yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
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(slight spoilers for ISAT, but just broad stuff no details)
I can't tell if it's because I'm a biased super fan of In Stars and Time or if it's just because due to work I had to space my playthrough of it out over the course of a week or so, but I keep reading reviews that say "wow this is really good but it does have a repetitive section later on in the game, so I'll understand if you can't deal with that!!" and every time I see it I'm just like???? I have no idea what section anyone is talking about????
I don't think I found the game repetitive at any stage. I might have just gotten lucky on that last "guess which route you need to take" section, but even then I went back and double checked the other passages just cause I was curious about what was there. Which you're rewarded for doing, like the extra good scene you get with Bonnie for checking the book and you do need to get into the astronomy room in the story ANYWAY so you gotta know it's there. And I'm a chronic dialogue hunter so every loop through I'd still double check everything for A) New dialogue, usually from Siffrin, which the game was very good about rewarding me for and B) because I kept trying to trigger that scene that's in the prologue where if you act weird enough your friends will confront you about it (I never did trigger this, but I read somewhere that you can if you also check the wishology and timeology craft books in the same loop?). And this is coming from someone who did a full run with everyone's personal quests done like. Three times. And I hardly ever fast forwarded until near the very end of playthrough and unless something was on the third floor I would just go in through the front door on most loops. So I gotta politely disagree with reviews saying some parts of it get repetitive!
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just played some Case Files with LoV part in it and just thought about a giant project like "every LoV filler ever in ANY media"
like games, manga (including those SMASH!! pages) or irl events (like ONE of LoV seyuu playing as LoV without any real footage of it) and most importantly - Ultra Impact events, but sadly I don't have ALL of them of at least I can't share jp server events that I know at least one happened before global started
I'm not that good with knowing what Ultra Rumble has as something special other than emotes, some phrases or outfits and I don't exactly play it
One's Justice 2 (the one Horikoshi named chapter with Hawks and Twice after) on the other hand has literally tons of interactions from just battle things and recruit talks that depend on your trust of something level to Arcade where defeat and a win give you a mini dialogue and LoV has levels with each other
the only problem with the latter is that I either did level them all up too much already and it would be a pain to lose progress or I'm not really interested in doing already hard to make screenshots one by one FOR EVERY SINGLE LOV FIGHT twice.
But since I've never found actual archive of those things aside from occasional video of Plus Ultra attacks or voicelines without any subtitles for jp vers or again Plus Ultra attacks only for the new characters... that's either worthless or it doesn't matter as much
Still! While 1-A class fillers and stories are so easy to find - literally in the novels or 90% of SMASH!! and Team-Up Missions (and I saw one thing that suspiciosly had LoV in there but still looking through it) while anything semi-canon or at least that can be considered such with LoV is either serves it's purpose in the final arc of the manga now or is actually hard to find since wiki doesn't actually keep up with the official games
maybe it's just an excuse to show little things that Ultra Impact keeps as it's canon for events like Tomura being good at poker and it first was in his "holiday story" and then it appeared in the event much later chronologically with MLA already working with LoV
Also if I remember correctly there are multiple vids with LoV somewhat main point of focus and there are still cool (like that one part of Peace Sign with villains suddenly being there for couple of seconds)
but meh... it's still just 1 am thoughts mostly
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bored so i’m looking for shit to overanalyze. anyway you know how nikolai has the 3 diamonds thingie on his eye. and how the diamonds suit can be switched with pentacles in tarot. anyway
upright this card has nothing to do with him (tldr: teamwork, collaboration, learning, implementation. maybe that last one...? if you stretch it) but reversed it’s p much all on point imo. this part^ is more for the doa in general. they literally all have different goals, but like, theoretically, i can see why the other 4 would work on the same things bc at the end of the day it can help them in some way. but not nikolai. he always stands out to me the most in that regard, bc his personal goal is the literal opposite of what the doa’s trying to achieve
this is interesting to me, bc we are first introduced to him when he’s disguised as a government worker that’s definitely overlooked by his superiors, BUT even in the doa he was meant to do his part of the plan then die. he really is basically meant to sacrifice everything for this plan and not even live to see its fruits, and there’s no way for him to further his own personal agenda either
at the end of the day, he went against the plan and saved himself, then went against it again by saving sigma all on his own, AND he’s the one breaking fyodor and dazai out of prison (even if. um. in his own unique way). every time we see him, he works alone. the most he does is drag sigma around with him, but not really involve him in anything actively outside of simple mundane things, never actually letting him in on it
NOW! and interesting thing i thought about, is that the upright meaning of this card is actually more aligned with the plans fyodor has for the doa. his plan relies on collaboration and everyone doing their part. and i thought, “wouldn’t it be funny if fyodor had a 3 of diamonds thing going on too”. and!
this is the card his game with ace ended on! what a crazy coincidence amiright. (i WILL say tho that’s not the case in the anime)
i mentioned a tldr of what the three of pentacles is, but to go in a bit more length, it’s everyone doing their role and bringing their best to the table. everyone is at different levels of experience and skill, but if they work as a team, they will bring the best out of each other.
i think this is def what fyodor’s going for. for example, he thinks sigma’s lack of history is his strength. he sees his lack of experience as something that contributes to his plan, and he’s willing to work with that. if anything, fyodor is closer to fitting the meaning of the three of pentacles
now. the thing about playing cards is they don’t really have a reversed form, they’re always upright. when we first meet nikolai - out of disguise - he does seem to fit that idea, talking excitedly about why he joined the decay of angels. but... we also see that his words are written by The Page. no better way to implement teamwork than controlling your coworkers’ actions!
there’s this theory running around that whenever nikolai has his eye cover off, that means he’s being his true self. if you wanna go into symbolism, you could say that working with a team - the meaning of the upright three of pentacles, or, the three of diamonds, the symbol literally covering his eye - is what’s diverting his eyes from his true goal, and only when he takes it off - becomes the reversed meaning of it - can he be himself and work towards what he wants.
you could also say, to an extent, that his attachment to fyodor is the thing that’s blinding him, and that this is the reason he wants to kill him and be free. to support this idea, he quite literally removes it when talking about it
the thing holding him back from going and achieving what he wants, the thing holding him back from true free will, the one who planned for him to die, the one whose plans involved nikolai’s actions to be written in the book. his attachment to fyodor. that’s why he has to kill him to achieve freedom
i’m not sure how to transition into the next thing, but this official art
becomes even more interesting to me in the context i’ve laid out so far. this is naturally designed to look like a card, one of the royals specifically, and i doubt that’s not intentional
well. we’ve just said that fyodor (or at least, his plan with the doa, which i’d say is his connecting thing to nikolai from his personal perspective) and nikolai are the inverted meanings of the same card. but the interesting thing is how nikolai’s the one upright in this one, and fyodor “reversed”. this might just be bc nikolai’s the more recent character so he needed high quality art to show off his design for the first time, but... ig if i stretch things again (which, tbf, this entire post is one big stretch lmao, so what’s another small one), his goals are more aligned with the protagonists - free will for all of humanity, rather than peace at the price of everyone being mind controlled. also killing fyodor lol. it could simply mean that this reversed meaning is the “correct” one, in the context of the story.
anyway, i’m not sure how to end this post, but i hope you enjoyed this blurb of words and maybe took something from it to add to your own future theories or analysis of either of them/their relationship 😌
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