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hanijunk · 3 years

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Alright boys, girls, and nonbinary folks of the world. It’s 5:36am (1/30 when I first started) as I decide to give up on my attempt to continue to focus on learning statistics, avoid studying for my two upcoming midterms, and put off my two actual essays for two different classes.

Instead we’re going into a dive about ✨ KazuFuuma ✨ . Is this me telling you you gotta ship it? No of course not, you’re entitled to your own ships! You don’t really gotta care about it as a ship. But I do want people to recognize it’s THERE canonically, and how disregarding it is extremely unfair to Kazuki as a character particularly. Also, I’m working on the assumption anyone clicking this at least knows the bare bones about what KazuFuuma (ex. You know they are a ship of Kazuki/Fuuma from Dolce, you know they are childhood friends, you know who Dolce is, you know about Honeyworks, etc.) I’ll be making references to specific things, but I won’t always go into heavy detail. Might just hope you know it or take my word for what it is, and go into analyzing it. Some I’ll put direct references to find, but some I’ll trust you can find it yourself. If you somehow read this MAMMOTH and want reference to a specific thing mentioned, hmu I can help you find it!!

Also I hate tumblr formatting sm if you legit wanna read this 7 page essay but hate tumblr format lmk I'll add it as a google doc link instead too. anYWHO

Before actually getting into the meat of things lemme preface some stuff.

Again it’s like almost 6am so this will be disorganized and very train of thought (and likely long due to the fact when I fly by the seat of my pants I’m known to get unnecessarily extensive). It’s definitely gonna be in large part why it’s important to recognize as a romantic relationship foundation and what about it shapes Kazuki’s character in particular. Maybe a bit of how it’s been built up and its general focus and implications. Dunno yet. We’ll see LMAOO

I say f*ck. Not a lot, just a handful of times. This ain’t something scholarly this is for my own enjoyment so if you don’t like that might not wanna read. And it’s not like spitefully I just curse a lot if you haven’t...read my tags before lol

Again this is through the lens of a Kazuki stan. Of COURSE I’m going to have some level of bias, but if anything that bias may help more than hurt because that means I become FIXATED and think a lot about Kazuki. Which plays into establishing just how important it is that Kazufuuma’s relationship is recognized, especially in a romantic light at this point. Lmfao.

I’ll have a few more prefaces about the actual content below but to keep this from getting too long if you wanna read come below the cut owo

I have extremely limited knowledge of Japanese just taking a few classes in highschool (so like 3 yrs ago) and live in America. This means a lot of my knowledge is gathered through the english translations of the super duper incredible and lovely people in the Honeyworks fandom who provide translations (delaix and takanenene esp have provided so much for me being able to understand Dolce) and my own limited Japanese paired with Google Translate for things that remain untranslated.

This only will be drawing on information I have come in contact with and have access to and making assumptions based on that, most (if not all) of which is in the public domain. So things like the Dolce Manga Volumes released via Animate, exclusive 4komas, and Light Novels are out of my area for the most part (apart from again snippets of translations thanks to this fandom’s godlike and generous translators).

I will not be drawing on anything from the first Dolce album with the exception of Nade Nade. From a meta standpoint, I consider those songs as songs made as performance media as opposed to character explorations. Nade Nade is the exception because (1) it was released a whole year before the album and (2) you can tell it’s explicitly an exploration of Fuuma and Kazuki’s interpersonal relationship even if it’s in a slightly more performance based context than the songs that came out with the Dolce LNs. Easiest parallel I can make to show this is if you held Non-Fantasy, Yume Fanfare, and Samishigariya up against each other, you could tell the difference in intended audience and intended purpose the same way the Dolce 1st album, Nade Nade, and the songs of the LNs do respectively. Even if there is some basis to ground Kazufuuma, for the purposes of this essay I’ll be acting under the assumption the 1st album falls under the Non-Fantasy equivalent category.

THAT WAS A LOT OF PREFACING CONSIDERING LIKE 2 PPL WILL PROBABLY READ IT I just have a tendency to anytime I do anything analytical lay down ground acknowledgements for myself to work on just...cuz it makes me feel less guilty for any accidental misinformation even if I’m writing towards my future self to read lolll IM SORRY WITHOUT FURTHER TO DO HERE’S THE BRAIN DUMP

First let’s go ahead and establish why it needs to be recognized as an important relationship. Again, I’m a Kazuki stan. He’s my favorite character not only of Dolce but also of the entire Honeyworks series, and as much as I love him for reasons outside the ship, whether you like it or not Kazufuuma is an essential aspect of his character and narrative. Of course there’s the fact that him and Fuuma are childhood friends, so that’s going to in part define their characters and interactions with each other and those around them. They’re both going to be relevant to one another and important to one another’s stories to an even greater extent than the rest of the members of Dolce. But on Kazuki’s side at least, it’s an EXTREME amount. A running plotpoint in Dolce Diary is the sheer amount of dedication Kazuki has to Fuuma and how much his thoughts and decisions are influenced by Fuuma, whether it be how he feels happiest spending time with Fuuma, how he decided to get his piercing to represent he wanted to protect Fuuma, how he doesn’t want to dislike food so he can eat what Fuuma dislikes, etc. Not to mention running jokes about his borderline overprotectiveness and downright possessiveness of Fuuma, how proud he is when Fuuma gets praised, or that one 4koma that literally explicitly states he can read Fuuma’s mind when he thinks motherfucking ‘dirty thoughts’ about his childhood friend (Fuuma). I still don’t know what the fuck to make of that last bit. Genuinely. Or the fact it’s a fucking running joke. As in it’s not a one off. It’s been brought up multiple times. Kazuki what the fuck.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have character outside of Fuuma or he doesn’t interact with people other than Fuuma. He’s great friends with Sara, Girisha, and Kippei and is shown time and time again to have fun interactions with all of them, generally acting as the best support friend for every member of the group, not Fuuma alone. For instance how he helps Kippei with his self confidence issues or stays over at Sara’s to protect him from a cockroach (which he fails at lol). Nor is that to say all his interactions involving Fuuma focus solely on his devotion to Fuuma, especially in instances where the manga focuses on Dolce as a group dynamic (though even in that setting there are times where jokes about his devotion are thrown in). He’s kind, he’s stupid, he’s friendly, he’s an amazing character in his own right, and I love him for all those reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact a major part of his character and his character interactions are rooted in Fuuma, and arguably some of his most interesting, eccentric, and notable behaviors and traits revolve around Fuuma (again the mind reading for example).

Hell let’s take it one step further. If you look at the character bios of the Dolce members, you get everyone’s motives for being an idol and interests. Of them, Kazuki is the only one to have another character mentioned directly, not to mention that supporting Fuuma is explicitly stated to be his primary motive as to why he became an idol. Not even Fuuma’s sister is mentioned, though two arguments can be made for this. The first would be that Fuuma’s backstory about wanting to fulfill his dream for himself and his sister was decided later to explain Fuuma’s choice to crossdress though it can be argued it was intentionally done to leave it as a reveal at a later date, to which I would argue I don’t think this backstory was a choice in post. While Fuuma’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra exploring that backstory was released a little less than a year after Dolce was revealed, the preview to set up Fuuma’s backstory was actually the first thing released after the character bios on the Dolce Official Twitter page if you exclude a drawing of Dolce from Yamako. The second argument could be that information about his sister was intentionally withheld to set up the reveal when Fuuma’s extra released to explore it. However, going by that logic (which I do agree with), that would also mean that Fuuma’s inclusion and importance in Kazuki’s character bio also set up his dedicated extra, which I don’t think would be incorrect to assume considering what his actual extra turned out being.

Which brings me to the thing that makes it inexplicable to write off the romantic implications behind Kazufuuma: Kazuki’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra, Suki. I shipped Kazufuuma before even knowing of Suki, sure. But the fact that Suki even exists is a shock to me and drove into me the fact that Kazufuuma wasn’t just my own projection. Again, it’s not a surprise that Fuuma shapes Kazuki’s life. They’re childhood friends, of course they’re going to be important to each other. But this extra explicitly brought Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma under a direct spotlight. At first I was thinking oh, this extra was just to acknowledge the fact that Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship can have romantic implications, but the end of it the conclusion that we got was that it didn’t matter what type of “like” he felt for Fuuma. Originally, I thought it wasn’t anything more than saying there are all types of like, and it doesn’t always need to be explicitly defined, but I appreciated the fact they were aware that they were writing Kazuki in a way that conveyed romantic implications.

Then I thought about it because, again, I love Kazuki of course I’m going to think about his character extra, and realized...that’s not how these character extras have worked. There are only three character extras out as far as I know and have read: Fuuma, Kippei, and Kazuki. If we look at Fuuma and Kippei’s, each extra had a conclusion, sure, but they didn’t have a resolution. Rather, they were simply setting up explicitly what each character’s primary character arc and conflict were. Fuuma’s extra brought attention to the fact that he’s particularly a crossdressing idol by exploring the motives behind it. His choice to be a crossdressing idol is constantly under fire both by himself and the world around him. He’s not immune to those who consider his crossdressing strange, and a part of his story is both finding people who accept his decision to crossdress and to succeed for himself as a crossdressing idol. It’s an essential part of how we understand and define him as a character and it’s a central part of how he interacts with the world around him. For Kippei, it lays the severity of his insecurity under the spotlight and his journey and motives for improving himself. Again, this isn’t something isolated and resolved in the extra; his extreme insecurity and negativity is constantly affecting how he interacts with practically everyone from his fellow Dolce members to his fans despite the fact in all honesty? He’s fucking insanely talented in his own right, his own brother mentioning how smart he is and how he has amazing reflexes. For Kippei, his negativity is an essential part of how we understand and define him and central to how he interacts with the world as much as Fuuma’s decision to crossdress is to him.

Which brings us back to Kazuki, of course. In his dedicated extra, in the chapter that’s supposed to explore and establish and bring attention to an essential part of his character, the aspect of himself under investigation is how he feels about Fuuma. It’s not just how he behaves around Fuuma, it’s explicitly an exploration of his feelings, on top of the fact it’s explicitly an exploration about whether or not he likes Fuuma r o m a n t i c a l l y. Literally the conflict is spurred on by someone outright asking “Do you like him?” and having to clarify “I mean romantically.” What they decided to focus on for Kazuki’s character and emphasize and establish is that Kazuki’s like towards Fuuma toes the line between friendship and romance. His ambiguous feelings towards Fuuma (if we leave them inconclusive as Suki did) are just like Fuuma’s crossdressing and Kippei’s insecurity in the sense the weight of whatever those feelings may be are seen in how he interacts with the world around him and influences his behaviors. It would be another story if they introduced the potential and shut it down all within the extra, because then his central conflict would to me be less directly open to romantic potential and more simply about how his arc was meant to explore the dynamic of the behavior of an extremely dedicated best friend. The fact that he may be romantically attracted to Fuuma or may be only platonically dedicated to Fuuma is instead something that looms over Kazuki in the same way Fuuma’s decision to crossdress constantly looms over him. It’s what Dolce wanted to point to and say this is Kazuki’s central character conflict and central arc: exploring what type of feelings he has towards Fuuma.

Sure, it can be argued that there’s only three Dolce Diary character extras, there’s not enough to be sure about that being the purpose of the extras unless we get the other two’s extras. First, at this point I honestly don’t know if or when they’re going to release an extra revolving around Sara and Girisha just because not only has it been over a year and a half since the latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Kazuki’s) was released despite the gap between the first and latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Fuuma’s and Kazuki’s) were within a year of release but also because the Dolce 4komas and comics they’ve been posting to Twitter have decreased (last one being over half a year ago) potentially due to them deciding to focus on releasing Dolce manga content through the purchasable volumes instead. (This is not particularly related to the Kazufuuma argument, just wanted to put out there my two cents on what Sara and Girisha’s extra/focal arc would be. Based on a large part of the Dolce Diary in conjuncture with Can’t an Idol Fall in Love, I’d argue Sara’s would be his journey to regain his passion for performing, and if it’s not that I’d say it’d be coming out of his self-imposed isolation and opening up to people again. As for Girisha, I have less of a concrete idea but I’m assuming it’d be something pertaining to how people often misconceive him whether it be in tandem with his determination, his optimism and sociability, or his stupidity/ability to ignore those misconceptions and work past them. But Girisha is treated like the comedic relief 90% of the time so I’m not entirely sure, but his primary conflict is definitely rooted in misconceptions of him being his roadblock imo. #MoreGirishaContentPlz) That being said, I personally feel like the three are already enough evidence, especially considering it would be honestly even more cruel for Kazuki’s character-centric extra to be focusing on something that wasn’t essential to his character and character arc, anyway. And though it’s not explicitly stated that these chapters are extras exploring a central character, you can kind of tell based on how they are (to my knowledge) the only Dolce Diary updates with cover/title cards each which include their focal character front and center. So working off that fact, the Kazuki-centric chapter established that a pillar to his narrative was his feelings towards Fuuma and that those feelings are still open to romantic potential.

But if you follow me, this is why up until Can’t an Idol Fall in Love With Another Idol’s release, I was terrified of them writing that off. I would have been ok if it was just an arc that was given attention then continued to actively work in the background, as all the character arcs have been over all of Dolce’s content. The fact that they might be giving Fuuma a love interest and giving Fuuma a love arc while Kazuki’s feelings were still up in the air and were still the primary highlighted narrative for him would have been fucking scuffed. To me, it would be like… why would they make him so Fuuma-centric to the point that even his dedicated chapter was not just focused on Fuuma but focused on the ambiguity and potential of him having romantic feelings for Fuuma, yet reduce him to being Fuuma's designated right-hand man. Don’t get me wrong, friendships are just as important as romantic relationships. But again, rather than conclude Kazuki’s answer in Suki to be that his feelings were of friendship, they left it open ended and allow audience members to be actively aware that Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma still had potential to be romantically coded. It would just be so weird to quickly close off that narrative by giving Fuuma a love interest as opposed to letting Kazuki conclude it himself. It would be fucking beyond frustrating for me, at least Eventually, I kept trying to drive my hopes that they would explore Kazuki’s narrative at all down to the ground because it was a Fuuma-centric novel; maybe if anything they’d explore those feelings in his own novel after the fact. But then they kept having little drops here and there of Kazuki being even the slightest bit relevant and I’d go back to questioning “Are??? They??? Is this on purpose??? Do they know what they’re doing or are they just doing this because Kazuki’s just so important to Fuuma as his best friend that he’s there as his right-hand I genuinely can’t tell???” And um. Welp.

Safe to say Can’t An Idol Fall in Love sold me on the fact that they know what they’re doing LOL. And to anyone who thinks that Kazuki’s feelings can still be read as ambiguous in CAIFILWAI as opposed to explicitly romantic - whether it be due to a fear they may pull the “I like him as a friend” card or due to the disbelief that they have an explicit mlm main character in the Honeyworks series - I’d like to cover any bases that may make you think this way. If you think it’s just Kazuki acting like a protective friend, why do you think he calls Yui a rival? If you’ve only seen the MV and think it’s ambiguous or can be taken as the "likfe" for friend, then does that mean you think Yui’s feelings toward Fuuma are also ambiguous or as a friend? With the way Yui responds, she is trying to rival Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma. She and Kazuki recognize whatever feeling it is that they hold towards Fuuma, both of their feelings are the same type. I don’t think most people would argue that Yui’s confession about Fuuma was one of pure respect and friendship. Plus, if anything I’d argue of the three characters in the MV, Fuuma is the one whose feelings are left the most ambiguous despite him being the central character. It’s heavily implied that he may be forming feelings for Yui, but nowhere is it established either in the song or in the MV, especially if you compare it to Kazuki and Yui’s declarations or if you compare it to Sara’s feelings for Uru in Can’t An Idol Fall in Love. Fuuma’s romantic narrative here is trying to figure out how he feels for Yui, while for Kazuki and Yui they’ve established a rivalry because they both have mutually established they like Fuuma romantically.

If the MV isn’t enough for you and Suki isn’t enough for you for...some reason…??? You can check out the snippets of the light novel which the wonderful takanenene translated: one which revisits the conflict set up in Suki and one that covers the confession scene in the MV in more detail. If the fact that the conflict set up in Suki (aka the lurking feeling of not knowing if all he felt for Fuuma was only platonic or more than platonic) was specifically reestablished in the LN for anyone who didn’t keep up with Dolce Diary didn’t tip you off that it was something important, his behavior in the confession scene as depicted by the LN definitely should have. He’s possessive about his spot by Fuuma’s side. He doesn’t want that spot to be taken by anyone else. Even if he knows that they can help Fuuma, he wants it to be him. And this line: “Kazuki then trails off his words, quietly saying ‘That’s why…’ and then gave Yui a slightly painful smile, his cheeks turning red,” before he declares Yui a rival and states he likes Fuuma. If you can tell me you read that line and are still on the fence about Kazuki’s “like” towards Fuuma being romantic, please message me and I will see how I can get through to you. Like it wasn’t even just a romantically coded confession. It’s just a romantic confession. That “like” is romantic. And I’m so proud that he’s not only come to understand for himself how he feels, but that he’s confident enough to ask the person he sees as a romantic rival to speak in private and not only clarify her feelings for Fuuma but before she can even do that firmly establishes that he loves Fuuma with conviction. Kazuki my boy I’m so proud of you. *sniffs*

And that’s it for establishing Kazufuuma as at least canonically one-sidedly canon and why there’s not only no reason to deny it but also why denying it is a fucking disrespectful move towards Kazuki. He’s a character, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact you shouldn’t write off his struggle to come to be convicted enough to say it out loud. This has been something weighing on him at least a year, if not more (all I know is it started when both he and Fuuma were in some year in middle school). And as a character in a piece of media, I’ve been saying this the entire time, but brushing it off as non-romantic is literally chucking a fucking pillar of his character’s story into the gutter. And to those who may be saying Kazuki’s confession came out of nowhere and is pandering reread this entire fucking essay again I dare you to do it and tell me to my face it’s pandering. Again. Writing off the buildup as pandering is disrespectful to him, disrespectful to his character and narrative, and disrespectful to the wonderful people who have been creating Dolce so diligently and have crafted this narrative for us. Saying his “supposed feelings” and “ambiguous confession” is pandering is like saying Fuuma’s crossdressing is pandering which. If you say either of those I will find you and I will shank you in the fucking gut. Even if you’re not fully into Dolce, recognize these characters are actually very well developed and executed amazingly, as per every Honeyworks character that has come to exist. I don’t blame you if you weren’t aware of the weight of Kazufuuma, but now that you read this I hope you are. That’s mainly what I needed to get out there, but as follows will be me more exploring how Kazufuuma has been built up and generally waving my hand off at where it may be going. If you want you can dip, thanks for reading up to here because I know I repeated a lot because it’s just. So important to drill into your head and has been something I’ve been hung up about constantly. LOL

As for where exactly they’re taking it from this point on, I honestly don’t know. In all honesty, I didn’t even expect them to take it the direction they did. But honestly, I think the direction they went with it is really interesting and better than I could have imagined, in my opinion at least. Honeyworks never ceases to amaze me with their storytelling and narrative choices, and I don’t think there’s any that stand out to me as being severely questionable that they haven’t reapproached at some point down the line. And, again, I think they’re treating this with a lot of care and deserved respect. So I’m just gonna be gushing about how smart they set it up and how smart they’ve been executing it and maybe my own hopes on the direction it could go.

Whether they make Kazufuuma reciprocated I have no real clue or bearings, but to me my gut reaction is they will. Of course, I’m biased, but again if you trace things all the way back to 2018 and step through Dolce’s content and growth from there, I’d say even if they didn’t know if they could execute it like this and see it to fruition, I’d argue that Kazufuuma has been at least heavily implied since the beginning as a relationship they wanted to explore from both sides of the relationship. Obviously I brought up Kazuki’s character bio already, but if you look at the *goes to count* 5th Dolce Diary update already has a joke jabbing at the fact that Kazuki is technically Fuuma’s type (and the way Kippei and Kazuki excitedly react is so cute). The fifth update. And as stated before there are tons of Kazufuuma moments in Dolce Diary, whether it’s played for comedic effect or played straight (and this is post Suki but oh my god I’ve said it before I’ll say it again get yourself someone who looks at you the way Kazuki looks at Fuuma oh my jesus). But song-wise, I mentioned the one Dolce album song I would bring up is Nade Nade and this is where it comes!

Not only is Nade Nade specifically focused on Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship as opposed to the whole of Dolce despite being the first song, it included the setup/preview of the Fuuma-centric extra prior to the full release of the Fuuma-centric extra itself and was released early as fuck. Literally between the 6th and 7th update to Dolce Diary. Sure, it could be to isolate them as a duo for marketing purposes (they’re very often the two promoted idols together if the whole of the group aren’t included), but the way it’s established as a perspective song as opposed to a general idol duet is what fascinates me. Anyone who didn’t know about Dolce prior and only followed Honeyworks for music would be first introduced to these characters through this song alone, and maybe this is where my Kazufuuma bias comes from but I was one of those people LOL. I thought it was just a cute one-off relationship that they had set up for the purpose of a song and that it was an implied friends-to-lovers story that would never get a conclusion. Also I mistakenly thought Fuuma was a girl oop-. In the full context of Dolce, this song in part helped establish Fuuma and Kazuki more solidly as a unique duo out of all of Dolce, but it also specifically explored through Fuuma’s eyes just how much Fuuma recognizes and appreciates the unwavering support Kazuki gives him to follow his dreams as he wishes. For Fuuma, he loves Kazuki too, though whether it holds any romantic potential in the same way Kazuki loves him has never been explored to nearly the same extent. But Fuuma appreciates how Kazuki’s remained by his side and does everything he can to support him, so Nade Nade explores how his way of expressing his love and thankfulness to Kazuki is by never saying that he needs Kazuki by his side. He’s glad Kazuki’s always been there for him, and his reciprocation takes on the form of being ready to unwaveringly support Kazuki and not ask for more than he already has, even if it meant Kazuki would be leaving his side, despite the fact that he really does wish they could remain together forever just as Kazuki does. The one point he lets himself say something vaguely close to always wanting to stay together, he gets a surprised expression out of Kazuki and says an ambiguous “suki dayo.” Of course, this it much less romantically coded than what we get from Kazuki in Suki and CAIFILWAI, but there is an interesting emphasis put on it nonetheless. Keep in mind, this is all established through the song, which released long before not only Fuuma’s character-centric extra released but also Kazuki’s character-centric extra released, so there is at least a substantial setup for Fuuma’s feelings towards Kazuki’s being strong as well and possibly grow to be reciprocated one day.

I think for me the most fascinating part about Nade Nade is how they tied it back around to Can’t An Idol Fall In Love with Another Idol. Again, without remembering Nade Nade, I still thought CAIFILWAI was brilliantly explored and executed, even if some people would have preferred no love triangle. But honestly, revisiting Nade Nade makes me trust even more the direction they’re taking with this. Whether or not they make Kazufuuma canon mutually (which. Even if they for some inexplicable reason didn’t I’m going down with this ship.), I’m sure they’re putting a lot of thought into the story, because the last bit of Nade Nade directly parallels the misunderstanding that arose from Fuuma mishearing the Kazuki and Yui. Fuuma is resolved to support Kazuki in any area he’s given the chance, and that explicitly includes if Kazuki had some girl he liked, which is what he assumes is going on. The fact that they tied this back around in the form of a misunderstanding was really really smart and Honeyworks is always so good at parallels and references back to their older songs, but for some reason I didn’t expect this. I don’t know how to say why, but the fact that the song that started it all, kicked off both Dolce and Kazufuuma, was directly referenced both visually in the MV with a cameo at the start and narratively despite the central dynamic being predominantly explored in this story in particular was that of Fuuma and another potential love interest and involves said potential love interest for some reason makes me think that (sorry Yui) this is all planned out for Kazufuuma in the grand scheme of things. That being said, I don’t know if me thinking it was planned all along is just me with shipper goggles, but the idea it’s come full circle nearly 3 years later is not shipper goggles and a very very well done parallel in my opinion, whether this trajectory was their plan for Kazufuuma from the beginning or not. Just wanted to gush about that some more.

There’s more I could go into especially if I went into specific details about interactions or specific implications established in Honeyworks' Dolce content about different characters that would be fascinating to explore in relation to and under the lens of Kazufuuma, but I think this is uh...plenty long enough. Plus, I doubt you'll stop seeing Kazufuuma posts from me so those ideas will probably just be miniposts or somethin.

Back to the overarching point of this segment, idk what they’ll do with this story in the end, but do I think Kazufuuma will canon? I’m used to looking at ships that aren’t explicitly apparent with a sliver of skepticism, but all things considered (as I stated before) yeah. I don’t see reason why they wouldn’t now that they’ve explicitly identified there is a romantic dimension to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like to me, the setup isn’t something that would be written off as unrequited? And this doesn’t have to play into why I don’t think it will canon, my personal opinion on the Fuuyui relationship (again albeit through the lens of a hard Kazufuuma shipper lmao) has it’s own merits and is really cute, I find it cute in the way I found Koyuhina cute. I personally never really shipped Koyuhina, and especially since they slipped Kotarou into Ima Suki Ni Naru I was more curious about who this kid was and how he played into things I didn’t really see Koyuhina as something that would come to fruition. Similarly, there’s more importance in the overall sense on Kazuki than there is Yui (considering he’s one of the 5 original and focal members of this generation of idols, this would be natural), as well as the fact there’s just way more foundation and exploration in Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship than there is Fuuma and Yui. As for how much of a balance there is inside the LN itself, the fact that they seem to have spent a substantial amount relaying the foundation of Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship and re-exploring it (at least in Kazuki’s perspective) at all on top of how much content there is covering their relationship prior to the LN ever since Dolce’s origin just feels like that relationship holds more weight. Pretty much Kazufuuma feels more established as a priority in general. The way I personally hope Fuuyui plays out is whether they wind up holding mutual feelings or not or whether Fuuma doesn’t feel that way towards Yui is they get a relationship akin to Kotarou and Arisa. Albeit, Kotarou and Arisa never viewed each other in a romantic light, but they had mutual respect and solidarity. That’s the type of friendship I hope comes out of Fuyui. And considering there hasn’t been a break-up in any Honeyworks’ canon relationships (nor do I expect there to be… they’re all perfect for each other LMAO) it would actually be interesting if Fuuyui get together but don’t endgame and Kazufuuma is established as the inseparable endgame after some realization or another, though I don’t expect them to go that route nor do I know if that’d be the best way to go about it anyway. Also final point, Honeyworks seems to have a thing for childhood friends trope anyway soooooo owo All in all, don’t know where they’re taking it, just excited to see where it goes.

TL;DR of this *counts* 7 page essay, stan Kazufuuma. Not gonna proof this. Maybe I’ll edit and repost but yall are getting a confusing clusterfuck of ramblings over 2-3 hr periods of me writing across 3 different days at around 5am each day. Uh. If you got this far like and subscribe and-- jk plz reply to this mammoth anywhere you see fit or tell me if you have stuffs to add or counter or whatnot I like hearing people talk about Kazufuuma ;w; I am Kazuki and Kazufuuma brainrot can you tell after reading this? No? Lemme just remind you I’m K--

#honeyworks #dolce #kazufuuma #kazuki haiga #fuuma shirayuki #long post #analysis #character analysis #kinda?#nobody cares trash #also keep in mind this is PURELY for self satisfaction LMFAO read it if u wanna dont if u dont idgaf either way #anyway kazufuuma canon fight me #or have intellectual conversation with me #if you want it on a google doc bc it's easier to read hmu #if you can't tell i think about kazufuuma too much #how much of this is repetitive? probably a lot...

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reyeslonestar · 3 years

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Question what are some things you wanna see in season 3 of lone star? Character development, plots, anything

I want to see Tonya Kong write every episode. that's all. thanks for asking!

sadfkja I joke, I do have other ideas, but that is definitely high on my wish list! i'm gonna go through by character and talk about what I'd like to see for them, so this is gonna get quite long whoops...

the main thing that I'd like to see overall, though, would be evidence of an overarching season plan or arc - it doesnt necessarily have to be a plot that stretches through all the episodes or anything major, but I'd love them to have plotted out the season before they start. from watching this season and then reading interviews after the finale, they dont appear to plan many things from the start and end up throwing in ideas as they go along. if they plan it from the start they can foresee how theyre going to affect character development more, and they can have a bit more balance in the types of episodes they have, so that the season is less insane and more naturally ebb-and-flow with a few light episodes to break up the drama.

okay, onto the characters! just going to do this in billing order for simplicity's sake. customary reminder that these are just my own opinions and thoughts, and this is more of a wish list than a realistic expectation.

if you want to search for a specific character, ctrl F for one of these terms including the dash at the start:

-Owen

-Tommy

-TK

-Grace

-Judd

-Marjan

-Paul

-Carlos

-Mateo

-Nancy

press “j” to skip the whole post.

-Owen

okay so I'd love to see them actually develop his character. Owen has been given a lot of backstory with lots to play with development-wise, but to me it feels like the show never goes anywhere with it. he's got a lot going on what with 9/11, feeling responsible for the fates of his fellow firefighters, the codependence of his relationships etc. I'd like to see him go to therapy and see him grow some self awareness and seek to manage himself better, rather than all his screentime devoted to him being a hero when other characters have the situation handled. it would really show him as a good leader if he drew on the skills that his team has and refer to them for advice/ideas. realistically he is the main character, so I'd like them to develop him like one.

also, I kind of love the chief role for him? I think it would suit him really well. but it would drag him away from the 126 and split up the dynamics too much so it would make for bad tv and I wouldnt actually want to see that. good for his character though.

-Tommy

I love Tommy :) just wanted to say that.

so obviously Tommy's got a lot of grief to handle next season, and I don't want them to shy away from that. I want it acknowledged and processed. (I'd also like a little bit of seeing the twins' grief too, because they're also suffering a massive loss). maybe something with Judd helping Tommy learn to manage her grief with his own experience of losing the original 126, encourage her to go to therapy, plus Tommy, Grace and Judd all feeling the loss of Charles together. after all, Grace and Judd were his friends and they will be grieving too.

I'd also kind of like to see Tommy have something outside being a working mother. obviously we're going to need to deal with that a lot especially now that Charles is gone, but I feel like she's been assigned the Character TraitTM of being the working mum and I'd like to see them give her a hobby or something. idk. and give her a night off with Grace or something. give her something just for her.

-TK

okay so I think theres a fair likelihood that theyre going to return to looking at TK's addiction next season which im not averse to. I think him struggling with his sobriety would be worthwhile to see for his character and to show that its not a straightforward path, plus it makes sense with all the insane stuff they've thrown at them in s2. however, Id like to see it in the context of his friends and family rallying around to help and support him and show him that he's got people to rely on, and that he's allowed to rely on them, plus the support of his AA meetings and therapy. I also need them to lay the groundwork for him struggling, so putting in signs of him deteriorating so the situation makes sense. this storyline doesn't need surprises to be interesting or good, and frankly it shouldn't have any.

as for him and Carlos, I definitely want to see them househunting! I'd like to see the combination of househunting/Carlos with Tommy's kids/Grace and Judd having their baby have an impact on their perspectives regarding their future and spark that conversation (like, looking at houses with more rooms and thinking about kids, future, marriage etc). I think that maybe one of them, probably TK, or maybe both of them those boys have way too many parent issues having anxieties about being a dad could be an interesting way to add tension without being too drastic, and then that can be resolved in a way that reassures them of their relationship and reaffirms their strength as a couple. the talk about the future would also lay the groundwork towards a proposal at the end of s3.

-Grace

grace :) my love :)

I could watch episode after episode of Grace kicking ass and saving people over the phone. I'd love to see an episode set there? like, some kind of story within the call centre with all the handlers having to resolve that between them, but also tie in the first responders, so we see the fire team, the paramedics and Carlos all working but we only see the bits that Grace and the other call handlers hear, if that makes sense? also an actual Grace/Carlos team up where they are coming in from the different angles with different amounts of evidence and figuring out the best way to solve something together. plus I'd like to see her maybe get some recognition for being awesome at her job, maybe another handler coming to her for advice on how to solve something.

of course we've got the baby Ryder on the way, and I want that to go comfortably and smoothly for her. she deserves that. lots of wholesome excitement for her and Judd from the whole extended firefam, baby shower, gifts, the full works. pamper grace please.

-Judd

judd4captain2k22. please.

yeah I know its not gonna happen, but I loved judd stepping in as captain this season and I'd love to see that continued with him taking more leadership, and Owen deferring to him for advice/council in a work environment rather than personal life. maybe set up a long term idea about judd being a captain someday.

he's gonna be a dad :') so what are his anxieties about that? why were they putting it off before? was it related to his PTSD? he's got lots of people relying on him now, how does that make him feel? what if his kid loses him? id like to see him still using therapy as a tool to help himself deal with everything. lots of meaty questions to dig into there :D

-Marjan

I'd quite like to see more of her balancing her daredevil nature with the impact of that and realising how much danger she puts herself in sometimes. or on the flip side, maybe the team is dealing with a really dangerous situation and they utilise her fearlessness to save people. her relationship with social media could also come back? but bring in the development they gave her this season, and her Firefox presence is more serious, less flippant?

I think that theres now a space for her to explore her sexuality/romantic experience now that she hasn't got her engagement with Salim as a kind of failsafe. maybe she wants to put herself out there and date, but thats really daunting as shes never really had to do that before? personally I think this could tie in really well with a self discovery/exploration regarding her sexual orientation, but I doubt they’d go there with her, so thats just my headcanon.

-Paul

I want them to draw on Paul’s observational skills and perceptiveness more, especially on calls and in emergencies. I remember someone (sorry I cant remember who) pointed out that he would have been a great character to centre the arsonist plot around in terms of noticing the clues etc, so id love a storyline that revolves around him dealing with an emergency like that. I also really want a Carlos and Paul friendship so maybe them collaborating on a call to solve something, that’d be cool.

can we give Paul a girlfriend please. if im not complely insane, there was a reference to someone in like,, 2x04?? someone who put mayo in his sandwich? idk I havent checked (edit: it was aioli in his banh mi! thank you @meneatyoghurt), but if there is someone can we show him having a fun and loving relationship please. I dont need there to be any drama. just them having fun on a date or something.

-Carlos

so I know that some people are keen to see him in his police role more but I really don't need much of that. on calls with the 126 I'd like to see him be the officer in charge more, but I don't need police-exclusive storylines. I've talked about it here if you want to know why.

the only area that I'd like to see would be in the direction of reform/addressing the flaws of the system, and I think they can do that on a personal level for him, because he and Mitchell need a chat. if they'd gone with her decision in 2x08, he, Mitchell and the bank robber would all be dead, and I think thats gotta have some impact. also the fact that he was suspended for trying to preserve life. theres a lot they could work with there and maybe have him thinking about how he can do good and how he can effectively protect and serve. not to mention, the opportunity that would provide in terms of addressing his relationship with his dad and how he maybe sought approval by pursuing a police career?

also I’d like him to learn that he doesnt need to accept blame/preemptively put blame on himself and that he doesnt need to apologise when someone else hurt him. kind of want to send him to therapy. kind of want to send all the characters to therapy. but yeah, him learning that he can accept apologies and understand that he doesnt have to make people feel better for hurting him. hes allowed to be hurt and feel pained about it. and that can tie into his relationships with Mitchell, with TK and with his parents.

I think I mentioned most of the tarlos stuff in TK’s section, but I wouldn't mind at least one instance for them where we see it all from his perspective instead of TK’s.

finally ive mentioned above how i’d like a team up with Paul on a scene and both of them figuring it out together. I'd also like them having a friendship outside work, just the two of them, bonding over books and being relatively sane people compared to the rest of their friends.

-Mateo

Mateo is so sweet. I loved 2x14 and the recognition he got, more of that please! also theres still so much I want to know - one of the more consistent things they set up for him in s2 was his faith, so I want to know more about that. what's his relationship with religion and God? he's pretty isolated from his family so how does he feel about that? is his religion something that helps him feel connected to them? maybe the church helped him find a community when he first came to the states, before he got settled with the 126, and he finds reassurance in faith that God is looking after his family while he cant be there? I think maybe there's scope for a conversation between Marjan and Mateo about that, about that distance and caring for their families through faith and prayer.

also, if he's still with the horrible firehouse, I'd like to see the other firefighters being won round by his resilience and stepping up to look out for him, and someone backing him up against the captain. Mateo is used as the butt of the joke most of the time, but I'd also like to see a bit more acknowledgement of things like losing his house and the bullying hes going to get more of from this firehouse.

-Nancy

I think that her speech to Tommy in 2x14 was really telling, and I'd love to see them expand on that a bit more. first on the loss and fear of losing her friends and coworkers, but then also on her hopes and aspirations - she said she wants to be a paramedic captain so lets see her working to take her exams and qualifications, and showing initiative on scenes etc.

id like to see more of her being integrated into the 126 group. she and marjan turned up to the hangout together, so lets develop that relationship more. I would love it to be romantic but I'd also love to see that as a friendship. but also her forming bonds with others in the group as well as more of her and TK being a chaos duo. I love that they stole the ambulance, more of that insanity please!

I think thats it? if youre still reading, youre insane and I appreciate you a lot! honestly im open to all sorts of things in s3, this isnt a prediction or anything, its just stuff I think would be interesting based on where the characters are now.

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mimiwrites2000 · 3 years

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3,5, 18, 20 and 23 for the ask game uwu♡

omg thank you so much for the ask!!

alright let’s get started! this answer is so long omg

Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

OH MY GOD LFJALFJA

Ok I basically love to explain these tiny details in my stories but I never do coz that would be lame, I think

Ok so, Legends is filled with symbolisms and a ton shit of foreshadowing, and I can’t really talk about them coozzz I don’t wanna spoil anything. But basically, every single line of every conversation has a future consequence, AND OH GOD I JUST FEEL LIKE THE SMARTEST BITCH IN THIS TOWN LMAO OK OK I’LL STOP

Alright sooo most of the metaphors I use are from real life experiences\emotions. I have notebooks where I write these emotions that happens for short moments, (coz I can’t risk forgetting about them)

One of them, is a sentence from Legends, chapter 13

Armin licked his lips, and he tasted salt, as if he kissed the ocean.

I wrote this line in 2019, before I even started writing Legends. I was on vacation, and just chilling by the beach, I licked my lips, and I felt like I kissed the ocean, so, with a sketch book in hand, I wrote that line, a year later or so, I used that line in Legends

Here’s the line btw, I know I have bad handwriting plz don’t judge

And also I tried to sketch Armin lmao

Anyway yeah, every emotion, is coming from a place within me, and I think that’s the reason why Legends means so much to me

here’s something else that I wrote in the same day in that sketch book:

The feeling on tiny waves bumping softly up against my feet. The air ruffling my clothes. The sea is trying to put me to sleep.

I’m so dramatic I know

What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would

An Aruani musician AU, I have a scene of Annie, singing on stage, for the first time, singing a love song, as Armin watches in the crowd.

It’s a long ass musician AU that I wrote a rough outline for it, but to be honest I don’t think I’ll ever get around to write it, even though I REALLY want to write this scene gkhajghd

What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Both Armin and Annie, and that is the reason I’ve been only writing them for over a year now.

I identify with Annie way too much, much more than I do with Armin.

I guess yall can kinda guess what kinda person I am LMAO

Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

YES!

In Legends, Mr. Leonhart personality is supposed to be the complete opposite.

In the story, he doesn’t accept Annie’s feelings for Armin, and he’s so adamant that her happiness is in spending the rest of her life with him. (but, hey, don’t hate him, he finally reunited with his daughter after 9 years, and he feels so guilty, he wants to kind of force redeem himself, he’s too scared of losing her again.)

But, in my original draft, he was very accepting of Armin, and I even had a scene in my mind (that is still yet to come in the story) where he walks on them making out in the kitchen, and he either tells his worst dad joke or just walks right out with no comment, and then teasing them the next morning.

In my current version of the story… things don’t go like that.

But here’s the reason behind all this drastic change in character.

A very important plot was added last minute to the story.

The whole Annie losing her memory because of Eren and her father’s plan was NOT supposed to be in the story.

I was already 30k words in when I first published the first chapter, and my plan was to post the chapters as is, without any editing, buttt then, after posting a few chapters, I came up with the idea of Eren altering Annie’s memories… and, well, based on that, Mr. Leonhart character had to be completely changed.

And if you’ve been keeping up with Legends, you would notice that I used to post almost every week for the first month and a half or so, then every three weeks, and now, every few months, and it’s because of this plot change, I basically had to rewrite the story all over again, which is probably the best decision I’ve made in my life, but that’s a whole other topic and this answer is already getting too long.

What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Oh… hmmm… well, probably Legends, other than that, there’s this new au that I’m working, I’m hoping I could share it soon uwu

Oh God it was so fun to ramble gfjakjda thank you so much for the ask and your efforts in making my tumblr less dead hahahha

I really, really appreciate

Thank you !!

#sorry for answering late!#uwu #writing #armin arlert #Aruani #fanfics

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fordarkisthesuede · 3 years

Text

The Tolls of Justice: the Tarot, Name Meanings, and More!

Gentlepeople…

BEHOLD!

All the tarot-aligned hints! All the future foretellings! All the silly references! :) Everything you might have overlooked is here for you easy-to-read pleasure!

Naturally, there be spoilers a-plenty ahead for Batman the TellTale Series: The Tolls of Justice, so if you haven't read it (or maybe you're thinking about reading it, or this is your first time hearing about it), I'd advise waiting until you're done with each chapter to read through the sections. You can either click the link and be redirected to Ao3, or look through my tumblr tag #ttoj!

*One forwarding note: the tarot references build slowly in this story, and I only use the traditional Major & Minor Arcana. You'll see a lot of jokes and name-type references before we get to the tarot. I also simplified the numerics, but they're often displayed as roman numerals on cards, hint hint.

Prologue

gang member "Four Ears" - a very very off-the-collar reference to the line "Listen up, four-ears!" from J-Men Forever; in context, it was an off-shoot of the insult "four-eyes" but for music taste, also implying the person's taste was "square".

gang member "Muddy Nye" - his name can be boiled down to "muddy river". It works as an allusion to the messy, unclear case ahead of Bruce and the Batfam, but also as a hint to Clayface, who acted as Muddy in his first sighting of the story.

"Sunset" - a reference to everyone's favorite vampire series to pick on, the Twilight series; back when it was at the height of it's popularity, some drug dealers sold heroin marketed towards the crowd based off it's terrible and unfortunately iconic(?) line from Edward Cullen, "You're my own personal brand of heroin"…hence why the drug of choice BM is shipping here is heroin. Essentially, this plot setup is one big joke.

"FIGS" - a reference to POP! vinyls, hence the capitalized name and spiky word balloon on the packages.

"Gray Ghost [memorabilia]" - one of my (and everyone else's) favorite BtAS episodes, which proves definitively that Bruce Wayne | Batman is not only a Huge Nerd™, but also a massive collector of normal fandom things. (Do you think he troughs through blogs and fanwikis…? What am I saying, of course he does. He edits them.)

gang members "Jack Whendleham and Kirby Noltz" - nod to Jack Kirby, comic artist extraordinaire!

Ch.1: A Different Ceiling

[chapter title] - John does not wake up in Arkham at the start of the story, hence waking up to a different ceiling. He also hits different limitations on what he can do, so it's also a different kind of "ceiling". (Like the term "the glass ceiling", the invisible barrier a demographic hits in a hierarchy.)

St. Dymphna New Life Home - named after Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness. There's no "'s" at the end because I saw other clinics named after Saints didn't use the possessive form when referencing them.

The Lucky Hotel - an oxymoron, really; the unluckiest place to get stuck at with it's seedy history, but also the place where John "gets lucky"…in a couple of different ways!

Stitched Up Alterations - a heavy nod to the wonderful batjokesy line from S2, "We're two threads in the same stitch". It's pretty deeply ingrained in fanon (and technically canon, if you go with The Dark Knight) that Joker makes his own clothes, hence Batman rarely finding him through his tailor. Since John's thrifty and clearly made his original Joker outfit(s), I piggybacked off it as a legit skill to give him. I mean, come on, the guy is always so stylish! And you're really going to look at me and say he didn't alter his thrifted shirts and vests to fit his sleek frame? Puh-leeease.

13th Street - 13 is a traditionally unlucky number in western culture; hence the "Lucky Hotel" there having a bloody history, along with a failed, closed casino nearby.

Corazón gang - okay, I admit…I'm still a weeb at heart. It's a One Piece reference. Corazon was one of the few post-timeskip new characters I really liked; his name is Spanish for "heart", and he sported a heart motif. Like the gang in this story, he also died before the start of the main storyline.

Ch. 2: Face Values

[chapter title] - A reference to the phrase "not taking things at face value", which is very evident in this story. Also doubles as a rather loose reference to the upcoming Tarot cards.

Sebastian Overfield - The name Sebastian means "from Sebaste", as is derived from the Greek word sebastos ("venerable", someone who has a lot of respect). Overfield of course is "over" and "field", implying the family is on a high hill overlooking/overseeing/maintaining a certain field. As Seb is a reverend, this name is well-fit for him.

orange rose [gift from John] - means "passion" in the language of flowers, and can allude to fascination; this can be taken platonically or romantically…but it's definitely romantic when it's coming from John.

blue iris [gift from John] - means "faith and hope" in the language of flowers, and sometimes are associated with royalty; an allusion to Batman/Bruce's overall symbolism in the eyes of Gotham…and John.

Chandis [ship, circa Prologue] - A reference to Chandi | Chandika, the Hindu deity; the short version of their story is that they are a demon slayer, known to be angry and passionate, wield multiple weapons, and ride a lion. And who was on the ship? Hmm…

Ch. 3: Ink Trails

[chapter title] - A reference to the Alterations' claim slip John finds, which ends up leading back to the Court of Owls. It doubles as a reference to the mask tattoo/clue on Ian 'Nito'.

Faith Ackart - "Ackart" is a variant of "ackhart", derived from "ekkehard", which we can say roughly means "brave/hardy". The name "faith" and "hardy" together is another very subtle clue for the audience towards the villains' motives. (Well, I say that, but it was really more of a joke-clue for me to giggle at. And it makes a good reporter name!)

Lou Monger - the guy's a fish monger…with the last name Monger. It's-a joke! ;D

Ian 'Nito' Coggs - first mentioned without his real last name, but "Ian Coggs, Nito", is a pun on the word "incognito"…which is what Clayface is here.

FriendBook/Chirp/bloggr/uBox - takes on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube respectively. (This started back in my 'Season 3' story, At the Brink of Midnight, though I've since learned that bloggr was a real thing. :T) The 'uBox' is meant to be a play on 'jumping box'/'the box' as other terms for TV, like 'the tube'.

"whole tomato of pins" - the supposed history of tomato-shaped pincushions is that tomatoes placed on mantels repelled evil spirits and guaranteed prosperity, but I really wanted to just allude to the common pin-cushion shape. (My mom once had a whole little basket of strawberry shaped pin-cushions. I remember "borrowing" them a lot as a kid to play with. And then "losing" them.)

"sock and buskin masks" - these are a reference to the "comedic sock" and "tragic buskin (i.e. boot)" of the Greek comedy-tragedy theatre masks. I figured something like them would be a good logo for the "false faces", as BM is obsessed with masks. It also doubles as a natural callback to the "your relationship with x has changed" feature of TT games.

Ch. 4: Suite of Cups

[chapter title] - the first chapter to be a reference to the Tarot, in specific the Minor Arcana of Cups; rather than specifying the card at play outright, this title is a pun on the aforementioned arcana "suite", as the main location of events this chapter are in a casino's hotel suite. One can interpret many Cups cards at play here, but...

○ Specifically, in the Casino's suite/crime scene, there are 8 visible seats, but 7 cups on the table. The 7 of Cups refers to choices, fantasy, and illusion, an indicates there are multiple opportunities or many paths you can take, but they should be chosen carefully; when reversed, it can mean confusion, diversion, and temptation, and indicate a lack of choice or failure to choose.

○ The upright version is definitely in play, with the overall root of TellTale games being choices, and some "the player" makes this chapter will move your relationships with Tiffany and John in different ways, which can strengthen your relationships with them. If "the player" has chosen to be a more violent Batman, the way the Talon - and later, the Court - treats Batman is different.

○ The Reversed reading can be interpreted for the Court's complete disregard for the mere notion of choice.

Bauta - a Venetian carnival mask, meant to represent 'anonymous decisions' via it's original design of protecting identities. It's quite common in carnivals.

Melpomene-Thalia - the Venetian masks for comedy and tragedy, a la 'sock and buskin', the masks used as a general symbol for theatre. You can practically taste the irony, given who's shown wearing it...

Volto - a Venetian mask, meant to represent 'anonymity, quiet exit' for it's blank face. It's also known as the "Citizen Mask" because of it's worn by the common folk (in comparison to the more elaborate masks).

The Lot [casino] - named for "drawing lots", like drawing straws or matches to pick a person to do a task (usually with the shortest straw having to do the task, but it varies). This is both a pun on the fact that it's a casino - where you try your luck at gambling - and corresponds with the theme of foretelling the future that's woven throughout much of the story.

The Wednesday Nighters gang - this doesn't mean anything in particular. I'm a big fan of Midsomer Murders, and there's an episode ("Death in a Chocolate Box") where it references a few dirty cops who frequently took the Friday night shift at a station for episode-plot-reasons, who called themselves The Friday Nighters. It's an off-shoot reference to it, hence the corrupt cops on the gang in this story. :)

[John's voicemail] - Another BtAS episode I love is "the terrible secret of Bruce Wayne". In particular, I loved Joker's voicemail when Dr. Strange calls in ("Boy, do YOU have the wrong number!") and I wanted to do something like that. But, y'know, way less murdery.

"F85H4ND" - l33t-written "Fate's Hand", for…well, the hand of fate, supposedly guiding you through life/events. Another correspondent to the foretelling the future theme.

Michael Hodgson - not all of the names I pick for characters mean anything. Sometimes their names are just loose references to things I like. This is a silly mish-mashup of the original hosts of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Michael [Nelson] and [Joel] Hodgeson. (Joel was the first host + show creator, and Mike was the second host who closed out the original series run.)

"40F5WRD5" [Batcomputer archive] - l33t for the 4 of Swords, a card in the Minor Arcana for rest and restoration; since the archives and file names are randomly generated when not prompted otherwise with manual input, an otherworldly force seems to be saying 'get some damn sleep Bruce'.

[John's ringtone] - I know, TT always has everyone's phone on silent. I don't care. Bruce's ringtone for John is "Mack the Knife", a song about a violent mobster, played on a carnival organ. Chosen because 1) John probably loves that song, 2) I thought it was funny that it has the line "the shark bites - with his teeth, dear - when he shows them pearly whites" and how well that goes with John's A+ dental care... 3) TeamFourStar made jokes in their BtTTS S2 playthrough about having "a special ringtone whenever John calls [them]"…why would I not carry that through? They did get me to where we are now, you know. ;)

Ryde - the in-game stand-in for Lyft, the not-a-taxi service.

Ch. 5: The Wheel Still Spins on the Upturned Chariot

[chapter title] - a reference to 2 tarot cards in the Major Arcana. 1) "The Wheel"/"The Wheel of Fortune", which is a sign for continuous cycles, inevitable fate, and usually indicates good fortune and pre-destiny when the card is presented upright. When reversed, it can signify bad luck and an unfavorable fate. 2) "The Chariot", symbolizing a path forward to success, confidence, and overcoming obstacles; when reversed, it's stands for recklessness and lack of direction/control. 3) As the Chariot is upside down, John's original plans have been upended and everything goes out of his control in a chaotic situation. He’s essentially "not at the driver’s seat" for a little while. "The player" decides which direction to take the wheel in - either letting him lash out violently and send him on more solitary and dangerous path, or satisfy his need for stability by embracing his new relationships. The Chariot is always upturned here, but whether the wheel spins forward or backward is up to "the player's" decisions.

511 N. Blade Street - this one's a bit messy. 511 = V I I, or VII in roman numerals, which =7. The tarot cards are traditionally numbered in roman numerals. North, for pointing upright, and "blade" is synonymous with "sword". So it’s the "7 of Swords", in the upright position – referring to deception and trickery, which is of course what's going on in regards to who Ian 'Nito' Coggs really is…

Apt 1005 - even muddier, but this is referring to the 10 of Swords, which is for betrayal and backstabbing, hinting at the true motives of "Ian" | Clayface. 10-0-5, so 10 and the l33t for "OS" = 10-o-S.

900 Wanda Way - Both a pun on the phrase “wander away” and the 9 of Wands in the Minor Arcana, which alludes to pushing forward to achieve victory. A good allusion for a clinic, me-thought.

400 Wanda Way - The 4 of Wands in the Minor Arcana stands for community, another good allusion for a clinic.

Karen McCarthy - named after the most stereotypically uptight narcissistic asshole the masses have agreed to call 'Karen', and both McCarthyism and another famous lady with the surname McCarthy. Because I wanted you to know the second you see her name that she is *horrible*. (Funny, though, there's 2 senators named McCarthy that are pieces of shit and one infamous quasi-celeb who's the face of the anti-vax scene. Is it just a cursed family name?)

Ch. 6: The Tips of Our Swords

[chapter title] - Refers to the 4 of Swords card in the Minor Arcana, as the "swords" are alluding to the four active members in the Batfam - Bruce, John, Tiffany, and Iman - who work together on the case[s]; you can infer this title to a presentation not unlike the Musketeers joining swords to affirm themselves as a team, as they all gather together. The reversed reading of the card is for restlessness/stress in Bruce's case, and the clear signal of the universe to tell him to relax, and the reading when presented right-side up is for the break it gives to "the player", with the homey atmosphere of the Batfam spending time together. Either reading is completely valid here.

○ BUT, as Alfred is a non-active member of the Batfam, we could also say that 5 of Swords is also at play, right-side-up for the fighting and resentment with Alfred, and John's hinted budding conflict with him; and 5 reversed for Bruce's attempts at making up with Tiffany. If one illustrated the gathering of our four heroes joining swords like the musketeers over a breakfast table, then Alfred would be sitting drinking tea, standing as a symbol of the Ace of Cups, signifying new emotions or stirrings of feelings.

○ If we stretch the metaphor eeeven further, the title can also be a loose reference to the Sword of Damocles; threats always hang above the heads of powerful people, and in this case the looming threat of Black Mask and the mysterious assassin, ever-present in Batman's world…

Dr. Brandi September - literally "Sword" and "Seventh Month", alluding to the 7 of Swords, hinting to deception and manipulation at play.

"I was tired of the soup du jour" - a shameless Devo reference; a tiring of the routine/everyday. "I'm tired of the soup du jour - I want to end this prophylactic tour - ain't nobody around me - understands my potato - I'm only a spud boy - lookin' for a real tomato" - DEVO, "Mr DNA/Smart Patrol".

Motel 11, Augury Road - "augury" is another word for crows; as a gathering of crows can be a method of fortune-telling, this a reference to a gathering of 11 crows, which when seen is supposed to be indicative of disguising or revealing secrets.

Ch. 7: Drawing the Strings

[chapter title] - meant to allude to John aligning the strings connecting the people and crimes together, like an old-fashioned way of mapping clues; can be interpreted as these crime-strings on the proverbial board being drawn closer together, marking the center of the "web" as the Court of Owls

Frieda Baast - Frieda, an allusion to the Norse goddess Freya, who rode on a chariot driven by cats, and Baast, the Egyptian goddess who had the form of a cat. It makes it really obvious who was staying at the Motel 11, huh?

room 14 [Selina Kyle's motel room] - a reference to the 14th tarot card, "Temperance", which when upright is meant for choosing the middle path between choices. This is meant to reference Selina herself, currently at a secret, personal crossroads and being in "the middle"; John can influence her hidden choice by either making her think about what her potential job's employers are really aligning themselves with, or taunting her into how she can't leave her old life behind. (Whether John is violent or not doesn't completely impact her choice, but it does impact how they interact later if Selina winds up in the hands of our villains.)

Oracle, Spoiler, Batgirl, Spectrum - Batman's had a lot of non-Robin sidekicks in comics, including Batgirl (originally Barbara Gordon), Oracle (Barbara Gordon, post-Batgirl-forced-retirement and computer hacker extraordinaire), and Spoiler (Stephanie Brown, who "spoiled" crimes). As a fan of Ao3/tumblr's @fractualized 's own Telltale Bat-verse fics (the "Release John Doe" series), I added in the reference to "Spectrum", which Tiffany became in lieu of "Robin". A wink from one fan-writer to another! ;)

"I'm steppin' out, my dear - to breathe an atmosphere […] - that simply reeks […] with class" - John's singing a classic Fred Astaire hit, "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails".

Eric, Jerome, Jeremiah, Jack [John's "Normal name" ideas] - As this story allows "the player" to pick a name for John to use in place of his own, you can pick between some classic and modern references to Joker's alternate personas over the years. Eric White Border (edit: goddang it that's what i get for looking at White Knight while writing this up and never double-checking), Joker's regular persona in the New 52 Batman comic line; Jerome or Jeremiah of the Gotham TV series, both of which are different aspects of Joker's personality through media, with a more modern gritty version in Jerome (think Heath Ledger's Joker) and a more modern take on Joker's sociopathy in Jeremiah; and last but not least Jack Napier, the first official name of Joker circa Tim Burton's Batman (1989), and the one most popularly used (BtAS and other comics throughout the years since use this name). "The player"'s choice doesn't impact the story or the way John acts, but it does give a surprise feature later. ;)

Matt Chaney - Aka, "Clayface", Matt has both new and old elements in his name alone. Matt, for Matt Hagen, the most well-known/used of the Clayface personas, and Chaney, for classic film actor Lon Chaney, AKA the man of a thousand faces. This Clayface is an aspiring actor who is psychologically dependent on Moddy to keep him handsome after a terrible car accident left his face marred. He uses his excellent makeup skills and acting to infiltrate the False Face Society, and double-plays them and the Court of Owls.

Root / MuSec - stand-ins for Vine and TikTok, respectively. "MuSec" is both a play on the word "musac" (the word for 'elevator music' and generic produced music you hear in fake stores and the like) and the mish-mash of the words "music" and "second", referencing the short length of the videos. "Root" was used in a prior story (At the Brink of Midnight), and acts as another "natural network" type name akin to Vine; though I do recognize "Vine" might have come along as part of the phrase "I heard it through the grape-vine". I have a feeling some Aussie fans might find the fake-Vine name funny...or just awkward.

Ch. 8: It Had to Be You

[chapter title] - A reference to the classic crooner song, "It Had to Be You"; specifically, the one that flows through the first scene is a cover done by Frank Sinatra, meant to align with other Bat-media's use of Sinatra where Joker and Batman are concerned. The Arkham games got his famous "Under My Skin", and another crooner's "Only You". Batjokes fans/content creators have also used "Strangers in the Night" for their relationship. I wanted to present one that would feel at-home in the TellTale universe regardless of what route you end up with, and what's more perfect than a song about finally discovering the love of your life? The song fits them to a tee, in my humble opinion…

Estella Art Gallery - Selina's art gallery, mentioned previously to have been the site of a Talon attack. "Estella" translates to "star", for the tarot card "The Star". When presented upright, it means hope and rebirth; this card can be presented after a disaster, such as an event like "The Tower". Normally, it can be interpreted as a card to show a phase where you have trust and faith in yourself and the universe. Selina was turning over a new leaf and enjoying her new life until the Owls found out who she was.

Mrs. Bollard - "bald-headed person"…this poor woman got her wig snatched as John stole Bruce from her on the dance floor. xD

"I knew today's horoscope was bullshit" - a nod to earlier, where Roman mentioned his horoscope when visiting Bruce; "a friend will help you out of a tight bind." Not that it was mentioned like that... still! I wonder what today's was? "You will be fortunate in your business endeavors"? Ha ha ha! But really, the horoscope is another nod to the theme of foretelling the future, as it's a popular method to try and see how your day, month, season, or year will be. Not that I know what sign Roman is… *thinking face*

[Achievement Unlocked: Batman Who Laughs] - John showing up in the Batman cowl was not only funny, but a direct nod to the Batman Who Laughs. The TT games had Batman comic titles often used as Achievements, so I figured I'd put in some…

[Achievement Unlocked: Batwoman Rises] - Iman helping the team out in the spare Batman suit is naturally a nod to Batwoman, and something I wanted to do for a while. ;D

Brighella - a Venetian mask taken from a play now used to depict a cunning and mischievous servant. Originally the mask was used to depict a greedy villain character.

The Two Gilded Cups - A restaurant in-story that references "The Two of Cups" tarot card, a card representing unity, partnership, and two becoming one. When upright, it's a card that can reference lovers or a new relationship; when reversed, it can represent broken communication, imbalance, or tension. As such, the couple who were seen at the restaurant - Sonja Townsend and her husband - are established lovers who work together for the Court of Owls, but those who were really there are Jackie Lant and Matt Chaney, who are in an imbalanced relationship. "Gilded" implies that "The Cups" are covered unnecessarily with gold - this is both in reference to Jackie and Matt's disguise of the Townsends and the truth about their relationship. Matt's lies are covering for his narcissism and selfishness, and ultimately is the only thing holding him and Jackie's relationship together.

Moddy - A fictional body modification clay-mud-putty that's a product of Janus Industries, this makeup is the favorite of Matt Chaney and the reason we can call him "Clayface". Like the traditional Clayface, Matt is in dire need to have his fix of the makeup, despite what it does to him - as John notes, it leaves a weird burn-like sensation, and since Matt has deep scar tissue he covers every minute of every day, it's made the skin damage worse.

"You’re really committed to drowning in that river" - A riff on the old joke "denial ("de Nile") isn't just a river in Egypt".

"Your words are honey in my ears, but my brain always turns it into bitter wax" - In Futurama, Fry has a silly line of “Sweet words! Sweet words that turn into bitter wax in my ears!”. It always had the potential to be a great metaphor if the words were twisted around! :) Plus, I mean, come on, this is a totally On Brand™ thing for John to say!

Ch. 9: Strength in Numbers

[chapter title] - Referencing the Strength card, for bravery, compassion, and inner strength; the title also doubles as a play on “different kinds of strengths”. Strength is the will the expose your truths. Strength is finding compassion to help others. Strength is staying true to your convictions in the face of opposition. We see all different kinds of strength on display here.

○ It can also a reference to the different partnerships going on, with Jackie joining the team (unofficially), Bruce and Tiffany going off to tackle the other half of our case, and John and Iman’s team-up. :)

"[John] could barely hear it over the tinny electronic whistling tune emitting from his own phone, telling him the person on the other end was a mystery" - this is referencing an old tumblr joke! Yes, John has the “It is a mystery” tone on his phone for unknown calls…complete with the little (:o) ghost icon.

CUP5K1NG [license plate] - Referring to the King of Cups card, a card portraying emotional balance and compassion. As it's not written as "K1NGCUP5", it implies it's a reversed card, signifying there's manipulation and instability at work. Even though Matt doesn't own the car this license plate belongs to, it's definitely tied to him since it's his getaway ride, and thus hints at what's to be revealed in his and Jackie's hotel room.

Aylin Street - the name "Alyin" translates into “moon halo; one that belongs to the moon”, thereby being a reference to the Moon card, representing mysteries and illusions. An investigation is afoot!

“Looks like I’ve got the red light, kiddo.” - In stage acts, the red light is to indicate to the performer their time on stage is up. Generally, it’s reserved for comedians who either overrun their time or are losing the audience. John's joking that he's been given the red light to exit stage left (but not persued by bear).

"What’s the ‘G’ for?” - Iman's 'Gotham Construction' jumpsuit has a G different from John's - it's shaped more like a gear. This is another Mystery Science Theater reference, in particular the logo for Gizmonic Institute, the company/labs that "employed" original host Joel and the mad scientist Dr. Forrester (and his assistant, TV's Frank), who started the experiments of forcing a guy and his robot friends to watch reeeally bad movies. The result was 12 (soon to be 13!) seasons of some guys making hilarious and very memorable jokes at said bad movies' expense. Does this reference mean that Bruce is just as huge a dork as I am, or does it mean that MST3K is real in this universe?! You make the call! ;D

○ …if you read 'What's the 'G' for?' in Invader Zim's voice, that's also valid. Especially if you followed it with “I dON’t know!” in GIR's. (There is no cringing here! We openly embrace our childhood silliness!)

MasterOfClayFace / #IdW3arThat [Matt Chaney's social media login] - naturally Matt is so far up on his high horse that he considers himself a master of clay work…and of course his nickname is ClayFace! His password is a joke in and out of canon, being a riff on Lemon Demon song: “A mask of my own face – I’d wear that” ~ Lemon Demon, “Mask of My Own Face” [Nature Tapes].

3055 [Jackie Lant's InstaPic followers] - According to research, the average Instagram following is about 1000, so Jackie is above average popularity. Anything above 10k is usually(?) celeb status. The number 3055 is meant to be broken up and turned partially into l33t, to make 3-O-S-S, or 3 of Sword[s]. The 3 of Swords card in the tarot signifies heartbreak and grief, stemming from betrayal, loneliness, and rejection. Jackie experienced all three of these heart-piercing swords during her return to Gotham, with Matt basically forcing her into isolation, betraying her trust, and rejecting her input and values in favor of his own; but she didn't really know it until the truth was exposed.

8055 [Matt Chaney's InstaPic followers] - similarly, Matt's follower count is meant to be 8-O-S-S, or the 8 of Swords card. It signifies self-victimization and imprisonment. In particular, the card shows a person restrained and trapped, but their helplessness is a show…they could choose to get out, if they got over themselves. Matt is incredibly selfish, so it comes as no surprise that he will play the victim card.

#OnlyInGotham - Another tumblr reference! I love the @hashtagonlyingotham blog! ( ^3^)

The Herold Rite's Theatre - A play on the word "Hierophant": Herold, like “herald (ruler/champion)” and Rites, like “sacred rites”. In the tarot, the Hierophant card represents following tradition and values, which for the Owls is their very core. This is basically a big ol' hint that Iman and John are heading into Owl territory, but also foreshadows the religious undercut of The Court and Reverend Sebastian Overfield's role.

"a familiar red-pyramid-and-floating-eyeball" [graffiti] - A reference to my icon! ;D You think I can't self-promo?

trading cards [found in theatre storage] - In the Theatre, John finds "old promotional trading cards for an old sci-fi film with big-brained aliens". This is a shameless and loving reference to Tim Burton's 1996 film Mars Attacks!, of which my AO3/tumblr icon and username is lifted - the movie was based on a series of Topps trading cards from the 1960's, and had it's own set of cards with movie scenes and behind-the-scenes pictures (and summaries of events) printed for the movie! They also used them as promotional tools, and if you get very lucky purchasing a copy of the old single-issue comic books from the 1995 Mars Attacks run from Image Comics, you can get a promo card.

https://bit.gt.gd/S3272019F?=RO - Originally "gd" stood for a derivative of Google Drive, but I can’t look at it and not see “get good”. The "S3272019F?" is meant to stand for "Started: March 27, 2019 Finished: ?". I can't believe I started uploading the story in March of 2019! Man, 2020 really messed with my sense of time…

Ch. 10: Tantara Bounces Off of Moonlit Walls

[chapter title] - "Tantara" is defined as "the blare of a trumpet or horn", as seen in the Judgement card, which stands for self-reflection as well as reckoning, and can indicate rebirth. There's of course another reference to the Moon card, for intuitions and the unconscious being. Then what are the "[Moonlit] Walls"? Well, they're the part of the only Major Arcana tarot card to represent a building - they are the walls of the Tower, symbolizing destruction and disaster. When all the cards' meanings are put all together, this alludes to a time of discovery among absolute disaster.

○ Expanded, the whole title is a reference to both forms of Judgement occurring – self-reflection and change are happening with Bruce and John as their mysteries and anxieties are finally put to rest: John is undergoing his final "rebirth", seeing his reality clearly in Arkham’s padded cell; Bruce seems to finally come to terms with working with Tiffany, as his fear of not being able to protect her comes through with her showing she's able take care of herself and prove she's a true asset to the team; and the Court of Owls finally comes to light, with Matt Chaney, the Talon Adam, and the Talon Sonja Townsend finally showing their real motivations.

○ We can also interpret the title as a reckoning coming for the Owls, who have long been obscuring the truth of their deeds and whose true motives have been murky. They've built their own tower of disaster with bricks of delusion, and judgement's horn is blaring a warning through their hallways…

"X-Sharp Manufacturing" - a reference to the 10 of Swords (hence the "sharp"), the tarot card for betrayal, backstabbing, and defeat. For Bruce, there is disaster here beyond his control that ends in a [temporary] defeat. For Roman Sionis, owner of the small factory as part of Janus Inc., he's unwittingly walked into his own betrayal.

"Merlin's Flower Arrangements" - Merlin, a famous wizard, is a reference to The Magician card, who defines “as above, so below”… And as John is taken to a secondary location, so is Bruce. :)

"La Luna Painting" - La Luna, aka The Moon; remember, shadows can play tricks on your eye, so something’s afoot here… Aka "HEY GUYS THIS TOTALLY ISN’T SUSPICIOUS OR ANYTHING NO SIR"

Yelsnia Theater - Yelsnia is…actually a name. But searching for it shows my true hint, as it's "Ainsley" backwards. "Ainsley" derives from Scottish words meaning “alone, solitary” or “hermitage”. This is a reference to the Hermit card – in this case, it's blatantly upside down, referring to loneliness, isolation, and a general disconnection with mankind. AKA, the path Matt is on.

"the looming pillar tower" [Arkham] - A blatant representation of The Tower. It stands for impending disaster and "an upheaval of a foundation of reality". Of course, this can be taken in two ways. 1) That John has overcome/avoided the disaster of another mental breakdown. 2) That John’s foundation of his delusions - that he’ll wake up in or get sent back to Arkham for his sickness - was wrong in a realistic sense, as he’s made serious progress in managing his emotional issues, and right in an unrealistic one, where the only way he could be sent back was through an outside force, i.e. the Owls.

10210475 [inmate number] - When separated for the numeric cipher, we get 10-21-4-7-5, or J-U-D-G-E

13051420 [inmate number] - When separated for the numeric cipher, we get 13-5-14-20, or M-E-N-T

○ When put together, the inmate numbers read "Judgement", the tarot card is shown here for John's choices and character arc on display throughout this chapter. When the card is reversed, it implies a lack of self-awareness, which we can also attribute to "the player's" choices for John if they make Bad Decisions. If you simply take the word "judgement" at face-value (without involving the tarot) it also works wonderfully, applying to John's entire situation as being a trial/judgement set by a higher force.

"The prince returned to the tower" dialogue [the prophetic cell mate] - Whether the person speaking is physical or not, John notes he can hear the scratching of pencil on paper within the cell, implying a person is writing their words down like a story… “The prince,” (John Doe, alias Joker, traditionally the ‘Clown Prince’ of Gotham) “having returned to the tower” (Arkham Asylum, the foundations of John's issues) “to reclaim his crown,” (assurance in himself and his reality; the completion of John's "self" with his final choices and becoming Vigilante!Joker for good) “trails after the fiend” (confronts the Talon Adam, alias Owl-man) “who's flying on wings of retribution” (core beliefs, perceived sense of justice). “The fiend’s wings are big, but the bones are brittle” (the Owl-man is imposing and persistent, but his physical "wings" are his weakness).

○ If you couple the Court of Owl's belief that G*d has written down the destinies of everyone in the world [as they are each born] with the knowledge that someone was writing down a short version of John's events at Arkham…hmmm.....

Room 11 [Iman's cell room] - The 11th card in the Major Arcana is "Justice". This can reference either 1) The just-desserts coming for Talon Adam/"The Owlman", or 2) The outcome of the player’s choice to take Iman with them or not.

11 minutes + 16 seconds [remaining time on bomb timer] - 11:16. 11/16, aka my birthday! :) I only wish I had finished Chapter 10 in time for the chapter's publishing year (2020), lol~

"Our Faith brings Perseverance, and Our Perseverance guides Justice, for Mercy to God." - The Court of Owls' beliefs circle around 3 principles bringing people closer to G*d: Faith, Perseverance, and Justice. Their belief hardens their persistence in their actions (as they are written and not guided by "Evil"), and their goals are ultimately to deliver justice where the human system failed and "Evil" prevailed in "escaping", hence the guiding of one principle to another. "Mercy to God" is what is granted by righting the injustices of the world; as G*d wrote your future down exactly, Evil can corrupt it, and once corrupted this does G*d a harmful injustice. The Court considers themselves close to G*d by "mercifully" stopping further corruption via eliminating "Evil" in all it's worldly forms…

Speaking of the 3 principles, our main Owls are meant to be "embodiments" of these in the story.

○ Talon Sonja Townsend represents Faith, driving home her belief in G*d's absolute destiny. She is corrupted by her own selfish goal of eliminating her son-in-law, but is also so by-the-book she does not think to look at the obvious double-standards of the Court, and doesn't think her underlying actions are guided by "Evil".

○ Talon Adam represents Perseverance, having fought Joker to unconsciousness, and was willing to blow up Arkham with himself still inside just to eliminate it; he is the most brainwashed, but the least corrupt in motivations, only striving to get what he feels is "justice". On the flip side of Adam is Talon Evan, who despite serious injury still appeared in Court and jumped at the chance to kill Joker and Batman, despite the Court's general appreciation of Batman; he is corrupt in personal selfishness, as he possesses no "real" faith in the Court's belief system and doesn't like others getting credit by stealing his targets.

§ ...it's also worth mentioning that the names for Adam and Evan are meant to be derivative of "Adam and Eve". In this way, it can also be seen as a parallel to The Lovers card, which one can attribute to Bruce and John. While Bruce + John are oddly harmonious and undeniably have a strong bond regardless of story paths, Adam + Evan are discontent rivals, with Adam "stealing" Evan's target and good graces with the Court, and Evan very pointedly beating up and kidnapping Batman (who Adam admires) to set up Batman's eventual Judgement.

○ Reverend Sebastian Overfield is the main representation of Justice, though he embodies all 3 principles. The Court’s belief is that their pursuit of justice – stopping Evil/chaos via deaths of criminals – overrides their own traditional sins. Because they are being helpful to G*d, granting Them mercy by righting the injustices of Evil and putting G*d’s Word back on the right path, they are in G*d’s favor. Therefore, as the leader of the Court and the one who organized everything by handing down "God's word", he is the carrier of Justice; without him, the Court would be nowhere and G*d would be shedding more tears over their ruined work…at least, in his mind. Naturally, he is the exact opposite of what justice should be. He is biased and unwavering in strict faith, as much a carrier of chaos as he doesn't want to be…

○ Of course, this is all also up to interpretation. One can interpret Adam as "justice", Evan as "perseverance", and Sebastian as the stand-in for "God", as he is the Court's ruler and is the sole person to hand down "the word of God".

"[…]if two people you normally count on for one reason or another" - Alfred made a subtle dig at John being Bruce's boy-toy. Ouch, Al'…

"[…]given it's your pet project, and all" - Even though Selina is talking about Arkham, she's making a dig at former-Arkham-resident John being Bruce's "pet", who in her eyes was Bruce's main reason for getting Arkham revitalized. :\ Man, everybody's picking on their relationship…

petrichor - The smell proceeding rain. Because it's not a climactic fight scene in Gotham city without rain.

Ch. 11: The Tolls of Justice

[chapter title] - Naturally referring to the Justice card of the tarot, this title is the same as the story title. Funnily enough, this is the 11th chapter, and the 11th card in the tarot deck. (I guarantee you I did not plan this bit… Funny how these things play out, ain't it?) The Justice card naturally stands for cause and effect, clarity, or truth; ultimately, it's a representation of karmic retribution, and what the Owls are in dire need of facing. The title overall is referring to both the [para]phrase "do not ask for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee" (in the original context: a grievance over death for all out of love for community/mankind, not just one person) and the "toll" - as in cost or damage - of enacting justice. What Bruce has put himself through to become and keep being Batman, the enactor of vengeance for all those wronged in the city of Gotham, and what ultimately the Court of Owls has sacrificed - either wittingly or unwittingly - in the name of justice. It also extends to John, who for the sake of "justice" is routinely stuck in Arkham, in one way or another, and has never had a conceivably just or fair life at all - thus paying the unwilling toll opposing Bruce and the Owls. We can also extend it to Tiffany, who is making good on her work with Bruce to "pay her toll" for her own crime, with her toll being seen in a positive light as Robin, compared to what life sentence she might have been paying otherwise.

[the sword in the pulpit] - a symbolic reference to The Justice card, as the Justice card in the major arcana often depicts a sword, either alone or in someone's hand. This can also be interpreted as a reference to the Ace of Swords in the minor arcana, which is normally pointing upwards, referring to victory, truth, or ideas; when flipped, as it would be when looking at the initial depiction of the sword as a "cross", it stands for lies and confusion. The sword in the story itself is a symbol of justice, and uses snakes as the stand-in for the forces of Evil, which are destroyed by the owl making up the handle and supposedly wielding the blade.

"the skull peeking out of the knight’s helmet" [card in the box on Reverend's desk] - A very clear reference to the Death card, famous in the tarot deck. It signifies change, inevitable cycles, and new beginnings/directions. Depending on the reading, it can be interpreted as an actual death, but more often than not it’s merely showing of a life change. As this is the Reverend’s deck, it seems the last card he drew was Death… The viewer can interpret this as a reading from the Reverend into the Arkham plot, where Death is representing John’s own changes, the end of Talon Adam’s latest “cycle”, or the actual deaths that had occurred (no matter how many there are in the end). The viewer can also read this as the Reverend trying to find his own fate, the fate of Roman Sionis for his trial, or Batman’s fate. All of them are quite valid, but I feel the most accurate interpretation is that the Rev' was trying to read the future of the Court of Owls.

○ …as mentioned above, the Death card is the most overt reference to the Tarot. This way, if someone didn't piece together the weird chapter titles, the specified numbers and number-letter strings, and/or the odd names of people and places, they'd be able to double-back and see them as clues. They are put there purely as a storytelling clue for the audience. As you can tell, the tarot references increased with each chapter…almost like someone is trying to get your attention…

[the framed painting] - a reference to The High Priestess, aka card II of the tarot. This card is indicative of intuition and looking within, and can signal to mysteries at hand or a higher power at work. The pillars on the card are (hilariously enough) marked with a B and J, and are in black and white, respectively. They stand for Boaz (Strength) and Jachin (Establishment), and are meant to represent the duality of nature, good/evil, masculine/femine, etc. Naturally, both pillars are equal. In this depiction, it is both relating to “the player’s” own duality, with the ability to be flexible as Bruce and John and have both good and bad decisions play through the story, and as a strong hint to a higher power being present.

8-9-6-3 [candle puzzle] - It takes a bit to work out by sorting through the alphabetic values to each number, but it doesn’t make a complete word. On ye olde phone keypad, 1 is always null in value, so it’s always unlit in the candle sequence, and since there are 4 other numbers present we know it doesn’t count as part of the string. (If there were only 3, you could guess a year from your notes.) My idea for the “game” specs of this part would be that the key-code would be somewhat randomized, either using a specific year (if Tiffany and/or Iman are not present, this is *always* the case, as you have to utilize your background notes and the candles by yourself), a few translated letter combinations just for fun, or an occasional number-card type combo, as presented here. (In some lucky scenarios, “the player” doesn’t have to solve the candle puzzle, since Tiffany can figure out the year by herself and just call you over when she opens the door. You still have the option of looking around, though!) In this case, the values are another tarot-themed hint, using the card number first: 8-w-n-d, for the 8 of Wands, which alludes to quick actions. AKA “Get ready for quick-time events!!!”

"looking more like the king on the throne than a judge" - Meant to allude to The Emperor card, the ultimate royal symbol in the major arcana and always depicted with a king. Traditionally this symbolizes power, authority, control, etc., but when reversed it alludes to overbearingness, arrogance, and chaos. For the Owls, they would likely see themselves as the upright depictions, even when presented upside down before the person doing their reading… And here is no better example, with the Reverend Overfield taking place as the ultimate authority over the Court.

"like [Sonja] had a say in commanding the room" - Alluding to The Empress, in conjunction with Rev’s position, this card alludes to femininity, motherhood, nurturing, creativity, and/or abundance. When reversed, it stands for neglect, creative blocks, overbearing, and/or uncaring. Sonja is a good example of an overbearing mother, trying to make decisions for her child because she thinks she knows best - thus fits the reversed reading well.

[Courtroom layout] - How curious is it that I haven't referenced The Devil when we have so many opportunities? That's because I strove to show this card rather than reference it overtly. The Devil card depicts El Diablo in the upper middle, lording over the card, with two souls chained to him at the bottom. The classic depiction shows a female demon-like human on one side and a male demon-like human on the other. As such, Rev. Sebastian sits on the high bench as the judge, overlooking the courtroom, and Sonja and Evan sit beneath him, one embedded on each side of the lower bench, sitting before him rather than beside him. Naturally, The Devil card represents temptation, manipulation, and materialism (though not necessarily of physical things). There is nothing more suited to The Devil card than the Reverend Sebastian Overfield and the Talons.

Circe | Cindy Peterson - Circe was the original Black Mask's downfall, or at least serious decent into who would be Black Mask. In her origin, she was a model who seduced Roman and ended up being blamed for his poor business choices, as he completely revolved Janus Inc.'s new direction around her image, somewhat at her insistence. Roman seemed to love her, but grew vengeful when she dumped him. She was named Circe, after the witch who lured men to their doom. In this story, she plays a much less active role but ultimately still serves as Roman's downfall, though in a very different way. : she does seem to care about Roman, going so far as to hide him on her yacht, not rat him out for his overt gang activities, and even leave Gotham with him for good to run from Batman despite not being in a relationship with him for long. But Bruce is able to spin this to his advantage, openly lying that she was working for him undercover and twisting Roman's affection for her into paranoid doubt, which he eventually lashed out with and ended up being caught because of. Circe never got a ~proper~ name in the original canon, so I dubbed her Cindy. The name "Cindy" can be boiled down to “person from Kynthos” and since Circe is Greek… Well, it fits well enough!

"[…]waltzing into the danger-zone without his wingman" - It’s Top Gun's “You can be my wingman anytime”, but with ALL the homoerotic implications!

"the Degnah Club" - The Degnah Club can be inferred to be one of Roman Sionis’ clubs, or just one his False-Face Society visited on occasion, but the event that happened there is implied to have taken place before the start of the story. “Degnah” when written backwards is “hanged”, referencing the Hanged Man card. When upright, this card means sacrifice and selfless acts. When reversed, as very much implied here, it’s an unnecessary sacrifice. This is both a play on what Roman’s implying – which is likely a very violent event – being an “unnecessary sacrifice” as part of Matt Chaney’s greater scheme for the Court of Owls, and as an allusion to Matt’s fate, where his morals/good choices/old law-abiding life were thrown away for an inevitably failed pursuit.

"[Tiffany | Robin's] personal count of 13" - The 13th card in the tarot is Death, bringer of change and ender of cycles. It’s also a traditionally unlucky number. This number is the “body-count” of Tiffany’s run through the Court so far. Does it reference the end of the Court's latest cycle, or something else…?

Accompanying the Tarot, as mentioned earlier I also tied in other fortune-telling methods, with the counting of crows and reference to the zodiacal horoscope. I also threw in allusions to luck, with The Lucky Hotel and The Lot (in both name and the fact that it's a casino). This is all tied entirely around the concept of fate and being able to change it with the choices you have made or currently make as "the player". Luck itself has nothing to do with your choices and the fates you guide Bruce and John to, and it's not something "the player" can control - it's an illusion, with things seemingly lucky for our heroes having already been written in on purpose to lead to the next event. It's essentially a long, drawn-out joke.

Talons/Reverend's Owl Masks - I wanted the Talons to be set apart from the rest of the Court and have special owl faces. The Court's owl masks are as follows:

○ Talon Adam - Great Horned Owl; chosen for the owl's large size and hunting ability, as well as the protruding "horn" feathers mimicking Batman's cowl. This is the most common owl used in media. The "horns" are meant to clue the reader into the culprit early on. Adam's a Batman-fan, so he mimicked Bats' style.

○ Talon Sonja - Snowy Owl; chosen for the owl's fairly elegant feather pattern and Sonja's ~colder~ personality. Sonja had a masquerade one to show her "humane" side to prospective Owls, but always wears a full-faced mask for the rest of the Court.

○ Talon Evan - Barn Owl; chosen for it's ghost-like face and screeching call, and it's hunting skills. They sometimes are seen as bad omens. While Adam was a mysterious stalker, Evan is overtly dangerous upon appearance, in no due part to his temper.

○ Reverend Sebastian Overfield - Eastern Screech Owl; this owl is smaller than the other, but has similar "horn" feathers to the Great Horned, and a gray face. The "horns" are meant to be another a mirror to Batman, but can be considered another allusion to The Devil. It isn't the largest or flashiest owl of the bunch, but Sebastian has the most power of all the Court members.

[The "Justice" bell-toll] - traditionally, a church bell tolls to signify someone passing into death. In the Court/Church of Mercy's case, they use a bell rung at midnight to signify a complete "trial" and a carry-out of their own brand of "justice"…which also culminates in death. The "trial" shown in this chapter is a rarity, as the offenders are actually present to get a talking-to before their sentencing - generally, the Church will hold a mock-trial to decide the fates of the perpetrators…after some previous counseling with Talons and select older members. (Think of the Trial like a ceremonial conference for the majority of the time.)

Chapter 12: Ten Cheers to the World!

[title] - The act of cheering, aka toasting, is to raise a cup and drink towards someone or something in celebration or tribute. Here, it's referring to the tarot's Ten (X) of Cups, which is pretty much the best card you could pull in a reading - when upright, as it is here, it means celebration, fulfillment, and happiness! The World card is the final card in the Major Arcana, encapsulating completion, accomplishment, and harmony, all from inner and outer sources. It might seem redundant at first, but the Cups suite in the Minor Arcana is all in regards to emotions, relationships, and love; in comparison, the Major Arcana represents a journey from innocence and ignorance to wisdom and completion. So you have an emotional celebration with fulfilling relationships, and the story's path marked as complete in both a literal and figurative sense.

"An accident at Ace Chemicals" [Iman & John's convo] - Referencing the majority of Joker origins, wherein pre-Joker fell into the vat of chemicals at Ace Chemicals and survived, leading to a psychotic breakdown due to his changed appearance and/or the circumstances around to what led him to Ace Chemicals in the first place.

"the string of deaths in the Velestra mafia" [Iman & John's convo] - a ref to the former mafia/main antagonists in Batman: Mask of the Phantom that kept getting killed off one by one by the Phantom. Whether The Phantom exists in this world…we'll have to wait and see, I guess!

"an unrecoverable ‘data loss’ at the Agency" [Iman & John's convo] - not a reference to canon, but my own theory on a potential background for John being a former Agent…(see further below)

"Et tu, Peeps?" - a riff on "Et tu, Brute?", Julius Ceasar's last words as he was betrayed and stabbed to death.

"Maybe I was someone in the wrong place at the wrong time" / "someone at the right place at the wrong time" [John monologue] - Another reference to the most popular background choice, the Ace Chemical origin story, and it’s variations. Though probably lacking Batsy’s involvement, considering the timeframe…

"Maybe I was some experiment gone wrong" [John monologue] - A reference to a different author's Season 3 replacement fanfic, where John ended up being a genetically modified human/test tube baby. Unfortunately the work got deleted from Ao3??? And my bookmark is gone, so I can't name the fic… But I still remember you, Unknown Author!!! It was a fun story and I've never forgotten that twist!!!! \( >o< )/

"Maybe I was even an Agent, like you" [John monologue] - My own little theory as to why the Agency was so keen on getting him for the Suicide Squad – and why he was considered a dangerous part of the gang despite not doing too much of interest in Season 1 (even if you consider the theory that he was helping Lady Arkham get her chemicals/drugs) – was that he was part of the Agency somehow. Either an agent who screwed up on the job, a rogue agent that escaped death via Agency trap…or maybe a guy who knew too much! But it's a fun, fresh idea to bring to Joker's multi-choice past, right? (( ;w;)) <(please say yes)

hippocampus - The region(s) of the brain that primarily deals with memory.

[the photo] - I wanted to leave it up to the reader/"player" to decide what kind of pre-Arkham past the TellTale!Joker has… So whether you think the picture Iman has is a "real" photo of him or not is entirely up to you.

"[…]'you're the moon to my sun'" [John, 'paraphrasing' Bruce] - In Tarot terms, this is a reference to the Sun card, representing joy, success, and masculinity, as well as another reference to the Moon card. One can also interpret the Sun card as "success in overcoming your obstacles or fears". As the Moon card can represent inner fears and femininity, it's a fitting opposite for interpreting this romantic line. While Bruce doesn't exactly embody the "positivity" and "joy" that this card represents, he brings that feeling into John's life, and Bruce is more traditionally masculine in contrast to John. This is also an overt use of the phrase "[they're] the moon to their sun" - a romantic notion that one person, though the opposite to the other, is completely complementary, like a One True Love. TeamFourStar's playthrough of TellTale Batman: The Enemy Within had not one, but TWO mentions of the "moon to [their] sun" line, the second of which was referring to John and Bruce. This one's for you, fellas!!! ( ^3^)

○ Funnily enough, The Moon is a very broadly interpreted card. Sometimes it's not a good card to have because deception, manipulation, illusion, and mystery/confusion are all potentially at work in your life. Sometimes it's an excellent card, because it tells you examine your feelings to resolve a problem, or tells you that you aren't seeing the whole picture. The reversed of the card is often attributed to avoidance of one's problems and further confusion, but also clarity, truth, and the full view of what's going on. If John is the embodiment of The Moon in the upright position, then I say Bruce is that of the Reversed Moon…

"[…] two lovers against the world" - Another classic romantic phrase that can be turned into a Tarot reference. The original phrase is meaning two romantic partners are pitted against "the world"/external forces that threaten to tear them apart, but they are committed to each other regardless. You can't really pit cards against each other in a reading, but you can read Past-Present-Future. In which case, in story terms, The Fool is always the Past, The Lovers is the Present here, and The World is the Future. As mentioned earlier, The World represents harmony and completion - if reversed, it would mean incompletion and chaos. The Lovers card is representing a strong union being forged between two people, very often romantic in terms of the Tarot. The meaning is usually attributed to decisions in a relationship being made (whether to start a new one, or to deepen the one you have), but it can also represent people outright, as well as an indication that a new partnership/relationship is on the way. When reversed, Lovers represents disharmony, imbalance, or a loss of relationship. In our story, of course, our two lovers are representing the upright reading of the card in the Present, showing as a strong couple. As it's "against", it implies that The World is something that will be a challenge, so it's likely Reversed. Which is a pretty good representation of Gotham in general, isn't it? lol~

○ The Lovers can also be seen symbolically in chapters 8 and 9, when Bruce and John are laying opposite each other and linking pinkies/holding hands at the hotel. :)

○ John uses the romantic line regardless of whether he's a vigilante or not! If you didn't get the Best Ending, aka our Sleepover Ending, Bruce would wind up back in the parlor with John as usual, and once the rest of the fam are gone (if they were there at all), he uses it to describe themselves. In the villain route, Bruce and John converse in the Batmobile on the way back to Arkham, and John uses the line there, too. ;3c

○ Naturally, you don't really get this complete scene if "your" Bruce is with Selina in the vigilante route.

Ending Type - …it's not a tarot reference or anything specific. I just wanted to let you know that you can ONLY get the Sleepover Ending if you have Tiffany and John in Bruce's party on good terms with each other AND with Bruce.

○ You can drive Tiffy away from Bruce by saying she shouldn't be with them at the Court Battle, but also by generally not believing in her/being mean and giving a neutral reaction to her staying during Battle; she won't go back to the cave with Bruce, so you don't get a chance to speak to her directly afterwards as either character. (John can still have his conversation with her via text, and they can still end on the same terms.)

○ If you don't have vigilante!John, there's no one else to help lift the things, so Tiffy's idea is never brought up.

○ John is always simping desperate for Bruce's attention, so even if you don't treat him as well in a platonic relationship, he'll still be there for this Ending type. ;_;

○ If you have a Romanced!Selina in your party, Selina will join you in both Court Battle and the Ending as seen in this story. It'll either cause her to take Iman's place (if she is not present) or to have extra spot suddenly appear above the rest of the group. Like Tiffy, she overheats and needs more space too cool off.

§ You can also talk to her as John, and sort of makeup/say your part of the team now. (But John will still be somewhat jealous of the attention she gets.)

§ John doesn't get the emotional hug with Bruce if Selina is around - especially since she doesn't temporarily leave with Tiffany and Iman - but the conversation is almost the same.

§ Naturally you can talk to her as Bruce, too. I don't think on her options too much, but they'll likely talk about change and what it means to have this "job" and internalizing too much of their emotions/themselves.

§ If you and Selina are only friends, Selina can join you in the Court Battle, but will text you instead of sticking around.

1:06 A.M & [Clock time on Belltower in Chapter 11] - Bruce's sense of time is off, which is why he's surprised it's after 1AM and not closer to 2AM. (Can't blame him, he was unconscious for a while and a whole bunch of stuff happened.) I figured if Bruce broke out of his kidnapping ropes at 10PM sharp, and drove all the way to the GCPD, that's about 20-30 minutes in his supercharged car, if not a little less, plus with 5 minutes to escape proper. If we think GCPD is sort of a halfway point to Old Gotham/The Coventry district, it's another 15 minutes to there. So he'd arrive at the Church of Mercy before 11PM, and wait John for around another 10-15 minutes, including with all the investigating inside. The "trial" scene probably took another 10 minutes until Batman crashed it, and fight scenes seem long because of all the action going on, but by the time Bruce and co' leave, it's not 12AM yet. The bell-tower in the Church of Mercy is actually off by about 20 minutes… And what do you know, card XX (20) of the tarot's Major Arcana is Judgement, alluding to karma at work! It can also be attributed to a life change. ;D

"11:43:20PM" - this wasn't deliberately meant to allude to anything. It took the batfam about 2 minutes from the last toll to leave the church. Bells' tolling speed is varying between clocks and towers, but you can estimate about 30-45 seconds for a full twelve. If it rang at 11:40 exactly, then…ugh, this is sounding like math homework.

Epilogue:

[Still a WIP, so will be updated after it's uploaded! Shouldn't have much, though! Saay, isn't there a Major Arcana card missing? (9v9) I wonder what that iiiiis~]

So that was [just about] all of them! I had a lot of fun weaving them throughout the story this time, especially with the story's themes! AtBoM didn't have as nearly as many, so they weren't really worth mentioning before.

I hope this was helpful to those of you who were interested in diving beneath the surface of BtTTS: TToJ~!

#ttoj #ttoj reference guide #telltale batman #batman the telltale series #tarot cards #I made it a goal to use all the Major Arcana!#fortune-telling #it took me a month to compile this whole guide #I had notes scattered between my Word doc and google doc #hopefully this wasn't too hard to read #even if no one got any of these i'm satisfied!#they were really fun to write!!#edit: corrected Eric's last name (my bad)

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entamesubs · 3 years

Text

Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS Blu-Ray: Episode 4

Google Drive ONLY (for now)

Support us on ko-fi

Blu-Ray episodes will come out one at a time every Friday, until I’m done with the full first season (1-13).

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Please use either MPV or MPC-HC to view the Blu-Ray episodes. I do NOT recommend using VLC.

Please check the post for episodes 1&2 to see why.

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!! This is NOT a final release !!

If there are any corrections you wish to make, please put them through the ask box. This includes any typos, grammar weirdness, or if you have a better way to word a sentence. Once it goes up on Nyaa, the subs will be LOCKED and can no longer be edited. I will consider it the final and best version I can put out.

If you see any mistake at all, please do not hesitate to send me an ask about it.

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Extended Translation Notes

Gakuto’s characterization

RoadRush:

“I am supposed to be stopping their chaos [...] How could I do such a thing?!”

Original Japanese: 「遊我くんたちの暴走を止めるべき立場にありながら [...] 私としたことが…」

The original RR subs make it seem like Gakuto is appalled at the fact that he’s been going along with the crew, but in reality the original Japanese points to Gakuto being appalled at his lack of responsibility (as in Gakuto himself is frustrated that he, himself, has not done anything despite the fact that he should).

The bolded Japanese from above is what I’m highlighting as the key to understanding him here.

立場にあり = someone in (my) position 私としたこと = someone like me

The translation I decided to use instead, and which I felt conveyed his inner turmoil better, was “I’m someone who should be stopping them, and yet... [...] I, of all people...!”

Gakuto is very concerned with his position and duties, which is the main focus for this episode. He is a character who is hyper-aware of his place and what kind of person he should be (that is, someone who strictly follows the rules and enforces them). The conflict he feels here is because of that hyper-awareness, not (primarily) because of the fact that he’s been “having fun” or “swept away” by Yuuga’s antics, it’s that someone like him shouldn’t be “swept away” in the first place.

I hope this makes sense and that this translation gets across his characterization a lot better.

Further Gakuto characterization

RoadRush:

“I have to draw the line somewhere!”

Original Japanese: 「きちんとけじめをつけなければ｡」

This is actually a translation I liked a lot, with “draw the line” being something very clear and also easily got across his newfound determination. It’s the reason I decided to keep the “draw the line” phrase in my final translation.

However, there is one important part of his sentence: けじめ, which I bolded above. It means “distinction”.

My final translation was “I must be decisive and draw the line somewhere!”

Gakuto uses the word “decide” and “decisive” a lot. You’ll see it the most in his summoning chants, where he keeps “deciding” not to stop, or “deciding” to follow a road, or “deciding” to find something new, or that he alone must “decide” his resolve, etc. At this point, being “decisive” is a huge part of his character and who he is as a person. The main theme of Sougetsu Gakuto is being able to lead, to decide, and, as we see in episodes 24, 33, 50, and 57, to be someone worthy of the Sougetsu name and inheritance by making these “decisions” and having the power to do so.

For this reason, I decided (haha) to put in his keyword here and tie this line further to his characterization in future episodes.

“Yametekudastop”

“Does Gakuto actually say this?” No, but he makes a pun just as bad as this one. This is a great pun to convey just how weird his “Yameruler” pun in Japanese is as well.

Thanks English!

トイレには神様がいますからね “Since a kami is always in the restroom, you should...”

This is a fragment of the full sentence, though its implied that Gakuto is trying to say “[I cleaned the restroom with care,] because a kami is in there”. To make this sound more natural in English, my final translation was the sentence you see above in bold, which adds a “you should” for context.

This sentence may seem strange to a lot of people, even more so if you don’t know what exactly a “kami” is. I wanted to elaborate on that in this translation note, and also the reason why I left “kami” untouched.

A “kami” does not uniformly mean a “god” or “deity”. In some contexts, yes, someone can be referring to such a being. In others, a kami can also be seen as a “spirit”, not necessarily of divine origins, who exists in a myriad of spaces for a myriad of reasons.

The “kami” Gakuto says exists in the restroom is not a god in the way English speakers would see it, but a spirit that has found a home there. However, I felt that the word “spirit” did not really encompass the importance of the word kami and why Gakuto was so careful with it, while the words “god” or “deity” placed too much importance on it.

For further context, I’d honestly just recommend the kami wikipedia article, which goes a lot more into detail than I can here. For heavier reading, and if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, I recommend the books Shinto - A Book of Prayers and The Essence of Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Heart.

黒子 (くろこ) Kuroko / “stagehands”

Wow, Kuroko Tetsuya himself from the acclaimed basketball manga and anime, Kuroko no Basuke! Okay I’m joking.

A “kuroko” in Japanese means a “stagehand”, though they have very a specific job in Japanese theatre that is different compared to what you might know of stagehands in Western theatre.

The job of a “kuroko” is to be invisible, which of course is not a literal thing. This simply means they help move things along on the stage, appearing center at times, while still not being perceived by the audience. This is where the “kuro” part of “kuroko” comes from—traditionally, they wear black clothes and cover their faces with a black sheet on stage, so that when they appear, the audience will not focus on them and instead blend them in with the background.

A kuroko does such things like moving scenery and props as a normal stagehand, however they may also play non-human parts in plays sometimes, being something like an animal or spirit when needed (usually with the help of a minor prop, not with a costume). They are the “invisible stagehands”.

Gakuto’s entire aesthetic themeing with Ranze and Rinnosuke is basically kabuki, a form of Japanese theatre that places more emphasis on aesthetics than on story.

A popular genre of kabuki is known as jidaimono, or historical plays, which dramatize a major historic event (like a war), which is how Gakuto’s various “Rulers” tie into this theme. Of note, Yameruler’s defense position animation is very much like how one in kabuki would try to “disappear” off stage (by holding a fan in front of his face), Kimeruler has elements of kabuki makeup in his design (though heavily watered down), and Semeruler’s summoning animation is a very common kabuki pose for combat.

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For people interested in the raw BDMV vs encoded final video comparisons, click here. (Click the image in the center to swap between “raw BD” and “encoded”).

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Credits

Translation, timing: entame Proofreading: angelthinktank (Yona) Encoding: PelvisBass

#yugioh #yugioh sevens #yugioh sevens spoilers #ygo sevens #sevens spoilers #entamesubs release #BD release #E004

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rose-of-pollux · 3 years

Note

1, 3, 11, 17, 20, 21 and 22? :o)

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? My current project is my in-progress BTTF fic "'Cause I Might Not Make it Back" (which I just posted the next chapter of!). Basically, in the summer of 1986, Marty gets caught up in a case of time-traveling spy intrigue and ends up in 1932 with amnesia and a Bon Jovi tape--and young!Doc finds him. Fun fact: before I went with Bon Jovi, the original outline had him go back to 1932 with a tape that Marty had made to record Queen's Live Aid performance; the chapters were all originally Queen-themed (and it was originally titled "Though You're Many Years Away"). I switched to Bon Jovi after I remembered that Live Aid was summer of '85, not '86, which was when Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet album was released.

The other project I'm planning is a 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo fic called "Sands of Time and Space" (so yeah, bit of BTTF influence in this one); since I don't count the Curse movie as canon to the series timeline (they retconned waaaaaay too many things for it to make any coherent sense), this will be my way of showing how Fred and Velma found out about the shenanigans they missed out on after the rest of the gang visits Velma in Florida to watch the launch of a new Mars probe developed by her supervisor at NASA.

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be bothered to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway) A. MYSTERY. SCENE. ON. A. TRAIN. Like something intriguing a la Orient Express, but I am thwarted either by either by there already being such a scene in canon (MFU, Scooby-Doo), or there isn't enough of a premise for it (Hogan's Heroes, Pokémon). ...At this point, BTTF might be my only chance to pull this off; maybe Doc and Marty end up on the actual Orient Express via time-travel... (and Marty breaks out his "inconspicuous" Secret Agent Man disguise from Part II again while Doc just facepalms in the background).

11. What do you envy in other writers? HOW DO YOU ALL UPDATE YOUR FICS SO QUICKLY???

17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations? I honestly don't know if they perceive my work differently than I do--they'd have to tell me themselves. At this point, I don't think I have any surprises--most people know I write about character relationships, with some drama and angst, but always with a happy ending.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Most of the fics I write are all meant to be in the same timeline. And I have a lot of references that tie events from other fandoms together; if I listed them all, we'd be here all day, but here's one example-- In my MFU Halloween fic, "The Jack o' the Lantern Affair," I had Victor Marton mention to Napoleon and Illya that he had a "very distant cousin in Tibet" to whom he bore some amount of resemblance to. This was meant to be a throwaway reference to Vincent Van Ghoul, an in-joke since Vincent Price played both roles--at the time, I never imagined I'd be writing 13 Ghosts fic. Now that I am writing 13 Ghosts fic, I have to make it come full circle--Napoleon and Illya will have a cameo in the party scene in "Sands of Time and Space," as Velma's supervisor is also Napoleon's childhood friend, Takeshi (who, in one of my many MFU short affair pieces, I revealed as working for NASA--which I only did at the time because I wanted him to have a space-themed bachelor party so that Napoleon would come home drunk after having one too many drinks that had been dubbed "Supernovas"), and Napoleon and Illya will pull the mother of all double-takes when they see Vincent Van Ghoul at the same party and momentarily mistake him for Victor Marton.

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?) Well, I intend for my stories to fit right into canon, so I generally see them in the same medium that they're originally in. Exceptions are whenever there are crossovers/cameos--I wrote a Scooby fic last year that had the 13 Ghosts fam being chased through ruined Hyrule by Calamity Ganon and basically imagined the fam drawn in Breath of the Wild/Age of Calamity-style for this fic, which was a very intriguing image, indeed.

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them? Yes, I do! For the most part, I like to see it as how far I've progressed since I started posting fic. Obviously, I'm going to think my newer stuff is better (though I also consider some of my older pieces "classics"), but that's only natural.

#my writing style #ask reply

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millionsofstrangeshadows · 4 years

Text

A masterpost of (almost) everything problematic Emilie Autumn’s ever said and written

Introduction

A few days ago, someone on asked @shefightslikeagirl about examples of Emilie being condescending/ableist toward other mental illnesses than her own, and/or trying to elevate bipolar above others. Here’s my masterpost of the things I remembered and found (bear in mind it’s not nearly entirety of problematic things she’s said). It’s going to be a long, scan/screen heavy and commentary heavy text, so brace yourself for a lot of information. I think it’s all well known to old timers, but new fans coming aren’t always “in the know” and keep asking about past dramas. Here’s almost everything you need to know.

__________

When I was compiling all that and writing commentary, I had both MY personal opinion and the fandom’s opinions. I try to explain why those things are problematic. I added a lot of my own commentary especially in book scans section, in the form of me personally speaking to Emilie, as a direct response to what she wrote. Keep in mind it won’t be unbiased text, there’s a lot of my personal opinions here, I think it’s impossible to write a completely unbiased, sideless, proffesional text at this point, cause a lot of what she said/wrote hurt/disappointed/disgusted me and others and it would be really hard to do this without even a slightest bit of sarcasm. (But it’s all good. Emilie likes sarcasm, right? She even thinks most of the world is too stupid to understand sarcasm, it’s only her that is so intelligent. Plague Rats claimed they love sarcasm too, so why not having some?)

Also, I don’t care if I violated anyone’s Emilie-protective feelings, I don’t have problem with posting scans of the book. This version of the book is no longer available to buy in eBook version, no less in paper version, and I don’t think it will ever be anymore. Fragments I posted are NOT included in newest versions of her book and to know the context, you need to take a look at at the text. I won’t tell you to read page this and this in a book that is impossible to obtain.

I know a lot of you will say it’s all a big exaggeration. Well, there are certain things I didn’t pay attention earlier, things I took with a grain of salt or ignored, but now, as I got older, I notice those things and look at them a little differently. I listed most (not nearly ALL) things that were and can be viewed as problematic. These are just scans/screens plus commentary, I can’t and won’t persuade you to change your mind or behave a certain way in current situation. It’s your thing what you’re gonna think and do.

I know a lot of newer fans or those blindly in love with Emilie won’t agree with me or say:

1. „Oh that’s sarcasm, she’s not serious”

2. „it’s not a big deal”

3. „it’s EA, what were you expecting” or even

4. „I know all that and I don’t care.” I’m talking here on that „holier than thou” „I’m above you, suckers” attitude.

To those I have following responses:

Ad. 1 No, not every time she said those things Emilie was sarcastic. Some things she meant 100% serious and it’s widely known. And even when she jokes or is ironic, this doesn’t excuse her when she says completely hurtful, ableist, racist or (drugist? How do you call having biases against drug users?). „It was a joke”, this way you could excuse absolutely everything. And the hurt still remains, additional hurt and harm. Think about it for a while.

Ad. 2 I won’t force you to understand anything, all I can do is laying out evidences and explaining what’s so wrong about them. I cannot understand those who claim Emilie is 100% Innocent and has never done anything wrong. You’re either painfully blind or you’re lying to yourself. Hopefully you will see it for yourself in a few years, when you grow up a little, or when she personally hurt you too (block you, lash out at you, cast you out of her Asylum).

Ad. 3 Well, we accepted to be in an environment of understanding and empathy, a house for outsiders, a safes pace. That’s how Asylum was presented. The most of if not entirety of hate/drama/hurt and problematic situations were caused by Emilie directly. NOW, now we don’t expect anything from her. But back when all the shit was fresh and happening, we were confused and lied to ourselves, making unnecessary excuses for a grown up woman that refused to explain it herself and take responsibility for her actions, and we thought she would eventually grow up and change for the better each and every next time, up until most of us has had enough, either now with the current drama or a few past dramas.

Ad. 4 I can’t force you to change your mind, also I’m not forcing anyone to boycott Emilie, to stop listening to Emilie, to understand my point of view. Do whatever the fuck you want, I don’t really care. Just don’t boast around how little you care, how you’re „above it all”, cause it mostly doesn’t speak well of you when you think all things are alright and easily dismissable. Also, nobody will look up to you as someone „cooler” or anything. Nobody cares if you ignore her shit or not. Do whatever the hell you want.

___

Now, you can read entire thing or jump straight to the sections for whatever you need to read. Here’s a little bit of introduction with commentary on her „ward” thing, W14A, 3 diaries vs „Evidence of insanity” parts of the books and the newest ECT bullshit she added to newer versions of the book.

List of sections:

1. Introduction: the „asylum” and „psych ward”/”Evidence of insanity”/ECT

2. Fatshaming

3. Ableism

4. „Manatee R*tard”

5. Britney Spears

6. Emilie’s feelings towards drug addicts

7. Romanticizing of bipolar disorder

8. Emilie’s bipolar disorder vs „normal depression” and downgrading depression

9. Emilie’s descriptions on people with other mental illnesses

10. Schizophrenia

11. Schizophrenia part 2/Emilie’s „jokes”

12. Romanticizing of cutting and self-harm

13. Asexual discourse

14. Additional stuff, more or less discussed, also problematic

15. Final words and bonuses

RACISM:

Additional note: I’m leaving recent racism case out. I might add this in the future if needed, but for now, I think you’ve all seen everything for yourself. You can always read about the racism drama here:

https://shefightslikeagirl.tumblr.com/instagramincident/

____

Introduction: the „asylum” and „psych ward”/”Evidence of insanity”/ECT

All throughout her career, EA referenced the hospital she stayed in as „asylum”. „I got locked up in an asylum”. This and also „psych ward”.

She claims W14A stands for her numer in the „asylum” and W stands for „ward”, 14 the number of the ward, A stands for the cell. She wrote that part of hospital she stayed in had words written over the entrance that spelled „psych ward”, from the way it sounds you can immediately see it’s impossible. Comming back to W14A, that’s complete utter bullshit, not a single modern institution refers to their patients by their „cell numbers”. No patient is „given a number”. Not in the way Emilie implied. Remember hand bracelets you get when you need to stay in a regular hospital? They always have a long number -- it’s a number of a patient staying at the hospital, it’s considered a normal thing by everyone, nobody questions that and nobody feels personally offended or stigmatized by that. I believe Emilie might get one of those long patient numbers, but that’s about that, only the number of X person entering the hospital. It couldn’t be „W14A”. Her claims of the LA hospital having „wards” and „cells” as a fact, not some victorian metaphore, are lies. She didn’t use those words to describe Emily with a Y’s victorian asylum, it was all about her modern day mental hospital. If you bought heavily edited 4th edition of TAFWVG (black with striped legs cover), you know that 3 personal journals of Emilie named „Cutting Diary”, „Drug Diary” and „Suicide Diary”, got ridiculously cut and edited, I’d say 90% of text got deleted and remaining text got randomly thrown on last pages of the book (it got omitted completely in eBook version). While those 3 diaries seemed like the heaviest but also the most personal and honest part of the original book, this feeling got washed out and destroyed completely by what she did to those diaries in 4th edition, somewhat putting in question their honesty. She compiled remaining edited scraps of all three diaries and titled them „Evidence of insanity: excerpts from confiscated notebook”. And she added some fake „commentary” from Dr Sharpe. Underlining certain fragments and madeup comments from Sharpe, explaining some things. All of them go like this:

Doctor’s Note: W14A exhibits paranoia and inability to remain in her own reality, begins to reference „Asylum” more frequently.

W14A is clearly experiencing delusions – arrange for time in the quiet room, keep away from other patients.

She basically states that her doctored referenced her as a number. I don’t believe it. It’s fucking bullshit. Even such „evil” doctors as EA considers Dr Sharpe to be follow their rules, don’t give out ward numbers to people and don’t refer to them by some bullshit „ward” and „cell” number. „Patient behaves this way or that way” – yes, but not „Ward 123 Cell D seems delusional, schedule lobotomy”.

Doctor’s Note: „His” is assumed to be referencing W14A’s boyfriend at the time of this writing. We have been investigating the identity of this man and have narrowed it down to two subjects, one extremely famous, one marginally so. Names will be made available to specialists upon request.

What? I mean WHAT? Yeah, we get it, Emilie, that you wanted to let us know you were dating Billy Corgan and Brendon Small in those years, we knew this already long ago. But the whole ridiculous „we have been investigating identity”?! Go ask yourself which fucking „asylum” doctor would care enough to do a fucking „investigation” on the identity of someone’s fucking boyfriends?!

But this one’s most fucked up:

W14A seems to have disassociated her own identity, episodic, each lasting for a longer period of time. We suspect she will continue further in this – stronger medication is needed, schedule electroconvulsive therapy.

She implies they at least scheduled ECT for her, if didn’t put her through ECT. There was NO mention of Emilie having ECT or having ECT planned for her in the original 1st and 2nd printing of the book. Not a single mention in interviews. Nothing. It’s a completely made up thing she fantasized only recently. She rewrites her own history over and over, adding more layers of lies. Now this sounds more like fantasy thing, these days EA treats her book more as fantasy novel. But back in 2009, this book had been marketed as „100 % true autobiography”. Suddenly, she writes more and more fantastical additions to HER OWN STORY, which in effect makes fans more and more sceptical about reality of her hospital stay. She basically dramatizes that hospital stay. If she dramatizes and fills it with fake elements now, who said she didn’t fake it 10 years ago? And people in the fandom had doubts about the way she portrayed the hospital stay for years, saying it’s a huge exaggeration and saying Emilie spits and rages at everyone in the hospital, feeling like a victim, when in reality all that was expected from her was following rules, and the way she was treated was the way everyone is treated in a regular mental institution. In effect, Emilie mainly made herself look like a spoiled brat. I don’t know what is true, what is not, I’m not saying some shit didn’t happen for real, but I don’t believe her „ward”, „psych ward” and W14A thing. EA’s flawed and irrational depiction of modern day psychiatric hospital is another subject.

But it’s also a real biography, just with mystery and time travel added, it’s so epic, but now that its finally here, I realize that a lot of people know so many intimate things about me and facts. It’s like they know me better than like my best friends, I hope I don’t regret it, but I don’t think I will, it’s that whole honesty thing again you know. I’d rather have 5 people at a show that love it, and likewise 5 people who read and understand or can relate to what I have to say; brutal, horrid truths about what really goes on in an asylum; it’s is really fucking uncomfortable, and I’m not going to sugar coat it. I think a lot of people may not know what they are in for when they buy it, it is funny and entertaining, but with the truths that go along with that, and when I did ‘Opheliac’, it was my truth and my obsessions, and the book is the same. It doesn’t try to pretend that it’s something it just clearly isn’t, which is all charming and pretty and nice, and all the things a supposed young woman should be. But I don’t give a fuck, it’s either this or death, and that’s what I’m trying to convey. It’s not daunting to share that with the world, it’s my relief that it’s out there now, so people know. I guess it comes down to that childish wish, or want to be noticed and be the centre of attention.

(Shakenstir interview)

Also once upon a time Emilie claimed TAFWVG is a 100 % historical book”. She claimed she’s done a massive research for the book and she called herself a „huge history nerd”.

It’s been proven by a lot of well-read people and victorian times fanatics in the fandom that her book is anything but historical, her knowledge of victorian times is very faint and it seems she’s done no reseach for the book AT ALL. There are signs of blatant ignorance in this book, for example, „resurgence of bubonic plague in England” when there was no bubonic plague in England in victorian times, or the usage of lobotomy in 1840s when lobotomy both as a term and procedure didn’t exist up until nearly 100 years later (the only thing existing then was trepanation). Her „Ophelia galeries” this is another bullshit: asylum tours were a thing in a previous epoque, I’ve never found ANY proof of specific „Ophelia” galleries taking place at all. Do I have to mention there’s no vultures in London? But that’s a talk for another day.

Fatshaming

Let’s just go straight to the scans.

4th edition of the book was heavily edited and modified. First the original story was hugely cropped up by the proffesional editor for a mainstream release, leaving all the bloody and ugly things out, like 3 diaries, abortion details, etc. Also suddenly making a 27 year old Emilie into a 17 year old Emilie. Nothing came out of that deal, except for the audiobook, which was this very edited and modified version.

Later came out also the paperback „normal book” edition of Asylum. It was hugely modified too, but EA sneaked things she wanted back in. She’s not 17 anymore here, I think. She even added tiny pieces of diaries back, but in a completely bastardized version (to see why, check the Evidence of insanity section). Emilie literally changed character’s looks, ages, stories and endings, she took time to do all that, but she didn’t bother to remove her fatshaming stuff. No, she actually added some more, in a much harsher words.

Now, I’ll allow myself to take these screen from Asylum_Oracle Instagram story, cause it’s all phrased perfectly already.

Ableism

Emilie got terribly offended when she had to be transported in the hospital in a wheelchair. It’s nothing out of ordinary -- you may be alive and well and totally walking on your own, but they offer to transport you by wheelchair. I got transported in wheelchair for magnetic resonanse, ultrasound, etc. I don’t know why they offer this, but I don’t see the reason to throw tantrums about it. The wheelchairs they use in hospitals for that kind of transporting are just plain hospital wheelchairs, NOT specially adapted wheelchairs for physically disabled. I don’t get why it’s such a big deal to her.

However, she doesn’t have any problems with dancing and snaking around in the wheelchair onstage. This case was a huge drama, there was a lot of people offended, both physically disabled and not at all, also a lot of people (also disabled) dismissing it all and saying it’s not ableist. It’s your opinion, but I think you’re lying to yourself a bit. Take a look at her response to reader letter in Bizzare magazine and ask yourself, is that alright? Is it alright to you that she considers being compared to physically disabled offensive?

When you see her dancing and laying dramatically and using wheelchair as a prop and fashion statement – it is fucked up. In this case, the fact that she uses hospital wheelchair doesn’t excuse anything. I mentioned it to see that:

a) being transported in wheelchair in hospitals (don’t know about psychiatric hospitals, so I say hospitals) is something totally normal

b) wheelchair can be used for both transportation and for general use of disabled people.

But using the wheelchair for something other than a vehicle for disabled and a transport for others (for example, people who aren’t disabled but felt ill and aren’t strong enough now to walk on their own), it is viewed as ableist. Using wheelchair as a fashion statement, on the cover of magazine, photoshoot, etc., including able bodied person sitting, or in the case of Emilie, hanging upside down from the wheelchair for the cool effect, is ableist. Seeing EA dancing and standing on that wheelchair, hanging upside down/whatever else during shows was extremely hurtful to those who cannot dance, stand or casually change position in their wheelchair. Those people cannot stand up and then lie upside down from the wheelchair in a „cool, fashionable” pose. They use their wheelchairs as a necessity, not a fashion statement. It’s not a cool show prop to them, it’s a thing they cannot move and function without in most of everyday life situations. The wheelchair can be both a blessing and a curse to them.

You may not notice that, you may not even think of it that way, but take a moment to actually think for a while, try to understand and empathize with those who are disabled and hurt by EA’s „Wheelie” actions.

Examples of lack of understanding for those hurt by the situation and Plague Rats dismissing them, telling them to „make light out of their situations” and „not take their misery out on others” (this is disgusting):

‘But the worst thing about that is her response to Bizzare Magazine question. She didn’t consider how it might look to disabled people. She once again lashed out at the person asking and proceeded to make a victim out of herself, so fucking hurt by the necessity to use wheelchair once in her fucking life for a few minutes, so fucking hurt forever, literally, lifelong trauma, PTSD after being wheeled for a second from point A to point B, in a fucking hospital. And once again, as always, she points all the attention to herself, makes a poor wounded victim out of herself, then tells everyone who doesn’t agree to fuck off.

(Big thank you to loveyou-x3000 for finding that photo - isn’t it crazy that the only place you can find it now is the glorious archive of spreadingplagueoflulz... )

Transcription for those who have difficulty with reading from the scan:

Star Letter - Going to far?

I enjoyed Bizarre 161 from cover-to-cover, but the images featured in the Emilie Autumn feature were the only letdown.

I sustained spinal injuries and was milimeters away from having to use a wheelchair. The use of a wheelchair as a prop for an able-bodied model is entirely irresponsible and decidedly nasty. I’m aware that Bizarre publishes material that some may find offensive, but I feel the chair is there to represent the possibility of illness, injury, the thread of imperfection, damage and weakness.

While I can only applaud you for your exposure of disabled models such as Viktoria, you undo all your fine work when you publish an image like this. Bizarre is on the frontline of the battle against discrimination based on cultural identity, so why propagate a misleading and unhelpful image of disability? - TraumaDoll, YourBizarre

Emilie Autumn says: Dearest TraumaDoll, thank you for your letter. I’m sorry that you didn’t see the irony in these photos. I’ve experienced being in a wheelchair while on suicide watch on a psych ward. Despite my mental health issues, I’m far from being physically incapable, yet I’ve sure been treated like I am. This stigma will never end, so I’ll own my fucking wheelchair and I’ll brandish any tool that’s been used against me and others. The concept of these images shows the joke’s on me because if I can’t find the humour in these situations, I’ll dry up and die. Your offence taken at my hard-won self-acceptance proves that I indeed have something to fight against - people with mental illness ought not to be treated like idiots who deserve no respect. It’s this that I want to bring to the general public’s attention. With Love, Emilie.

Again, everything is excused by the great irony. It’s ironic, you just don’t get it. It’s all the great irony that seemingly nobody’s intelligent enough to understand. In the past, whenever Emilie said something questionable and people started asking, it’s all been dismissed as “being ironic”, the irony and highly intellectual sarcastic humour that you had to have high IQ to understand! (Take any older interview; Emilie loves to boast about her ironic sense of humour and how nobody understands her.) Also, screw what you feel - Emilie Autumn needs to make fun of mentally ill, drug abusers, plus sized nurses to stay alive. She needs to tell her schizophrenia jokes and pose provocatively upside-down on a wheelchair, cause if she can’t find humour in mocking others, she’ll dry up and die.

No matter how bad was your experience, no matter if you had spinal injuries, if you were on the verge of death or disability, or actually you are using the wheelchair, just remember that Emilie Autumn’s experience was way worse: she’s been through the hell of standard hospital procedure, the horrible necessity to sit down for a minute in a wheelchair to be transported, and her trauma lives on, this stigma will never end. Questioning the point of her hanging upside down from a wheelchair for a magazine is really offending, cause sexualizing wheelchair is her way of coping with catastrophic trauma of being sat down in a wheelchair for a minute or less. This way, you’re destroying her hard-won self-acceptance.

“People with mental illness ought not to be treated like idiots who deserve no respect”. That would be very true and important quote, if only it wasn’t put in a context it was put in. Emilie Autumn thinks that being likened to disabled people is offensive, being an able-bodied mentally ill and transported in a wheelchair is offensive, and so having to sit in a wheelchair and being transported is in her opinion being “treated like idiots who deserve no respect”. It’s a really poor choice of words, no matter the intention. If mental illness people ought not to be treated like disabled people, then it sounds like it’s disabled people who are those “idiots who deserve no respect”. I don’t think she truly intended to call disabled people idiots, but the way she said it makes it sound so disgusting.

Take a look at the way she subverts everything. She finds using the wheelchair as a “torture device” of transporting her despite her ability to walk gravely offensive, yet she cannot see how wheelchair users can be offended by her using the wheelchair to pose/perform on. She doesn’t try to understand why would disabled people and wheelchair users be offended by this kind of use of a wheelchair, she immediately turns it all around and accuses TraumaDoll of not getting her refined irony and taking a stab at her “hard-won self-acceptance”. It’s Emilie Autumn that’s the real victim of wheelchairs, right? Being likened to disabled people, getting the same treatment as disabled people, in her opinion (what happened to her was actually a way of transporting typical for every hospital, and being able-bodied has nothing to do with it) is worse than actually being a disabled person?

What the fuck does it really mean? It means that being SO OFFENDED by being transported in wheelchair implies that being compared to physically disabled is a biggest, worst offence to her. Thanks, Emilie. I’m sure your disabled fans are really flattered.

She didn’t really say “fuck you” in this response, but she didn’t really need to. The way it’s written already implies it loudly enough. If you know the way she writes her angry rants, the way she replied on the forums and formulated responses to any sort of criticism in general, then you know what’s hiding behind her words, which are “politely civilized” only on the surface. What she wrote was enough of a slap to the face. “With Love” was a bonus slap.

Manatee R**tard

I don’t use that word and usually if its needed, I’d write the word as above with **, but it’s her own words, so have them in full, as they were written.

youtube

„Manatee Retard” is a song written on tour and performed sometimes in 2009. It was a song about Captain Maggots, who was rumoured to be a „special” inmate.

Lyrics:

„Manatee Retard

Manatee Retard

Swimming in the Sea playing ‘round with you and me

Manatee retard

manatee retard

She’s an African dream, an ocean beauty queen

oh oh oh, manatee retard

oh oh oh manatee retard

manatee retard

manatee retard”

„The real problem is simply that we talk about a lot of things which is good, in our society, which is we can talk about child abuse, and rape, and all that stuff to some degree, but there’s still so much we don’t talk about, largely because we don’t know. One of these things is…well, on the subject of mental illness, we’ve no fucking…I mean, calling someone bipolar is now almost equivalent to calling someone retarded.”

Another thing that caused quite an outrage in the fandom. Emilie has a HUGE problem with women products placed next to baby products in shops. Here’s excerpt from the book. Same thing was said on other platforms such as her forum (2009) and Instagram (2014), but in much harsher words. This time, if we didn’t agree with her, we got called „fucking potatoes”.

January 16, 2009: In Which There Are Questionable Items In The Feminine Care A

Dearest Plague Rats,

Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture???

[Photo of baby care products next to feminine hygiene products.]

(thanks Shefightslikeagirl for source)

Again:

Britney Spears

One of the things that really bothered me personally was how she spits at drug addicts and celebrities with mental problems. She constantly made references to Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan, describing them as „stupid starlets”, „dumb fucks”, stupid fucks loaded on drugs and making fools out of themself. Emilie clearly suffers because of how tabloids call Britney bipolar. She constantly highlighted that the reason Britney behaved the way she did (shaving head, showing tits, etc.) was because she was „fucked up on drugs”, not because she suffered from any sort of mental illness. Now, I’m not a fan of Britney and I don’t know if she indeed has bipolar disorder, but we know she used to have severe mental problems at some point in her life and I think it’s very hurtful and cruel to judge „she doesn’t have this, doesn’t have that” or say she’s „a stupid idiot fucked up on drugs and making fool out of herself”. We don’t know the reasons behind Britney Spear’s behaviour, it might have been drugs, but EA treats drug addicts with real contempt, calling them idiots and whatnot, inventing offensive names for them and blaming them for their own stupidity and blaming then for „giving poor bipolar depressed victimized girls like her a bad name”. Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan give her bad name, just because they happened to have mental and drug problems and got called „bipolar” by tabloids. It’s not Britney Spear’s fault that tabloids armchair-diagnose her with bipolar disorder or whatever else. Britney Spears doesn’t have any power over what is published about her in magazines. It’s not her fucking responsibility to come out and say „I’m a dumb fuck, I’m just a stupid junkie, please don’t call me bipolar cause Emilie Autumn is gonna cry because of that”. Plus, how the fuck she’s so sure Britney doesn’t actually have bipolar disorder? Does the fact someone uses drugs doesn’t allow you to have bipolar disorder, depression o rany other mental condition? Does the fact your name is Britney Spears and you play kitchy pop music means that you cannot actually have mental illness? Does being a „starlet” scorned by Emilie Autumn and deemed „dumb fuck” exclude you from having the „priviledge” of having super fun and artistic glamorous bipolar disorder? Emilie acts as if Britney Spears couldn’t actually suffer from bipolar disorder, like her actions couldn’t be a result of that illness and like whatever eventual drug problems excluded her from having that mental illness. She considers her a fool that intentionally go out fucked up to get people’s attention and then get called bipolar, and intentionally „give bipolars bad name”. She clearly thinks bipolar is some uncommon issue, a rare artistic disease that only affects artistic, special, chosen people.

Here are quotes both from interviews and journals.

(Bipolar) “It’s just like a blank, almost insult for someone who’s acting fucking crazy, which essentially is doing something stupid.”

(Curve Magazine)

“The thing is that bi-polar disorder/manic depression, to begin with, is so intensely misunderstood in a way that really affects people and really matters. It doesn’t help if you’ve got people in Hollywood – Britney shaving her head and showing her whatever-the-hell (I couldn’t think of a clever word to call that right now) we’ve all seen it a million times, and not just with her. Basically, a famous person behaves badly and the next day in the paper, they start calling her bi-polar. It’s like “Oh my God, she acted crazy, she must be bi-polar.” It’s almost like calling somebody a retard.

Yeah, it’s like saying “That bitch is insane, she’s acting all bi-polar” and the thing is, no, they’re hopped up on drugs, that’s what. They might be miserable, and they might have good reason to be, but they’re not bi-polar – that’s something entirely different. This condition has made me try to kill myself, but it’s never made me get out of a cab without underwear or shave my head. It made me cut my hair, but that was different – I left a few inches on there.”

(Glade Magazine)

January 12, 2008: I throw up my hands…

“Hmmm…Suffer’s kidnapping and my plot for revenge has undoubtedly put me into a foul mood, something not entirely unassisted by my having been unable (happy “un” day) to refill my myriad drug prescriptions while on tour leaving me still unmedicated (which, in accordance with the public’s positively moronic understanding of bi-polar disorder, and yes, that is the exact same thing as manic-depression, folks, means that I ought to be out fucking some paparazzo guy whose name I can’t pronounce and jetting off to Mexico after shaving my head and getting myself kicked out of the Four Seasons every night)…but this would do in anybody’s day, UNless of course, as I’ve said before, you’re a fucking potato (would you be surprised if I told you just how many letters I’ve received from good people telling me, “Although according to you I’m a "fucking potato” - insert UNnecessary *wink* here - I’m a big F-A-N"):

As long is no one’s biting their tongue today, I will confess that I HAVE gotten into trouble at the Four Seasons, and Lady Joo Hee can confirm it…I was refilling our champagne flutes during high tea with the vanilla vodka I had stashed in my sarcastic pink thermos, and waiter boy didn’t like it, poor thing…best day evah!

Hey, Brit Brit, I’m on my way!

p.p.s.

Note To The Press: Being Bipolar doesn’t make you do any of the things that the Hollywood fucked-up are doing. Being a drug addict does. There’s a big difference. And it’s days like these that give me the slightest splinter of a reminder of why in the hell I am writing a book about it. So, please, remind me of this day when it comes out and I can’t quite recall why I went to the trouble.”

(From forum journal)

Potato - A derogatory slang term used to describe the mentally handicapped.

And now we’re coming to another closely related subject, which is Emilie’s very visible disgust for drug addicts.

Emilie’s feelings towards drug addicts

I screened that next quote and seemingly forgot to save it and I can’t find it now, sorry. But I remember that at some point she says specifically:

„These people might have taken a lot of drugs, but I actually tried to kill myself. Which is more crazy?”

Yeah, sure Emilie, you gain upper hand in this argument. Those people might have taken a lot of drugs, but you win this round because you tried suicide, yes, you’re more crazy, congratulations. (Hey… didn’t she actually say she’s NOT crazy? Decide for once.) As if people abusing drugs don’t try to commit suicide. As if they weren’t suicidal, didn’t use the substance they abuse to try to kill themselves. Their whole drug use is a long suicide in some way or another. People are drugs are just stupid, irritating, REALLY CRAZY honest to god lunatics, who are too stupid to actually have any idea of themselves, to have feelings and to ponder the oh so inteligent question „to be or not to be”.

There's no word on her being officialy "lunatic", i.e. mentally ill. Even if Kara is indeed mentally ill in some way, it's pretty disappointing how Emilie categorizes and judges illnesses - depression and bipolar disorder patients are perfectly sane, it's so offesive to call them crazy lunatics, this title is reserved for such oddities like schizophrenics and drug users. Emilie is not "crazy", she's always "stark raving sane", it's junkies that are crazy and violent lunatics. Kara's biggest fault is mostly being loud and too talkative for Emilie's liking, flirting with guards, talking out loud what she thinks. She shouted at staff, but her curses and other words didn't hurt anyone nor threaten anyone's safety, she got ignored just like every screaming patient gets ignored. She's detoxing from crack and it would be honestly surprising if she acted polite and satisfied. I’d like to notice that Emilie shouted and lashed out at hospital staff, nurses and doctors a lot of times too. She loudly cursed and „raved” too, yet she doesn’t deem her outrage „violent” or nonsensical (excuse me, in what way exactly „If leaches ate peaches” was more sensible and intelligent that whatever shit shouted by Kara?). Is her screaming fit directed at Sharpe really that much different?

Notice that Emilie calls Kara mad from the very beginning, when she’s done as little as asking for mixed juice. No matter what she does or says, Emilie documents everything with a great joy and reserves almost entire page for calling her offensive names. She hears that guards are violent towards her and she doesn’t have a sympathy for her. So where’s your Fight Like a Girl attitude, Emilie? Where is condemnation of misogyny and abuse? It’s horrible when men are abusive and violent towars women, UNLESS they are drug addicts?

If you don’t view this as problematic, you’re very delusional. She’s got real issues and real prejudices against drug users.

Romanticizing of bipolar disorder

There’s a lot of weird things she says about bipolar disorder, she often acts as one true medium of bipolar disorder, some sort of proffesor specialized in bipolar disorder, knowing everything. She can only be an expert on her own bipolar disorder experiences, but just because she experiences this and that doesn’t mean every person suffering from bipolar experiences same things as her. That’s what i feel about her madeup „statistics” on three out of four bipolars jumping out of the window, or that „there’s a bipolar phenomenon that every bipolar person in the world wakes u pat 4 o’clock!!!” What you have in mind is insomnia, not that a „bipolar thing is to wake u pat 4 o’clock on the fucking dot”. That’s bullshit, but not most irritating of everything she said on the matter.

What unnerves me more is her glamourization of bipolar disorder. While she describes her struggles and downsides of the illness in lenght, she often praises bipolar, talks how it opens some special doors, how incredible it is, etc. She mentiones being bipolar in EVERY DAMN INTERVIEW, before even speaking about music. She’s the one that called herself „famously bipolar” in her own fucking biography promo description.

Some of these are just rather realistic descriptions of bipolar disorder and benefits of manic phases, but if you look at the sheer AMOUNT of bipolar mentions, bipolar talk being the staple of almost every interview, to the point where she sometimes brings up fucking word in word same sentences, as if she recited it from the memory (same as FLAG talk, same as “classic music selling less than jazz, and it’s really fucking low”)... (Well, I tried bringing you more “varied” answers at least):

“So when it comes to bi-polar, anxiety, whatever it takes you to this whole another world of creativity that is never ending.”

“It puts you on another planet a bit to where you see things differently. You know, the sunlight looks different, everything looks different and it makes you a very dramatic person which then leads to…it’s like other people hear a leaf fall, and you hear a house crash. That’s something that makes you…you have this intensity of experiences that need to be let out. You just see things differently which have a unique point of view which then makes it slightly interesting. Still unfortunate - I’d still trade it in for anything else but, while it’s here, I’m going to use it for all it’s worth so that I’m not a victim of it.”

(Metal Discovery interview)

“It is, and that’s because nobody understands it. I know that I’m derailing, but it’s fun to talk about the whole bi-polar thing for a second.

So I could either try to live a normal life and be 9-5, whatever, and have background checks and psychiatric evaluations and have that matter, or I can take everything and make it my career. Now it’s like: how can you fuck with that; it’s what we’re making money off of, and that’s a beautiful thing*. I’m honestly pretty proud of that, because I’m not ashamed of anything.”

(Glide magazine)

*She sure made a lot of money off of that, lol.

“As a writer, a creative person, [bipolar disorder] gives you access to a place that you would not otherwise be able to go to.”

Interviewer: You’re often described as being “famously bipolar,” so I wasn’t sure if all the drama was just part of the show.

“No, that was all completely legit. It is kind of funny – and I’m not ashamed of this in any way – that a large part of what I’ve fortunately been able to figure out and build a career around”

(wrestling with pop culture interview)

Here’s one of those repetitive answers:

“That access to a particular portal of creative awesomeness,” she says. “When you’re writing on the ceiling because you can’t find enough paper to contain your thoughts.” Countered, unfortunately, by long periods of bleak depression. “So it isn’t a good tradeoff — no high is worth that kind of suicidal low,” she says.”

I want to make it clear that despite all that, she usually adds the bad sides of bipolar and she admits it’s not worth this kind of low, as stated above. But that’s too much of talking on one subject only nonetheless – nearly every interviewer, no matter if he asked or not, has to listen to her ramblings on being bipolar. I don’t think i know any other artist that boasts about his bipolar disorder on every occasion or brings it up as much as Emilie.

There’s a photo from 2012 where she shows her „bipolar pin”, literally a button pin with both :) and :( emoticons and „Certified bipolar” text. It was really in a bad taste – wearing your illness as some sort of badge of honor or a title earned at your local scout meeting. I think the pin was stylized as this exactly, a scout badge, something to proudly wear around.

(If you happen to have this particular photo I’m talking about, please send it to me!)

Emilie’s bipolar disorder vs „normal depression” and downgrading depression

“Depression is serious business, but it’s something you can develop through life. Bipolar disorder is completely genetic. You’re either born with it or you’re not and there’s no getting rid of it through any amount of medication. It’s always going to be there, but it’s a matter of deciding after so much incarceration and suicide attempts, if you’re going to die or if you’re going to fight and live.”

It’s not true bipolar disorder is strictly genetic, like you’re sentenced to bipolar from the beginning of your life. It can appear at some point in life due to stress, long drug use (it’s a chemistry after all, it changes your brain), some other lesions and other mental problems. Environmental risk factors include a history of childhood abuse and long-term stress. It’s not true it only happens when you have a history of bipolar disorder in your family. Causes of bipolar disorder are still not clearly understood, but the fact is a lot of different factors and environments make an ill person and saying it’s ONLY genetic isn’t really correct. Plus, i hate how she literally highlights that because of genetics, whe’s sort of doomed for this fate since her fake great-great-great-grandmother Alice Liddel, while “mere depression can be developed”, “depression can be easily treated”.

Emilie’s descriptions on people with other mental illnesses

(Reminder: Emilie considers herself mad, but also not insane, because bipolar is not crazy, she’s „stark raving sane”.)

It can just be about taking a person of any sort and can be as simple as bringing them this enjoyment or taking someone who has some serious problems and maybe reminding them while having a sexy sparkling fun time in one small way relying on your individuality to carry you through crazy times or not paying attention to a bunch of doctors who tell you that you are insane just because you do certain things doesn’t necessary mean that you are crazy. Because you are bi-polar doesn’t mean that you are crazy. Crazy is a whole different term.

Who is „crazy” then?

Again, she’s „sad”, other illnesses are „dangerous”.

Now, brace yourself for one specific illness that got slandered in quite a lenght…

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia part 2/ Emilie’s „jokes”

Emilie has a penchant for making „mental illness jokes”. She gets hellishly offended when someone says anything on her bipolar disorder, but it’s totally fine for her to make jokes on conditions she doesn’t have and certainly doesn’t understand. By the way, if you look at her schizophrenia jokes, you’ll see she’s quite misinformed about what schizophrenia is.

Yes, you do hear voices when suffering from schizophrenia. But you DON’T take on a 2nd persona, different to your usual personality. Developing unconscious personalities is a symptom of dissociative identity disorder. If you want more Wikipedia sort of description:

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a mental disorder characterized by the maintenance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The illness is accompanied by memory gaps beyond what would be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.

(taken from Troll Like a Girl, the quote comes from Opheliac Deluxe Edition.)

Ok, you don’t find this offensive? Try putting yourself in a schizophrenic person’s shoes. I know EA offended a lot of schizophrenic people. And even if you don’t have schizophrenia, nothing gives you permission to make fun of it or dismiss it. Or speak for everyone and claim that something is “not offensive for schizophrenics”, ESPECIALLY if you don’t have schizophrenia.

Next joke:

Here’s an opinion of a person actually having OCD, plus something that’s probably never been discussed this way:

You can hear all that and more here, by the end of the video. “What illnesses you do NOT have”... How funny...

youtube

So, are they lighthearted jokes? Emilie’s „way of coping”? She claims it’s her way of coping, in order to not go mad, to not go and blow her head and drown herself, etc. and so on. We’ve heard it all in her interviews, right. Yeah, her way of coping is basically offending sufferers of other illnesses. Emilie, if you like joking about yourself so much, why don’t you joke about your bipolar disorder instead of someone else’s illnesses, which you don’t understand? Why do YOU get so mad when someone jokes at your own disorder? That’s literally degrading someone else’s illness to feel better about your own. That’s low even for you.

_______

You’d probably protect Emilie saying „But it’s sarcasm! She’s just showing victorian standards and victorian obsession with madness! But she herself speaks against romanticizing of mental illness in the book!” Yes, she speaks negatively about victorian and modern examples of romanticizng of mental illness, but at the same time she doesn’t preach what she speaks, she romanticizes it herself. She spoke about downsides and suffering of mental illness in lenght, but she also wrote and repeatedly said A LOT of very problematic things, including stuff that is apparent glamourizing of madness and ESPECIALLY self-harm. I will sacrifice a lot of space for dissection of her Cutting Diary.

Romanticizing of cutting and self-harm

***(TRIGGER WARNING! Please don’t read if you find this topic triggering, there’s A LOT of glamourization of cutting.)***

Yeah, Cutting Diary. While I don’t think it’s 100 % bullshit and she noted a lot of accurate observations (especially on how society views cutting and self-harm), she wrote a ton of questionable things in that diary that, no matter what her intentions were, sound pretty fucked up. And I think intentions are clear, she spoke her mind so clearly that there is really no point in further making excuses for her, attempts at finding explanations for the shit she wrote or saying that „she didn’t mean it, it was sarcastic” – there was no sarcasm when she repeatedly called bleeding „beautiful”. I’m aware a lot of people never had a chance to read it in full (I’m talking to 4th edition book owners now – your book contains next to nothing from original story in case of Emilie Autumn’s story, she cut out at least a good half of hospital entries and she deleted basically entirety of her diaries, only leaving 10 or so scant tiny fragments, filed as „Evidence of insanity”), I’m aware some never read it because of trigger factor or never re-reads it anymore because of that. If you feel triggered by Cutting Diary/Drug Diary/Suicide Diary, I advice you to leave out this section. But if you look for specific examples of her glorifying self-harm with paragraphs and words highlighted, as well a bit of commentary, here in Cutting Diary excerpts you will find all that and more. As I said, not everything in that diary is shitty, some of her opinions are very accurate, it’s worth reading it to form your opinion (but not if reading on self-harm is triggering to you). But the fragments I posted speak volumes, that’s best examples you will find.

She explains her reasons and feelings and how horribly self-harmers are treated by society very clearly and a lot of what she says is true. What is problematic however are passages where she clearly becomes enchanted (sorry for the pun...) with some sort of „beauty of cutting”, she thinks cutting and bleeding is beautiful, uses a lot of pretty comparisons and words and expresses her pride of her new cuts.

This very attitude of "scarring so they see my pain/illness" is the reason that honestly depressed and struggling self-harmers get accused of being emo phase attention whores. I don’t think Emilie started cutting purely for show, I believe, like a lot of cutters, looked for a way of escapism. But if she’s done it as a „fuck off” for all people asking, a visible proof of authenticity of her manic depression... that’s questionable and naive at the very least.

I used to cut a lot, but I never deemed my blood flow „beautiful”, „something to be proud of” or a meaningful „artwork”. I didn’t collect my bloody tissues. I didn’t have a treausured cutting kits or favourite „tools”. My family used to take and throw my razors away. They also hid/threw out all the razors in the house, shaving razors, etc. They did that because they were worried and hoped lack of razors might stop me from cutting at least for a while. I would never throw a hissy fit about someone throwing out „my favourite razor” or „beautiful artwork masterpiece and whole year documentation of Top 20 cuts on my body”. I wouldn’t make threats like „this bitch better watches her back”. This is fucking ridiculous. If there’s ONE thing embarassing about it all (and I will always fight anyone calling cutting yourself embarassing, or cringey emo phase, or wanting attention), it’s this particular thing, raging at someone because she threw out your favourite razor, probably living in a cozy little bed made of victorian matchbox and called Mr. Thompson or Mr. Wilde, plus a true modern art of papers filled with „beautiful droplets of crimson tears”. This is fucked up and this I would count to the list of glamourization of cutting.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about her want to have scars left, re-cutting the old wounds so that they become more visible, or worrying about scars that are fading away too fast. I think self-harmers just concentrate on the action of cutting, to feel the pain that would allow them to escape psychological pain, not on „wanting scars”. That’s so fucked up. I can’t fucking imagine any cutter being GLAD that they have visible scars. Or STRIVING to get more scars, more visible. Scars left after cutting are a real torment to both ex-cutters and ongoing cutters because of how society treats cutters. It’s a thing that fills them with a huge amount of shame and self-disgust, all those problems with covering wrists/other parts with clothes, worrying what if somebody notices, what if somebody asks, what if your friends notice and mock you and leave you. As a person constantly asked „What happened to your arms?” by complete strangers, mocked, called „emo” and „attention seeker” by people I used to call „friends”, eventually left by those fucking idiots AND as a person that has scars so deep and visible that after almost 9 years are very much apparent (because they’re healed white scars that won’t ever fade, they’ll stay forever), EA’s whole fucking want to have scars, to make them visible, to use them to let everybody show she’s sick and unapproachable, this is fucking disgusting.

I don’t think she still has this mindset anymore, but what she wrote in Cutting Diary is fucked up.

Asexual discorse

Ever since 2003-2005 Emilie claimed she’s asexual. The problem with her identifying as asexual is her definitione of being asexual, which is as faulty as it could be.

Here is right definitione of asexuality.

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity.[1][2][3] It may be considered a sexual orientation or the lack thereof.[4][5] It may also be categorized more widely to include a broad spectrum of asexual sub-identities.[6]

Asexuality is distinct from abstention from sexual activity and from celibacy,[7][8] which are behavioral and generally motivated by factors such as an individual's personal, social, or religious beliefs.[9] Sexual orientation, unlike sexual behavior, is believed to be "enduring".[10] Some asexual people engage in sexual activity despite lacking sexual attraction or a desire for sex, due to a variety of reasons, such as a desire to pleasure themselves or romantic partners, or a desire to have children.[7][11]

Emilie's definition of asexuality:

About your sexuality; what are your tendencies? Are you hetero, bi, lesbian…?

“I think for the most part I feel asexual, which is a kind like you are not completely attracted to either men or women, is in between spaces which is almost as to be bisexual, because you don’t have a real choice. I’ve been with men, of course, but I love women so much (and you can see it on stage) …and that’s what men think: “oh, this is what women do?” that doesn’t make me a lesbian, it’s just what happened. But at the same time there’s a part that I don’t like, and is to don’t be on only one side, because it makes me confuse. And often I watch all from the outside, and I watch all as it is fine, and I respect it. I’m just proud that more and more people show their own tendencies and sexuality in a more free way, I speak even about my shows, where there’s a “lesbian marriage” every night. We started like a joke, and it develop in a very good thing, where people feel more and more comfortable to show themselves.”

Then, suddenly this happened:

Ok, if you didn’t dislike sex, if you were attracted sexually to others, then you weren’t asexual. From what i understand, she had a lot of boyfriends that happened to be bad at bed and suddenly she met someone who wasn’t and she needed to tell everyone in the world… It’s good she finally said she isn’t asexual, cause it would be ridiculous if she still claimed to be, but it’s just that she was misinformed/didn’t care to actually read wtf that means. That’s it – that’s the whole asexual thing.

Additional stuff, more or less discussed, also problematic

Say that to women who had to part with their breasts because of cancer...

Idk about you, but it’s the choice of photo that bothers me. This i san article compiling all the bad shit that happened to her – rape, abuse, depression, contrasted with info on sexuality AND a sexy photo session, with EA putting her finger between her mouth. I think we’re all not surprised that when asked about „what’s inside her mind”, she will 100 % bring up bipolar, supplemented with rape and abuse. But this is fucked up. You have all that horrible traumatic stuff and it’s accompanied by sexy semi-lingerie photo. It changes the sound of it all dramatically, it makes it sound as if she lists all the traumatic stuff and make it look her sexy points. Like romanticizing. I don’t know who chose that photo for this article, it might as well be Kerrang’s fault. She made that „Queen of Hearts” costume specifically for Kerrang photoshoot. I don’t know if she had that costume specifically in mind for this particular article. But it’s her own words, her own costume and her chosen pose. Idk whose fault is this, but it looks kinda distasteful. It make it read like „hey, I’m Emilie Autumn, i’m super hot, and these are my super hot mental issues, and rape and abuse, wink wink”.

Analogical situation: combination of heavy subject, suicide, with sexy suggestive pose. Sarcastic? Ironic? Still kinda odd. It didn’t bother me before, but now it lowkey does.

„Lithium chic” fashion. Her sarcastic t-shirts with puns very intended. At the time it seemed super witty and smart. After you grow up a bit, it’s not so cute anymore.

„Lithium chic” is a play on „heroin chic”, a fashion trend of 90s, which is a look promoted by huge fashion designers. Those designers not only started making „grunge” collections (a style based on flannel shirts, a common element of wardrobe of so called „grunge” scene of punk/alt rock bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney, Melvins, Tad, Mother Love Bone and their fans, bands coming not only from Seattle but also up to 100 kms away from Seattle, who wore flannels because of warmth and weather factor, not because that was in „fashion” where they lived – designers of course took it and thought it’s genuine real fashion trend), but also created a „heroin” look based on what they thought is the look of girls addicted to heroin. That look involved hot models putting fake grease in their hair, heavy smeared make up, ripped clothes and heavy boots and generally being almost anorexically thin. It was a straight up glamourization of heroin addicts.

Does it make it any better if it’s sarcastic? No matter what were EA’s intentions, it’s still tank tops with mental illness puns, it’s still making a fashion statement out of serious issues.

Personally, i didn’t pay much attention to that matter. I remember how everybody loved those tanks... It seemed so witty at the time. People actually wanted her to sell that kind of t-shirts/tanks. Can you imagine yourself parading in that kind of tanks now? I’d honestly feel pretty stupid.

I think good part of fans/ex-fans will dismiss this case, ignore or like those tanks nonetheless. Tbh, it’s not the most offensive thing she’s ever done. I don’t feel anything when I look at those tanks, aside from the fact that I think now it’s rather distasteful. It’s up to you to decide if it’s offensive to you. But it’s still something that CAN be called problematic and deserves its place here. What I find most fucked up is wearing your depression medice as a fashion statement. It’s just as cringey as wearing „I love cocaine” t-shirt. Who the fuck cares what you take?

This really irritates me:

Final words

My finishing 2 cents:

Laughing at mentally ill and mentally disabled, or considering songs like „Manatee R****d” cute and funny really does say a lot about your maturity and empathy. Downsizing and dismissing something just for your own comfort, because you’re „bored” or uncomfortable, says a lot too. Don’t tell others what to be or not to be offended by. You’re not everyone and you don’t make rules for what is internationally offensive or acceptable. There could be literally one single person in the world hurt by EA’s words and it STILL always be be hurtful words. The fact that someone else got offended is enough. Your “but it’s not offensive” has nothing to do here and doesn’t change that fact - it is offensive when it offended someone. Same with her idiotic claims. Emilie doesn't decide that she's not racist - if she clearly said something racist and silenced POC, and offended black (and other) people, the fact remais that she said something racist and behaved racist, no matter what she'd like to think. Even if her intentions aren't purely racist, ableist, fatphobic from the start, it's her actions that scream the most. It's her actions that showcase what she really is. And her actions paint a really unflattering image.

To those eager to excuse EA’s behaviour with bipolar disorder, EA’s own words:

Something to think about:

Thank you for listening. Feel free to take scans/excerpts for other platforms if you need certain proof, share and discuss.

And a little bonus:

#emilie autumn #emilie autumn problems #emilie autumn drama #ableism #fatshaming #emilieautumn #opheliac #the asylum for wayward victorian girls #the asylum #plague rats

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haberdashing · 4 years

Text

Unraveling All The Mystery

TMA mental time travel AU; Jon gives the rest of the original archives crew an explanation for his erratic behavior. Inspired by this post and this fic of it.

on AO3

“Jon...”

“...this is an intervention.”

Jon couldn’t help but burst into laughter when he heard those words.

He’d known something was up when all three archival assistants had joined him at once in his office early that morning, had half-suspected that they were going to ask in unison about how he had been acting different ever since he had the memories of his future self (well, of his no-longer-future self, hopefully) dumped into his head, but that phrasing...

It reminded Jon of an entirely different “intervention” directed his way, and while he knew he needed to take this situation seriously, it was still a far sight for being confronted for stalking his coworkers and accusing them of murder.

(To be fair, two of the four people he’d seen as murder suspects at the time had in fact killed someone, but Jon knew well enough that that didn’t entirely excuse his actions.)

Martin’s brows furled together in that way Jon had always secretly found adorable as he asked, “What’s so funny?”

Jon tried his best to school his expression back into something approximating neutral before he replied. “It’s... it’s a long story.” Technically true, that, though he knew it wouldn’t get him far to say that alone, knew he wasn’t the only one here hungry for answers (at least metaphorically speaking). “Never mind that. What is this... ‘intervention’ regarding?”

Sasha, Martin, and Tim all exchanged a look that Jon couldn’t quite decipher for a silent moment before Sasha spoke up.

“All three of us have noticed that you haven’t been acting like yourself lately.”

And of course it was Sasha telling him this. Sasha who he had two sets of memories of now, one of the real her and one of a being that had taken her place, the two already starting to blur together in his mind when he wasn’t face to face with the real thing.

Jon knew that her point was a fair one, but he still wanted to know more, wanted to know what exactly had changed, what had revealed to the rest of the world his internal change, wanted to know if it was something Jonah Magnus might have already noticed, so he raised an eyebrow and asked, “How so?”

Tim blurted out “weird” right as Martin blurted out “nice,” with Sasha waiting a beat before adding, “Weirdly nice.”

“...fair enough.” Jon could feel a smile sneaking back onto his face as he spoke. “I do know what you’re referring to there, and I, I do want to explain it all to you, but... do you mind if we take this conversation- er, this ‘intervention’ elsewhere?”

“...this is your office.”

“Exactly. Hardly neutral ground, is it?” Especially with Jonah Magnus doubtlessly watching their every move from his office, but Jon wasn’t very well going to mention that bit... “How about we go to that ice cream parlor we went to for Martin’s birthday? My treat.”

Sasha eyed Jon warily. “I had breakfast two hours ago.”

“Are you really going to turn down an offer of free ice cream and answers because of that?”

The three assistants exchanged a few pointed glances and slight shrugs before Tim said with a wide grin that may or may not have been entirely genuine, “You had me at ‘free ice cream.’”

“Glad to hear it.”

Jon got up and grabbed his bag, but before he could finish leading the way out of the Archives, a thought occurred to him. “Somebody bring a digital recording device with--laptop, phone, whatever, just so long as it’s digital. This won’t be a statement per se, but talking about it all will probably mess up the recordings as badly as the real statements do, and maybe that’ll help prove that this truly is the supernatural at work.”

There was a brief silence for a moment before Martin asked, “Jon, what d’you mean by real statements?”

“You know what I mean.” Jon sighed softly. “The ones with something solid to them, the ones you can’t easily rationalize away... not that I haven’t tried. They never record digitally.”

“I’ll go get a camera then.” Sasha darted away, and as she did, Jon could practically feel Martin and Tim’s gazes boring into him.

“So you do know there’s a difference.” Tim said.

“I didn’t think you believed any of them!” Martin added.

Jon sighed again. “I’ve... I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Well, perhaps not always, but for decades now, long before I got hired by the Institute. That’s why I wanted to work here in the first place. The skeptic act was always just that. An act, because it felt safer than the alternative.”

The awkward silence that followed was broken only by Sasha returning triumphantly, camera in hand. “Got it!”

“Great, let’s go.”

For a moment or two, as Jon’s feet obediently traced their way towards the ice cream parlor despite part of his brain insisting that it’d been years since he’d been to the place, Jon thought that was that.

Then Martin spoke up, his voice tentative but clear. “Care to share why you started believing in the supernatural, then?”

“Not particularly.” Jon paused, considered his options a bit more. He needed to be open with them, to trust them, he knew that, but... but that didn’t make talking about supernatural childhood trauma any easier. “Let’s just say it has to do with my distaste for both Leitners and spiders and leave it at that.”

Martin scrunched up his nose, and Jon’s heart ached at the sight of it. “Fair enough.”

The ice cream parlor wasn’t terribly busy this time of day, which was probably for the best, as Jon figured the less chance of being overheard, the better. After a bit of teasing and decision-making, Jon paid for the order as he’d promised, with both him and his assistants getting one scoop of ice cream each (though Tim had jokingly threatened to buy a scoop of every flavor the place had to offer just because Jon would have to foot the bill).

“What’s with you and rum and raisin ice cream, anyway?”

Jon glared at Tim. Tim glared back.

“What do you mean? It’s good.”

“If you’re eighty years old and have no taste buds left, maybe. Seriously, if you made an objective ranking of ice cream flavors-”

“That’s literally impossible, Tim, everybody has different preferences-”

Tim raised his voice a bit as he spoke over Jon. “Then you know that in dead last would be-”

“Anything with marshmallows in it?”

Martin looked up from his scoop of rocky road, pointing his spoon at Jon accusingly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Jon couldn’t quite look Martin in the eye as he continued, so he focused his gaze on Tim instead. “The texture is all wrong for mixing with ice cream, they’re disgustingly sweet, and do you know what marshmallows are made out of? Because I don’t consider that appetizing, especially in a dessert context.”

Martin scrunched up his face again. “...I try not to think about it.”

“So we’ve established that Jon’s taste in ice cream is just wrong in general, I see.” Sasha chimed in.

“Exactly! We weren’t discussing Martin’s taste in ice cream here-” Tim started to gesture wildly with his own spoon, flecks of moose tracks coming perilously close to falling off as he flailed it around. “We’re discussing Jon’s, and specifically how horrible it is.”

“Technically, we didn’t come here to discuss anybody’s taste in ice cream.”

“Said like a man who still hasn’t explained what the deal is with him and rum and raisin.”

Jon weighed the pros and cons of trying to change the subject more forcefully versus just flat-out telling the truth before settling on the latter.

“My grandmother used to buy it for me as a treat. We’d sit side by side on the couch and share a pint as we watched nature documentaries on the telly. It was as close to a family tradition as we had, I suppose.”

“Oh.” Tim’s gaze softened a bit. “Alright, I’ll give you that one.”

“So it’s not because you’re eighty and have no taste buds, it’s because your grandmother was?” Sasha added.

“Hey!”

Sasha stuck out her tongue, turned bright pink from the strawberry ice cream she was eating, her expression clearly unapologetic.

“Can we talk about what we’re actually here to talk about now?”

Jon’s voice came out a little louder than he had intended, and his near-shouting seemed to shut down the friendly banter that had been surrounding him in one fell swoop. Sasha closed her mouth, a few awkward glances were exchanged (none of which were directed at Jon himself), and silence fell.

“...sure thing, Jon. Go right ahead.” Martin eventually replied.

“Start the camera, please?”

Sasha futzed with the camera for a few seconds before nodding and shooting Jon a thumbs-up. Before Jon could speak up, though, Tim beat him to the punch.

“Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding-”

Jon pressed one hand against his temple, though he was struggling to hold back a laugh as he did so. “I told you, Tim, this isn’t a statement. Not a proper one, anyway. We’re damn well not going to be filing it away in the archives, at least.”

Even with his hand half-covering his eyes, Jon could see Tim’s raised eyebrow and amused expression clearly enough. “Not even going to mention the Joe Spooky bit?”

“Wasn’t planning on it, no.” Though Jon couldn’t help but think of the other time Tim had grabbed a recording device and made a joke about the statement of Joe Spooky... but that was why he had to explain all of this, so that they could work together, so that they could prevent Prentiss’ attack on the Archives and all the horrible things that had followed it the first time around.

“Smart man, knows better than to quibble with some quality wordplay.”

“That’s not wordplay, Tim.” Sasha interjected. “That’s not even a pun, just a first name and the word ‘spooky.’”

“Like I said, quality wordplay right there.”

“Please let me actually talk about this?”

Once again, as Jon spoke up, the others went eerily silent. Jon set his hands on the table as he weighed his next words.

“So, do you want to hear my explanation first, or the proof I have to back it up?”

Tim spoke up first. “Proof first. Given how much you’re building this up, I doubt I’ll believe any of it before you’ve given me a reason to believe this isn’t just some elaborate prank.”

“Usually you’d be the one pranking me, not the other way around. I’m not exactly the pranking type.”

Tim shrugged slightly. “Well, maybe you’ve finally snapped, decided to get your revenge by launching a prank for the ages.”

Jon thought about disputing the idea that he would ever prank one of his assistants, let alone Tim--Tim who he knew from back in Research, Tim who was his friend, Tim who probably knew him better than anyone in the Institute (Jonah Magnus notwithstanding)--but decided against it. “Fine, so that’s one vote for proof first. Anyone else?”

Martin raised his hand before speaking, as if he were still back in primary school, and Jon knew that there had been a time not that long ago when he would have made that very comparison in an attempt to dismiss Martin, in an attempt to prove that at least he was more mature and competent than one of his coworkers. But that time had come and gone now, and Jon was just grateful that Martin was willing to take turns rather than everybody trying to speak over everybody else all at once. “Er, I’d rather have the story first, personally. Hard to establish proof if we don’t know what’s being proven to begin with.”

“Alright, well, that leaves you with the deciding vote, Sasha.” Jon pointed at Sasha, using his finger rather than his spoon for the gesture.

Sasha shoved a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth right as Jon pointed her way, dramatically drawing out her consumption of it before finally swallowing and saying with a mouth still tinged bright pink, “I say proof first. Between working in Artefact Storage and in the Archives, I’ve heard more than my fair share of horror stories; I’d like to know we can trust you, trust that you’re not some creepy doppelganger or something, before we get to the meat of whatever this is.”

Jon nodded. “Very well. Proof first it is.” Jon drummed his fingers on the table for a moment as he thought. “I can’t directly prove what’s happened since there’s no physical evidence, but I can prove that I know things about each of you that you haven’t told me, things that I have no way of knowing unless something supernatural is going on.”

“Go for it, boss.”

“Tim, I... god, there’s no easy way to say this, is there... I know what happened to Danny.”

Tim’s whole body tensed up at the mention of Danny’s name, and he glanced over at Sasha briefly, the two evidently having a silent conversation through facial expressions and minute gestures. Once, Jon would have been able to Know what it was they were saying, Know the meaning of each wink of the eye or tilt of the head, but now he could only make a few educated guesses.

“I know the whole story about your trip to Covent Garden Theatre, and your run-in with Joseph Grimaldi there. I know you want revenge on the circus more than anything in the world, even your own life. I’ll make sure you get that revenge, that the circus is destroyed, though hopefully this time you won’t be lost in the process. And I’m... I’m sorry for your loss.”

Tim blinked rapidly a few times, shifting his gaze from Sasha to Jon. His spoon fell from his hand into his cup of ice cream, though he didn’t seem to notice it, even when a few flecks of mostly-melted ice cream fell onto his shirt. “...shit.”

“Wait, you know about that?” Sasha said, tilting her head slightly to one side.

“I do now. Due to... well, I’ll tell you the story, but I don’t think I’m quite finished with the proof bit yet.”

“Right. Well, keep at it, I suppose.”

“Of course. Sasha...” Jon reached out to grab his own hair, but ended up with more empty air than actual strands of hair in his grasp. How had his hair ever been this short? “I wish I knew more about you, the, the real you. Besides arguing about how to pronounce calliope-”

“Cal-ee-OH-pee.” Sasha corrected, a weak grin on her face.

“Ca-LIE-oh-pee-” Jon returned Sasha’s grin with one of his own, one that he wasn’t sure he could stifle even if he tried. “And your distaste for Artefact Storage, though that apparently won’t stop you from going there in an emergency... Terrible idea, by the way. Don’t go in Artefact Storage, and especially don’t go check out that web table alone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Sasha shivered exaggeratedly at the thought.

“But I, I do know, actually, that you and Tim have talked about how you’re more qualified to be head archivist than I am, that you should’ve been the one to get the position instead of me.”

This time, Sasha was the one to start the silent conversation between her and Tim.

“And honestly? You’re absolutely right. I came across a tape Gertrude left for her successor--far too late for it to help me directly--and she made it very clear that she expected that successor to be you, Sasha.”

Sasha stopped her silent conversation with Tim to stare at Jon. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And based on what I now know, it’s entirely possible Elias chose me in part because you really would have been better at this job than I am.” Jon punctuated the statement with a sharp, bitter laugh.

“Why would Elias do that, though?” Martin asked.

“That ties in to the bigger picture stuff a fair bit, but suffice it to say that when Elias was looking for an Archivist, he had a lot more in mind for the position than actually taking care of the files in the Archives. There’s a reason Gertrude left it in such disarray, and there’s a reason he has so many inane rules about how to go about organizing what remains.”

“So he’s sabotaging the place?” Tim looked a little less shaken than he had been a moment ago, though he still hadn’t cleaned up the ice cream staining his shirt and was now fiddling absentmindedly with his spoon, half-eaten ice cream forgotten.

“Essentially, yes.”

Tim snorted. “Explains a few things, actually.”

Martin raised his hand again. “D’you have any spooky impossible knowledge about me, then?”

Jon laughed, loud and long. “Martin... the question isn’t whether I know anything about you, the question is where to start.” Jon shook his head, rapping his spoon against his cup as he considered what to say next.

“I know... I know you lied on your CV to get in here, that you don’t even have a degree, let alone the Master’s in parapsychology that you claimed to have. I know that you don’t have a middle name, middle initial notwithstanding. I know you’ve got a second tape recorder stashed away in document storage, that you use it to record poetry you wrote, because you think it gives a, a certain lo-fi charm to the recordings...”

“H-hang on a minute!” Martin’s face was red, but Jon didn’t think it was entirely out of embarrassment this time, and Tim and Sasha had their shoulders raised, as if they felt they were being attacked somehow...

“...oh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? I promise this- this isn’t me calling you out, or, or attacking you, you don’t need to get defensive about all this-”

“Really?” Martin sounded skeptical; Jon couldn’t really blame him.

“For one thing, I couldn’t fire you even if I wanted to. And for another, I absolutely, positively don’t want to. Martin Blackwood, you’re stuck here with us for the long haul.”

“Great.” There was a sharp sarcasm to Martin’s tone, but Jon elected to ignore it.

“I also know that... that you notice a lot more than people think, that you do a lot more than people give you credit for. Including me. Especially me. I’ve taken you for granted... all of you, really, but especially you, Martin. And I’m sorry about that, I really am. I know better now, I swear.”

“...thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. Literally, don’t mention any of this when we’re in the Institute. I don’t want to risk Elias overhearing what I’m going to tell all of you.”

“Elias doesn’t come down to the Archives that much...”

Jon shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Still don’t talk about it.”

“Fine. Won’t mention it.”

“Good.” Jon took a deep breath and let it out before saying, “Proof?”

A few more glances were exchanged between the three assistants before all three nodded in agreement. “Proof.”

Sasha adjusted her glasses slightly before asking, “So what exactly is it you’re proving to us, then?”

“I, uh.” Well. No use beating around the bush. It was going to sound ridiculous no matter what, but hopefully he’d done enough to establish beforehand that he wasn’t just imagining things or making things up. Hopefully he’d done enough that they wouldn’t dismiss his experience the way he’d dismissed so many others.

“I have memories of the future.”

“You’re talking about time travel?” Sasha says, the bright gleam of her eyes visible even though her glasses.

“Not exactly--I didn’t physically go back in time, just, just mentally, just the memories I shouldn’t have yet.” Jon stared down at his hand, the same hand which he clearly remembered being covered in scars from worms and flames and stabbing, but was now utterly unblemished. “And they’re not... not memories of this future. I mean, I didn’t have this conversation before, it doesn’t work quite like that. I remember a future where I didn’t have these memories to work with--so it’d be some sort of changing or branching timeline, not, not a stable time loop...”

“I see.” Tim’s expression suggested otherwise, suggested that despite what his words might suggest he was caught somewhere between confusion and disbelief.

“I suddenly got these memories overnight not long after Martin...” Jon hesitated, unsure how to delicately phrase the next bit of what he had to say, how to refer to Prentiss’ siege on Martin’s flat without risking upsetting Martin in the process. “...started living in the Archives. So I imagine that’s when I started acting weird, or, or nice, or weirdly nice, or however you want to put it. I don’t know why it happened then, exactly, but maybe it has something to do with me growing into my role as Archivist--late enough that I’m already getting comfortable in the position, but hopefully early enough that I can prevent the worst of it from happening all over again.”

Martin held up his hand, though less in a way reminiscent of a primary schooler and more in a way reminiscent of such a child’s crossing guard telling an oncoming car to stop. “I’m sorry, I was trapped in my flat for almost a fortnight, under siege by, by some sort of flesh worm hive thing--are you honestly saying that’s not ‘the worst of it’?”

Jon laughed and shook his head brusquely. “I wish it were, Martin, but unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg here.”

Sasha tilted her head to one side, some strands of hair falling into her face as she did so. “What’s the iceberg then?”

“Well, there’s a lot of it, as the metaphor rather implies, but I’ll try to keep it short... Prentiss attacks the Institute-”

Martin’s face visibly paled at the mention of Prentiss’ name, and Jon scrambled to reassure him.

“Even in the future I remember she didn’t directly kill anyone, and I’ll make damn sure she doesn’t get a chance to do so this time around, but, well, that is what happened. And when Prentiss attacks, Sasha runs over to Artefact Storage, messes with the web table when nobody else is around, and gets killed and replaced by the monster bound to it.”

Jon started to put one finger out for each major event he lists off, as if keeping a tally, though he has no idea what the final count should be.

“Martin finds Gertrude’s body in the tunnels. I accidentally release the thing that replaced Sasha when I meant to kill it, and it almost kills me in turn. I get framed for murder, get kidnapped three separate times within a few months. Tim stops the circus from completing their ritual, but blows himself up in the process. Martin almost gets lost to the Lonely. I accidentally end the world, try to make it better, can’t make it better, send my memories back right as everything’s entirely going to shit. There’s more to it, but those are the most important events, at any rate.”

At least, they’re the most important events relating to Martin, Sasha, and Tim. No need to tell them about things like Melanie getting shot by ghosts in India, or Daisy getting stuck in the Buried. The big picture is complicated enough as it is.

“...I know you’ve made a few cock-ups in your time, boss, but ending the world is a new one even for you.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to laugh, or even to meet Tim’s eyes, instead staring down at the sad dregs of his ice cream, long since melted. “It’s really not funny. Billions of people--just about everybody in the world--were suffering, stuck in a seemingly-endless torment, and it was all my fault.”

Martin bit his lip anxiously for a moment before speaking up. “I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault.”

Martin’s words brought a slight smile to Jon’s face, but he still shook his head in response. “It was. Trust me, Martin, it really was my doing. We had this argument enough after it actually happened... rather than discuss that further, I’d rather focus on preventing it this time around.”

“Do you have an actual plan for making sure the world doesn’t end for us, then?”

Jon looked up, looking into Sasha’s dark eyes, before breaking into laughter and grinning.

“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing

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jeidafei · 5 years

Text

D.Gray-Man Chapter 234 Translation Notes

I haven’t posted a note for many chapters, but this chapter dropped so many reveal-bombs I just can’t i just can’t aaaaaaaargh gurglegurgle

/regain composure /why am I listening to “Send In The Clowns” on loop while posting this?

Ahem. So, in short, this chapter is super LIT, but also a headache to translate. As with all reveal-heavy chapters, there is no knowing how disastrous the ramifications of one tiny misinterpretation can be on future reveals. Whoops!

So let’s peruse the story page-by-page, word-by-word, unraveling the story plus a little ramble on the Japanese language.

Warning: this post is incredibly long

(You can skip to 5 for my wild theory on The Pillar)

1. Gawd, I’ve always hated these opening captions T T

Because they always give me this feeling of I think I kinda understand what this means but I don’t know how to translate this so it makes sense!

紐解かれるかつての別離（わかれ）

I think I spent time on this one sentence even more than the rest of the chapter. Despite it being the first thing on the first page, this is honestly the last thing I translated this chapter.

Word-by-word, 紐解かれる (himo-tokareru) is the passive form of the verb 紐解く (himo-toku), which by definition means:

1) Unbinding and opening a new book 2) Unraveling (i.e. memories, history, the truth, etc.) 3) A flower blooming

紐 (himo) and 解く(toku) are also actually two separate words used normally in daily life. The first one means “rope” and the second means “to solve, to untie, to unravel etc.”

So, in essence, this word refers to something hidden, a secret being revealed. No surprises here, since we’re talking about D.Gray-Man.

かつての (katsute no) means “Once”, “Used to be” whereas 別離 (betsuri) means “parting, separation” but the furigana indicates must be read as わかれ (wakare) for some reason, and means farewell or separation as well.

I take it that as Mana and Nea were once separated by death, but now Nea has returned to Mana as he vowed to, the “farewell” is no more; it just used to be a farewell.

So now that we have all the pieces...

HOW ON EARTH DO I TRANSLATE THIS !!!???

You saw how it turned out above. To be frank, I’m still not satisfied with it, but as my period cramps are killing me and I’m literally typing this to distract my mind from it because I can’t sleep yet with this pain, and my brain is out of ideas, as always...

I’ll leave it to you guys to interpret freely!

2. Nea’s last words

Just when I thought I’d skip that troubling caption and start on the dialogue right away, manga-kun messes with me again! Who was Nea talking to? In the background, Nea is reaching up to Mana while decaying away. However, on the next page, turns out it is Cross recalling those words.

So I walked over to my bookshelf and picked up DGM volume 17 and 22.

In volume 17, in their last meeting before Cross disappeared, Cross told Allen that Nea promised him that he’d return to Mana if Cross kept watch over Mana.

In volume 22, however, Road reveals to Allen that “Don’t stop, keep walking.” were Nea’s parting words to Mana.

Um...so...which is it, exactly?

So if context doesn’t help, then should we turn back to the literal word? If it were some other language I might’ve said great idea! But this is Japanese; a douchebag of a language that assumes all parties must be native speakers and privy to the conversation beforehand. And thus omits subject, verbs, and objects whenever it pleases to screw foreign learners and outsiders alike.

Why, Nea’s sentence has no subject and object!

まってろ。必ずマナの元に行く。「アレン」が目印だ。それまでは立ち止まるな。

Literally this says “Keep waiting/Just you wait. (I will) definitely go to where Mana is. ‘Allen’ is the sign. Until then, don’t stand still.”

While Nea using Mana’s name might imply that Nea’s not talking to Mana, but to someone else, otherwise he would’ve used “you/your”. But in Japanese, usually people will refer to their convo partner by name as well, i.e. Lenalee and Allen refer to everyone by name instead of “you”. This is considered neutral and politer than the textbook pronoun “anata” (which is kinda condescending actually...so why do they still keep it in the textbooks!?).

In case you’re not that close with the person you’re talking to, and not sure which pronoun you should use, using their name is the safest bet to avoid offending them. (Don’t go calling your client omae, of course lol!)

So, back to Nea, going by this rule, he also could’ve been talking to Mana himself as well. See? Curse you, nihongo!!!

Anyway, Nea didn’t talk to Mana/Earl that way when they met in recent(? I dunno, my sense of time is already warped from too many hiatuses and hopeless waiting) chapters; Nea refers to Mana using the pronoun “anta” which is the shorter, more casual form of “anata”. And judging from his overall language, he’s not that polite or soft-spoken either, so the possibility is lower.

Also it’s kinda weird to tell someone who’s sitting right in front of you that you’ll “go to” where he is.

So, using my spidey sense plus all things considered, I finally concluded that since it’s Cross’ flashback, Nea was talking to Cross this time.

Looking back on this, I don’t know if I’d be able to translate DGM even with 50% accuracy had I not read the series from the start and have the volumes stacked on a bookshelf nearby just in case. Screw you, NIHONGO!

3. Pierrot, Clown, Auguste, Whiteface, Harlequin; What’s the difference?

In Lost Fragment of Snow, Mana is described as a Pierrot whereas Cosimo is a Clown. As I’m not well-versed in clown traditions, I did some Googling and Wikipedia, and learned the art is even more interesting and richer than I once thought:

In this informative blog , it’s explained that while in appearance, the Pierrot and the Clown are almost the same, there is one rule that sets them apart:

The Pierrot has tear marks under his eyes, whereas the Clown does not.

The Pierrot’s tear marks:

(I just noticed Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker also has tear marks)

The blog is long and detailed and very interesting, but in short, though both the Pierrot and the Clown are supposed to make people laugh by doing foolish things, while the Clown intentionally acts foolish to be laughed at, and can also joke back at and laugh at the audience as well, the Pierrot will always have to be laughed at and made fun of by the audience.

Deep down, though the Pierrot is hurt and sad, he must act as if he’s not, to conceal it from the audience. Thus the tear marks indicates a deep, profound sadness.

(*pause to sob for Allen and Joker*)

Back to Mana, we can clearly see he has a tear mark on his right eye. But Cosimo has what looks to be a tear mark and a star under his eyes as well.

So...aren’t they both Pierrots? Grrrrrrr! DAMMIT HOSHINO!!

Anyways, moving on. I think we remember that back in Allen’s epic showdown with the Earl in Edo, this scene happened:

The Earl compares Allen to the White Clown/Clown Blanc and himself to Auguste. In classic tradition, Blanc and Auguste are often paired together, and it is said that this originates from the pairing of the Pierrot and Harlequin.

No no no obviously I’m not talking about this one lol

Ahem, back to serious-ass clown lore:

Both Blanc & Auguste and Pierrot & Harlequin are similar in that the former (Blanc and Pierrot) is more sophisticated, stern, serious and melancholic, whereas the latter (Auguste and Harlequin) is the happy, clumsy, grotesque, sometimes rude fool that does the former’s bidding, to comical results.

In Lost Fragment of Snow, Mana is said to always be smiling and extraordinarily kind, and that he is an enchantingly elegant, beautiful clown, but when he smiles, he always looks as if he is actually crying, dying inside.

I mean, pretty much everyone has had that moment in their lives, no?

Okay, back to seriousness, again; Yes, Mana is the ultimate Pierrot, the Whiteface, the Blanc. The sad fool who must always be laughed at by the world.

And now Allen, who has taken on Mana’s personality, became the melancholic laughingstock of the world himself, constantly being pushed down and trodden on and used, but having no choice but to push on with a smile, hiding his pain deep underneath the white greasepaint.

Cue the music!

I started a joke, which started the whole world crying But I didn't see that the joke was on me. I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing Oh, if I'd only seen that the joke was on me.

(Bee Gees - I Started A Joke)

4. Great, Cosimo had a hard life too. One more confirmed-dead character I have to cry for!

I hated Cosimo. Still do. Heck, EVERYONE HATES COSIMO. I mean, until now, the guy totally has no redeeming qualities and no justifying reason behind his relentless cruelty.

But in the recent chapters, there are reveals not mentioned in LFS:

Cosimo was bought and forced to work as an errand boy, like Red, before he somehow crawled his way out and became the circus’s top performer. While drunk, Cosimo would also complain about how he was actually born a noble (this last one is also mentioned in LFS).

Imagine that. Your parents abandoned you for whatever reason (maybe he’s a bastard child?) and you ended up sold to slavery in a circus. After years of being worked to the bone and abused, you struck it big and thought you had it all, then new guy waltzes in with his stupid dog and takes your spotlight.

Heck, you don’t even have to live such a rotten life to feel bitter. In Toy Story, even brave and fair Sheriff Woody was reduced to a jealous wreck in the face of Buzz Lightyear stealing Andy’s attention from him, wasn’t he? And I think we can all relate to that. Most of us have been jealous of someone before.

Cosimo’s unforgivable actions towards Mana and Allen the Dog may have been fueled by insecurity, trauma and fear as much as jealousy. His abuse towards Red is a result of long years of being abused himself; his own way to cope.

While Red/Allen blames himself for his pain and not inflict it back upon others, Cosimo did the opposite, because everyone reacts and adapts differently. However, to be clear, both of these traits are not healthy.

There’s also the fact that Red was saved by the kindness of Allen the Dog and Mana while he is fortunately still young enough to regain faith; whereas Cosimo suffered alone all through his life, surrounded by selfish, two-faced scumbags like that guy handing out leaflets. Had things been different, who’s to say Red might not turn out the same as Cosimo?

In a nutshell, Cosimo is simply a product of his harsh environment. While I still despise him, I can’t help feeling some pity for him and understanding where all that evil had come from. I don’t believe he is inherently bad. Nobody is. Had he been raised with love, I’m sure he would have been a very different person.

5. The Pillar

I know, this is what y’all are actually here for. I mean who cares about Cosimo’s tragic life or the difference between a Pierrot and a Clown when there’s an honest-to-gods HOLY LIGHT SPLITTING THE SKY APART AND OBLITERATING THIS WHOLE WORLD FULL OF SINNERS!? And it’s even teased, like, waaaaay back in Timothy’s Arc (gawd how old was I back then?) !!

First, a recap of this chapter:

7,000 years ago, The Pillar destroyed the world (which seems pretty modern). The Noah survived and held a grudge against The Pillar for forever destroying their world, leaving them with nowhere to return to. Once they found the reborn Millennium Earl, they pretended to be his family, but instead are using him to exact revenge on The Pillar, because it is predicted the Earl will one day become The Pillar and destroy the world again. Cross however took pity on the Earl and chided Road for believing in that prophecy and causing the Earl so much misery.

Some IRL tidbits:

Hoshino-sensei revealed she traveled to Ground Zero of WTC for inspiration, now we finally get to know which scene that inspiration is for. And IMO, the instant obliteration coming out of nowhere on one fine day, the Pillar etching a line from sky to ground amidst the pile of rubble, reminds me of the A-bomb’s mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And we all know which country Hoshino-sensei comes from, right? Could there be a link?

Now, my personal analysis (or rather, pointless rant with no answers coming out whatsoever):

This chapter both confirms, clarifies and also debunks important things we have believed from our time with the Order, listening to the Order’s side of the story.

1) In the very beginning, Komui tells Allen about the previous end of the world 7,000 years ago. The Bible calls it “The Great Flood”. The Cube calls it “The Three Days of Darkness.” However, we now learn it is neither rainy nor dark. Nope, one day all of a sudden, a blindingly bright shaft of light struck down from the sky, and The Capitol suddenly became The Scorch. How did it achieve that? No clue!

2) Komui tells Allen that the end of the world was caused by a war between the wielders of Innocence and the Earl + the Noah Family, and the ensuing flood that destroyed the world scattered the Innocence around the world.

However, in this chapter, we learned there was no war. There was no flood. Just the Pillar that appeared suddenly one day. And surprise, the Noah Family hated The Pillar for destroying their beloved world, their only home (wait, aren’t they supposed to hate the Innocence?).

Yet now the Noah are working with the Earl, who wants to destroy the new world and would someday become the Pillar and destroy the new world too? Yet Cross says they’re just using him for all this time?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

My super duper wild theory is that since 1) The Earl is the Pillar-in-Making, 2) The Noah show hatred for The Pillar as much as they do for the Innocence, 3) The Pillar, like Innocence, could trigger their Noah Memory to threaten to swallow them, then it’s kinda implied that;

Mana = The Millennium Earl = The Pillar = The Heart of Innocence

And the Noah, knowing this all along and wanting to prevent the end of the world from happening again, tricked the Millennium Earl into thinking they’re helping him fulfill his raison d'être of Harbinger of the End of The F***ing World (sorry, another reference, heh), not telling him that he’s actually the Heart of Innocence itself, watch him go after Exorcists he suspects are the Heart, and gleefully accept his orders to kill those Exorcists looking for the Heart, in order to prevent the Black Order from ever getting the Earl aka the Heart on their side.

They also let the Earl create legions of Akuma to fight the Exorcists and destroy all the Innocence shards, literally using the Earl to destroy himself, keeping him away from his true allies, chipping away at his lifeline one shard at a time, like Harry crushing Voldemort’s horcruxes one by one, not knowing he’s a Horcrux himself. Until finally, when there is nothing left but the greatly weakened Heart with no army to protect it, then will the Noah have the chance to defeat it once and for all.

And of course while they keep the Earl busy searching for the Heart, old man will never pause and think hmmm, maybe I am the Heart?

Perhaps this is why Wisely said that all humans who have awoken into Noah will accept their duty once they learned of Noah’s mission. Since Noah’s mission now seems to be preventing the end of the world at the hands of Innocence, which I take as God’s power, and God’s weapon for “cleansing” the world whenever he deems it too sinful.

After all, we have seen the horrors Innocence can do, the lengths Innocence will go to punish people it judged to have sinned. Innocence is said to be a crystallization of God, and like God, it has been foreshadowed numerous times to have that ruthless, merciless, unforgiving streak within it that could alienate even Allen himself.

Anyway, I typed this one without checking the earlier volumes that much. I expect there will be several loopholes, so be sure to point out any inaccuracies and also please, please do let me know what you guys think of these reveals as well! I’d love to hear differing theories!

Other tidbits

The Garvey Troupe, not Garbeigh. Sorry, everyone. Phonetically, Japanese does not have the “v” sound. Nowadays, you can write it out by adding the mark on the ウ (u) letter like this: ヴ, but most words would still transliterate it to the “b” sound, and most Japanese people will still have trouble pronouncing the “v” sound properly anyway. For example, “Violin” could be written both as (v)ヴァイオリン or (b)バイオリン, and most people would pronounce it like the latter.

Do you think Road’s memories of the End of the World has anything to do with Lenalee and Allen’s shared dream of the End of the World as well? Though Lenalee’s nightmare features the Black Order in ruins and not the modern skyscrapers of Road’s.

So Cross knew Nea and Mana from childhood!? I’ve always thought he met Nea by chance when they are grownups and he was forced to do Nea’s bidding. Interesting!!

So, that’s it for this chapter! Phew! That was uber long. Thank you so much for bearing with me this far. Hit me up in comments!

#dgm #d gray #d gray man #d gray man 234

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