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titleknown · 1 year

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Doing a pseudo-reblog of this fucking post because I don’t want to get in arguments over it or shove it into people’s faces, but like... I think we need to talk about the ugliness of the broader attitude in that comic (specific media referenced aside) because it keeps getting fucking spread in other posts by otherwise smart people and I hate it.

Rest of this after the break because it’s kind of ballooned into a wall of text.

Like... it is a common experience on the spectrum for people to earnestly gush about their special interests only to get shut down by a neurotypical in front of them because “that’s stupid,”

While the autism experience is diverse enough that it is difficult to categorize, that is A Thing I have seen people on the spectrum talk about time and time again, pretty damn common.

And that’s literally what that comic is doing, just on a wider scale and “funny,” Like, the setup is “the person is gushing about their interests” and the punchline is “the interest is stupid, I feel despair that this person likes such a stupid thing”

It is that exact fucking nightmare scenario for so many of us, but with the joke on the side of the Typical Neurotypical Viewer.

The core “joke” is literally "LOOK AT HOW STUPID THIS PERSON IS FOR BEING EARNEST ABOUT SOMETHING I FIND STUPID! DOESN'T THAT MAKE YOU DESPAIR FOR THE STATE OF BEING SURROUNDED BY STUPID PEOPLE INTO STUPID THINGS?!"

But it’s funny. It’s innocuous. It’s silly. Which lets it spread despite the fact that what it’s saying is; in the end; kinda fucked up.

But, the OP said this in the tags:

But like... this is really two-faced, right? Like, they’re basically saying “I don’t mean to be mean" while also saying “reading critical depth into what you like is bad because the source material is stupid,” which is like...

...Well, firstly I thought y’all fucking hated “the curtains are just blue” and yet y’all are making fun of people for doing the opposite of that, and secondly, it’s doing the same “I don’t get why people like this, therefore it is stupid/worthless” shit that y’all accuse people of doing with Shakespeare and the classics.

And like... I see that attitude a lot. with regards to the big post-Gamergate/post-Infinity-War backlash against fandom as A Thing and the fact it’s becoming more common worries me.

Like, in the common talking point of “I’m sorry that you think Toni Morrison is less good than your fanfic of Goku fucking Charizard” or “Dante didn’t write fanfic because what he wrote was actually good” (paraphrased), I want to deconstruct the core assumptions I see behind it:

The named author and the anonymous fanfic writer reflects the idea that authors working in approved mediums are important, whereas authors working in the Wrong medium aren’t. The “Goku fucking Charizard” thing is based on the assumption that sexuality (And “weird” sexuality especially) debases a work.

The idea that Dante’s “not fanfic” because it’s good primarily serves to define fanfic as based around quality rather than the bullshit insane walls of copyright law (Which is actually what the “Dante is fanfic” talking point was about).

The way the sex fanfic and Toni Morrison are pointed at each other shows that while fanfic must use its worst works as representatives, published literary fiction must use its best.

I wonder what the sorts of people would say about the fact that a novel about a woman fucking a bear literally won Canada’s highest literary award. But I digress.

It is an ugly view that is ironically pretty anti-intelectual in and of itself, but from a different angle than their opposition.

It seeks to demolish a very specific intellectual view of the importance of democratizing art/audience because it views the public intellect and taste as stupid and not worth commenting on. Better to return to a walled garden than to let the mob dictate public taste (even if they’re not really in control).

And like, to speculate from what I’ve observed, I hypothesize that comes from a view that; since corporate monopoly over media via copyright and consolidation is basically invincible, the best we can do is on a “grassroots” level.

And their view of the “grassroots” is that the culture is infantilized, by people who for stupid selfish reasons like stupid baby garbage instead of “real” art and give it all their money, and that fandom is primarily an engine for the most devoted of these stupid baby garbage worshippers.

You will note that what they deem as ‘stupid baby garbage” tends to cross over heavily into the diagram of “things liked by autistic people.” They’ll deny this, while ignoring how much a lot of anti-autistic ableism isn’t directly targeted but inherently stochastic responses against a perceived abnormality.

Point is, they feel this abnormal element is a key driver of what they think must be excised from the culture, like a tumor. So the core idea is that if they bully enough people into shutting up about their garbage baby interests, that “imperial core” of people into Dumb Baby Bullshit will be starved and Real Art will reassert its rightful place.

Note that none of this is conspiratorial, it’s stochastic. It’s a bunch of people with the same general beliefs adopting the same shitty tactics by sheer force of carcination. And they don’t even have to adopt all of the beliefs to act in the interest of that view, just enough of them.

And I am begging y’all, please stop boosting and reblogging this shit in the name of countering the excesses of fandom. There are better ways and better critiques you could be making and supporting.

And for the love of god, people who are saying this shit, you’re not helping. You are not going to break up Disney or elevate the fucking culture by shaming autistic people.

Go work on trying to decrease copyright duration, or expand arts programs, or push for antitrust, or fucking something that’s not bullying people for being publicly earnest about what they like!

#media #critique #bullying #ableism #fandom #media critique

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0nemorestranger · 6 months

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an in-depth, spoiler-free review of flight of icarus

despite eddie being written from a pre-joe quinn perspective, there was enough "accuracy" to where i could see him become the loveable goofball two years down the road. "he would never say that" moments were few and far between and i could say the same for the rest of the characters we already know too. the problem was the new guys. ronnie, paige, and al were so one-dimensional! i could tell what caitlin was trying to go for with ronnie and eddie's dynamic, and with everyone hyping it up i was ready for a good time. unfortunately it just read as a wannabe bastardized platonic stobin to me. paige, for being a love interest, had little to offer -- we aren't even told what she looks like, aside from the fact that she has freckles and a wavy bob. and then there's al. i was interested at first, but the more i saw of him the more repetitive his scenes got, to the point where i was like "okay i get it" and skimming most of the parts that he was in. you'd think that caitlin schneiderhan, being a writer for the show, would be good at creating new people out of thin air. but as far as the st novels go, these newbies were the most forgettable.

as far as genre, i wasn't expecting something akin to a cheesy 80s action movie. imo, there's a reason action movies work; trying to capture that tone on paper just feels manic and juvenile, and again, led to me skimming the parts with al in them. i'm wondering if the "bigger" tone of s4 inspired this, but honestly, what drew me to st (el notwithstanding) was the down-home nature of it. i loved the balance between average suburban kids on the cusp of coming-of-age in their mundane lives vs government experiments and abuse of power. it felt real. this just felt like die hard? more like try-hard.

i will say this was the first time i've seen an eighteen-year-old portrayed semi-accurately in a ya book. eddie had the arrogance and i-know-better attitude most boys his age have, especially most edgy boys involved in a not-society-friendly subculture. but at the same time, all he really wanted was to know his dad would stick around. it was heartbreaking. unfortunately it goes back to the repitition and surface-level approach; with trauma having been a buzzword online (where a lot of teens hang out these days) for the past few years, you'd have thought schneiderhan would've approached it with some... care? nuance? understanding? instead it just rang hollow because it was basically the same issue presented in the exact same way, over and over again.

and speaking of the same issue over and over again, can we please get rid of the "character goes through trauma after trauma only to die when things start looking up" trope? the fun of eddie being a one-season character was, yes, we could theorize and create headcanons about his backstory. like i said, i love the idea of just a regular, slice-of-life kid who feels like an outsider in his close-minded small town, but at least he has his guitar and a great relationship with his uncle and friends who love him. but no. this story kinda shit all over that, and knowing his fate made it that much tougher of a pill to swallow.

my biggest dilemma is the ending, inasmuch as it saved this whole thing from being painfully average. the author did a good job of giving us just a glimpse of who eddie would become, and honestly i cried a little bit. that said, the issue is, now i don't know if i have the heart to get rid of the book lol

#stranger things #flight of icarus #eddie munson

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perfect-bi-paradise · 2 years

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Hi, bi person here and I just to say...

Your anti-pan posts are bullshit.

You are literally using your own personal experiences to fuel hatred and bigotry against a group of people who don't deserve it.

Literally no pansexual ever said "pansexuality is about personality!" You made that shit up. It doesn't matter if you consider yourself bisexual or pansexual, both are valid and don't deserve any more vitriol than we already get from outside (and even sometimes inside) the LGBT community.

"bUt tHe IdEa oF pAnSexUaLs aRe TrAnS & eNbYpHoBic!!11!!" You DO know that people have said the exact same thing about bi people, right? That were "transphobic" bc "we're attracted to only two genders" or "we only like men and women" or something. You're pulling that same argument except for pan people.

TL;DR stop using your own sexuality as a way to dismiss and gatekeep other people's sexuality. Now if you excuse me... I'm going to write some bi and pan characters happily being in love just to piss people like you off :)

Also...

I highly suggest you stop using Sigmund Freud as a reliable source. His work has been widely discredited by modern day doctors and phycologists and is considered to be highly outdated nowadays. No credible psychiatrist would use him as reference in today's world.

Dear Anonymous, thank you for this ignorant rant and being a good example as to why Pansexuality is so harmful and divisive to the bisexual community. Just because you're willfully ignorant doesn't change the fact that just Monday a Pansexual on Facebook decided to DM me to say that Bisexuals only care about genitals while they were pan because they only care about personality. Also if pansexuals are "so different" from bisexuals why are they always invading bisexual spaces and stealing bisexual content?! Sounds like gatekeeping is needed to to protect marginalized communities against this kinda harmful malarkey. Also did you know that the pansexual community is actually responsible for the propagating the biphobic and transphobic stereotypes bisexuals still face today? No! Well that's probably because you're 19 while having spent most of your life on Tumblr and being terminally online. It's clear you know absolutely nothing about bisexual history or pansexualities disturbing past of both fetishizing trans people like myself and heavily relying on biphobia to retconn bisexuality itself. Don't believe me, here is actual chronological proof that I'm sure you won't read.

FYI there are whole quote's of people saying pansexuality is about being attracted to someone for their personality. Here you go:

November 12, 2014: “Sometimes referred to as omnisexual, pansexual describes an attraction to a person regardless of sex or gender. People who use this label may describe themselves as ‘gender blind’ or as being attracted to a person’s personality rather than his or her sex. The term also acknowledges a space for intersexed and transgendered people in an otherwise binary understanding of sexuality and gender.”

February 2015: A pansexual individual is attracted to a person, not a gender. It seems very similar to bisexuality. BUT, bisexuality, for the most part does not include genders aside from male and female, which is what the main difference is with the two.

October 2017: “Pansexual is basically a more liberal version of bisexual. It means you don’t care about someone’s gender or identity or sexuality, you just like them for them.

December 2018: “Gg, 21: ‘I [identify] as pansexual because when I am attracted to people it’s usually more down to their personality or attitude, not their gender or even their looks.’ […] Laura, 24: ‘I don’t care what their genitals look like. It’s the person I’m attracted to.’ […] Bronagh, 21: ‘Being pan is being attracted to someone’s personality over everything else such as looks.’”

July 16, 2019: “Pansexuals are attracted to the person, not their physical form…

Unknown: “Sexual orientation associated with desiring/loving a person’s personality primarily, and specific bodily features secondarily.”

The majority of provided descriptions of pansexuality demonstrate ahistorical and bigoted assumptions about bisexuality, on top of saying that attraction to transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people is exclusive to pansexuality. Some insist that pansexuals are “moving past” this bigotry, but considering how recent and widely-circulating some of these sources are, such a claim is extremely contestable. Articles written by pansexuals discouraging transphobic or biphobic descriptions of pansexuality are unfortunately either extremely rare or just nonexistent.

Insisting that “most pansexuals aren’t like this,” visit the comment section of virtually any pansexuality-related article, Instagram post, TikTok clip, YouTube video, tweet, you name it — and you’ll find the rhetoric in the timeline regurgitated. Transphobic and biphobic definitions are frequently found in scientific journals, and from celebrities with massive platforms. People tend to chalk down harmful rhetoric to just an exceptional “fraction of the community” instead of acknowledging the issue’s prevalency, which is an unhelpful deflection.

https://aninjusticemag.com/the-history-and-troubling-present-of-the-pansexual-label-9e535e15277

Oh, let me ask you a question? Do you even know that "regardless of gender" is actually bisexualities real definition, as it was created by bisexuals in the 70's to describe bisexuality and pansexuals literally appropriated the term in 2008 and used Bi-erasure, and transphobia to do so? NO! Well congrats you have successfully been indoctrinated by pansexual propaganda into being okay with biphobia to the point of defending it and continuing bi-erasure. Way to be a total pawn.

P.S If you Sigmund Freud still wasn't relevant than people wouldn't even consider using the term pansexual in the first place.

#anti mspec #lgbt discourse #battleaxe bi #bisexuality #transgender #biphobic #anonymous #woke mob

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep22

All of this ‘the culprit’s motives are super shallow and they’re just unhealthily obsessive’ discourse is giving me war flashbacks to . . . . basically every other part of the entire When They Cry franchise, lol.

Thoughts under the cut. [Plus spoilers for Umineko]

I feel like at the end of the day we’re all just gonna have to agree to disagree about how we feel about how Ryukishi is handling Satoko as the culprit here, since I don’t really think any amount of social media posts detailing our interpretations of her character are gonna change anyone’s minds, lol. But I’m still gonna give my thoughts on her anyway because it’s fun, even if I’m basically just preaching to the choir.

To be honest, this feels pretty much in line with how Ryukishi already wrote characters like Takano and Beatrice, in terms of them having unhealthy obsessions that lead them to mass-murder. The amount of violence Satoko has caused is arguably worse than either of them, but they’re all pretty awful if you think about the reality of what they all did as villains.

Sorta like with how a lot of the old-school Umineko discourse went, I think people are too focused on the whole idea of Satoko hating studying, and ignoring everything else about her character and her circumstances. Although even then I feel like people are being kinda unfair toward Satoko about how strongly she feels about academics, but maybe I’m just biased because of my own history with schooling and the intense levels of anxiety and self-hatred that can go along with it.

Plus the fact that Satoko already has a long history of sever abandonment issues, and has basically always had HS that amplified her feelings of paranoia and persecution. It’s pretty obvious at this point that she never really got ‘cured’ in the first place, though it’s less important to think about HS as an in-universe fictional disease with it’s own rules, and more important to just think about it as a representation of real-life mental illnesses which aren’t bound by the rules of made-up brain-worm parasites and aliens or whatever.

Also, the Satoko that started all this looping in the first place was one who never dealt with Teppei returning to the village, and thus never went through her whole character arc related to that. The series is kinda ambiguous about how it handles the idea of people’s character development carrying over between loops, but it explains a lot about Satoko’s attitude here if you go with the idea that she never really had to overcome any of her trauma or coping mechanisms in the “good ending timeline”, and this is the consequence of that taken to it’s logical extreme. The idea of her view of the world being skewed by the fact that she only remembers the “good ending timeline” is also kinda lamp-shaded by the part where she hears about Rika’s looping and is like “oh yeah, that’s the month where we had that cool action movie stand-off with the Mountain Dogs :)”. By the time she really got to understand exactly what was going on beyond the specific timeline she had experienced, she was already way over the edge.

I get why people don’t like the idea of Gou ‘tainting’ the VN’s happy ending, but I honestly like the idea that it’s examining the consequences of how Matsuribayashi was such an overly-specific timeline where basically nothing bad happened and everyone just banded together to beat Takano. It kinda glossed over a lot of the personal problems that the main cast had in the rest of the series, and this really goes to show the effects of some of that stuff not getting properly addressed. It also reminds me that Minagoroshi is a timeline that even in the VN, Rika completely lost her memories of, so I can see how even post-Matsuribayashi she might have never let Satoko know about the details of that one timeline where she overcome her abuse.

I also feel like it only really got to this point because of Featherine’s meddling. In the original Matsuribayashi timeline, Satoko just started drifting away from Rika and ended up wandering into the Saiguden and meeting Featherine before anything actually serious happened in that timeline. I think that if she had just been left to her own devices and that timeline had just kept going, Satoko probably would have either found a way to reconnect with Rika, or they would have just slowly drifted apart for good. But then Satoko got given the power to time travel, and only started going off the deep end after going through another five years of identical suffering.

And on that whole note, it reminds me of how in Umineko, Lambda had a whole conversation about the idea of an abused person becoming an abuser themself if they’re given the power to lash out. Which is basically what’s happening here. Satoko is being given the tools to completely detach herself from reality and try as many times as she likes to get what she wants.

Which also reminds me that this episode in particular REALLY lays the Umineko parallels on thick, lol. Particularly the whole ‘Satoko is turning into Lambda’ thing, which feels just about 100% confirmed now. They straight up have Featherine bring up the exact same ‘monkeys using a typewriter’ analogy to explain Rika’s situation that Lambda uses in Umineko to explain Bern’s situation.

I know a lot of people don’t like the increasingly blatant Umineko tie-ins, and that a lot of people still think it might just be misdirection, but considering how much stuff in Gou has been surprisingly straightforward and predictable, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it seems to be.

Though to be more specific, this is probably more about the start of Lambda and Bern’s relationship, and their appearances in Umineko, rather than the very first origins of them as individuals, if that makes sense. Obviously the concept of Bernkastel as an identity has been around since Higurashi itself, and we’ve known for a long time that Lambda was the one who originally gave Takano her blessing of certainty, but we’ve never known the full details of how those two started their relationship, and Featherine’s whole series of name-drops in the last episode makes it seem like Lambda as a meta individual more or less already exists, with Satoko being an iteration of her. So I think they both technically already exist, but this is how the two of them come into contact and start their whole unhealthily obsessive relationship.

I guess it’s still possible that, even if she’s already existed for a long time as a meta individual, she hasn’t actually come up with the name ‘Lambdadelta’ for herself yet, and this might be where she does so. Even with the list of names Featherine referenced, she didn’t technically bring up Lambda’s name directly. So in that sense this might be ‘Lambda’s’ origin story, even if she already exists.

Considering how basically the entire story at this point seems to be acting in service of setting up the whole LambdaBern relationship dynamic no matter what, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this will end with Satoko and Rika fully embracing their codependency and mutually ascending to the meta plane so they can stay together once and for all. There might still be human versions of them that stay behind in the real world and continue living normal lives, though.

At the very least, it feels like that’s the logical outcome of the whole Chekov’s Sword Fragment plot device that’s been hanging in the background for ages now. I think it’ll just be the in-universe explanation they use to show the mechanics of how exactly that process works. It’ll probably be used to ‘sever’ Satoko and Rika’s meta consciousnesses from their physical bodies and allow them to basically become witches.

Mainly I just can’t really see this having a ‘happy ending’ at this point, aside from the whole idea that maybe the severing process leaves behind ‘normal’ versions of the two of them who stay in Hinamizawa and go back to their normal lives. I dunno if that’d make people happy, but it’d at least be a way for Ryukishi to have his cake and eat it too, lol.

I just don’t think that there’s any real chance of this ending with them just talking to each other and agreeing to put an end to all this, though. For one thing that’d just feel kinda anticlimactic and honestly make Gou’s story feel even MORE pointless, if it just ends with literally the exact same ending as the VN with nothing really being changed. But I also feel like Featherine wouldn’t be willing to just let Satoko ‘give up’ without having one of them definitively win their current game. In general I just feel like Ryukishi should just commit to the story he’s setting up at this point, instead of just backing out at the last minute and circling everything back to the same ending we already had like nothing in Gou ever happened. If we’re gonna have this whole new story to begin with, it should at least have some lasting consequences.

Anyway, I think in the next episode we’re finally going to loop back to the Damashi arcs and see how they played out. At this point I don’t care too much about getting answers to the ground-level mysteries of those arcs, and I doubt the story will spend much time on that, but I’m curious to see how it progresses Satoko’s whole development through these loops, since I think she goes through some changes with her motives and methods over the course of them.

Specifically I think that the actual experience of being physically present in her own set of loops and causing so much pain and suffering started to get to her, and she might have almost given up in her own way during Tataridamashi and wanted to just stay in that arc, but things went south anyway. Maybe, if that’s what happened, Featherine basically let her know that she won’t let her give up, and will force her to keep looping until one of them ‘wins’ no matter what. Either way, I think that arc was a turning point for her. Like how she asked Featherine to arrange things so that Satoko can make sure that she and Rika’s loops are synced up, she probably asked Featherine after that arc to change the rules again so that Rika will start remembering the details of her deaths. At this point it’s pretty obvious that the Hanyuu fragment Rika was talking to earlier in Gou was more or less just Featherine putting on an act and manipulating her, so the scene of Hanyuu giving her the power to remember her deaths was probably just Featherine telling her about the rule change.

And going by how the Nekodamashi arc went immediately afterward, I think that rule change was related to Satoko becoming increasingly desperate to put an end to the loops as soon as possible. And considering how she was willing to spend so much time reviewing Rika’s hundred years of looping just to prepare for this, it’d make sense to me if she becomes desperate because she basically gives up, but realizes that she isn’t actually allowed to give up, so she has to try and make Rika give in as fast as possible. Either way it’s pretty obvious that Satoko’s methods start becoming more violent in that arc, and she basically tries to brute-force Rika into submission, leading up to the loop where she just spawn-camps her and straight up starts screaming at her to just stay in the village while tearing out her guts. It’s still possible that her attitude in that loop was just one big act, but I think that was the result of her being genuinely desperate to just have Rika give up once and for all, and her starting to crack under the pressure of doing all of these things with her own hands across so many loops.

So now we’ll just have to see how the confrontation between them at the end of Nekodamashi plays out once we get back to it. In the long run I just think it’ll lead to the ending I talked about before, with them using the sword on each other. The exact nuances of how that sorta ending might play out are up in the air, though.

Either way, I think there’s probably enough time to wrap up all that in two more episodes, but there’s still reason to believe that there might be some kind of sequel in the works. I don’t really want to bet on it, though, so I’m just gonna assume that there’s two episodes left and base my theories on that. In which case I think the next episode will go over the Damashi arcs and end with Rika and Satoko’s confrontation at the end of Nekodamashi, and then the final episode will wrap everything up. Considering that they both more or less know exactly what’s going on with each other by that point, there isn’t really that much that needs to be wrapped up. I think that will be the final loop we get, so it’ll all just come down to how their confrontation plays out, and what decision they come to about how to handle each other.

I honestly don’t really know how I think a full sequel would go, if it’s at least one cour long. Assuming that it’s not just a new Umineko anime that more or less continues Rika and Satoko’s arc via Lambda and Bern, but is a straight up ‘Higurashi Gou Season 2′. It just feels like there isn’t really that much that needs to be done to wrap things up, now that everything’s being laid out in the open, and Rika and Satoko are both aware of each other’s looping. They might switch it up so that they both end up teaming up to take down Featherine, but I kinda doubt that’ll happen.

I’m still hoping this is leading into some kind of new Umineko anime though, lol. That feels like it’d be the main reason for putting so much effort into this whole elaborate LambdaBern origin story we’re getting here.

I’ve heard rumors that there’s been listings for a 25th episode of Gou, so it’s possible that rather than another full season, there’s just one extra episode at the end. I’m not exactly sure what the point of doing one extra unannounced episode at the end would be, though. It might end up being a bridge between Gou and a new Umineko anime.

At the very least, if it’s just ‘Satokowashi Part 8′, it makes me wonder why they haven’t announced it yet, and why they didn’t just split that arc into two BD volumes with four episodes each, instead of having it be one big volume with seven episodes, and one random episode at the end for some reason. But if it’s more of an epilogue or a bridge of sorts between Gou and something else, with Gou’s story concluding with episode 24, then I guess it’d make some sense to do it that way.

We also know there’s gonna be a panel for Gou at a convention around when ep24 comes out, so if anything gets announced it’ll probably happen there.

Anyway, this whole episode can be summed up as “Satoko does a gay little psychological torture that pisses Rika off”, in the most morbidly entertaining way possible, lmao.

#murasaki reblogs #higurashi #higurashi gou

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m39 · 3 years

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Hiveswap: Act 2 review

It’s the end of November. The shitshow known as 2020 will soon come to an end. So why not talk about Hiveswap: Act 2 for a minute? As I said days ago, Act 2 didn’t suck major ass. Overall I thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, like many games, it also has some bullshit in it.

Just to warn you up before we start: While I’m not gonna talk about major spoilers from the game, there still will be topics that might be considered as one. Proceed with caution.

Byers-Tier of Awesomeness(positives):

Let’s start with the story. I kinda enjoyed it. It starts off slow but when it reaches the 2nd act (as in, the train), it gets better. We get the target location to get there and we are under the time limit to do so. So yeah, a solid motivation to go forward, and it makes sense what we are doing with the train.

The characters, however, are probably the best thing in Act 2, particularly our two main protagonists. I fucking adore Joey and Xefros! I adore what they do! I adore the dialogues between them! I fucking adore them! I fucking adore them!! I!!! FUCKING!!! ADORE!!! THEM!!!

As for the rest of the cast, it was mostly good. I kind of expected that the characters would act differently than in Friendsim(since you know, different people were writing them), but most of the time, I think they were acting like in the Friendsim. Sure, some of them could stick up for more time and there is definitely one troll who overestimated hER WELCOME but I’ll talk about it later.

There isn’t really much to talk about the graphics about it. Both backgrounds and characters look amazing and props to the artists for a fantastic work.

The soundtrack is still God-tier. Then again, it’s James Roach and Toby Fox (with some help from Clark Powell). These guys can make gold out of thin air. My three favorite music pieces were the first three variations of Ticket to Ride (the last one especially was stuck in my head for a long time)

Now let me show you some of the highlights from the game (particularly, the train ones):

The first act (before the train): The bug lusii from Charun’s and Zebede’s hives and the train station. Their design is awesome and I want to pet them.

Rust/Bronze wagon: It was kinda hard to choose the highlight from this section since it’s pretty short but I think I’ll go with Skylla. Her smile fucking broke me!

Gold/Olive wagon: The wagon itself was the best part of this section since it reminded me of the trains (railbuses to be exact) I used to take in the past. Asides from that, there is also Konyyl.

Jade/Teal wagon: Ignoring how the trial was a chore, Tyzias was a fucking savage beast in this game and I fucking love her for that. The best part was how she and Joey basically straight out humiliated Tegiri for being such an attention-seeking failure of a Tealblood. Stuff like this makes Tyzias the best troll out of her caste (in Hiveswap of course).

Blue/Indigo wagon: Amisia.

…

What? You want me to say more? NOPE! There is nothing else to add. Amisia is still the best! She was an adorable, murderous child back then, in Friendsim, and she’s still the same child now. I fucking love her!

I’m not going to talk about what happens in the third act because, you know, spoilers, but let me tell you: it gets fucking intense.

Septic Tank of Caliborn’s Yaoi Filth(negatives):

Unfortunately, Hiveswap: Act 2 is not all fine and dandy as you might have guessed. It can be infuriating sometimes.

Let’s start with the most obvious con: The trial in the Jade/Teal wagon. It drags the game out for way too long. When I was playing the game, it was around 10-11 PM when I reached this wagon. I’ve decided to finish Act 2 the next day after finishing that part of the game. Unfortunately, it went on, and on, and on for so long that I’ve decided: Fuck it! and stopped when I reached the recess. Sure, there are some funny moments like the one I’ve mentioned before but when you create a segment that feels like it’s ten times longer than it actually is, shows that you need to triple-check your in-making game before releasing it.

Now for my personal worst aspect of Act 2: Elwurd. Good, fucking, GOD!!! I fucking hate this one-note character for being such a plank of wood! The fact that we have to overly rely on her of all the trolls pisses me off even more! I’m serious, we are forced to ask her for help like three to four times to go further! Let me show you an example: You receive an item that you have to show to another troll. To make it look more convincing, you need Remele to cover it in paint. Now here’s the catch: In order to get the painted item, directly talking to her will do shit! Seriously! You have to talk to a plank of wood with I’M GAY written all over it to actually get help from Remele!!

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OKAY! TIME OUT! CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHICH ONE OF THE WRITERS DECIDED IT WILL BE A GREAT IDEA TO TURN JOEY INTO A FUCKING SIMP?!?! Is it because they want to develop Joey in terms of her sexuality?! Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use someone who’s attitude screams GIMME DA PUSSAY every time there is a dialogue with her!! Like, for fuck sake, Tegiri was more enjoyable to watch! Hell, Zebruh, of all trolls, was more bearable than Elwurd! And we are supposed to hate his guts!! You could have make Joey ask for help from the other trolls that didn’t really shined in this game but NO! You are forcing us to pick the most boring one for help over and over again!! GOD FU-

technical difficulties

Okay, this rant was going on for too far. Let’s change the topic.

For some unknown reasons, Zebede and Charun were not in this game. Like, we saw them on promotional media and I saw that they were probably finished so the reason why the rest of the cast was in Act 2 but not them is nonsensical.

Although the artwork is still amazing, it feels rushed and unpolished in some places. For instance when Joey and Xefros are passed out, instead of the animation of them waking and standing up, they just… POP And now they stand up.

…

Okay?!

Also I would prefer for items to be more usable.

And that’s basically all stuff that I have to say about Hiveswap: Act 2.

Before I’ll end up my review, however, there is one last elephant in the room that needs to be said about: the credits that weren’t implemented when this game was released a few days ago. While the reason behind this decision can be considered reasonable (as is, avoiding a backlash until the hype wents out) since some of the fans can be considered complete nutcases straight out of Arkham Asylum, the decision itself overall feels hyperbolic to me. I saw many artists who were showing the assets from the game that they were working on, and they were proud of their work. They wanted to share it with fans and they were greeted with a very warm response from the fans. It basically looks more like it was about the writers and directors not getting a backlash for the decisions they created since some of them were working on the highly controversial Epilogues and an even worse sequel to them. If that was the case, then why not just have the credits from the beginning but without the directors and writers until around three months pass? There! Problem solved!

Summary:

Despite the trial, despite Elwurd being Elwurd, lack of two characters and the overall roughness, Hiveswap: Act 2 is still a very good game. While I don’t believe anymore that any of the future installments will give us the same level of magic that Act 1 did, I was still satisfied with what we got.

Before I’ll finally take a break from Homestuck for a long time, let me tell you something. The beginning of the game with the train in the background felt like this:

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After finishing it, the atmosphere changed to this:

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I’ll let you feel it for a moment. >:]

See you all next time.

Bye!

#homestuck #hiveswap #hiveswap act 2 #review #joey claire #xefros tritoh #skylla koriga #konyyl okimaw #tyzias entykk #amisia erdehn #elwurd #zebede tongva #charun krojib

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hjazysol · 3 years

Note

What do your Yakuza kids think of their classmates?

So they all hate Mikazuki because obviously. Kyosho's the sort of acception because he still likes to let Mikazuki feel included even if he still acts like a prick.

Takeshi

As you know has a crush on Yoshiyuki. He thinks she's very kind and that she takes her role of basically being class leader very seriously.

With Okamura. He doesn't hate her for getting between him & Yoshiyuki to be honest he can't blame her for keeping her away from him.

Jotaro he respects with every fibre of his being. And even if Jotaro doesn't know. Takeshi views him as a friend nonetheless.

He finds Hoshino to be a mysterious fellow. Is impressed by his skills as a whole. And sees him as the most competent in Sakurai's gang.

He doesn't have any special views towards Sugawara aside from he's a funny guy. He doesn't really get all the piercings.

Sakurai. A brat. But a clever brat. Does have casual talks with her at times but leaves the second she starts talking about taking care of opposing schools or starts going on about rival talk.

Takahashi. Thinks she's a marvelous person. She isn't pushy & likes her understanding nature. He sees her as simultaneously one of the luckiest & unluckiest people he's met for the fact she went out with Jotaro but had to let him go.

Masame just a normal friendship. Honestly surprised and very thankful she isn't the fangirly type.

Kyosho

In short. FFFFFFFFFUCK WHATEVER YOU THINK ABOUT HIM. He adores everyone in his class.

Yoshiyuki. Helps her in literally anyway he can. To a point of exhaustion in fact. Assuming he can get tired.

Okamura. Views her as the god damn guru of being nice to people. Is surprised that she's not that smart but he doesn't really care that much. Will sometimes appear uninvited to see how her tutoring with Yoshiyuki is going. He knocks don't worry XD

Jotaro. Treats him the exact same as Takeshi a big boy buddy with menacing aura.

Hoshino, the guy who gets on with him most with his skill in swordsmanship. Best sparring partner he could ask for.

Sugawara, he thinks he looks badass as hell. Always compliments his piercings.

Sakurai, he treats her like a baby. Not because he's trying to be mean. He just kinda sees. A small rabbit with a knife.

He views Takahashi in a similar way to Takeshi

Always compliments Masame's cooking skills. Respects her alot for always improving at something she's good at as he does with everyone actually.

Miazaki

He tries to be the best wingman ever and get Takeshi with Yoshiyuki. He himself views her as a perfect girl for almost anything.

Is prevented by Okamura from being the best wingman ever. Is still cool with her though.

He thinks Jotaro's hot as hell. But doesn't have a crush on him. He just talks to him like anyone else in his class.

Hoshino. He imagines him as the stars in the sky. He has no real reason he can just see it in him.

With Sugawara he likes his style.

And with Sakurai it's kind of the same as Kyosho. They see a small rabbit with a knife. Only Mizaki doesn't treat her like a baby.

Takahashi. He just thinks of her as a really sweet individual. And treats her as kindly as possible

Masame. Nice girl.

Coda

They're all just the only class members she's happy to be around.

She thinks Yoshiyuki is a good leader. For class anyway.

Thinks Okamura's big heart towards people is really adorable though she also thinks that's her biggest weakness.

Jotaro. Already said she gets on with him mainly because of the struggles in their pasts due to their ethnic differences to the eyes of certain people in japan.

Hoshino's a mystery to her but she doesn't know why & she likes it.

She sees Sugawara as just an excitable person. That has an addiction to metal in his face.

Coda likes Sakurai. She's a tough girl with attitude. And in her eyes being small puts her in perfect kneecap cracking distance.

Takahashi is the first person she's ever lectured aggressively about going out with Jotaro at first she thought that this approach would come of as too intimidating. Having the pretty much boss of the school mert you randomly is gonna scare you. Especially if they're in a group like the Yakuza. But she was surprised when she learned Takahashi meant absolutely no harm towards Jotaro and that she wasn't afraid of her enough to run away. Basically she thinks of her as a literal angel.

She's impressed by how easily Masame gets everyone to socialize with each other just by making some food. Which she absolutely loves. But her face never changes when eating that much. So she just smiles. In her head she's actually going crazy at how good it is.

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razberryyum · 5 years

Text

With the past arc coming to an end this week, resulting in most of our collective hearts being ripped out of our chests, I wanted to take this opportunity to pay tribute to our two dear big sisters of The Untamed/MDZS, Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing.

(novel and ep 32 spoilers below the cut)

Jiang Yanli (Shijie)

I took an immediate liking to Shijie the first moment we met her on the show since with her sweet smile and gentle eyes, she was so obviously a loving person and a caring big sister to her two unruly little brothers, there was almost no way I wouldn’t like her. She felt like the gentle type who would not harm a fly, and as we got to know her even more, I only loved her more. I’ve already talked about her kick-ass moment on Phoenix Mountain which perfectly encapsulated her greatness as a person, so I will look at other aspects of her life instead. Considering the fact that she grew up with parents who loved her in a well-respected cultivation sect, she really could have easily been a spoiled princess type of character since I doubt she was ever left wanting. And then, when her father brought home Wei Wuxian, she also could have easily either ignored the kid or worse yet treat him like crap, especially with the rumors about Wei Wuxian being her dad’s bastard son, which I’m sure she would have gotten a whiff of. Even if she had mistreated WWX, she probably would have gotten the full backing of her mom in doing so. But instead, because she is really just the most generous soul on earth, she instantly accepted him as part of the family and loved him as she did her own brother, even making sure that Jiang Cheng would accept him and treat him right as well. In fact, it is abundantly clear that Shijie had to act as more of a mother to WWX since Madame Yu most definitely had no intention of filling that role. Her attitude actually reminded me of Catelyn Stark and Jon Snow in Game of Thrones: like Catelyn Stark, she simply couldn’t forgive her husband’s infidelity and therefore could never like the child her husband brought back since she saw the boy as a daily reminder of his unfaithfulness. As much as I love Madame Yu, because she is awesome and fierce AF, it could NOT have been easy growing up in her household when one’s mere existence and presence triggered her ire. So really, thank God for Shijie, for being there and providing WWX with the motherly love and warmth that he probably sorely needed since Jiang Fengmian probably couldn’t always be around to take care of him.

As a result, I totally understand why WWX would have such bitter feelings towards someone like Jin Zixuan, since I felt the same way for a long time. Actually it wasn’t until JZX’s last moments did I finally like him as a person. Despite the fact that the live action has given us more time with him to redeem his character and make him more likable, I still held out all the way until the bitter end because, honestly, how can I ever forgive someone who had made Shijie cry like this:

But since he was also the one to make her smile and enjoy the happiest moments of her life, I could also never really hate JZX either. Mostly I’m just Shijie got to be with the man she obviously was in love with and I really appreciated the fact that the live action made him earn her forgiveness a little more. Even though she had to sneak out to let WWX see her in her beautiful bridal gown, I do believe that she had JZX’s blessing to do so because he knew how important WWX was to her, and how sad she probably already felt that he wasn’t allowed to attend her wedding. I wish the siblings’ reunion in Yiling was the last moment they could have shared together, instead of the gut-wrenching one in Nightless City.

When JZX was killed, my heart hurt so much because I instantly thought of how much his death would hurt Shijie, especially when she learned of it and more importantly, who killed him...they didn’t even have to show us her reaction since my imagination had already conjured up the worse scenario possible. I am certain WWX was thinking the same exact thoughts and conjuring up the same image, hence the pain on his face was so understandable and completely heart-wrenching.

Yet, despite being told her beloved A-Xian was the one who killed her beloved husband, that moment when she saw him at her home, she didn’t even hesitate to call out to him, using the same affectionate nickname she has always used. There was not an ounce of hatred or anger or blame on her face, only something akin to joy that she could see her brother again. Knowing he was in trouble as a result of visiting her, she then actually rushed right into the midst of battle to reunite with him again. I mean, just think about that for a second. Here she was, still in mourning for her husband, the love of her life, holding her only one month old child, but upon realizing her little brother was nearby, she dropped everything to rush after him, to see him, probably because she just could not believe he would ever do anything to hurt her like that. All the nasty things people have been saying about WWX, including how he commanded Wen Ning to murder her husband, she probably couldn’t believe because that was simply not the Xian Xian she knew and loved. In the past, every time Jiang Cheng would talk smack about WWX misbehaving or up to no good, she would always come to his defense. And even though in this particular case she had full reason to not defend him for once, she still believed in the good of WWX to go after him. Her love and faith in her A-Xian was so strong that when great danger was to befall him and she saw the sword strike heading for him, she completely forgot that she was a mother now with a child that still needed her, and just took that fatal hit for him because she just loved her brother so damn much that the only thing she was probably thinking about was A-Xian's in danger, must protect!. One might say she acted purely on instinct, without really thinking about the negative consequences of taking such a hit would have on her, but I believe that even if Shijie had one more minute to think about the situation, she would still make the same decision. Because that’s the type of selfless person she was: the caring big sister she was, the loving mother figure to WWX she will always be, the amazing mother she would have been to Jin Ling.

Even though Jin Ling grew up to be the spoiled princess instead, at least his basic nature is still good, and I’d like to think that that is what he got from his mom (while the spoiled part from his flowery peacock of a dad, lol) since God knows grumpy uncle JC and “doting” uncle Jin Guangyao probably weren’t much help in nurturing that sweet side of him, and not to mention we know he’s mostly friendless because of his disposition. Regardless of the sincerity behind JGY’s gestures when it came to his nephew, I am still utterly grateful that he gave him Fairy the floofiest doggo in the entire universe so that at least Jin Ling didn’t feel so alone when his peers mostly ignored him (even if it was kinda his own doing). I hope that wherever Shijie is, she can smile and be happy that her son grew up healthy and well and somewhat loved, and now, having finally reunited with the uncle he never knew but whom she probably would have always wanted him to meet, he could become an even better person who would make her even more proud.

Wen Qing

I owe Wen Qing a big apology. Before I started watching The Untamed, I had read rumors that they were going to change the love story between WWX and Lan Wangji to a love story between WWX and most likely Wen Qing, and therefore, I started the show with a lot of misgivings about her character. Personally, I hate when perfectly good love stories are altered due to no other reason than bigotry, so even though the character of Wen Qing is really the innocent bystander caught in the line of fire in this case (it’s not her fault if the writers had changed her character in that way), every time she shared a scene with WWX in those beginning episodes, I would actually grimace a little because I thought I knew where things were heading. Suffice it to say, I’m glad things worked out in favor of WangXian and I’m sorry I had any negative feelings towards her at all, because after WWX, she really is the most tragic character in The Untamed/MDZS.

Here's the thing, even though she didn’t turn out to be the love interest that would come between WWX and LWJ, I DO firmly believe that Wen Qing was in love with WWX, based on the way the actress played her and some of the moments we’ve seen (her reaction to having her wrist held by WWX, the way she asks about him when Jiang Chang rescues her from the Wen dungeon, the way she looks at WWX sometimes). Some might say she’s just being a big sister to him, which I would wholeheartedly agree with in terms of her novel counterpart, but on the show, that wasn’t my read of her character at all. However, I actually find it utterly reasonable that she would be in love with WWX because...hell, who wouldn’t be in that situation? Putting aside the fact that he’s her age, charming, smart, handsome, funny, kind-hearted, and talented, he’s also the savior of her treasured little brother and her clan. I would actually find it more shocking if she wasn’t in love with him. I know Wen Qing in the novel was not written that way at all, but she also didn’t appear much either despite having a pretty significant impact on certain key plot elements. Here’s the thing though, I actually think her feelings for WWX is what makes her character even more sympathetic because it’s a love unfulfilled, could never be fulfilled, not just because of her shortened lifespan, but also because during their time at the Burial Mound, it was made abundantly clear that WWX’s heart was elsewhere the entire time. Her disappointment at seeing the invitation from LWJ to his sister’s baby shower perfectly captured her understanding of that fact.

She believes WWX is staying with them only out of a sense of obligation, and one can imagine how guilt-ridden she felt since she believes her family is what has been keeping him from the people he actually loves. Even though her time at the Burial Mound is probably the happiest she‘s ever been in her short life, especially after Wen Ning woke up, she was still not afforded complete happiness because of her own sense of guilt in addition to her ever-present fear that their simple, happy days would eventually come to an end at the hands of the unforgiving world surrounding them.

Just thinking about Wen Qing’s life in general is enough to make my heart ache on her behalf. It could not have been easy growing up as basically a hostage of the Wen Sect, constantly living in fear of what Wen Ruohan would do to her little brother or her family if she didn’t do as she was told. Thank God she was blessed with the gift of being a talented physician and therefore useful to WRH, but it is also because of her talent that she acquired the unsavory reputation of being a ruthless, vicious medicine woman of the Wen sect, according to WWX when they first spoke to each other in the back hills of the Cloud Recesses. Nie Minghue’s words about her not being guiltless because she never once tried stopping WRH from doing his horrible deeds actually got to me since there is some truth to them: I mean, isn’t someone who is a part of the Nazis guilty by association, regardless of why they had to join in the first place? When she wasn’t worried about what the Wens would do to Wen Qing, Wen Qing was probably plagued with guilt since she undoubtedly witnessed the horrible things the Wens did and yet could do nothing to stop them. As someone who saved lives as a profession, seeing the Wens carelessly take lives could not have been easy on her conscience. But there was little she could have done since she had her own people to protect. It had to have been a stifling existence. And then, when the Wens were defeated, instead of being granted the freedom she probably wished for her whole life, the good guys turned around and basically imprisoned/tortured her people and even killed her beloved A-Ning whom she had lived her life for all this time. Her life went from bad to worse in a blink of an eye.

But then thanks to WWX, her little bro was miraculously brought back to life and even more miraculously retained all the sweet qualities that made him lovable so that she could at least enjoy one short year with him. Unfortunately, the semi-joyous days came to an abrupt end in the worst way possible. I can only imagine how heartbroken she was when she made the decision with Wen Ning to surrender themselves to the Jins, but I also believe that in knowing what fate would befall her brother as a result, there was no way she would be able to live with herself after that, so that’s why she chose to go to her death with him.

And honestly, her death is what haunts me and will continue to haunt me, because if memory serves, we were never really given details of how she died in the novel, nor did we get much in the show. We know she was just reduced to dust, so she was never even afforded a proper burial, but that still pales in comparison to the notion of what torture probably awaited her in the hands of that particular Jin father and son duo. There is no way Wen Qing’s death could have been pleasant. The only consolation I have is that at least she died quickly, relatively speaking, at least compared to poor Wen Ning, whom they kept around for a much, much longer period of time to experiment on. Seriously, just thinking about it now is making me sick to my stomach. For someone who probably never hurt anyone in her life, Wen Qing didn’t deserve that kind of ending. I’m glad she got to meet Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian and through them, experience friendship and maybe love like any normal girl would, but it was still too small and quick an interlude in her otherwise difficult life. Personally I wish they developed her relationship with JC a little more since I actually thought the two of them had a lot of chemistry, but I doubt that would have afforded her a happy ending either since, as she pointed out, JC wouldn’t have been able to let go of his responsibilities and status as sect leader to save her and her family as WWX was willing to do. It would have still been a doomed romance in a sadly doomed life.

Before I end this tribute, I wanted to also applaud the two actresses who so wonderfully brought our two beautiful big sisters to life: Xuan Lu as Shijie and Meng Zi Yi as Wen Qing. Their performances greatly contributed to the affection I feel for these two characters and I am so glad they were chosen to embody them.

So to our dear Shijie and Wen Qing, the two fine, brave ladies of The Untamed/MDZS, I salute you, and I hope that wherever you are, you are finally at peace and happy.

#The Untamed #陈情令 #CQL #Mo Dao Zu Shi #MDZS #Jiang Yanli #Shijie #Wen Qing #novel spoilers #episode 32 spoilers #Jin Ling #Wen Ning #Wei Wuxian #Jin Zixuan #Jiang Cheng #Madame Yu

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amwritingmeta · 5 years

Text

14x14: Dean and Cas and Questioning the Status Quo

Note: I found this in drafts and I believe I chopped it into smaller pieces, but I thought I’d post the whole long thing because it actually ties back to the lack of communication currently happening in S15 and the need to shake up the status quo. By, you know, someone actually speaking words. And the other, you know, actually listening. :)

Let’s take a closer look at this, because it warrants a closer look, or so I’d like to argue: these two idiots are (and Sam too but Dean and Cas more prominently so in this ep) locked in a status quo that is informed by Dean’s inability to stop believing that what he wants is something he can’t have.

Know what I mean?

Now, I think the dance around this fact in 14x14 is quite elegant, way I see it, and though what exactly the gorgon represents is up for interpretation, the simple facts are:

Noah the gorgon in and of himself is a snake symbol, and per the ouroboros of the title, the snake symbolism in 14x14 might be leaning towards renewal, rebirth and a conjoining of opposites rather than, you know, the snake that brought knowledge to mankind and helped us rebel........ Yeah, kinda good either way you look at it, no?

Noah also Biblically brought the flood, which is a mighty symbol of rebirth, so he’s this double-edged sword where both edges spell renewal

Noah looks at you, assesses you and sees the truth of you, established with the truck driver, his note to Dean and with Jack - a bit of a narrative tie to Michael in 14x01, who blasted onto the scene reading the truth of people’s motivations left and right, and subtle foreshadowing of how Michael will shed Dean and go looking for a new skin *shudder’

Noah enjoys both men and women (yes indeed bisexual symbol and nope I am not the first to point this out of course)

That’s the basic makeup of Noah’s demi-god character, yeah?

Now a bit of a look at the interaction we have in the episode between Dean and Cas. (I have a very strong urge to refer to them as nothing but the two idiots for the rest of this post but) (I shall not)

1. Invisible Cas (and Jack)

It’s rather striking. The first image we get of Sam and Dean breaking through that door together, and alone, only for a mirror moment to come barely a minute later of them doing the exact same thing, only now Cas (and yes, Jack) is stepping through the door with them. *goosebumps all over*

What does it mean? Could mean a host of things. To me?

Well, Noah can’t see angels. Right? Fair enough, he can’t see either Cas or Jack so it’s not like Cas is special here, not really, but what does Noah represent? I talked briefly in an ask about whether he’s representative of toxic masculinity and how I don’t think he is.

He’s submitting to his fate, isn’t he? He’d rather not, but for survival’s sake, he doesn’t really have a choice. He’s performing ritualistic killings because that’s what’s expected of him. He’s not taking any real pleasure from it. Not very toxic, especially when compared to Michael the Dick Archangel, who breaks his promise to Rowena and slaughters the innocent’s of the bunker without mercy.

I would say Noah is more likely to be representative of suppression/repression, predominantly suppression in Dean, because oh, man, is Dean tying himself in very knowing knots this episode, and predominantly repression in Cas and Jack, which is why it makes enormous sense to me that he cannot see them.

You see, where Dean is completely aware of his emotions and is actively and consciously suppressing them - which is so fucking unhealthy - Cas and Jack are both shown, throughout the episode, to be unaware of how deeply their unconscious repression runs. I’ll talk about Jack in a separate post, but oh god. It’s lovely.

Sidenote

Suppression is a psychological term for when we consciously push down unwanted thoughts or urges. Used healthily this is where self-control lies, but when an unwanted emotion or urge is ignored out of fear, this suppression tactic can turn into a pattern of behaviour that may lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms (like drinking, casual sex, violent outbursts, addiction to danger etc) *side eye Dean Winchester* and irrational behaviour and lack of self-control due to lack of self-awareness.

Repression is a psychological term for when we push down unwanted thoughts, urges or very often memories into our unconscious, where our conscious mind is protected from having to deal with these particulars, because our conscious mind is kept wholly unaware that these particulars are a part of us. However, these repressed thoughts, urges or memories will push to be recognised, because anything we try to simply forget, that is deeply affecting, will never stay forgotten, and being unable to confront these buried thoughts, urges or memories may result in unhealthy outlets, such as the coping mechanisms and irrational behaviour mentioned above.

(long af)

2. Almost Liturgical

This scene is so incredibly wonderful for setting up Dean and Cas’ attitudes for the rest of the episode. Cas is observant and supportive and quietly brazen in making Dean be honest with him, and Dean can’t resist opening up, not when Cas asks him to. Prompts him to, even.

There’s so much softness from Dean here, and I’d say Cas sees it, and still doesn’t see it at all. Dean’s been looking at him with heart eyes for so long without it meaning that anything between them is developing or, I don’t know, renewing, that Cas just takes that softness and those heart eyes at face value.

There are subtle shifts throughout this scene between them, but the biggest one, to my mind, comes once Jack is back at the table and tells them he’s fine, because Dean then tries to swipe his opening up to Cas, as well as the severity of his reminding Cas of Plan B, aside by being flippant and adding this smile:

Which basically gets him a stern look from Cas -->

--> because no, Dean, Cas isn’t fine with everyone being fine. You can’t just make him be fine with Plan B, because Plan B is anything but fine.

And Dean looks contrite enough -->

--> and, I would say, realising exactly how open he just left himself to Cas’ scrutiny. Feeling exposed and vulnerable and a little raw and this isn’t helped by Cas putting himself in a position of having the upper hand by using a word that’s not in Dean’s vocabulary, because whenever Cas gets the upper hand it serves to remind Dean of?

Yes, that Cas isn’t his to make heart eyes at.

Because?

He believes, to his core, that what he wants, he can’t have.

I’d like to shake him. And shake him hard. Because even when Cas, over and over, through his actions and reactions, tell Dean exactly what he’s feeling, Dean still doesn’t see.

And so he goes from the soft expression and full on openness with Cas...

...to that ^^^ detached and Got Work To Do expression.

*shake shake bloody shake*

Now, of course, the fact that he’s being open and making heart eyes and feeling all sorts of things that are scary as all fuck to him and always have been - the scariest thing of all is love, right? - makes him go to great and unnecessary lengths to cover those feelings up to anyone who might be watching him.

And to suppress them to himself.

Stop wanting, essentially. Letting that hope flare that Cas could love him back only leads to pain and pain and pain, because in his low self-worth idled brain, his thoughts are stuck running along the same lines that they’ve always been running along, saying the same thing they’ve always said: why would an angel rescue him from hell?

Which translates to: why would he ever deserve Cas’ love?

In his head, he doesn’t deserve good things.

And he’s perpetuating this conviction out of fear, rooted in losing his family at four years old, a loss that has cemented the belief of how Good Things Don’t Last, and this cementation has occurred in Dean out of sheer ego self-preservation, and Michael now is the ultimate proof of that. Michael in his head. Because Dean said yes. So -->

3. Overcompensation

This is Dean’s default reaction to Cas being in an obviously superior position, no matter how small that superiority might be. In 14x14 it’s something as simple as Cas having a deeper vocabulary and Dean being in the sudden situation where this is revealed to Jack, who couldn’t give less of a fuck, but since Dean just spent five minutes laying his soul bare to Cas, this moment is like a slap back to reality for Dean.

And what does he do?

He does what he always does. He tries to put himself in the superior position, because, truthfully, he knows he never really can be superior to Cas, because, um, angel. Yeah. Can’t really bypass that fact.

This ^^^ is all about Dean desperately trying to cover, trying to act like Cas knowing things beyond what Dean knows makes him, somehow, inferior.

Look, Dean’s habit of pulling Cas down to Earth is never malicious in intent, but all to do with Dean’s insecurities and, in many scenarios, also directly linked to his falling in love and not believing, ever, for a second, that Cas the angel - as an angel - could or would or should love him back.

The angle in 14x14, where he makes light of Cas’ superior vocabulary by putting him in with the brainy kids in AV Club - and look at how it sets up for Dean with his next breath trying to impress with his knowledge of Medusa, that turns out to be based in a movie that’s exaggerated the myth for entertainment purposes, which leaves very little of his knowledge to feel as impressive as Cas’ observations regarding the gorgon - the AV Club reference aids in Dean’s suppression of his emotions.

All the while this utter verbal denial of what it is that he truly loves about Cas serves to underline to us how he really feels deep down, and knows he feels deep down, which is why he’s scrambling to cover it up, terrified the truth is written all over his face, the way it is whenever he looks softly, softly at Cas and dares to open himself up to everything Cas means to him.

So instead, in dialogue, he goes:

-- Oh, look at the baby in the trench coat. Not so powerful now. -- Oh, look at the weird, dorky little guy. He’s not a commander. -- Oh, look at the nerdy dude who knows words. He is so not my type.

Yeah, okay, sure, Jan.

Meanwhile, Cas is like The fuck? -->

*darling Cas*

Now, when it comes to not seeing, we are presented with a baddie who eats the eyes of his victim to glimpse the future. Obviously he doesn’t snack on anyone’s eyes out of TFW 2.0, but he does carry a bit of the whole other side to him, where he can read people’s fate, with him in how he interacts with them, doesn’t he? It’s like he reads Jack’s palm, once he has him in front of him. And Dean and Cas?

Well, not the first one to point out that they’re both flat on their backs on the floor by the end of their encounter with the flood.

I mean, their encounter with Noah.

Who is actually the saviour away from the flood. Almost like their interaction with him constitutes the way out of drowning, for both of them. Funny that. But I’m skipping ahead.

First -->

4. Regards, Noah

Dean,

I see you standing alone by the truck stop reading this. I see you and the tall man and the red headed witch chasing me. I will always see you. Stop, or I will make you stop.

Regards, Noah

I’ll get back to this.

5. He’s a Lover, Not a Fighter

So, we arrive at the confrontation, which opens with the statement Noah makes of how he’s a lover, not a fighter. Interesting, isn’t it? Because this is truly the core trait of the entire TFW 2.0 --> innately they are not killers, they are protectors; they are not weapons, they are shields.

In the confrontation scene we also get a previously invisible and now not at all invisible Cas focusing on giving the antidote to the victim, while Jack keeps Noah distracted by listening to the fable.

Cas is mildly on guard about the whole thing and finally comes right out and questions Noah’s motives for telling the story to Jack. When Noah gives voice to what could be read as Cas’ own worries concerning Jack burning off his soul, Cas attacks, because he doesn’t want to even think about the implications of what Noah is seeing, or unable to properly make out, in Jack -->

--> in this context, Noah as a manifestation of Cas’ suppressed fears about Jack’s choices.

Cas being in denial of how serious Jack’s situation is, is given to us in the El Saboros, because we see Jack alone healing himself, burning off his soul, and returning to the table with a ready lie of how he’s fine. Cas might not be convinced, but he’s also unaware of how Jack is still coughing up blood, and if he wasn’t suppressing his constant worry, arguably writing it off as him being overprotective, he’d most likely take actual action in order to stop Jack from walking down the dangerous path he’s stubbornly treading.

(rather than the righteous path) (*clears throat*)

Back with the confrontation, where Noah very easily disarms Cas (demi-god that Noah is and all), slaps Cas twice, once across each cheek, and then kisses one of those cheeks, effectively paralysing Cas with gorgon poison.

Cas goes rigid and falls to the floor, unable to move, but the antidote doesn’t work on Cas.

Why does the poison have the same effect on him as on a human, but the antidote doesn’t? Why does it take Jack sacrificing a piece of his humanity in order to tap into his angelic powers for Cas to be released from the poison?

Mh-hmh, let’s look at Dean before we try and answer, shall we?

Dean bursts in and Noah very easily disarms him (Noah can fight y’all) and knocks Dean’s head once, twice against the wall, rendering Dean unconscious.

Let’s glance back for a moment at how we got to here:

Throughout S13 Dean was confronted with toxic masculinity representatives leading right into him saying yes to having the most outstanding toxic masculinity representative literally possess him by the end of the season. S13 was all about making Dean aware of how toxic the ideal he’s modelled himself after for so long truly is, and he did begin to move away from it, this in order to be equipped to recognise Michael’s true colours, once he had to grant them absolute access.

S14 has been very much about confronting the past and all those suppressed/repressed fears and hangups being pushed to the surface. This while TFW 2.0 have all been asked - in not so many words - to find the answer to the question of What Do I Want?

Dean’s reply to this question in 14x12 is so far from what the narrative is continuously angling for it to be, that only two episodes later that answer is not only nullified, but brings on a possible narrative punishment, because odds are that Jack, through self-sacrifice, is opening himself up to a world of hurt, and if Dean’s answer to the question of What Do I Want? had been different, if he’d reached that point in his individuation process where he could be honest with himself, then the outcome would have been different too.

But he hasn’t reached that point, and so the outcome is what we’re given in 14x14. So, what’s Dean’s answer to the question What Do I Want?

Plan B.

You see, Dean doesn’t believe that they’ll find another way to beat Michael, not really. Dean is humouring the people he loves, but he’s expecting them to be the ones to do all the emotional work and let him go, rather than him doing the necessary emotional work and confronting his fears, collected in the manifestation of his shadow-self: Michael.

Dean’s answer to the question What Do I Want? is to symbolically put himself into the box of societal norms that has dictated his relationship with his shadow-self for his entire life, and drown his ego, his consciousness, with the cycle of unhealthy suppression/repression that the darker side to his shadow-self is responsible for maintaining. (Dean’s suppressed longing for more, for a long and happy life; and his repressed childhood neglect)

Why? Because his fears run so deep that he doesn’t know how to confront them without annihilating his identity. To get to his true identity, though, he must confront these fears and understand the truth: that his fears are nothing but a construct, and that he can choose for them to no longer hold any merit.

6. Shake Shake Shake

Now, diving back into 14x14, where Dean and Cas are both flat on their back thanks to Noah.

So, let’s pull on the symbolical threads I set up at the start of this post. Threads that are very much tied to the Jungian doctrine of individuation, which I first wrote about here and have been reading up on since. (seriously it makes for deeply satisfying study) (Carl Jung was a great man)

Cas

When it comes to his worry for Jack, Cas deals in suppression, but when it comes to answering the question What Do I Want? Cas deals wholly in repression. He is not being honest with himself, and it’s given to us in his exchange later on with Jack, where he talks about humans as burning bright, unlike "things like us”.

Yes, an unspecified thing is what he identifies himself with.

He doesn’t identify himself as an angel, which, to my mind, is important, but for him to also step as far away as he can from humanity is equally pertinent because, well, this meta writer does believe that he needs to admit to himself what it is he truly wants for himself before he’ll be able to properly begin the final leg of his journey towards internal balance.

Noah’s note underlines how he sees Dean, but Noah couldn’t see Cas, and to me this is all because Noah is much more narratively tied to Dean, while serving - as representative of suppression/repression - to narratively highlight these habits in all of TFW 2.0, but there’s another layer to it, where Noah is tied to Cas’ repressed true identity, meaning Cas is blind to his own repression.

(and Jack is blind to his own internal conflict, given to us in dialogue when he yells at Michael - childishly - that he’s not a child) (because Jack still is a kid)

Looking at the setup of Noah not being able to see Cas and Jack, it could be argued that he can’t see them, that he’s cut off from them, because they’re unaware of him, and so he’s unaware of them.

Awareness is key to confrontation. So, to me, it’s delicious that it’s Cas and Jack who grow aware of Noah and go to confront him, allowing him to see them, because it’s the ego’s awareness that allows for any internal imbalance to be confronted and worked through.

Moreover, Cas’ continued unawareness - his inability to recognise what it is he’s actually doing - of his own repression is what is keeping Cas complacent.

It’s keeping Cas accepting the status quo.

It’s keeping Cas paralysed in his own skin.

See what I’m getting at? Cas’ confrontation with Noah is brief, very, very brief, and Cas is disarmed very, very quickly and receives the kiss that paralyses him after being slapped, like a proverbial wakeup call, on either cheek, by the representative of his repression.

And, look it, when it comes to the question of why the antidote doesn’t work on him: if Cas had been human, it would’ve.

But Cas - being an angel - needs Jack to help him, needs Jack to burn off a piece of his soul in order to get the poison out, needs Jack to unlock his limbs and get him out of the paralysis.

Jack, who in 14x08, was shown to be such an incredibly important tool for Cas’ individuation, since Jack is the one who symbolically (and literally) woke him, making Cas aware of his shadow-self.

And where Dean is unable to face his shadow-self due to his low self-worth making him fear what it will mean for his ego, aka his self-view and understanding of who he is if he were to confront his deepest fears, Cas’ low self-worth is equally exposed through his acceptance of the shadow-self’s threat to come and take him in his happiest moment. Cas doesn’t believe he deserves more, so for his happiest moment to be a point of punishment makes perfect sense to him, and this makes it incredibly difficult for him to break out of his complacency.

Better the status quo than the Empty.

Better a useful thing than daring to consider what would actually make him happy by truthfully answering the questions of Who am I? and Who do I want to be? and going for it.

*shake shake bloody shake*

The poisonous kiss from his repression, and Cas’ inability to get himself out of a state of paralysis without Jack’s help, doesn’t necessarily set up for what’s to come, but to me it does underline what is: as an angel Cas is stuck in a place where, as a human, he wouldn’t need help getting out of.

And this place that he’s stuck in takes a toll on the one person he’s tried, for seasons now, to protect - Jack - and this moment is entirely reflective of - and of course helps set up for - Jack’s choice to step into this exact same position for Dean, when he kills Michael.

Dean

Oh, Dean.

Old patterns are a bitch.

Actually, old patterns are turning into his greatest enemy, which gets me all kinds of squeakily excited for him. The lessons he’s been set out to learn for many, many moons now, are, at this point, hitting him so hard over the head they’re knocking him out against a wall.

Dean was fighting his toxic masculinity in S13. Growing aware of the ideal and moving away from it so that he can see Toxic Masculinity Michael for what he truly is, but because of patterns that have informed Dean’s sense of identity ever since he was a child, modelling himself on John and his mode of Feelings are Weaknesses that Will Get You and Your Brother Killed, Dean can’t bring himself to believe that there’s a way out of this confrontation with his shadow-self without killing the ego. Meaning without killing his conscious idea of himself. And because of the fear this brings of losing his sense of self completely, his incapable of believing there’s a way of beating Michael.

Even when Dean is sitting in front of the key to his own faith in the future, and yes, indeed the key to Dean’s faith in the future has always been Cas, and Cas is basically telling Dean that there’s no way Cas is ever giving up on him, and that they’ll find another way, Dean still can’t submit to his own need to believe, because his love of Cas is tethered to just as much fear as anything else, and confronting that fear, his fear of love and having hope for the future and believing that Cas does or could love him back, brings on just as much of an identity crisis as the thought of confronting his shadow-self.

And it’s all connected, of course. Because Dean’s internal fears don’t exist in a vacuum. But if he dared lean on his love for Cas and the faith and trust it’s always brought him, then he’d find the strength to confront his shadow-self and question all the lies it keeps filling his head with when it comes to perpetuating his low self-worth. Likewise, if he dared push past his identity crisis and begin to question the lies of his shadow-self that keeps his self-worth low, he would begin to feel the faith and trust Cas instils in him, and he’d start to believe in the love that Cas is continuously showing him.

But Dean can’t.

Dean is stuck in the belief that lingering in the status quo, and keeping to what he knows, is preferable, because there’s this huge thing in the way for Dean to be able to do anything else.

And holy fuck it’s formidable how this is now set up. (if I’m right in this reading)

The huge thing in the way for Dean to dare open himself up to his true identity is his inability to let go of old patterns, and 14x14 makes it explicit to me that this inability is rooted entirely in his neglected inner child.

So what truly needs nurturing and attention and for Dean to grow aware of exactly how much he’s been neglecting it, is Dean’s inner child. An inner child that he’s been ignoring through his repression of his yearning for love. This yearning has been present in him since childhood and he’s repressed it by adopting the adage that feelings are weaknesses, and adopting this very harsh take on love in order to protect himself from a father incapable of providing the affection every child needs to feel truly safe and protected.

Moreover, Dean has been putting up walls to keep out the memory of the horror of his mother’s death and the guilt that’s haunted him and the mistrust it’s produced in him of anything good ever truly lasting for very long, and this, all this, is why he, in 14x14, teases Cas and tries to cover up how he’s really feeling and it gets him his head smashed into a wall by the representative of all of the above fears collected into his lifelong habit of suppression and repression of his true identity.

Noah sees Dean.

Noah will always see Dean.

And the narrative punishes Dean’s inability to break old patterns by having those old patterns knock him out cold, because clearly something needs to happen to shake up the status quo.

Because the representative of Dean’s neglected inner child is...?

Jack.

And so Dean’s inability to do the shadow work needed, or to fully trust in those he loves, brings about the necessity for the representative of his inner child to step up to the plate and take matters into hand by expelling the manifestation of Dean’s shadow-self, while taking part of it into itself.

Yeah, I know right?

To my mind, Jack swallowing Michael’s grace is set to lead to not very good things.

Well, ultimately it will, I believe, but, oh, there may be quite a bit of glorious turbulence ahead. Or, at least, a huge push for Dean to face his internal imbalance and find a way to start all the emotional work needed if he’s to take full responsibility and stop running.

7. Off With Their Heads

This image is so powerful, because it serves so many possible purposes and can be interpreted in so many different ways, but here’s what I see:

A foreshadowing of the snake in Dean’s head (Michael) shedding his skin

An underlining for what Michael shedding Dean truly stands for: the first step toward internal rebirth/renewal for Dean

A plant for Jack picking up Felix and claiming him for a pet, which is deeply symbolic when looking at what Jack represents in the narrative, and what Jack himself needs for his own progression

But first, we get Sam also thrown across the room, very, very easily, by Noah the suppression/repression representative, because of course, Sam’s got his own shit to work through. Like his inability to take a moment for himself. His codependent behaviour runs so deep that he has no idea who he is unless he has people to look out for. And, good Lord, all the people under his protection getting killed by Michael after Sam insisted they bring Dean back. The internal conflict must be tearing Sam apart. *hands clutched to mouth* It’s not your fault, Sam!!

Once Sam hits the floor without getting knocked out (feels possibly significant here because Sam leading the way in letting go of the dependency and pushing himself into adulthood feels so important for Dean to finally allow himself to do the same) (but we shall see about that) we get Jack cutting off Noah’s head.

And looking at the fact of how Jack is the one to place his hands on either side of Rowena’s head, driving Michael out of her, you might say he cuts the head off both snakes in this narrative, right?

But, as I wrote here, he also swallows one of those snakes down, taking its essence into himself, while keeping a little piece of Noah in a glass box in his room, and so it can be said that he, symbolically, is tied to both symbols (suppression/repression/shadow-self) and is the last snake standing.

So. Turbulence.

Because Jack is no snake.

Jack has felt like a powerful symbol of internal balance for all of TFW and so for this symbol to now be in such absolute imbalance is quite possibly heralding Jack’s own dark arc, which could prove a necessary push out of the status quo that Dean and Cas and Sam are all in.

Something to shake shake bloody shake them awake already.

Please. And thank you. :)

8. Access Denied

Cas has tried, on more than one occasion on the ride back to the bunker, to heal Dean, but he can’t. He can’t even see what’s going on inside Dean’s head.

*slow eyebrow raise*

Dean’s repression knocks him out -->

leading to Dean’s shadow-self no longer staying suppressed

leading to Dean’s inner child confronting the shadow-self with a declaration of how its not a child

Dean’s inner child swallowing the essence of Dean’s shadow-self down and declaring that it’s now itself again, restored to its former glory through taking into itself the toxic masculinity representative that’s the source of Dean’s repressed longing for love and his neglecting of his inner child in the first place

Oof.

Cas suddenly has no access to Dean because Dean’s repression runs too deep, and faith can’t reach where it’s not welcome, where it’s constantly shut down and mistrusted, and neither can love.

Especially not a faith or a love that doesn’t actually believe it belongs there.

The fucking status quo acting like the barrier it’s always been between these men, the barrier sitting like an enormous obstacle in front of open communication and honesty with each other, but foremost with themselves.

*so frustratingly amazing*

#spn meta #spn 14x14 #deancas #destiel #tfw 2.0 #dean #cas #sam #jack #noah #repression suppression #open communication #character progression

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kitsunebishake · 5 years

Text

Why Hríd is such an amazing character who just got done wrong during his “character arc” (SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE BOOK II AND FORGING BONDS)

WARMING: THIS IS JUST ONE LONG ASS LOVEMAIL POST FOR HRÍD

this was originally written as a thread on twitter but i’ll try my best to put it all here because someone asked for it some time ago

I’m putting it here because @chascah suggested i uploaded it here as well for those people who actually appreciate the icy boy

this is basically an analysis to most if not every quote from hríd, also adding some translations and little details from the japanese quotes (and some lore behind the whole idea of hríd’s new year alt)

let’s start then!

lemme start with the fact that hríd only appeared in 3 out of 13 chapters, yet is the character that caught my interest the most (funny because i already had a crush on alfonse, then i saw hríd and was like "oh, hello there")

hríd arrived like a half-dead yet somehow composed prince who somehow (x2) survived by himself in múspell for weeks (maybe even months, there's no exact timeline but it is canon that alfonse and the others spent some weeks in nifl, it probably also took them a while to navigate through múspell until loki arrived as ylgr)

he served as some kind of excuse to not put bruno too much with the main characters, practically a messenger only despite this guy being alive with burns and a broken sword (the crack on gjöll's blade hurts bc he couldve actually lost his sword and ended up defenseless in battle oof)

so, there was no really much use of his character other than being a magical solution for everything

he even helped unmask loki (though they never explain why hríd suspected of ylgr, we only know loki's own take)

btw, can we talk about the fact he probably outsmarted loki while the others weren't yet in múspell? he terrorized surtr's army and even outsmarted laegjarn and laevatein

and since he survived for so long i believe most of his wounds were made by surtr himself

they never really say whether he actually managed to kill surtr or not, but let's say yes just to add up on all of the things hríd does just in the story

at first glance it looks like he's doing nothing, but reading further into it and applying some logic

hríd's... he's pretty impressive for a prince so young

gotta also add how hríd appears less impulsive in japanese than in english

when "alfonse" blames him for being a traitor, hríd gets to the defensive immediately in english

in japanese, he's more in shock, probably because after all he's tried, he's being doubted by his allies (which shows a lot how much he cares about being perceived as perfect, something i'll get on to later if i have enough time)

I added this part in the middle of the whole thing because it was a different thread so excuse the sudden change of topic, kinda. It’s supposed to be from the last conversation in Book 2, where Fjorm tells Hríd she’s going to stay in Askr despite her “condition”.

"I understand your feelings, Sister. By all means, go. I will pray for your safety."

this is one of the quotes i'd like to put in that one hríd character thread i want to make

the feeling behind this quote got completely lost in translation, as there's no way to translate it properly

in japanese, hríd uses a pecular way of speech to refer to his sister here he says "... I get it. If that is what you wish, it's alright to go. I'll pray for your safety." the peculiar part, aside from hríds "..." is where he refers to fjorm, the "you"

hríd normally uses "kimi" to refer to people, which is like a more... gentle? way of speaking? men usually use it towards women bc they want to treat them nicely, and jps in general use it with people they don't know (it's that, or "anata" or "[name]-san")

yet here, hríd decides to use "omae" to refer to fjorm, which is more informal and even rude (specially for someone who normally uses "kimi", it means he wanted to express some kind of anger or frustration about fjorm's decision without saying it directly,,,,,,,,,,,,,which is very japanese to do so,,,,,, *looks into the distant "most japanese people i've known don't directly say 'no' and instead go 'hmmmmmm' '*very indirectly rejects*' and it's probably a fact*)

it feels like instead of being supportive, hríd just understood there was no way of convincing fjorm to stay with them

so he gave up and felt hurt by that

please protect hríd

Back to the rest of the analysis.

now let's talk about forging bonds, in the wiki there's only the opening part transcribed in japanese, the rest is only on english (i curse not having started playing 3 months earlier orz)

the first thing you can notice in the japanese version is how informal hríd is when he's stressed

while he speaks in an usually softer manner, here, he doesn't even greet ylgr and gunnthrá, he goes directly to "gunnthrá... ah, ylgr is here too" (he kinda does the same in the mainstory, where he just says “ah, fjorm, you’re okay... ylgr too :)”)

AND IMMEDIATELY, HIS NEXT TEXT IS HIM CALLING GUNNTHRÁ WITH "OMAE”

ALREADY DEEP INTO THE STRESS OF MÚSPELL INVADING THEM

this shows how easily stressed hríd gets and how much he lets his emotions dirve his attitude and actions (which makes sense with the part where he tells fjorm she should be the one wielding leiptr and not him, he's too emotional despite how much he tries not to be)

in these parts we also see some level of deattachment from gunnthrá, on english he goes "sister..." by the end of the opening conversation

in the jp, however, he stays silent, he doesn't even call her name

idk if it's just me overanalyzing it, but from my experience with animoo and vidya, it feels a little weird that he says nothing there, like he's thinking (this is probably foreshadowing hríd's inner feelings oof)

something that i particularily like about this event is that hríd seems so at ease when he's on the dreams, even in the english translation it seems like that he mentions it might be because he feels at ease with kiran but i feel like it also has to do with the fact they're just a dream, it's not the real world, there's nothing to worry in a world where there's no war

at least, that's the feeling his dialogues give me

the closest thing to that hríd is his lvl40 speech and ny hríd (who's happier)

the only quote where hríd mentions some type of concern for his mother btw

from here on it only gets worse when it comes to hríd, though

he speaks about the invasion and such he talks in a way that implies he's probably taking the role of a commander (same as how it is implied he trains the soldier, or that he trains with them, though since he's been training alone with fjorm for so long, it's most likely the former) aside from that, he's weighting on himself the responsibility of what happens to nifl and what happens to his family

and since he's doing so, here's when it comes the part of hríd not being able to care about himself

this young man is carrying a heavy weight, the hopes and dreams and lives of many innocent and PEACEFUL people who barely even know how to fight, on top of those of his loved ones

it doesn't seem like anyone asked him to, not even his mother or sisters

he just decided it on his own that he needed to be "the perfect prince/king" in order to "protect" them

/even if it costs him his life/

he prepared his sisters for that moment (which, might give an insight that hríd knew more than he says, but let's leave my conspiracy theories aside lol)

and to THAT PART, we can add this from the mainstory

in english, when he's rescued, he thanks them for doing so

but in the jp text he actually apologizes for it

not sure how to exactly translate it, but it's something along the lines of "my apologies...for having to be saved..."

idk you guys, but it sounds like what someone who just failed to commit suicide would say, instead of someone who's grateful to be alive

and it makes sense, with how obsessed hríd seems to be about "dying for his loved ones" despite it not being entirely necessary

i mean, look at that, he survived surtr and was aided by bruno as he escaped (probably? they never say what exactly happened, but since they're looking for hríd and not for bruno, it's most likely that they just found each other by accident)

and yes, even though he seems to calm down with those thoughts during the sequence, it is only a dream and we know he has no recolection of them

he forgets completely about that motivation to keep living, which leads him into further down the path of death (whichinnorsemythologymightbecalledhríd,,,,,,orgjöll,,,ykow?)

im still not done, havent even gotten to his unit quotes lmao

hríd still did his best to survive for as long as he could, but it feels more like his strategic "i'm making time for fjorm and the askrans to make their moves" purely, out of the fact he didn't seem too happy to survive until he saw fjorm and ylgr

hat's all of hríd's quotes from that event, i can finally move on to his unit quotes

let's start with this one, luckily it is practically the same quote in both languages

this immediatelly counters any "hríd is boring" comment

though that is subjective, in my case what drove me even further into loving hríd was how different he was from usual characters related to ice

he might come off as cold sometimes, but it's purely because he's actually really dense/has a really bad sense of humor

in jp he tries to make an ice joke, but says "it's not suitable for him" (which is funny because in english he does have ice puns and i hate it)

1. he doesn't mention his mother 2. hríd blaming himself and being kinda gloomy part 1

"I should have protected my people and sisters, I couldn't play that role... I can never forget that."

this part hurts a lot (it's a little more poetic than the og one, i like it lol)

he could be talking about himself, about his sisters, his people, or all together, since the four of them have expressed desire for peace, and all four ended hurt by such thing

this part is scary, though it's not as much in english

NOT BECAUSE OF THE TRANSLATION, but because of his battle lines in eng (i'll get to that first and then come back to this one)

the most shockingly different skill trigger is the second one

the first one is exactly the same the third one in jp is "this is the last blow" (or smth like that) the fourth one is a little weird to translate (ice upon you works, but "freeze your life" sounds a little scary??)

OKAY BUT THE SECOND ONE ALONG WITH THE VOICE CLIP

IT KINDA SCARES ME A LITTLE FOR MY CUTE SWEET MOCHI BOY

it literally says "no mercy for the enemy"

IT'S LITERALLY SUGAR COATED, hríd went from a gentle giant to a merciless killer (who knows how many muspellians he's killed???) thanks to surtr and his fucking ass

hríd blaming himself and being gloomy part 2

the fact that he has not one, not two, not three, but about 5 to 6 lines that imply he's still dueling over everything that happened during the war is hurtful, he really can't forgive himself for that

he also sounds a little dead to me here (it’s one of the voiced quotes from his status page!)

which brings me back to the initial scary one

hríd is obsessed with earning his peace no matter what

and for that, he wants to get stronger

for that, he's willing to even perish, for everyone's sake

it's so sickening for me since i can kinda relate???? it reminds me a lot of the kind of wording they use for depression-themed japanese works, with the "peace" part and his willingness to just die anytime (which, is actually pretty normal for a warrior outside of FE. outside)

iT MAKES ME FEEL BAD BUT AT THE SAME TIME i kinda like he's written this way

AND EVEN WHEN HE'S LIKE THAT, hríd is still a gentle sweetheart who speaks so kindly you kinda forgets how merciless he is in the battlefield

like, the audio where he holds kiran's hands???? where he speaks about how the order of heroes saved nifl????? EVEN WHEN HE GETS STARTLED

he's always such a gentle and kind person

it makes me hate surtr even more because they didn't deserve this

hríd didn't deserve going through all of this fucking shit HE. DESERVED. HAPPINESS. AND PEACE.

then there's the ny hríd

he's an angel

a happy angel who makes me a little sad bc og hríd is not as happy

From here on everything was written like 2 weeks after the previous stuff :’) i’m sowwy

he's a resolute prince, he has the resolution of saving even at least one person,,,,,instead of being a "king", instead of being a "brother", or a "prince", he just wants to be "a hero",,,

hello, this is my opening statement of why ny hríd makes me cry with just existing

welcome

let us start with something that makes his quotes even better, particularily the previous quote and his lvl40 speech, which is the powerful meaning of this alt itself for a character such as hríd

in japan, new year used to be celebrated not at the end of the year, but at the end of winter, which is where geishun comes into the scheme, as it currently means "new years greetings" but in those old times, it was actually "welcoming spring" (or something along those lines i suck for precise translations)

and that's where our next quote comes into the picture

hríd speaks about nifl's winter, about how it practically symbolizes the nifleans' strength and will power

the alt itself is a more positive hríd, one who's willing to try his hardest for everyone, who doesn't regret his past, but looks into the future and has the purpose of being even better than before

of course, this hríd didn't suffer the same fate as the OG hríd, as he still has all 3 sisters (i want to believe ylgr was with them, just not shown bc of the lack of space for a sixth character) and now also 2 new allies to power their search for peace and strength to defend that peace

so, while our normal hríd is desparate to become stronger and suffers, this hríd is like his pole opposite, it's like the sun and the moon (too bad this hríd has no default special, sol would've fit him so well)

can we talk about how he feels so comfortable wearing the celebratory outfit?

the obi (the.....thing that acts as a belt) should be tied strongly enough so the hakama (the pants) doesnt fall down while he fights, yet he feels comfortable with it

i mean, it isn't as constrictive as a kimono as it doesn't prevent him from moving around freely, but he still shouldn't normally feel as comfortable with it as he is, he's never even worn something like that (it is implied, at least) yet he's loving it, isn't it adorable???

one time i joked about hríd being able to feel when winter is coming or when snow will start falling but

i think this quote pretty much confirmed it (YOU CAN'T SAY IT'S BECAUSE IT'S WARM, IT DOES SNOW IN ASKR WE'VE SEEN IT)

blessed boy munchs a whole fucking piece of mixed flour with FOUR HUNDRED GRAMS OF FUCKING SUGAR

he's got a sweet tooth i know it, i know my people when i see them

it's just that he doesn't seem disgusted, and he also only mentions the mochi so we can assume he didn't drink sake or matcha with it

he ate the fucking thing alone and apparently liked it

we have a sweet angel, guys

i just think this quote is cute, he loves cold just as much as i love him

t HIS IS SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT FROM OUR NORMAL HRÍD HE'S SO POSITIVE AND DETERMINED I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

though in japanese, the last quote is a little more gloomy

im not entirely sure of how to properly translate it *looks at the jisho page of the kanji he cant understand* it's certainly a word

but it could be something like "to be in such a predicament from so early in the year... I'm unable to say it's pathetic..."

i???? imagine he says he "can't say it" because he's trying to be positive?????? or something along those lines, but saying it proves he's taking it way to the extreme

nasakenai can also be shameful or miserable, pitable, disgraceful stuff like that

i'm not sure how to describe this quote?

this time it's the english localisation that kinda throws me off, i don't understand what he's trying to say lmao

in japenese he's saying something about having been graced this early in the new year

7 years speaking english and i still can't break down complex phrases the only reason i've survived this long is through the power of deduction abilities

pray for me

u know hríd's damaged quotes in english are all grunts, right?

in japanese, this hríd has a peculiar quote i find adorable when he gets damaged

he says "as expected from you...!"

hE'S COMPLIMENTING HIS ENEMY, THIS IS THE SAME MAN WHO SAYS NO MERCY AS HE KILLS THE FOE

btw listening to his english quotes is so funny

he sounds so damn cool in japanese and in english he

he sounds like a fucking nerd

I THINK IM TAKING A LIKING TO HIS ENGLISH VOICE ACTING PURELY BECAUSE HE SOUNDS STUPID

compare this (JP) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/1/12/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2_jp.wav

to this (ENG) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/6/6a/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2.wav

it's the exact same quote by the two different VAs

HE SOUNDS LIKE A NERD IN THE ENGLISH VERSION I CAN'T

back to translations and analysis

i hate this one

his eng quote is more positive while the japanese one is something along the lines of "I was useless... I'm sorry..."

HATE

look, say whatever you want, but hríd is such a sweet man

he cares for people and he tries his best to be the perfect prince everyone thinks he is

AND FOR HIS *MORE POSITIVE VERSION* TO SAY THIS AS HE IS DEFEATED IS JUST

WHAT DID HE DO TO U INTSYS TO MAKE HIM SUFFER THIS MUCH??

despite how "im so useless...!" his japanese version is

he way he says these two quotes sounds way more positive in japanese lmao it's the same translation, only that he's more "I'll repay you!!!!!!" in jp ( https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/3/34/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_MAP_3_jp.wav )

adorable

can’t use emojis on this pc so i’ll just leave the whole screenshot here

you see this quote here?

this is what it actually says

I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY CHANGED IT BUT I THINK IT'S CUTE BECAUSE I THINK HE DIDN'T JUST SWALLOW THE WHOLE MOCHI

HE ATE IT NORMALLY AND THINKS HE'S GOT SOME ON HIS CLOTHES BC PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT HIM LGHDSKLGSDFKS

why are u so cute aaaaaaa///////////

this is probably the translation of hríd's quotes i hate the most in english it just...sounds so rude

in japanese it's more like "could you please tell me if i'm wearing these clothes wrong? i'll fix it fast"

he's trying to be respectful to the hoshidans sobs

THESE TWO QUOTES ARE SO DIFFERENT BUT SO EQUALLY ADORABLE AND POWERFUL

THIS 180~195CM OR SO MAN IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON IN THIS WHOLE PUTRID PLANET AND IM GOING TO TELL YOU WHY

first, this is my fave quote on english

he sounds so confused as to why people think the hoshidan clothes suit him

HE'S. NOT. AWARE. OF HOW FUCKING GOOD HE LOOKS.

TELL ME THAT'S NOT THE CUTEST SHIT EVER HE JUST DOESN'T GET IT

to make it more adorable, in japanese, the original quote is something like "I wonder what makes a type of clothing 'suit' you..."

HE'S GOING ALL PHYLOSOFICAL ON THAT SHIT probably because people keep telling him he looks good in that kind of clothing

this man's density is so powerful that he can't even begin to understand people find him attractive and that the attire literally makes him go from a 10 to a 1000000000000000000

he doesn't get it and he wants to know if it's really true so he goes out of his way TO ASK KIRAN

i love hríd so much he's so adorabl e

i want to give him a hug

with this i finish my thread for now

for now

hopefully we will get another alt for hríd and i can come back to spam about how adorable his quotes are

please stan hríd he's literally an angel

#analyzing #overanalyzing actually #i read his whole quote set like 30 times for this #it took me a full hour to put this on tumblr from twitter aaaaaaa #I DON'T EVEN HAVE HALF A YEAR IN THIS FANDOM AND SINCE I CAN'T BE UP TO DATE WITH ENSTARS I TOOK IT UPON MYSELF TO ACTUALLY ANALYZE HRÍD AS #A CHARACTER #HE'S AMAZING PLEASE LOVE HIM #HE'S ACTUALLY WELL WRITTE IN CAN'T BELIEVE THIS #could've added facts about his name origin and such as well but #anything to do with his name and gjöll is just theory #pretty sure they sadly just chose a cool name set for the nifleans #hríd #hrid #icy blade #prince of nifl #feh #heroes #fire emblem #fire emblem heroes

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headoverjojo · 5 years

Note

I’ll give a match up a try please? I’m 5’2 female, straight, (might be Bi but I don’t weigh it sexuality all that much for things) I’m really white, I get that from my mom’s side as part Irish and Puerto Rican on my Dad’s side (but I’m a mix of almost everything) I’m quiet and reserved cause I’m really shy and I don’t have that many friends but those I do have I get really close with and I’m loyal I’d say? Idk you probably know more about my personality the I know how to describe lmao.

Hiiiii, Danae! First of all, I’m sorry for the HORRIBLE delay ç.ç Sooo I chose to leave Vento Aureo aside, as you already have a darling from there c:, and to focus on other parts! And soooo, I think I’d match you with...

Joseph Joestar!

Let’s see why: it may seem that your personalities kinda “clash”, being Joseph mostly confident and even cocky, basically the exact opposite of shyness and reserve, but this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t appreciate a shy and reserved person! He’d find your reserved attitute fascinating; what are you hiding behind your shyness? What fire burns behind those unspoken words? He’d like to know! He may be a bit overwhelming, but he’s also really warm as friend, lover and, in general, person! He’d also love to see how loyal you are; even if he’s grown up without parents, grandma Erina and uncle Speedo always taught him how much family, friends and bonds are important; when he establishes an important bond with someone, he’s going to protect it with everything he has, and knowing that for you too bonds are so important would make him so happy!

Joseph wouldn’t be absolutely bothered by the fact that you stutter. He may tease a bit, but never to the point to be offensive; when he sees that you’re really struggling, due to too much stuttering, to express what you want, he’d hold your shoulders, looking in your eyes and telling you to stop for one second, take a deep breath and then restart, taking all the time you need. In the same way, he’d not be bothered if you talk too fast; he’s used to uncle Speedo’s fast and enthusiast commentaries, it’s nothing new!

Joseph would absolutely support your dreams and ambitions! He’s all for it and he sees that you have all the abilities to make it! He’d gladly read your drafts, if you want to, and, in general, he’d be your first fan and supporter! He’d also associate your tendency to zone out and day dream to this activity; all in all, a writer needs inspiration! So he’d not be bothered if he sees your eyes not focused on what’s around you or if you stopped listening to people around you; he knows you’re in your world, plotting and scheming, and he can’t wait to know what you have thought! And, also, he’d find right and wonderful the fact that you like to learn things about other cultures. It’s the right attitude for a writer! Other than enriching your personal knowledge, it would also enrich your writing!

You don’t have to worry about not having a high self-confidence; Joseph would help you so much with this! He’s the best cheerleader in the world and, every time he sees you down, he’d be all over you, listening to what is making you upset or what you’re not liking about your writing or yourself and he’d analyze it with you. Joseph’s a master with words and he’d surely find the right words to encourage you and make you smile!

Generally speaking, Joseph would love your body shape. It’s well-shaped, is generous, he loves to hug you! He also adores your curls, to the point that, when he’s near you, he can’t help but to absentmindendly play with them! He’d also like to see how fit your body is. He’d love to spar with you, sometimes!

Aaand here it is, finally!! I hope you like it :3

#jjba #battle tendency #hamon masters #joseph joestar #matchup #dianezeppelijoestar

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it-will-not-last-the-night · 5 years

Text

Blegh

In terms of Persona 5 I’d been riding high mostly since P5D. I’d been positive mostly over it because P5D and fan-generated content had been lovely overall and really engaging and enjoyable. It had helped me forget that the main game itself seriously does upset me at times and I have a less than ideal opinion of it.

*Sigh*

Now I’m starting to feel like that again. Both announcements of today have left brought back to mind some of my biggest problems with Persona 5 and the way Atlus writes in general. What are they? A bit of a lesson then in me;

For myself there are three events in Persona 5 that I really REALLY just consider outright despicable. In no order they are; 1) Two homosexual adult males being negatively stereotyped as child molesters targeting Ryuji 2) Ryuji’s friends responding to one of the greatest acts of selflessness in the entire story by physically abusing Ryuji and 3) The Valentine’s Day event making Canon that Akira/Ren is horrible, Sojiro is horrible and that Atlus thinks all the girls are vapid idiots.

‘Magical Valentine’ raises an issue I’ve always had but makes it even more forceful. You see in the game the Valentine’s Event is only ‘optionally’ canon. You can play a canonical run-through and not have it occur. So you can, legitimately, without needing headcanon or fanon, just have your own canon playthrough in which the girls are not vapid idiots. The anime however, now, makes it that, for the Animation, it is canon that Akira/Ren is an awful person and that the girls are vapid idiots. Oh and that Sojiro is just literally the worst like...like he is scum in this event. As bas as Akira/Ren is (and he’s bad in this version!) the bigger problem I think a LOT of people forget about the Valentine’s Harem Route is that it literally casts Sojiro as a Guardian of Futaba who would lie to conceal her boyfriend’s infidelities...even when said infidelities LITERALLY CAUSE FUTABA TO CRY!

So the animation is now making it canon that; 1) Akira/Ren sees no reason he has to be honest or forthright with any females in his life 2) Sojiro holds such low regard for his daughter he will aide Akira/Ren in an ongoing deception and emotional manipulation of her RIGHT AFTER SHE OVERCAME A SUICIDAL PHASE OF HER LIFE and 3) That Ann, Makoto, Futaba, Haru, Takemi, Kawakami, Ohya, Hifumi and Chihaya all fall in love with the exact same person and are literally when confronted with incontervertible evidence of his infedilities not only tricked into instantly accepting that them all bringing him chocolate on Valentine’s Day was a ‘misunderstanding’ but, in the case of the Phantom Thieves members, this has so little impact on them that mere days later they have no reaction.

AKA the ending Valentine’s Harem Route basically says: “Akira/Ren successfully cheated on all the girls in his life, and is free to continue to do so since they are so stupid that they could be convinced to assume it was a ‘misunderstanding’ even under the most blatantly false of pretext,” the ending basically gives carte blanche to say that Akira/Ren will probably keep cheating on the women in his life because, well, they’re so stupid that even if they all end up right in front of him, confessing their love for him to each other’s faces...they somehow think this was a ‘misunderstanding’?

That’s gonna be canon now for the animation. Not ‘optional’ canon, just...just outright canon. Literally everything in the Canon is soured now. Did you like Ren’s bond with Ann in the foregoing episodes? Well bad news; Ren literally is willing to commit to an intimate relationship with her and then emotionally cheat on her with several different women at once. Did you like how Ren played a pivotal role in building Futaba’s character and helping her grow out of her emotional turmoil? Well sucks for you cause Ren is literally willing to lie to this girl’s face and tell her he loves her whilst carrying on behind her back with numerous other women.

It sort of goes without saying that this kinda wrecks P5A completely since, canonically, Akira/Ren is now just an irredeemable asshole and the female characters are reduced to stock harem-style idiot love interests with basically 0 individuality because everyone has to love the Protagonist (self-insert!).

But when you think about it even in the original game...this was a problem. Sure you could choose not to do it...but you could also choose to do it. This means, technically, as far as Atlus’ writing is concerned, canonically Akira/Ren has it in him to be a complete asshole with no respect for women or his friends...and the females in the game are all vapid idiots. That’s technically canon since that’s required for the Valentine’s Route to work.

Oh, also, that Sojiro is the worst. The worst.

The Valentine’s Harem Event, like the Ryuji abusing event post Shido’s Palace. does irrevocable damage to the characters and the content itself, kinda ruining it since for it to be canon...well it means the characters are terrible people or stupid. Why I sort of have to choose to ignore them to actually like the story.

Of course what does all this writing have in common? It’s a JOKE! Haha! Ryuji’s being abused, isn’t this funny? Haha! The girls are all vapid idiots and Joker’s such a chick magnet they have no varying tastes in partner at all! Haha! Gay men want to force Ryuji to undress for them!

Isn’t this funny? I mean, no, of course not. In almost all these cases the ‘humour’ is...someone suffering. A common retort I then see is; it’s not canon, its just for a joke.

But the problem is it is, all, strictly canon. I could definitely understand if these things were packaged as clear ‘not canon’ events.

Here’s an example; the Blazblue game series has ‘joke’ endings which are explicitly not canon but usually feature bizarre or ‘funny’ scenes. One of said scenes is a reoccuring bit in which the protagonist Ragna is made to wear glasses that causes the female cast to all fall in love with him. Putting aside the fact for the moment that, to me, this still isn’t funny since its treating the Mind Rape of the entire female cast as a ‘joke’ the fact remains that it is, however, not canon. The creators make sure that nothing that happens here technically infringes on or diminished the canon character content by making it explicitly non-canon.

Persona 5, both the game and now the Animation, take no such efforts. There are no efforts to make clear that Ryuji being beaten up is a ‘comedic non-canon overreaction’ or that Akira/Ren being a womanizing prick and Sojiro being the WORST are just ‘comedic non-canon skits’ all these are played as explicitly, irrefutably, canon. That is how the characters are, as far as Atlus is concerned. That is their opinions, their beliefs etc.

Is it weird that P5 Dancing has the best, most wholesome, most healthy characterization of the entire Persona 5 Franchise? I suppose maybe the mangas are good to, I must admit I’ve never read any of them since from what I can tell Ryuji is basically ignored in all of them in favour of focus on the girls.

Atlus has a writing problem and that problem is centered I fear on a simple fact; the protagonist is a self-insert who is assumed to be a self-insert for a very specific formula; a young male who sees female characters as things he wishes to collect for himself and wants to feel adored by. Almost all of the major writing problems stem from this; Girls seem exploited or turned into vapid haremettes? Well, obviously, gotta appeal to that ‘chick magnet’ fantasy. Homosexuality is cast as negative or frightning? Well, obviously, the fantasy being appealed to is explicitly heterosexual in nature, everything else is ‘icky’. Other males seem to constantly be the butt of a joke or consistently shown up compared to the protagonist? Naturally since the fantasy is about making the player feel like ‘the man’ and all other men are simply lame by comparison so that the girls will only love the protagonist (the self-insert).

What really bums me out about all of this is that Atlus can write such amazing scenes as Ryuji’s ‘the place I belong is next to you,’ but then in that same game or anime have the Valentine’s Event and the Ship scene. I imagine in part this is due to it being a game first, story second, so they feel there are ‘beats’ that need to be there (the loser must be made fun of, the protagonist must get all the girls) even if, from a storyboarding point of view...it just makes the characters look A) Very inconsistent in personality and attitude (Ren’s infamous standing up for a stranger being assaulted but then instantly refusing to step in to help Ryuji in Shinjuku) or B) Like massive asshats (The entire Valentine’s Event from Ren and Sojiro’s perspectives.

It is just...its sad. I want to like this story because there is legitimately good characters and writing but...in the name of appealing to the lowest common denominator it gets weighted down by stuff which is explicitly canon and makes the characters awful.

It really makes it tough to like it at times.

*Sigh*

At the end of the day I don’t know how to handle this. Accepting its canon makes a lot of people awful or stupid. Headcanoning it away is fine but...then I gotta accept I don’t like Persona 5 per say, I like what I, or other fans, create from Persona 5.

Also can we please just be able to date Ryuji. Please Atlus. We don’t need another female character to be another fangirl for Joker, to be another vapid idiot who can be duped by the WORST Sojiro, please Atlus, please. Please. There are ENOUGH love interests Atlus, please try perhaps instead stop treating women like little toys for a protagonist to effortlessly collect and dupe.

Watching all the Persona 5 Girls (sans Sae) in the Valentine’s Event is painful. They are characters I like, many of them have good writing...and then they are reduced to props to make a player feel “Oh yeah! Such a chick magnet! They all want me! Women are simply a commodity by which I inflate my own sense of self-worth since having multiple of them attracted to me and betrayed by me makes me feel as if this is a positive development and not a negative one!”

And I do mean that seriously. Look at most content or statements around the Valentine’s Event. They frame it positively. The ‘harem’ ending, Joker is such a ‘chick magnet’ and so ‘alpha’ etc. etc.

Terrible emotional betrayal? Deep seated trust issues? Sojiro treating his own daughter like garbage? Ignored because ‘Joker is a PLAYER! WOOO!” And this is overall seen as a positive development.

By now I’ve rambled on ridiculously long but if I must have a conclusion it is thus; Please give us a Female Protagonist who can date the other boys and stop selling this sexist approach where non-protagonist males and all females serve the same purpose; inflating the ego of the player character.

#persona 5 #p5 #persona 5 the animation #p5a #akira kusuru #kusuru akira #ren amamiya #amamiya ren #joker #phantom thieves of heart #phantom thieves #sojiro sakura #sakura sojiro #sojiro

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classicdaisycalico · 6 years

Note

🔥 for the Sonic series as well ;)

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

Hoo boy you just opened another entire can of worms here

So uhhh let’s get started shall we?

First of all, people need to stop bitching about whether or not the classic games are the best or the Adventure-era games or the modern games. All Sonic games have their ups and downs. To say that their greatness stopped after [insert Sonic game here] is really rude and puts down a lot of other people who genuinely like the series and all it has to offer.

With this in mind, I genuinely like Sonic ‘06…at least, in theory. If Sega hadn’t rushed it the way they did (and I feel awful about all the pressure that was put on them in order to put something out there), then I’m sure we would have had a genuinely excellent game and we definitely wouldn’t have as much of a divide in the fandom. Of course, I am not without my fair share of opinions on it, though.

Let’s just get right down to it, shall we? We didn’t need Elise and that awkward “romantic” subplot. It felt kinda…forced in some ways? Furthermore I don’t even think that the princess in the story should have been Elise. It should have been Blaze. She could still be the same character implemented in the exact same way and everything, but carrying all of Elise’s role in the story would have made SO much more sense. It would give her a larger reason to be a part of the storyline, too. Also…SOL Dimension? SOLeanna? SOL Emeralds? SOLaris? Sega missed out on a golden opportunity here. I think they should hire me for a remake of this game.

Speaking of Blaze, WHERE WAS SHE IN FORCES?! I know she’s gonna show up in IDW at some point, I think, but if the Phantom Ruby can mess with other dimensions, then Blaze popping up in the in-game story could have made sense. Also, where was Big in all this? Where was Cream? And her mom? And most importantly, where were all the Chao and the animal buddies? Sonic games aren’t the same without Chao :(

Now let’s change the subject here and get to the voice actors. I genuinely like this voice cast a lot. Roger’s voice still sits a little too deep for a 15 year old, I think, but he delivers the snark so well it’s grown on me.

I like that Cindy Robinson doesn’t sound too Minnie Mouse with her take on Amy, but I still like Liza Ortiz’s slightly better since her 12 year old voice is a little more believable.

Quinton Flynn makes a good Silver. His voice doesn’t bite as much as Pete Capella’s voice used to. Quinton sounds much…calmer? But he still manages to capture both the vulnerability in his voice and the strong sense of justice he maintains.

Kirk Thornton is doing an amazing job with Shadow. I know he had a little bit of trouble adjusting in earlier games but he has improved so much. I don’t like his take on Boom!Shadow, though. He didn’t have to make him sound so gruff.

Kathleen Delaney’s voice for Rouge was absolutely atrocious. Bringing Karen Strassman in was such an enormous relief. I like how she implement’s Rouge’s coy and witty nature, but Lani Minella still holds out as my #1 Rouge VA.

Speaking of Rouge, people need to understand that Rouge is not just your stereotypical “sexy female character”. Being flirty and confident is party of her personality, yes, but it’s both of those things that contribute to what is undoubtedly the biggest part of her character: her wits. Rouge can use what her mama gave to manipulate any enemy ever and later physically kick their ass in a matter of seconds. That’s pretty badass, in my book.

Speaking of female characters, Amy is more than her crush on Sonic, and the writers need to figure this out. Amy is a dedicated girl who throws her heart and soul into all that she does, and if she’s ever fighting alongside her friends, she’ll fight to the death for everyone there that she loves. Yeah, she just so happens to be more vocal and physically aggressive than most, particularly when it comes to Sonic, but she is only 12, after all. And even then, her crush has been significantly toned down, which I appreciate, since it means the writers are finally getting it.

Speaking of the writers, I notice that a lot of people complain about Pontac and Graff’s way about writing storylines for a lot of the games recently. And yes, that is true; while I do like the way they write humor, the things I don’t like are the plotholes that seem to stay empty at times, and some minor characterization things. While they do get the big picture about certain characters’ thoughts and actions, it’s the small stuff they seem to overlook, and missing all the small things can add up and make the characters overall attitude in a game seem off.

Speaking of characterization, I’m still bitter about the way they handled Infinite’s backstory. SO MUCH MORE could have been done with him, and yet his motivation for becoming what he became was chalked all up to simply being bored with the current state of the world. I’m not bitter lol

Lastly, let’s get to ships. There are a few that I’m not completely on board with, and shipping Knuckles with Rouge basically tops the list. I always feel like I’m one of the only people on this hellsite that doesn’t ship the two together (anyone who knows me knows that Shadouge is my OTP for the Sonic series). I just feel like there’s a stronger bond and overall sense of closeness that Shadow and Rouge has that Knuckles and Rouge doesn’t. Most of the time, their interactions are generally negative and sometimes even played up for comic relief. I don’t see those kinds of interactions culminating into a relationship, I just don’t.

I’m not on board with Sonaze, either. Sorry guys! I feel like Blaze wouldn’t want to ruin one of her first real friendships with someone who she used to hate. Friendship has become something really special to Blaze, and trying to move beyond it, especially with someone who is not on board with romantic relationships most of the time, would probably not be the best move to make, anyway. I think it’s for the best if she left her friendship as it was.

Shadamy is a little unsettling. Shadow saw a comparison in Amy to Maria in Sonic Adventure 2, right? So at best, I think he sees her as something akin to a little sister figure, just like how Shadow saw with Maria. Also, I haven’t seen much interaction between the two of them since then (with a few minor exceptions, of course). So…how would that make any sense? (It’s through this reasoning that I can’t ship Shadow with Maria, either. Aside from the fact that she’s a literal human. Who is also currently dead.)

With all the times Sonic and Shadow have faced off against each other, I don’t see Sonadow happening. While they do harbor a mutual respect for one other, their personalities clash immensely, and pointing out their shit to each other every time that happens can turn ugly very quickly. The fact that it’s been going on for so long only justifies that reasoning further. (Sorry, guys!)

Phew. Okay. I’m done. Hopefully I don’t get crucified or burned at the stake or anything for this. (Especially that last bit. I swear I’m not homophobic, at least…I try not to be. Anyone who follows me would know that I try to educate myself on any LGBT+ issues as much as I can.)

Uhhh so that’s that. Hope you enjoy reading through all of this!

#ask me things #perla-speedofsound-adventuring #sonic

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bloodboundarchfey · 6 years

Note

Could you do a mainly ghost but also fairy/flying and maybe even ice or dark based pokemon team for witch of hope?

Sure!! Sorry this one took a while!

Mismagius - aside from the obvious correlation between mismagius and witches, this pokemon has the ability to curse people, provide people happiness, make people fall in love, or force headaches or nightmares onto people, all on a whim. Your enthusiasm and confidence means you probably do a lot of things... just because you can. Mismagius has the carelessness and the manipulation to boot.

Drifblim - this pokemon has a weird kind of wanderlust in that it doesn’t really care where it goes or where it ends up. This is reminiscent of your persistent optimism. While drifblim don’t have anything extraordinarily magical about them, they have an odd tendency to disappear in plain sight, and nobody knows where they go. This can be likened to your rebellion against your aspect; hope has weird connotations with logic and reasoning, but also conviction. You rebel against the idea that things cant just disappear from plain sight, and you rebel against conviction. Drifblim has no conviction, just going where life takes it.

Togekiss - hope is the aspect of warmth, kindness, positivity and optimism, and these are the exact things that togekiss revels in. It also brings blessings to people who represent these ideals. While the blessing is more of a Creation class, you would also kind of have this ability to some degree. All in all, this optimistic friendly pokemon is perfect for someone so outwardly positive.

Ninetales (Alolan) - as far as I’m aware, Alolan ninetales possesses the same kind of graceful but vindictive attitude as the standard variety. With this in mind, it seems like a good fit: it’s an incredibly powerful, divine pokemon (lore-wise, less so gameplay-wise), which easily fits into your title. In fact, Alolan ninetales has a reputation of being worshipped as a kind of deity. This is also very in line with your manipulation of faith: you possess the ability to basically convince people to worship you as a deity. Active manipulation of such a high-potential aspect is really scary. Also, ninetales is infamous for being incredibly punishing and unforgiving. This fits the Witch reputation of having a high potential of being kinda dark-sided, and also fits with your rebellion against hope. In this circumstance, you defy the idea that you should express positivity and forgiveness.And you certainly have the raw power to curse someone for 1,000 years.

Again, sorry this took so long and it’s on the shorter side! If it makes you feel better, I am absolutely terrified of this godtier.

#seriously.... it's A Lot #witch class #hope aspect #witch of hope #pokemon #Anonymous

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep25 [”I’m Different Now”]:

For the season finale [but not series finale, because they’ve already announced a third and final season for next year], we get a huge plot twist that completely changes our perspective on one of the characters, and their various relationships, in a way that has major implications about the future of the story and how things will progress.

Aside from all that, we also get the world’s worst gender reveal party.

Thoughts under the cut.

Just to start off, this episode adapted chapters 96 and 97 like I figured it would, to wrap up this season with a big cliffhanger to hype people up for the final season. And for better or worse, this was a pretty much 1:1 adaptation of these chapters, so there’s not really any differences to talk about that I noticed.

Anyway, I may as well just cut right to the chase and talk about the whole Shocking Gender Reveal Plot Twist[tm], now that that’s out in the open and everyone can stop tiptoeing around it.

It’s not like I’ve really tried to hide it or how I feel about it as a plot point before this, but I really do dislike it on basically every level. There’s a whole lot to unpack about it, but really at the end of the day it’s just one of those old-fashioned plot devices where we’re meant to think that someone being a different gender to what you thought they were is inherently something scandalous and shocking. They could have at least immediately started talking about the idea of her being raised as a man against her will, since that’d at least give it some actual meaning and value, but they don’t, which really says a lot about how that’s actually kinda just a foot-note that the story doesn’t dwell on much, and in practice we’re just meant to be surprised that she’s a girl.

It doesn’t really help that the season just ends right there, when in the manga this whole sequence keeps going in the next chapter, and I think they start touching upon that part of Akito’s backstory then, but the anime won’t get into that until next year at this point, so I think it’s fair to take it as it’s presented right now.

The idea of Akito being a girl is surprising in basically the exact same way that it’d be surprising if we found out that Haru was a Sanrio fan, or something. That is to say, it’d be vaguely surprising, but then we’d all just go on with our lives.

Even at this point you can definitely guess that there’s probably something going on with her being forced to present as a man, but it hasn’t really been explained or touched upon yet, so it’s all pretty nebulous, at least from the perspective of someone like Tohru who barely knows Akitto at all and doesn’t know all the stuff about her past that Kureno does.

In general I’ve never been a fan of this entire trope to begin with, but I think it’s made a lot worse by the fact that, as you get further into the rest of the story, it becomes clear that it’s not even that important, and the majority of what’s going on with Akito’s character has much more to do with the curse situation and how it impacts her relationship with the zodiac members. The whole deal with her character is how being the god of the zodiac from birth forced her to be pretty much raised in seclusion, with her only frame of reference for human relationships being abusive cult behavior. She’s miserable and twisted because she isn’t allowed to live a normal life due to her status, and her possessiveness gets enabled by the people that she clings onto, putting her into a loop of arrested development and mental instability.

And literally none of that has anything to do with her gender, lol. None of it would be different if she was a cis man, or if she had been raised as a woman. Because that whole deal isn’t actually all that relevant to why she is the way she is, why she has the attitude and world-view that she does, and why her relationships are so fucked up. Even if you decided to write out her romantic/sexual relationships with people like Kureno and Shigure by having her be a man, that’d barely change anything about the story as a whole, because even if it was entirely for platonic reasons Kureno would have still decided to stay with Akito and ultimately enable her actions, and Shigure would most likely still more or less do all the same things he’s already done. And obviously to begin with, if Akito was actually a dude that wouldn’t even necessarily mean you couldn’t still have some of these relationships play out this way, so you can’t even really act like the story required her to be a girl for that reason, lol.

And for better or worse, if Akito was written as a gay dude, it could still totally have lead to all the same stuff with her possessiveness over the male zodiac members, and her irrational hatred of the female zodiac members. It’d just be a different, more homophobic sort of trope than what actually happens, in a way that plays out in basically the exact same way. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve gotten a villain who’s a gay dude that irrationally hates women for Reasons [tm], and who has ominous and sinful relationships with men.

Which is also the reason why I don’t exactly think the story would be ‘better’ if she had been written as a gay dude, or as a trans woman, or anything like that. With her whole role in the story to begin with, it’d play out in an obnoxious way no matter what. Mostly I just kinda wish they had completely avoided this sort of outdated, schlocky storytelling to begin with, and just focused entirely on the more interesting stuff about her character.

And in terms of outdated tropes, we haven’t even gotten properly introduced to Ren yet, lol.

I’m also assuming that they’re not exactly planning to change anything about this in the anime, so I’m just going with my existing thoughts about how the manga handled it, since that should still carry over to the anime.

I know that this is all just beating a dead horse with a stick because of how long the series has been out for, but I still just can’t help but be irritated by this whole mess.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I think a good comparison to make is the recent Banana Fish adaptation, and how from what I gathered, most people’s reactions to that series’ ending was ‘I know it’s just a product of it’s time, but this is just kinda unironically shitty’.

Ultimately, I think a big part of why this annoys me so much is because I actually really like Akito’s whole character and what the story does with her after this point. I just dislike how it’s shackled to this unnecessary plot twist that ends up dominating the conversation surrounding her even though it’s barely relevant to anything after this in the story.

The stuff with her being the god of the zodiac and how much it fucks up her entire life and all of her relationships is genuinely really compelling, and represents an integral part of the story’s overall message about the nature of abusive families and cults, and the various ways they end up hurting everyone inside them. Her whole arc is about learning how to embrace a life that’s not based around being a god surrounded by their followers, and I think that aspect of it works really well, especially with how it ties into all the stuff with Tohru later on.

I also think that all the stuff with Kureno that gets revealed in this episode is genuinely really interesting, and is ACTUALLY a plot twist that meaningfully shakes things up, and people actually have a reason to be surprised by it. Especially Tohru, since her whole goal at this point is to break the curse, and now she’s literally found someone who’s already had their curse get broken. It’s basically the first major lead she’s found in her whole search for answers, but in the end it kinda just, y’know, gets overshadowed by the gender reveal and her being shocked about that instead.

It’s also still really interesting to me how the Kureno situation is basically the only time where the story seriously talks about the implications of the animal transformation part of the curse, and how someone in the zodiac might internalize that part of themselves. Most of the time, the animal transformation part of the curse is kinda irrelevant, and the series could work in 99% the same way without it. I think Takaya’s literally said before that she didn’t even plan to include that whole aspect of the story until her editor suggested it fairly late into the process, and I think that shows with how it’s kinda just there for some wacky hijinks early on, and then it just gets benched in favor of the actual stuff Takaya wanted to write about.

But with Kureno we actually get a look into what it meant for him to be able to literally turn into a bird, and how losing that ability affected his sense of identity and how he engaged with the world. It’s still ultimately just metaphorical in it’s own way, but it still feels like more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they literally turn into animals than basically any other part of the story, lol. And in general I just think it’s at least compelling on paper that he ends up shackling himself of his own free will, because that sense of freedom and disconnect made him feel obligated to stay with Akito to ‘make up for it’.

I just wish that Kureno as a whole was interesting enough for me to actually care that much about all of this, lol. In the end he’s just kinda intentionally boring, and it’s more interesting to write about his role in the story than it is to actually, like, watch him do stuff as a character. Which I guess is all just part of how much it bugs me that all of the interesting stuff in this episode, and this whole part of the story, feels like it gets overshadowed and drowned out by a dumb shock value plot twist.

There’s also all the thematic stuff with how he’s basically Tohru if she was taken advantage of and had all of her own bad habits enabled until she ended up barely being a functioning adult. He even has his whole personal conflict about feeling like moving on with his life and developing new relationships is an act of betrayal towards someone that he really needs to let go of at this point. But then you just get into the whole Uo thing and how their whole relationship is about as compelling as the whole Cinderella plot that it’s clearly a reference to, and aaaaaaah why is this series so frustrating, lol.

Really, the fact that I can gripe so much about stuff like this just goes to show how much I like the series in general, since I can’t muster up any strong feelings about stuff like this if I just straight up dislike it as a whole. At least for me, stuff like this is much more frustrating when it’s one part of a larger story that I really love. Thankfully there’s more good than bad when it comes to this series, so I can still hold onto it as a personal fave that I just happen to have complaints about.

I’m genuinely really excited for the final season, in spite of all this, since there’s a whole lot I love about the final third of the manga, and in a funny way, the fact that Akito being a girl isn’t actually that big of a deal in the long run, and what actually happens with her as a character after this is more about her status as the god of the zodiac, actually means that I’ll [mostly] enjoy a lot of it. It’s mostly just this specific part where we get the Big Reveal [tm] itself, and the immediate lead-up to it, that bugs me.

Anyway, as a whole, I still think this is a good episode that serves as a fitting cliffhanger for the season. The actual plot twist that most of the episode focuses on is really good, and serves a really meaningful role in progressing the story, and it gives a pretty clear picture of how we’re entering the final act of the story.

Hopefully the final season will start in April next year like the first two seasons did, but it’s entirely possible it might get delayed because of the whole pandemic situation. But I could live with them holding off on starting the final season until it’s ready to come out.

Also, before I forget, they haven’t said anything about it, I’m pretty sure the final season will also be around 25 episodes long. With how many chapters they have left, if they stick to the same two chapters per episode pace that the anime’s had on average thus far, they could easily cover the rest of the story in 22 episodes, which would be a lot easier to expand by an extra two or three episodes, than it’d be to condense it all the way down to 13 or so episodes.

#murasaki rambles #Fruits Basket #can you tell that I have Feelings [tm] about this whole part of the story? lol

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punkscowardschampions · 5 years

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Buster & Rio

Buster: Distract me Rio: ? Rio: As much as it's one of my favourite things to do Buster: Please Rio: Okay Rio: I can catch you up on what's happened since you left if you like Rio: Never a dull moment Buster: Go on Buster: Tell me Rio: Well, Indie got caught riding her dirtbike again so the garda took it off her Rio: cue the phonecall that she's kicking off and me having to go down there and basically beg for it back/them not to actually charge her Rio: got away with a warning and not inducing Ro into labour by keeping it hush hush Buster: Bet Drew was really helpful over the whole thing Rio: As if he's voluntarily going anywhere near the station Rio: or Indie would bell him Buster: Sure she will after the fact to show him what a rudegirl she is, like Buster: 😂 Rio: 🙄 Not wrong Rio: the things she's gotta do to make her Da proud Rio: let's not Buster: Agreed, let's not Rio: I'm thinking if there's been much else drama Rio: aside from the obvious Rio: Everyone kinda letting Nance have her moment, idk if that's a good thing Rio: tell 'em to up their game Rio: So, what's wrong? Buster: I can't talk about Nance right now, okay? Buster: I've had a shit enough day as is Rio: 'Course Rio: She's alright, though, don't worry Rio: What can I do? Buster: Tell me I can get on a plane right now and not have to come back here until I want Rio: I mean Rio: You can do whatever you want, yeah? Buster: Until I miss too much school and my grades drop, like Buster: End of the world as the fam knows it Rio: Not naming names but you're probably good for a minor blip right about now due to, like Rio: That bad? Buster: Nah, gotta hang onto that golden boy tag for as long as, you know Buster: It's standard. That's what makes it bad. Does that even make any sense? Rio: Don't blame you, babe Rio: Completely Rio: Fuck the cunts, do something selfish, that's what you'd tell me Buster: Yeah Buster: But you're the only thing I want and I can't come and get you Rio: I can come and be with you Buster: I can't ask for you to just drop everything for me Rio: You don't have to Rio: Still coming Buster: What about Indie? Buster: Plus work Rio: She's got School too, like Rio: What's one more for Ma to drag in by her hair? Rio: I'll worry about work later Buster: Babe Buster: You don't need to worry about me Rio: Who else is gonna if not me? Rio: And I wanna, so let me Buster: Well, I want you here so I'm not gonna argue any more Rio: If I could make time go faster I would Rio: fuck this year Buster: You do Buster: That sounds really stupid but like Rio: Babe Rio: You know you deserve to be happy, yeah Buster: Shh Buster: You make me happy Rio: Good Rio: S'a start for sure Buster: Are you serious about coming here just 'cause I'm being a mopey cunt? Rio: Yeah Rio: like I need much of an excuse Rio: completely selfish, naturally 😉 Buster: 'Course Buster: Speaking of, we should probably start planning my birthday Buster: Get your lies and excuses ready for that at least Rio: I've literally been pondering on your gift so hard Rio: You're hard to buy for Rio: What do you want, baby? Buster: You do reckon you're gift enough? Rio: For every day? Obviously Rio: but it's your special day Rio: you get whatever you want Buster: Yeah but it's not like its an important one, what am I gonna do, go vote? Buster: Everything else I can do already Rio: I know you wanna be in charge always but like, yeah, do your civic duty, boy 😜 Rio: but now you can do it legally, fun fun fun right? Rio: adulthood, babe Rio: we'll make it important Buster: 😂 Buster: Let's go somewhere Buster: Not be surrounded by cunts for a change Rio: You wanna be surprised or you wanna look together Buster: Surprise me Buster: Anywhere but Skerries, like Rio: Damn Rio: 😂 Rio: I'm on it forreal, no caravans or fam in sight Buster: One of many reasons I love you Rio: If you get stuck for ideas for my upcoming Rio: just write that list, babe Rio: not that i'm already making this about me Buster: 'Course not 😇 Buster: Only room for one selfish cunt Rio: Already competing with Halloween Rio: how many costume parties can one boy have Buster: Good thing blind folds and ball gags aren't technically costumes so you can still wear them for me without me wasting a wish Rio: 😳 Rio: Okay, and you're acting like you don't have plans Rio: Damn Buster: No plans yet Buster: Just thinking Buster: Like I said, shit day Rio: Well, feel free to take it all out on me Rio: just keep me in the loop 'cos I wanna know Rio: Who's got you so mad though? Buster: You don't wanna know, babe Buster: I'm not trying to get you mad too Rio: I do but I dont need many guesses now Rio: What the fuck's she been saying Buster: Just ignore any screenshots you see 'cause you know the context isn't there Buster: Depends if you wanna be mad on my behalf or my sister's Rio: I'm sure I can manage both Buster: You and me both, babe Rio: Not amatuers Rio: She's a bitch on such a ridiculous level it should be comical Rio: but it ain't Buster: Yeah Buster: At least I as good as told her I have a girlfriend so hopefully that's the last time she'll find her way into my inbox Rio: Be nice but wouldn't put money on her being the respectful type Rio: See if she's got as much staying power as Ryan, ha Rio: I'm sorry Buster: Hardly respectful at the party from what I remember. And what I don't Buster: So I'm sorry too, like Rio: Don't apologise Rio: It's fucked up, she is Buster: Yeah Buster: She's so smug about it that's what's fucked Rio: That's gross Rio: Does she not realise what she's done or like? Rio: fucked up power trip, okay bitch Buster: [sends own screenshots because you suck Chlo] Rio: I hate her Rio: I'm gonna fuck her up Buster: You can't Buster: She's the exact type to get you in trouble if you tried Rio: Give a shit Rio: Who does she think she is Buster: You do give a shit though Buster: And so do I Buster: She's already fucked everything up, there's no way it's happening again Rio: Okay Rio: I'll get Billie to throw some bad juju her way then Rio: Oh, babe, now I know what you mean Rio: Fuming Buster: Same Buster: Like what can I actually do? Rio: Fuck her Rio: like, don't, ew Rio: but Rio: she's seriously not worth the aggro, avoid at all costs 'cos I weren't joking that she gives me those Ryan vibes Rio: you don't need that Rio: it's hard when she's winding you up like that but try not to engage unless you have to now Buster: Right pair me and you are Buster: How do we attract these types? Buster: Fucking hell Rio: Who don't we attract Rio: so irresistible, right? Buster: True Buster: I miss you Rio: I miss you too Rio: not for long, like Rio: just sorting shit here Buster: How long can you stay? Rio: I dunno, baby Rio: As long as I can, that's for sure Buster: I love you Rio: I love you Rio: She don't know shit, yeah, remember that Buster: I just wish she knew some shit Buster: It'd make things easier Rio: Who said that Rio: Can't argue with idiots, get you down to their level and win by experience, yeah? Rio: the lawyer in you gotta stay out of it babe Buster: Okay, you're right Buster: Just this once, obviously Rio: 😏 Rio: Won't even gloat Rio: 'cos I want you to feel like a winner too Buster: 👑 always Buster: Pormise Rio: Good Buster: What's Nance doing for Halloween, do you know? Rio: I've not heard yet Rio: Some cute nerdy goodness with June, no doubt Rio: I'll put the feelers out Buster: Like, can I be that selfish? You can't be in two places at once Rio: I'm sure I ain't all her plans hinge on Buster: Not with that attitude, babe Rio: 😂 Rio: Who's bday is it again, Nance? Rio: Do you want me to stay here? Buster: Don't be an idiot Buster: I just Buster: Feel like more of a cunt than usual today, that's all Rio: Don't let her do you like that Rio: She seriously doesn't know you Rio: and she can't chat about doing Nance wrong Rio: trust me, I know who she actually hates, and it ain't you babe, promise Buster: Nance still ain't gonna forgive me though Rio: She will Rio: it'll take a lot Rio: and time, lots of probably too but Rio: even if you were a total cunt Rio: she ain't, yeah? Buster: Such a know-it-all Buster: Christ Rio: Don't act like you don't love it Rio: 😏 Buster: I can't Buster: I can imagine how buzzing you are right now at being so smart Buster: so cute Rio: 😋 Rio: Fun being a nerd, I see why you rep so hard Buster: You wish, babe Buster: If that's what you're after you're gonna have to trade me in when we go check out Harvard Rio: That's the plan isn't it Rio: if I don't hook me a prof for the daddy vibes Imma get me a future billionaire Buster: Well, my plan was to see how far around Campus we could get before I got you too turned on to resist me Buster: Standard Rio: Well that sounds like more fun Rio: you've got to focus though, so serious Buster: I'll focus on you Buster: that sounds more fun to me Rio: 😒 boy Rio: catch me packing nothing but turtlenecks and floor-length skirts Buster: 😂 Buster: Catch me planning the trip for summer then Rio: You're mean Rio: play fair Buster: I could say the same to you Buster: Denying a whole university campus that body Buster: So selfish, babe Rio: Right? Aren't you proud of me, daddy? Buster: You're learning Buster: Very appropriate considering where we're going, like Rio: Not got the cap and gown but Rio: you're a pretty good teacher, babe Buster: You can borrow mine Buster: I reckon you'll look pretty good in it Rio: Reckon I can borrow something of yours forreal Rio: not a label whore just miss you Buster: 'Course baby Buster: Whatever you want Rio: better stick to a plan tee, like Rio: could be anyone's Rio: long as it smells like my baby Buster: So smart Buster: And cute Rio: 😻 Rio: I just like the idea of having you wrapped around my body even when you're not Buster: Well now that's all I can think about Rio: Good Rio: You wanted distraction, right? Buster: Now all I want is you Rio: I'm going to be there so soon Rio: Should I get a hotel or am I making up an excuse for being in LDN again? Buster: I'll book you a room Buster: You deserve it for being so nice to me Rio: Buster Buster: Yeah, babe? Rio: If you ain't gonna let me give you at least half, make sure it's cheap and cheerful yeah Buster: Not gonna happen Rio: It's not worth fighting you on this, is it? Buster: I mean, you can, and I'd enjoy it but I promise you'll enjoy the hotel more Rio: You're bad Buster: You love it Rio: All I know I love is that I can do whatever I want to you and not be disturbed Buster: You're not the only one with good ideas, babe Rio: I know Rio: tell me more about that blindfold and ball gag, like Buster: Thinking I need some silk scarves added to that list Rio: Yeah? Buster: I know you're gonna be here soon but I'm already thinking that I don't want you to leave Buster: It's one solution, like Rio: 🤤 Rio: Won't be complaining Rio: I don't wanna leave Buster: If you think that now, wait until you check in Buster: [sends fancy af hotel deets] Rio: Okay know I'm still mad but you spoil me so well Buster: Don't be mad I just want you close to me Buster: I can walk there if I need to Rio: I'm not Rio: I like it when you look after me but shh Rio: reputation already there without proving it Buster: I haven't even started to take care of you yet Rio: I'm meant to be looking after you Buster: I only asked you to distract me and you are Buster: I'm so fucking distracted right now Rio: My specialty Buster: Is everything you're packing a surprise or do I get to hear about what you're gonna wear for me 'cause that's part of your specialty Rio: I guess you gave me some spoilers to prepare me Rio: Only fair Buster: If you wanna play fair, yeah Rio: Decisions decisions Rio: Oh, I have some cute pjs Rio: wanna see? Buster: You know I do Rio: [Snap] Rio: Adorable, yeah? Buster: Babe Buster: Adorable ain't the word Rio: Give me the words Buster: I'll try, seeing as it's so unfair that you couldn't hear the sound I made when I opened that Buster: Fuck Buster: How do you keep doing this to me? Rio: Seriously unfair Rio: Your noises are my favourite thing Rio: Just doing what you asked me to do, babe Buster: You'll just have to get me to make them again Buster: Or others Rio: I want to so bad Rio: I want YOU so bad Buster: How bad? Buster: Show me Rio: I'm so wet it's embarrassing baby Rio: you should see my knickers then you'd know just how much I need you Buster: Embarrassing isn't the word, babe Rio: I've got no shame Rio: I'm your dirty slut, and I want you to know it Buster: Good Buster: You're perfect, I need you to know that Rio: Shh Buster: I'm trying to be quiet but you keep getting me to make all those noises you like so Rio: You better be recording yourself Rio: Or I'm gonna need you on the phone right now, like Buster: [Sends video] Buster: I know what you like, don't worry Rio: Yes, you really fucking do Rio: Fuck me Buster: I want to so badly Rio: I'm coming in the AM Rio: Flight booked, shit sorted Buster: I'll get you early check in so we can go straight there Rio: Good Rio: No better way to spend a Sunday Buster: It's gonna be the best, baby Rio: Yeah it is Rio: If you decide to go to School the next day though, I don't mind Rio: I can find plenty to do Buster: I'll mind Buster: Do me Rio: 😂 Rio: Just trying to make you behave Buster: That isn't what you really want Rio: No, but I only want to get you into fun trouble Buster: My attendance ain't nothing for you to worry about Buster: I'm a nerd, remember Buster: I'm not usually missing that many days Rio: Okay, cutie Rio: Stay with me then Buster: You ain't getting rid of me easy Rio: Not even gotta tie you up, yeah? Buster: I won't be mad if you want to but Rio: Hmm Rio: Might be fun to play look but don't touch with you Buster: Aren't we already playing that right now? Rio: Too true Rio: Didn't say it'd last long before I needed your hands all over me Buster: I know Buster: I need my mouth on you too so again, not mad about it Rio: Well, you can do that with you hands behind your back Rio: I believe in you, babe Buster: Yeah Rio: Indie is roasting me 😖 Buster: Dare I ask Rio: Thinks it's jokes how whipped I am Rio: no point trying to fool her these days Buster: As long as you don't tell her I am Rio: This is where the heroics stop then, yeah? Rio: Charming 🙄 Buster: If you need a hero tell her she's gotta shut and go so you can fuck yourself for me 'cause I need to cum for you Rio: BABY Rio: You can't just say things like that 😩 Buster: I just did Rio: The sound I just made was unholy and is so not helping my case Rio: Are you close? Buster: I'm gonna need you to make that sound for me right now Buster: Please Rio: Buster you're so fucking hot do you have any idea Rio: No one has ever turned me on as much as you, or as hard as you do Buster: I feel it too Buster: Like I said, you're perfect Rio: Maybe this is why we weren't meant to do this Rio: can't stop Buster: I don't care Buster: I don't wanna stop Rio: Me either Buster: I love you so much Rio: I love you too Rio: One day, we can let people know Rio: can't we Buster: Of course we can, babe Rio: It's not just that sneaking around is hard Rio: I want to too, you know Buster: I know Buster: Me too Buster: Even telling Chlo about you, sort of, was kinda nice in a way Rio: Yeah? Bet she was gutted Rio: Should be, bitch 🖕 Rio: Mine Buster: She just thinks I'm lying Buster: Give a shit Rio: Can see why but yeah, not gonna rush it just to wipe the smug off her face Rio: though it will be a nice bonus Buster: 😏 Buster: One day I'll be able to claim you properly, but for now I'll just have to settle with continuing to leave marks that only you can see Buster: As far as consolation prizes go, it could be worse Rio: I like 'em Rio: I'll put pictures up Rio: Gonna know I'm not just letting anyone do that, even if they don't know it's you, yet Buster: I know you do Buster: It's killing me to think about how much you like it Buster: And what seeing those pics is gonna do to me Rio: Hopefully wanna mark me some more Rio: Otherwise I've really fucked the shot Buster: That's what I always want Rio: Good Rio: I like your bruises 'cos I can see and feel how much you want me Buster: Good Buster: I've never wanted anyone as much as you Rio: Me either Rio: even before I'd ever had you Buster: I know Buster: And I can't act like it wasn't exactly the same for me Rio: Even the bad kiss was good, somehow Buster: 'Cause you loved me Buster: I could get away with anything back then Rio: Oh hush 😂 Buster: You so did though Buster: Take that mum and dad with your childhood love story, like Rio: 😩😬😶 Rio: How embarrassing, lil bitch Rio: you were cute Buster: You were beautiful and you ain't outgrown it Rio: Awh, bringing all the old feelings back here 😜 Buster: You're gonna have to wait until tomorrow for a kiss but at least this one actually will be worth the wait Rio: Looking forward to it, babe Buster: Bit rude if you ain't Rio: 😂 Rio: Bit weird too Rio: in it for the hotel room or? i'm not that desperate Buster: Glad to hear it Buster: Like I've gone whole nights without kissing girls on the mouth but I'm not trying to remember that right now Rio: How do you even... Rio: Never mind Rio: not remembering, I've got you Buster: I can show you if you're that curious Buster: But it's not rocket science Rio: I don't wanna Buster: Baby Rio: It'd make me sad Buster: I told you before, you don't have to worry about me Buster: Same goes for being sad Rio: I know, I know Rio: but I still do Buster: 'Cause you're perfect Buster: How many times am I gonna have to say this Rio: Erm, I ain't making you 😂 Buster: Yeah you are Rio: Babe Buster: Babe? Rio: You're a nerd Rio: and I love you Buster: Yeah, yeah Rio: 😠 Buster: What's that face for? Rio: You didn't say it back 😥 Buster: Well, you ain't a nerd really Buster: But of course I love you Rio: Ha ha Rio: 👀 you boy Buster: Good Buster: I love the way you look at me too so Rio: Who doesn't love 😻 Buster: Normally me but you make it work somehow Rio: 'Cos I'm actually seeing you Rio: not just your abs, though appreciating that too, of course Buster: Shhh Buster: You gotta keep my secrets, babe Rio: Yeah, that was way too close to sincerity Rio: Shut me up, babe Buster: I can't Buster: I need to hear every sound from you Rio: Well Indie's packed and gone so Rio: Call me Buster: Thank Christ Buster: I thought you'd never ask Rio: I know, poor baby Rio: Practically torture Buster: I'm not trying to cum when all you've done is breathe into the phone Buster: Who am I? Rio: Who am I breathing down the phone Rio: old school pervert in the phonebox, like Buster: 😂 Rio: not the sexy vibe i'm going for, babe Rio: can ask you what colour your undies are if that'll get you going Buster: Hurry up and show me your actual vibe then is all I'm saying Buster: Killing me here Rio: I know, soz, spend too much time with that one now I think I got jokes too 😏 Buster: We both know you've got jokes, babe Buster: But there's a time and place, like Rio: That's me told Rio: Gonna be good now, promise 😇 Buster: Not too good though, yeah? Rio: Duh, I already told you, slut for you always Buster: Good

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