translations are translat #(if they are not already familiar with how translations work and that they are usually not perfect or 1:1 translation) #i think a degree of humility is needed but that is difficult to find among many eng-speakers in the us/uk/canada/aus lmao #the witcher #anon #ask

[karazrel]

i used to truly believed theres nothing wrong w kara lying to lena bc its w good reason until more ppl said this twitter(.)com/lafergs/status/958499514721091584 (lol this is from an avclub writer who i love lmao she used to write about sg) 3 seasons of lying to the point of being a dick at times to ur bff(even w good intention)& now after a season of lena reacting to it in the stupidest way cw could come up w its her that has to grovel for forgiveness its why s5 feels so unsatisfactory:/

I’ve talked about this before but like, there’s nothing inherently wrong with kara wanting to keep her identity private, that is well within her rights. But the issues in the context of kara and lenas relationships are:

Lena knew both supergirl and kara personally she had her own unique relationship with each of them, with one being flat out antagonistic from s3 onwards so it wasn’t of fair kara to maintain a double life with lena when she knew lena didn’t like supergirl

Kara used her identity and her friendship with lena against her as supergirl, because she knew things she wouldn’t have known if she weren’t lenas best friend. That’s a HUGE violation of trust and beyond that point there was simply no excuse to not tell lena

The irl reasons for not telling lena are just flat out idiotic why is she the only one who doesn’t know when every single person kara meets finds out within 3 minutes like? What was the point of keeping it a secret when they could’ve just as easily written a reveal in s2??? Don’t even get me started on how that’s a LI interest trope to begin with but kara and lena aren’t dating anytime soon so what was the reason?

Their in-universe explanation was even more fucking dumb and infuriating there is no point in time where lena not knowing supergirls identity protected her, if anything her lack of knowledge IS what hurt her!!!!! And that’s not even going into the fact that THEY KEPT ASKING LENA TO HELP THEM ANYWAY!!! If they wanted to keep her safe that bad they would’ve stayed away but no shes been bailing their asses since s2 so PLEASE explain to me how knowing about supergirl would’ve put her at anymore risk

So yeah s5 was unsatisfying in all sense of the word when they could’ve given us prime friends to enemies to lovers content and I’m never forgiving them for fucking it up like this

#its been so long since i ranted about sg 💆🏻‍♀️💆🏻‍♀️ #asks #anonymous

[jungnoir]

𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡!𝐛𝐭𝐬;

bts but as witches in a coven. discuss

𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤𝐣𝐢𝐧: the supreme

ok not quite but he’s the most experienced in magic out of all the boys

his mother was a witch and she taught him everything he needed to know from birth to adulthood

his whole family is blessed with magic save for a few who didn’t get the gene but every family reunion they all dote on jin and talk about how powerful he’s become and how proud they are of him

the coven house where all of the boys stay is actually jin’s ancestor’s home from a long time ago

the place has brought up witches of all generations and jin was very eager to inherit it

while there’s definitely a lack of witches he’s been able to recruit, he loves his family of six so it doesn’t really bother him

he acts like he’s all serious but in reality he’s always casting spells on the youngins as tests (read: for fun)

jimin: why tf did you give me green skin

jin: if you had been paying attention during lessons you would know how to fix it :)

has definitely said this out of context more than once: ”any witch worth a broom handle knows how to get rid of poisonous snakes! you know back in my day…”

wears the flashiest outfits, but little do people know that they’re all homemade. he has a serious creative eye and seeks to make what simple human designers wish they could (taehyung is very eager to learn this talent from him)

goes all out on halloween with this talent too, creating uber realistic costumes

no he didn’t make a costume out of real human bones that year he went as a scarily realistic skeleton what are you talking about

no graves were robbed in the making of this outfit

if you couldn’t tell, his specialty is in glamours

honestly the guy should just tattoo “i’m a witch” across his forehead, he makes it so damn obvious

he openly practices magic too like it gives yoongi stress pains bc!! there’s still ppl who would very much like to burn witches still to this day!!! where is the self-preservation!!

jin doesn’t care. he’ll burn them right back. checkmate bitch

honestly charms anyone that comes in contact with him which is one of the things he never has to try at

the guys think he uses magic to do it but he’s honestly just, as jin would say, “born with it”

𝐲𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢: the right hand man

*namjoon voice* and who do we got here right now??? ˢᵘᵍᵃ!!!

when it comes to magic, yoongi is pretty neutral

an awfully interesting feeling to have given that seokjin has appointed him the heir of the coven in case anything happens to him

he’s not obsessed with magic like tae, hobi or kook

he doesn’t spend his time learning everything about it like namjoon

and he’s not playful with it like jimin and jin

yoongi just… acknowledges it. its like it exists as something he can do and he’s proud but he doesn’t really care if that makes sense

most of his friends outside of the coven are human too and he has no reservations about telling them what he is bc if they cause trouble he is more than prepared to take care of it

they’re usually like “wow so cool! i wish i was a witch” but yoongi really doesn’t care lmao

with or without magic, yoongi is the same: he loves music, he loves making music, and he loves being a musician

yoongi, however, is guilty of having used magic to make his music just right before

sometimes a note just doesn’t sit with him right and it’s driving him insane

or maybe the bass doesn’t hit hard enough

he charms his music in a way that when one listens to it, they feel exactly what yoongi wants them to feel

people are always telling him he has a real gift in music and while he most certainly does, he feels he has to give credit to his magic for helping him along sometimes

but then seokjin will be like “isn’t magic your talent too? aren’t you just exercising it when you charm your music? it’s not like you can only make music well. you should give yourself props for your magic too”

it’s just. weird to him because he’s seen how much magic can corrupt people in much higher positions than himself and it’s Terrifying

he wants to know that no matter what he makes, it’s his and his alone, not attributed to any otherworldly advantage

this just kind of contributes to his need to be as detached from magic as possible

he’s too cheap to buy one of those coffee makers that automatically start brewing at a certain time in the morning and just uses magic to do it instead

“yoongi do you want me to buy you a new coffee maker for your birthday? they have ones that do all the work for you now-” “no”

he has to be extra, okay namjoon

jimin teases him sometimes but yoongi knows it’s all out of love

jimin understands yoongi in a way, and while the others are always like “yoongi you should have more fun with your magic!” jimin is always like “no no no, let him be”

besides yoongi could probably smoke all of them in a battle of magic if it came down to it lol

𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: the perfectionist

HERE HE IS!!! ITS HE

hoseok is probably one of the most talented witches in the coven

hoseok is a perfectionist to a t so if he feels insecure about how he’s doing a certain spell he will do it over and over and over until he’s got it right which makes him a pretty formidable opponent

like even the boys wouldn’t go up against him bc they know they’re just gonna get their ass handed to them

he’s a sweetie tho and very light-hearted and he never lets his power get to his head

he mainly uses it to bother the others tbh

also uses magic to give himself and the boys cool ass hair colors

currently he’s obsessed with this orange he’s got going on

calls it “pumpkin spice” bc it angers yoongi

“it really brings out the burnt sunset hues of a pumpkin ya know? or like a mix of changing fall colors, like golden crisp and warm crimson” “it’s fucking orange” yoongi can be heard chiming in from somewhere else in the house

but don’t get me wrong, hoseok loves himself some yoongi and vice versa

yoongi taught hoseok directly bc yoongi was the one that found hoseok

he was just an average college student and wasn’t really finding a will to live outside of paying off his student debts

he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and was pretty dead inside, working at a cafe and serving coffee to other dead inside college students when yoongi came in and sensed his strong magical aura

yoongi kinda forced hoseok’s magic out of him by tossing a cup of steaming hot coffee to the floor, causing hoseok to freeze the entire cafe in time, save for the two of them. yoongi told him what he was and the rest was history

now that it’s been so long hoseok still gets upset that yoongi was willing to break one of the cafe’s mugs to prove a point

because of course, when time unfroze, the mug fuckin shattered all over the place what a fuckin jerk guess who’s going to have to clean that up does he really have no respect for retail workers seriou

seokjin also was opposed to yoongi’s method but since it resulted in hobi joining their coven, he can’t be too mad

it was hoseok’s natural ability that yoongi was able to help hone, and when hoseok found a love for it, he took it upon himself to be the absolute best witch he could be

hoseok’s power of stopping time is uniquely his own and he’s worked hard to perfect it

sometimes he just stops time to stop it

hob: *freezes a movie theater right before something dramatic happens on screen* hold on yall I gotta piss real quick

freezing time is also super helpful during *cough* stressful exams* cough*

𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐧: the scholar

he knows…. everything

not only did he do the reading, he did an 8 page analysis on it and corrected a few mistakes too

namjoon was aware of his witchy nature even from the moment he was a little kid, and his parents were both human and a bit scared for him since they didn’t know how to handle it, but they gave him the option of pursuing magic or not. they made sure to do all their own research into where witches could go to hone their craft just in case

in the end, namjoon grew curious and started reading books about magic and magical things

tho he didn’t actually start using his power until his mid teens

by then he was a bit shaky with it, but he knew a lot and was very determined so he got the hang of it very quickly

rarely uses his magic outside of it being necessary tho bc he’s gone so long without having to use it that he doesn’t rely on it for anything

he also likes to be independent from his magic in a way

while magic is very much a part of him and his being, he doesn’t want it to be like a crutch, you know? his biggest fear is losing his magic, bc he’s heard it can happen

he’s also aware that some witches lose important life skills and miss out on opportunities to build their character bc they’re so used to being able to just magic their way out of a situation

went from student to teacher real quick

teaches the other boys how to properly say incantations

“its levios-ah not levios-ar”

actually?? a pretty scary dude when it comes to using his magic for real

don’t put him in a situation where someone is getting hurt because he will not go easy on the aggressor. the other boys can attest to this too, having been saved by him far too many times than is acceptable in namjoon’s eyes

basically dont fuck with namjoon’s boys or u gon die

does cute things for the boys on their birthdays with magic

one time taehyung was sad that it wasn’t snowing on his birthday so namjoon made it snow for hours

may have fucked up the climate a lil bit

yoongi almost lost a toe

namjoon frequents a library and whenever a lil kid is struggling to reach a book he uses his magic to drift the book down to the little kid and when the kid looks at him in awe he just presses his finger to his lips and winks at them

flirts using his extreme wicca knowledge, of which is either a major turn off or a major turn on. you decide

𝐣𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧: the reluctant

jimin loves magic, but it wasn’t always like that

jimin kinda struggled with accepting his magical abilities at a young age bc he was really confused

like why wasn’t he just like everyone else? why did he have to be a witch? why did he have to have magic when he could’ve just been normal?

he often rejected it, never bothering to learn anything even to impress the family at reunions

but as he grew older, his parents grew worried he’d hate his magic and never use it again, putting him in a vulnerable position if his magic were ever to just come out when jimin isn’t in a place to control it, so they let him meet a slightly older witch that could help mentor him

his parents would’ve done it but jimin hardly ever listened to his parents about magic and they wanted to show him there were witches his age that were amazing people and embraced it, that it didn’t take away from jimin’s life but in fact added to it

in comes yoongi

yoongi, at first, really pities jimin

he understands the struggle between wanting to be normal and dealing with a part of his identity that won’t ever go away

where yoongi is concerned, that struggle for him was that he wanted to be himself regardless of being talented in magic. jimin... just hates it

but then jimin starts bashing magic and witches and he’s about to get angry at his parents for trying to force him into being a witch when yoongi just,,, slaps him upside the head

jimin’s shocked and yoongi is just like “respect your parents kid, they’re looking out for you. just because you don’t use your magic doesn’t mean people won’t know you’re a witch. its dangerous for a witch to go around with magic and not know how to use it”

jimin is shocked. he never thought of it that way

jimin feels embarrassed all of a sudden and apologizes and then yoongi cracks a smile and he’s like “no biggie kid, i’m just here to teach you the basics of magic and then i’ll be out of your hair”

jimin finds that learning magic with yoongi is really fun and soon he’s asking to be apart of the coven and embracing being a witch

he becomes carefree with it, like it’s another part of him, and he’s still kinda inexperienced, but he’s learning a lot from yoongi and namjoon

loves playing with temperature

the boys make him freeze their drinks for him, or ask him to heat up some popcorn while they’re all sprawled out on the couch on movie night bc no one feels like waiting two minutes for it to cook in the microwave

makes the water in the shower cold whenever one of the boys is taking way too fucking long in there which is Everyday

also jimin: *hitting on someone at the bar* *makes the room slightly warmer* “is it hot in here or is it just you?”

relates everything he learns back to naruto in some way, much to everyone’s complete and utter confusion

he just really kins the guy i guess

100% owns every single witch pun shirt known to man

“witch please” “witches do it better” “this is my resting witch face”

jungkook: by all means jimin why don’t you just burn us all at the stake yourself

it’s ok tho bc it’s his own little way of owning his identity, and if you want to avoid having your fingers frozen off, you’ll be sure not to step to him any kind of way

𝐭𝐚𝐞𝐡𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐠: the transcendent 

my favorite witch!!! i wrote this whole thing for him

tae is like jin in that his whole family is magical and he grew up surrounded by magic his whole life

in fact, he’s so familiar with magic that he’s kind of sick of it (no he isn’t (most of the time))

taehyung is unique with his magic bc he’s actually able to transcend realms oooh~

the information on how many realms and parallel universes and such are limited as hell so taehyung actively helps broaden that knowledge as he travels, a very Dangerous and Scary job to anybody else

but to him he’s like!! fuck yeah astral projection!

basically, he’s able to put himself into a deep sleep where he moves through different realms, some more or less magical than the others

he’s so good at it that he can project himself into someone else’s dreams too

he’s basically capable of seeing more than most magical beings, and he can perceive spirits easily, as well as being able to actually see a magical aura around someone

so for instance, if a witch who didn’t know they were a witch walked into a bar, he’d know what they were instantly. besides the general intuitive feeling that most witches get, he can see the auras physically, like swarming tendrils of smoke unique to every person

each aura feels and looks different than others which makes it easy for him to point out shape shifters and vampires and werewolves and all the other guys pretty easily

bc of this ability, taehyung also likes to mess with the boys like everyone else lol

“tae, i just saw the most beautiful-” “they’re actually an ogre in disguise” “WHAT”

“man my english teacher is a witch” “she actually is”

in case you couldn’t tell tae’s favorite victim is jungkook

casually tells people he’s a witch just for the #reactions

if you’re wondering, no. nobody in this coven cares about keeping this shit a secret

since he’s more sensitive to dreaming, a lot of his dreams leave him incredibly emotional because sometimes he really is there

he once had a dream where all magical beings were universally accepted in the world and were loved and happy and woke up sobbing into jimin’s lap

also nightmares take a HUGE toll on him so his sleep pattern is fucked for real

usually ends up eating cake with jin in the dining room at four am and talking about life together to get the nightmares off tae’s mind

tae uses his magic on humans in a different way. like he doesn’t prank them that much, but rather manipulates their moods. he tries to charm anyone he comes in contact with to make them happy or to make them giggly

he wants to use his magic for good, because it often leaves a very painful burden on him in turn

𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤: the prodigy

honestly i feel like if jungkook was a witch he’d probably be an underdeveloped one, you feel?

he finds out his power late bc either his family didn’t know (they’re all human) or they just didn’t tell him in hopes of him never becoming one

but jungkook is being bullied by some guys in his grade and they corner him after school one day and jungkook gets so frustrated that he just,,, makes them all start uncontrollably burping

as dumb as it is, those kids never bother jungkook again

when he does get a hang of it, jungkook probably uses his magic for fun more often than not

jungkook is recruited by jin for this very reason. he catches jungkook messing with old people at the park on his afternoon runs and he’s like this kid is such a brat. i want him

jungkook is SUCH a fast learner holy shit

he goes to namjoon for every little question, to the point where namjoon is positive he’s become a better witch simply because jungkook has prepared him for any fuckin scenario known to man

he also makes himself float upside down in the kitchen at night so when hoseok comes down for a glass of water he almost pisses himself

“haha did i scare you” 

cue hoseok making jungkook fall down as he mumbles “little shit” under his breath

halloween is his favorite time of year and he likes to pull harmless pranks on the kiddies while scaring the mean teenagers ruining all of the children’s fun

like he sees this guy in a deformed mask holding a plastic knife about to scare a little boy so Jungkook just gives the dude a wedgie with his magic

all the kids are laughing at him and jungkook just smirks

honestly he doesn’t like reading about magic as much as he likes just doing it from intuition/namjoon’s instruction. he’s a lot like hoseok in that he has a lot of natural talent but not a lot of proper training when he first starts honing his ability

since jin yoongi and namjoon are in charge of teaching magic they all hound on him like “did u do the reading”

jungkook maybe glosses over everything and then just over-performs as compensation

they get on him abt it but there’s no lying about it, jungkook is a strong witch on his own

he hasn’t gotten a special manifestation of his magic Just Yet but he only gets stronger as he goes. the more he applies himself, the stronger he grows

#majwrites #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts headcanons #bts au #witch!bts #witch au #bts #been in the drafts for far too long

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

#loki spoilers #loki series negativity #loki tv series spoilers #loki series spoilers #long post

[midoriyaizukustan-inactive]

MHA Song Analysis - “Holy” by PVRIS

so i was listening to this song and it gave me massive todoroki family vibes lmao

anyway!! i got encouragement from fran (thank u fran) so its time to go off

i will leave a read more for those of u who dont wanna see me yell tho uwu

this is the song: https://youtu.be/rfrFT_3GP4A

SO i will be using genius lyrics as a ref for the lyrics so if u would like to double-check me on anything, u can do so using the same source

also for this analysis, we are going with the theory that dabi is todoroki touya just for simplicity’s sake

ALSO there are some manga spoilers in here so be careful!! it’s nothing too major or anything but there are instances discussed here that have not yet happened in the anime, so just a warning

w that let’s begin hoho

“youve got it all” “you” in this context is endeavor (who will be referred to as “enji” for the rest of this) and the rest of the line is obvious then; he’s got it all in the sense that he’s a successful, rich pro hero; he has a wife and kids and his own agency; when/if he retires, he could do so comfortably; he has a world-renowned, powerful quirk; he’s got looks and fans and everything

“but youve got it all wrong” despite everything enji has, he doesn’t treat it right at all. obviously he’s abusive as fuck towards his family, and negligent to natsuo and fuyumi once shouto comes along. he’s not satisfied with his place because he doesn’t get to have the number one next to his name. nothing is enough for him; his fatal flaw is envy, and it consumes him to an absolutely absurd degree

“now you dont know you’re a poor unfortunate soul” as previously mentioned, enji’s fatal flaw is envy. it fucks with him so severely that he can’t be happy with what he has, and instead stews in hate towards all might and the bitterness of “what-ifs”. thus, he’s a “poor unfortunate soul”

“oh i know/you make it seem that you feel whole/so they don’t know you’re a poor unfortunate soul” so even though enji is clearly a bit unstable and will never be satisfied or happy with what he has, he has to hide that fact; we see this particularly with his interactions with all might. he is venomous towards him, yes, but he will never let all might know that he’s jealous of him. we see this pattern of behavior echoed in shouto in the sports festival and dabi

“you put on a faith facade/think you’re holy when you’re not” the “faith facade” is enji pretending to feel accomplished with what he’s done, when he clearly isn’t. the “think youre holy when you’re not” refers to enji’s tendency to not see or not admit when he’s wrong. at least until his fight with the nomu leading to introspection, enji did not see any error in his ways. he was fine with using a woman solely for the children she could potentially bear, he was fine with neglecting the children that weren’t “good enough” in his eyes (natsuo and fuyumi), and he was perfectly fine with overworking the children that did meet his standards (shouto and dabi), which supposedly led to one’s death (touya/dabi)

“i hate to break it to you, baby/but you’re simply lost” could be seen as words dabi is telling enji during the nomu fight. shouto, fuyumi, and natsuo have no doubt thought this as well, though, and shouto and natsuo have said things that are equivalent to this (shouto when he told enji he would use him as a stepping stone to be a good hero and natsuo’s recent blowing up about touya’s “death” and enji’s parenting)

“you can right all the wrongs just to feel you belong” these are words natsuo definitely said to enji during their most recent interactions. shouto and dabi echo this sentiment, though, with how they interact with enji. its a very sarcastic and bitter line about not being able to just let what enji has done slip by

“but simply calling out sins don’t bring you closer to god” “calling out sins” is enji’s abuse towards his children and otherwise living through them, particularly shouto, and “bring you closer to god” in this context would mean enji reaching his goals. this is a sentiment all the todorokis feel, but particularly shouto, as enji honed in on him for years and shouto had no way of getting away from him until ua

“youre just a ghost at most/a set of empty bones” i feel as if this is a sentiment all the todorokis feel currently: enji because he’s finally realizing all he’s done wrong and doesn’t quite know how to cope with that; shouto because he’s trying to see himself as anything other than enji’s tool; natsuo because he wants to be more than the abuse enji inflicted on him, but it’s hard bc he can’t let go of touya’s “death”; dabi because he’s completely warped as a person from who he used to be and can’t reach out to his mom or siblings; fuyumi because she most likely has doubts about her feelings/lack of anger towards enji, even though her brothers are all angry with him in some form or fashion; and even rei, because she was changed as a person from enji’s abuse and hurt her own child because of it, and she must deal with the guilt of that

“searching for anything and everything to make you feel whole” this is a reference to how the todoroki’s are trying to cope with what is making them feel like a ghost. enji is reaching out to his kids, shouto is connecting with his friends and midoriya, natsuo is honest about his feelings to enji himself, dabi has a new family/group he connects with, fuyumi stands her ground bc her feelings are her own and shouldnt be swayed by what others are thinking, and rei is in a much better headspace now that she’s away from enji

“when it gets cold, oh, oh, oh” “when it gets cold” means when their struggles get particularly hard. examples of this: enji during the nomu fight, shouto during the sports festival, natsuo during the attack in recent manga chapters and the following conversation with enji, when dabi “dies”/runs away, and when rei hurt shouto. i cant think of a specific example for fuyumi right now, but you get the idea

“you dont know/no you dont know/oh you’re all alone/you poor unfortunate soul” i feel this line relates solely to enji and halfway with dabi, as shouto, natsuo, fuyumi, and rei all have each other and others that help them with being “unfortunate souls”. enji and dabi, on the other hand, only have themselves -- enji because he’s too prideful and also has no one left in his corner after his years of abuse, and dabi because he hasn’t told the league his past (yet), thus he certainly hasn’t talked about this at all

“you can’t control/where your body lets you go/oh you’re all alone/you poor unfortunate soul” i think this line, in particular, is dabi’s, as depending on which “dabi is touya” theory you’re looking at, he was kidnapped by ujiko to be made into a nomu that kinda failed/kinda succeeded, therefore he literally had no control where his body let him go. however, dabi in general didn’t have much choice, or probably felt he didn’t; he couldn’t stand to be with enji any longer, and it quite literally would have killed him if his scars are anything to go by. so he left, and ended up on the path of villainy. he didn’t choose that necessarily, it was just how the cards were played

“and you say that i’ve got it all wrong” “you” is enji and “i[’ve]” is shouto. this is before and during the sports festival. enji is still at his worst, shouto is trying to spite him/separate himself from him, and enji hates shouto for that, thus, he says shouto has it all wrong to not use his quirk/be obedient

“cause you just know im a poor unfortunate soul” enji knows and is the cause of shouto’s fucked up upbringing, so this line is kind’ve a bitter acknowledgment of that

“but there’s no way that there’s weight in the words that you preach/when you’re claiming your faith and you contradict your speech” shouto’s pov one again; he can’t take enji seriously in addition to not wanting to be like him because of enji’s obvious issues with envy. enji tells him to be proud of his fire, and yet clearly enji isn’t even satisfied with it as he can’t beat all might with flames alone. thus, shouto has resentment towards the irony of this, which this line attests to

“so i sit here and listen to your tongue and cheek/i know that when you sit and pray you’re only praying for keeps” shouto has no choice but to listen to enji’s hypocrisy, at least until the dorm system at ua is put into place the “praying” in this aspect can mean a couple different things; enji’s talks to the public, talks to shouto, or talks to all might. “praying for keeps” in these contexts, then, are: “just want to keep his hero ranking high”, “wants to live through shouto’s success because he’s unhappy with his own life”, and “wants to one-up all might in anything possible, from demeanor to supposed satisfaction to pride to legacy, etc”

chorus (“cause you’re a ghost...[...]unfortunate soul” bit) once more

“you’re shallow and empty and filled with regret” arguably all the todorokis feel this way. they all have things they regret at this point and all feel the emptiness that comes when there is a void in what is supposed to be a family. enji in particular has been shallow for a long time and still has issues with that.

“i think that chest must be heavy from that cross on your neck” the “cross” in this context is the weight that the todorokis each feel about what expectations they think they have to live up to/what worries them. obviously all the todoroki kids had/have the pressure to live up to enji’s expectations, but to get more precise: shouto and natsuo have the need to be more than “endeavor’s kids” on their chests, and shouto additionally has the pressures that come with being a hero course student; fuyumi has the dilemma of if she’s being too forgiving or not (and how that affects her loved ones) on her chest; dabi has the knowledge that he left behind his siblings and mother on his chest; enji has regret and dissatisfaction with his whole life on his chest; rei has the regret of what she did to her kids and the horrors of living with enji on her chest.

“you only wear cause you’re wary of what comes next after your death” why the todorokis hold on to their aforementioned “crosses”? they hold on bc its important to them that they carry reminders of who/what they want to be, or because they regret or are unsure of certain decisions, or because of nostalgia and a desire that things were different

“dont think i didn’t notice” this can be an outside perspective, but particularly im thinking midoriya because he’s met almost all of the todorokis now and has seen them at lows. very low lows in fact. thus,,,it can’t escape notice however it can also be the todorokis acknowledge the trauma and guilt that each other has; “takes one to know one” sort of thing

“dont think i didn’t notice/dont think i didn’t know/you’re just a po-o-o-or, poor unfortunate/so-o-o-oul, poor unfortunate/oh, oh, oh, oh poor unfortunate/so-o-o-oul, poor unfortunate” this line is kind’ve incoherent which is why i think it fits all of the todoroki’s thoughts; this is all of them thinking over each other about themselves and about the rest of their family

“and you’ve got it all/you’ve got it all wrong/no you’ve never known, known, known, known/you’re a poor unfortunate soul” once again, this is the todoroki’s thoughts overlapping each other, except these thoughts are exclusively about each other and not themselves

“dont think i didnt notice” definitely this is where the outside party comes in, at least for everyone but enji and dabi, as they have others that are there for them and they can talk to. as for enji and dabi, this line is still them thinking about the others

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