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comradekatara · 2 months

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Your atla analysis is the best so I wanted to ask your opinion on something I've found the fandom fairly divided on - what did you think of Azula's ending within the show proper? Unnecessarily cruel or a necessary tragedy? Would you say that her mental breakdown was too conveniently brought about in order to 'nerf' her for the final agni kai? Also, do you think it was 'right' for Zuko to have fought with his sister at all or would it have been better for him to seek a more humane way to end the cycle of violence?

okay so im saying this as someone who loves azula to death like she has always been one of my absolute favorite characters ever since i was a kid and i’ve always vastly preferred her to zuko and found her to be extremely compelling and eminently sympathetic. i am saying this now before the azula stans come for me. i believe in their beliefs. but i also think her downfall is perfectly executed, and putting aside all the bullshit with the comics and whatever else, it’s a really powerful conclusion to her arc. obviously that isn’t to say that she wouldn’t continue to grow and develop in a postcanon scenario (i have a whole recovery arc for her mapped out in my head, like i do believe in her Healing Journey) but from a narrative perspective, her telos is in fact very thematically satisfying.

no, she wasn’t nerfed so that they could beat her in a fight. the fact that she falls apart is what makes them feel that they can confidently take her on (although i do think in a fair fight katara could win anyway), but the whole point is that it’s not about winning or losing in combat. the whole point is that zuko and azula being pitted against each other in this gratuitous ritual of violence as the culmination of their arcs is fundamentally tragic. yes it’s a bad decision to fight her, and zuko should have chosen another path, but the whole point is that he’s flawed and can only subscribe to the logic he has spent his whole life internalizing through violence and abuse.

that’s why aang’s fight against ozai, while tragic in its own way, is also a triumph for the way in which his ideals prevail in the face of genocide, while zuko and azula’s fight is very patently tragic. there is no moment of victory or triumph. even as zuko sacrifices himself in a beautiful mirroring of “the crossroads of destiny” and as katara uses the element of her people combined with techniques across other cultures to use azula’s hubris and ideology of domination against her, it’s presented as moments of personal growth occurring within a very tragic yet inevitable situation. it was inevitable because azula had always been positioned as an extension of her father, and thus to disempower ozai also means disempowering azula, his favorite site of projection, his favorite weapon.

yeah, it does rub me the wrong way when zuko asks katara whether she’d like to help him “put azula in her place.” it’s not a kind way to talk about your abused younger sister. but it’s also important to understand that zuko doesn’t really recognize his sister’s pain, despite the fact that they obviously share a father, because he’s always assumed that she was untouchable as their perfect golden child and thus never a victim. and he’s wrong. zuko and katara expect a battle of triumph and glory, noble heroes fighting valiantly so that good may prevail over evil. but as they discover here, even more so than their previous discovery two episodes prior, a battle is not a legendary event filled with bombast and beauty until after it has been historicized. often a war is simply fought between pathetic, desperate people who see no other option but to fight.

aang’s ultimate refusal to fight despite having all the power in the world is what makes him so important as the protagonist. but katara and zuko both share a more simplistic view of morality and what it means to be good. and zuko assumes that by fighting azula, he can only be punching up, because she has always been positioned as his superior, and she (in her own words!) is a “monster.” and then azula loses, and his entire worldview shatters. joking about putting her in her place makes way for the realization that behind all her posturing and lying (to herself more than anyone) and performance and cognitive dissonance, azula has always been broken, perhaps even more than he is.

azula says “im sorry it has to end this way, brother,” to which zuko replies “no you’re not.” but i think azula is truly sorry, because in her ideal world, she wouldn’t be fighting zuko. she doesn’t actually want to kill him, as much as she claims to. she’s already reached the conclusion that zuko will only truly reach once their fight is over. she lacks a support system, and she needs one, desperately. if she could somehow get her family back, do everything differently, less afraid of the consequences, she would. she’s smirking, she sounds almost facetious, but really, she is sorry. as of this moment, she really doesn’t want it to end this way. but zuko cannot accept that, because in his mind, azula is evil. azula has no soul nor feeling. azula always lies.

her breakdown doesn’t come out of nowhere, either. it’s precipitated by everyone she has ever cared about betraying her. first zuko betrays her, then mai, then ty lee, and then ozai — the person she has staked her entire identity to and to whom she has pledged her undying loyalty and obedience, become nothing more than a vessel for his whims — discards her because she had the audacity to care about someone other than him. what i don’t think zuko realizes, and perhaps will never realize, is that azula betrayed ozai by bringing zuko back home. he was not supposed to be brought back with honor and with glory. azula specifically orchestrated the fight in the catacombs to motivate him to join her, and it’s not because she’s some cruel sadistic monster who wanted to separate a poor innocent soft uwu bean from his loving uncle, it’s because she genuinely believes that she’s doing what’s best for him. she believes that their uncle is a traitor and a bad influence, and she believes that bringing zuko home with his honor “restored” is an act of love. to her it is.

yes, she claims that she was actually just manipulating him so that she wouldn’t have to take the fall if the avatar was actually alive, but also, she’s clearly just covering her own ass. she didn’t know about the spirit water, and only started improvising when zuko started showing hesitation. but even if she was only using zuko, then that was an insane risk to take, because either way she was lying directly to ozai’s face. and zuko admits it to ozai while simultaneously committing treason, so of course ozai would blame azula, his perfect golden child who tried to violate his decree by bringing zuko back home a prisoner at best and dead at worst, and instead found a way to restore his princehood with glory.

we only see ozai dismissing and discarding azula in the finale, but it’s clearly a tension that’s been bubbling since the day of black sun. and we know this because we do see azula falling apart before the finale. in “the boiling rock” she is betrayed by her only friends. in “the southern raiders” we see that this has taken a toll on her, that she is already somewhat unhinged. she and zuko tie in a one on one fight for the first time. and she takes down her hair as she uses her hairpin to secure herself against the edge of a cliff. unlike zuko, who is helped by his friends and allies, who has a support system. it’s a very precarious position; she’s literally on a cliff’s edge, alone, her hair down signifying her unraveling mental state. azula having her hair down signals to us an audience that she is in a position of vulnerability. she is able to mask this terrifying moment wherein she nearly plummets to her death with a triumphant smirk, but it should be evident to us all that her security is fragile here.

and the thing is, even though she’s always masked it with a smirk and perfect poise, her security has always been fragile. azula has never been safe. azula’s breakdown is simply the culmination of her realization that no matter how hard she tries, she will never be ozai’s perfect weapon, because she is a human being. she is a child, no less. and there is no one in her entire life who loves her for nothing. zuko has iroh, who affirms to him that he could never be angry with zuko, that all he wants is simply what is best for zuko. but azula doesn’t have unconditional support in her life. she doesn’t even have support.

everyone she ever thought she could trust has betrayed her, and so she yells that trust is for fools. because she feels like a fool. of course fear is the only way; it’s what kept her in line all these years. azula is someone who is ruled by fear, and who is broken by the recognition that fear isn’t enough. her downfall is necessarily tragic because her worldview is wrong. the imperialist logic of terror as a tool for domination is her own undoing, just as ozai’s undoing is losing the weapon he has staked his national identity to. it’s a battle of ideals. aang v ozai: pacifism v imperialism. katara and zuko v azula: love and support v fear and isolation.

zuko is unfair to azula, it’s true. he tries to fight her even as he can clearly recognize that “she’s slipping.” instead of trying to help his little sister, he uses that weakness to his advantage, tries to exploit her pain so that he can finally, for the first time ever, beat her in a fight. it’s cruel, but it’s also how siblings act. especially considering the conditions under which they were raised, and how zuko has always viewed her. and in zuko’s defense, she has tried to kill him multiple times lately, both in “the boiling rock” and in “the southern raiders.” zuko is someone who gets fixated on a goal and blocks out everything else, including recognition of his surroundings or empathy for others. so of course when he’s promised to put azula in her place he’s going to exploit her weaknesses to do so. after all, isn’t exploiting his weaknesses exactly what azula does best? so he allows himself to stoop to her level, and in fact only redeems himself through his sacrifice for katara. but it is when azula is chained to the grate and zuko and katara, leaning on each other, look down and observe the sheer extent on her pain, that zuko realizes that “putting azula in her place” isn’t actually a victory. it feels really, really bad, actually.

they’re in a similar position as they were when they faced yon rha. and now it is zuko’s turn to understand that he is not a storybook hero triumphing over evil, but rather a human being, facing another human being, in a conflict that is larger than themselves. to “put someone in their place” is to imply a logic of domination, of inherent superiority, that someone has stepped out of line and must be reordered neatly into the hierarchy. but aang disputes the notion, ozai’s notion, that humanity can be classified along these lines, that there exists an ontological superiority among some and not others. so operation: putting azula in her place was always going to be flawed, even if she was performing competency the way she always does, because they’re nonetheless subscribing to her logic.

of course they should be helping azula, of course they should be reaching out to abuse victims through support instead of more violence. but first they must recognize her victimhood. first they must come to understand that they didn’t get lucky, and they didn’t dominate her because they are more “powerful,” that they weren’t “putting her in her place.” they must understand that they are not heroes fighting villains in a glorious trial by combat. that the logic of the agni kai is flawed. that they are all victims. that they are all just scared, hurt children who are still grieving their mothers.

#update: ok i readmored it 👍🏼#azula #analysis #zuko #katara #ozai #azula&zuko #azula&ozai #asks #malatilata #ugh azula is such a beautiful character….. i love her sm #her arc is so beautifully perfectly tragic #just thinking abt the mirror scene gets me sooo . distraught #this was supposed to be like 2 paragraphs lol #as is always the way . with me..

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stem-sister-scuffle · 1 month

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STEM SISTER SCUFFLE: ROUND 3 MASHUP 2

Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus) vs Winry Rockbell (Full Metal Alchemist)

Ms. Frizzle is a Science Teacher!

Winry Rockbell is an Automail Mechanic!

Why you should vote for each contestant:

Ms. Frizzle:

"*gestures at entire magic school bus series*"

"Embodies the true spirit of scientific discovery: barely-contained chaos."

"She is very knowledgeable about a wide variety of sciences, and uses that knowledge to further the educations of many people. Teachers deserve the world; they do so much for so little in return. (shout out to Mrs. Goates)"

"She loves science and loves teaching kids about science. I love her. Idk I saw she only had one submission and that made me sad so now im here submitting her"

"She is an icon and has cool earrings"

"SHE'S SO COOL!!! She's so smart and so fun and genuinely just an icon. ALSO she has a little lizard on her shoulder. I saw an ask abt the submissions for Ms. Frizzle and the sender was the only person who submitted her.. I couldn't let this go. ALSO one of my professors irl called herself the irl Frizzle and she's a doctor of biology so make of that what you will"

Winry Rockbell:

"The best automail mechanic in the whole of Amestris: need I say more? She’s also the only person who can really get Edward Elric to listen / scare him"

"She's super smart and is crazy about mechanics, but she's also so kind and compassionate! She helped deliver a baby, she cares really deeply for her friends and family! She truly rocks!"

"i’m a biomedical engineer so she is the best women in stem"

"she’s extremely skilled and dedicated to her craft, her work is very high quality (she’s also the personal mechanic for one of the protagonists) and she has a dedication to improving the lives of the people around her in any way she can (and she has so much autism swag about automail, it’s a joy to watch). i love her your honour"

"She's so good and so fun and she's trying her best. She makes sure the prosthetics work and they're super plot important!!!!!"

"She can build and repair robot limbs AND attach them to human nerves"

"She’s only 15 and is repairing magic-infused heavy machinery for fun"

"Spunky, kind, and smart as hell... one of the shounen manga girls of all time."

"At age fifteen she could build a whole metal arm in 3 days (pulling all nighters)! She geeks out over the work of other prosthetics engineers and earned herself an apprenticeship where the shop's costumers began to prefer her after only a few months! She's kind but takes no shit and narratively symbolizes the goodness of humanity. also she read medical textbooks as a kid (her parents were both doctors) and was able to apply that knowledge for successful impromptu midwifery years later!"

"She is practically a child engineering Genius! Designs and makes prosthetics. She takes her work very seriously and geeks out over other people's designs. She is such a beautifully written strong female character that holds her own in a fandom full of amazing strong female characters and a great role model. She's Hella cute"

"She is considered a prodigy in her field, and is known as the “Automail Otaku” because of her unending interest of any machines and tools in the building and repairing of automail. She is incredibly smart, sincere, and passionate. She works hard for what she wants, is full of optimism despite what she has suffered, and is very loyal to her friends."

"built a fully functioning prosthetic arm for her friend when she was TWELVE basically by herself and has been his regular mechanic since. also heavily dabbles in the medical side as well as the mechanical side (for example: she successfully delivered a baby single-handedly at fifteen having only ever read about the subject before). she is so skrunkly she’s an icon a legend and she is the moment"

"Listen any girl who can master mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and biology in order to build prosthetic limbs by the age of 12 is Impressive. She’s the one that got me onto an engineering career path I’m very biased"

#stem sister scuffle #round 3 #the magic school bus #ms frizzle #fullmetal alchemist #fma brotherhood #fma #fma winry #winry rockbell

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insufferableprotagonistpoll · 3 months

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Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

Really mean to Cas (called him a child, zero respect for him, calls him family and casts him out when the angels are looking for him), and an absolute dick to Jack (threatening to kill him CONSTANTLY)

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

misogynistic scumbag. theres also a few different times that dean finds teenagers sexy with the most recent and prominent example that i can recall being the scooby doo crossover episode in season 13 where hes super into daphne who in the version they chose for the episode is 15-16 and is interacting with her as if shes a real person cause they got magicked into the episode. he treats everyone around him like shit and the only time the narrative agrees that thats a bad thing is when he has the mark of cain put on him and hes acting no differently than he does usually its just now acknowledged that hes treating others like shit. ive been rewatching the show for shits and giggles with a friend and wow he really does not treat anyone well but i wanna focus on how he treats sam for a second cause dude's hobby seems to be ignoring what his brother wants and lying to sam about doing stuff that directly concerns him the demon blood and souless things are reasonable cause those were both Bad for sam but theyre still part of a wider pattern and the most prominent example of this being when dean tricks sam into letting gadreel possess him and actually gaslights sam about it with the whole ordeal ending when its revealed gadreel lied about who he was and while possessing sam murders a friend of theirs. his voice is just also stupid as fuck im sorry this is just petty but he just sounds like hes trying so hard to be gruff n intimidating but he just sounds like a kid pretending to be batman

Dean’s list of sins is crazy long because of how long the show ran, but the key thing for me is that post-locking Sam in the bunker (season 4 I think?), I just can’t enjoy their relationship anymore. I normally love their sibling dynamic, but Dean’s ultimate worst past-the-point-of-no-return moment for me was demonizing (pun intended) his little brother for being “addicted” to demon blood, which only happened because of a series of events that were either Dean’s or someone else’s fault, not Sam’s. I also really dislike how the fandom treats Dean like this angel (pun intended) who has done no wrong and even tries to justify the MULTIPLE times he’s beaten up and otherwise abused his little brother. Canon Dean is like the polar opposite of fanon Dean: he’s homophobic and racist (jokes about a Black man being sexually assaulted in prison), misogynistic (take a shot every time he calls a woman a slur and you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and abusive.

Propaganda why the Tenth Doctor is insufferable:

They’re so *edgy*

That one time he committed a genocide by drowning the last children of a near-extinct species (Racnoss) because their mother was evil. The closest anyone ever got to calling him out on it was when Donna noted that his take on a *different* set of weird alien babies (the Adipose) was a lot nicer than last time.

A combination of hypocrisy, sanctimony, and an equally insufferable fanbase. And the dissonance between what he actually does and how the narrative presents it.

#dean winchester #supernatural #the tenth doctor #doctor who #insufferable protagonist poll #insufferable protagonist tournament #tournament poll

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potahun · 6 months

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im watching blood of youth and have made it to ep 6 so far, and it is starting to grow on me after episode 5. however, since i've seen a few comparisons between the two which have led to my watching it, i would not say it has a similar vibe to mysterious lotus casebook, so i would not recommend watching one because you like the other and hope to find something similar.

to clarify, the vibe i get so far from BoY is very similar to a shounen . it has the young teenage protagonists on a grand mission, the companions coming to each other's aid, it has the fighting spirit, the leveling up (even the training sequences with hype music!) Possibly, it is also more of a traditional wuxia (but experts pls weigh in on this) because there is a much greater focus on fighting and overcoming adversities in a martial arts context. i understand there is a great political intrigue coming up at the end, so maybe things will change. for now, i see a lot about martial arts with impressive visuals, youths choosing their paths regardless of the previous generations' choices (a theme i like!) and about growth and breaking out of the shell in general

mysterious lotus casebook leans strongly towards murder-mystery and intrigues. it also deals a lot less with the passion of youth as a theme. the protagonists are older (li lianhua and di feisheng should be in their early thirties, fang duobing is likely around 20, but it's not specified). the mood varies wildly, but it's sometimes a soft ghibli and sometimes an eerie ghost story... it deals with accepting the fragility of human life, haunting/escaping the narrative, closure, death and rebirth, being queer (yeah, i'm saying this), mirror sides of human bonds and their sometimes coincidental, brittle but precious nature... despite impressive fight sequences, leveling up in martial arts really falls to the far background. much of the heart of the story is li xiangyi being given a chance to make his goodbyes to the jiang hu, but also living again as li lianhua.

also, a point that seems minor, but can lead to very different feels: the visuals of both shows are different. mysterious lotus casebook is soft colors and low contrast. it's crisp fights, but barely any magical attacks and few effects. it makes up for the lack of special effects with agile and artistic camera work, and smart use of speed, as well as elegance in the choreography. blood of youth uses more highly saturated colors. the visuals are aimed at impressing. the cgi is very decent, and can lead to a pleasant image on their own, but sharp moves are also used. i think if you come out of BoY and head into MLC expecting the same level of visual shock, you might come out thinking MLC has less impressive fights. or on the contrary, if you are not into cgi at all, you might head into BoY and think it's overkill.

not saying that you can't enjoy both! i adore MLC to death, but i enjoy a good shounen and i am starting to enjoy BoY. so far, i feel like they've told very well what they set out to tell, but i would not pit the two against each other in an objective manner. they feel like apples and pears to me, despite some jokes feeling similar (xiao se being a miser, li lianhua being an iron rooster, wu xin's bad cooking, li lianhua's bad cooking etc) the atmosphere of the two shows have extremely different vibes to me. MLC feels like blossoms falling softly on grass and waterfalls, BoY (so far) feels like setting off firecrackers and a storm on the rise. they are love letters to different aspects of the jiang hu. if you want to tackle both, please don't expect the same thing out of the two

#not going into my pet peeves area such as style of humor because i ve had to tame that down multiple times already #but thats more subjective #blood of youth #mysterious lotus casebook #lhl #mlcb #the main protags are also incredibly different #xiao se still acts with a certain noble haughtiness to his cold attitude #li lianhua is a sly lying bitch (affectionate) with no loftiness left in his daily behaviour (as li lianhua)#some could call xiao se cool.#li lianhua (again in his daily behavior as li lianhua #is Not Cool (i say this with so much love for him. i love this bitch and his sense of humor to death)

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cyberneticlagomorph · 8 days

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is there something you've got that you've worked really hard on and loved, but not really been able to share extensively, in Jack's world? yes this is an invitation to talk about it.

god theres so fuckin much

the second version of the lore doc is 104 pages long at present and this 3rd edition is gonna be AT LEAST that and some change

i have pages upon pages of weird stuff i've written down and mulled over and will never ever use bc i have no idea how to incorporate it into anything yet

like the-end-of-everything

ok so i gotta put this under the cut due to length and religious stuff and Theseus Hare spoilers

so the-end-of-everything is

a lot?

She's almost As Much as Jack

She's the personified Ending of Jack's Narrative, the Jabberwocky from Alice in Wonderland, the angel Lucifer, The Green Sun from Homestuck, Nidhogg from Norse mythology, Mr Eaten from Fallen London and a million billion other things

She exists currently as a weird dream ghost that has attached Herself to Jack to the point where he dreams about Her every night no matter what.

The same dream, every single night for as long as he can remember

In one of his earlier iterations on this blog, he had his ability to dream SURGICALLY REMOVED (don't ask me how he did it, he just did it, it was hard) and She still showed up every night like normal

You see, their fates are tied together. Jack is the Protagonist, and She the Antagonist, as well as the Ending to his story.

Her in universe lore is fucking WILD and i'm probably not gonna do much of anything with it on the blog for Reasons.

In universe She was made to be Fairyland's original captive star, but She was Too Much on many levels to the point where Her creators had Her lobotomized in hopes that would calm Her down. It did not, She eventually escaped and fucked off into deep space, where She met God (yes that God) and fell in love.

He made Her his favorite angel and named Her Lucifer. And then the shit in Eden happened and She got kicked out of heaven

She swore revenge against God for abandoning Her and when She tried to take that revenge She was torn apart and devoured by... something.

In older drafts it with other deities, im not sure about now tho, but Her leftovers were shoved into a well/hole/pit at the bottom of the universe where nobody could ever find them, Her True Name erased from all history and record. (Hence why we know Her as the Nameless Thing)

She wasn't dead though, not completely anyway. She found Her way into the world of dreams and spoke to people through them, She amassed followers and made plans.

And then a child was Born

Alice was born, many Alices in fact. Each born and grown and groomed for war and lost and lost and lost because they were not the right Alice to slay the Jabberwocky

Jack is supposed to be the Right Alice, Alice is actually his deadname and why his VTM alt is Named That. Jack is supposed to slay the Jabberwocky for good with the Vorpal sword and lock Her away inside of himself forever and always

See, Lucifer does not want that at all, She wants to find Her Name and pull Herself back together so She can kill God for what he did and then devour the multiverse bc everyone let God Do That to Her so they very much should all die about it.

THE THING IS

Outside of the in universe lore, She doesn't HAVE a fucking Name to find. The Writer never gave Her one, She was never supposed to win or leave or anything, and even if She was the Narrative is unfinished and abandoned so She's stuck in here with the rest of those virgins until She figures out a way to Fix That.

Also Lucifer and the elder god thing inside of Vorpal have major beef, they had beef before Vorpal died and became a bone sword. I'm 90% certain Luci is why Vorpal fuckin died but i might change that later. Vorpal was made exclusively to kill the Jabberwocky and other divine entities so if they didn't have beef before they sure do now???

ANYWAY

I wanna do so much with Her but i can't cuz writer's block has hands, I'm a coward, and vivzieverse made characters based on biblical figures Weird and Kinda Uncomfortable but The-End-Of_Everything is my fucking BABY and i can't wait for you to meet Her, also she looks like this in jack's nightmares:

art by @/pencilbrony my befriended

#ooc #ask to tag #long post

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the-owl-tree · 1 year

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oh my GOD I love your isekai warriors au.... I love that the isekai trope is becoming a lot more popular, especially in anime... please tell me more about it!!

shaking ur hand rn hello fellow isekai anime/other mediums fan :3c FIRST lemme go on my tangent about this genre and my main inspo because wow this got way too long lol

isekai is total comfort food for me haha it's my go to genre of manga/manwha/webcomic reading whenever i'm feeling down and while i generally feel the genre is getting bloated and somewhat stale in anime, i still enjoy it quite a bit. It's a cute idea with a lot of potential, i just wish less of the shows went for the wish fulfillment route of things since we have so many by now.

mine is very inspired by a lot of korean manwha style stories in which the protag gets trapped in a show/game/book/etc. and has to deal with it, specifically what if you became the villain of a story. A lot of them play off the trope of the one dimensional evil villainess and how an average person would have to deal with coming into the body of someone like that and dealing with consequences. That, or it's the tragic villain, someone's who's life is marred by tragedy usually of their own doing.

The most interesting ones are those that play on how character archetypes would actually work in the story. The cold bad boy is just a shitty abusive guy, the shy guy who follows the girl is kind of a stalker, and so on.

One of my bigger inspirations was a plotline that also stuck out to me: a teen girl who died too soon and got reincarnated as the mother of the protagonist. obviously she has no clue what to do, she's a kid who wants to go home! And the only way she thinks she can is by ensuring the story goes as planned (and this of course is doomed from the start, unbeknownst to her, the villain is a reincarnater too and has already made tremendous changes). She dies and the reader never knows if she gets to go home or not. It's kind of this rough around the edges gem of an idea that I love and obviously had to steal for myself.

note for anyone getting intrigued by my descriptions uh a lot of these stories tend to be pretty shallow in their exploration. this subgenre consists a lot more of wish fulfillment/revenge fantasies comparatively to like a deep dive of "oh my god i've fucked up the narrative". Not to say they don't have interesting ideas! many are super interesting. just like. temper your expectations if you're going in

originally the story was gonna be set in a canon arc but that felt boring so i decided to just make up a whole story for it

The story is meant to be a (loving) poke at old fanfiction, common tropes in the aforementioned subgenre of isekai, and just a general ""cliche"" Warriors series (in the human universe here, I figured it's call Battlers/Battle Cats or something stupid lmao). In this story, Frostblaze is born into [ONE OF THE FOUR FAKE CLANS I HAVENT FIGURED OUT NAMES YET IM SORRY]. She's the born to an unnamed mother who tragically died of illness when she was just a young baby and has no clue who her father is.

She's isolated from her peers due to her eyes which some believe are an omen of her unnaturality. This only worsens when she is apprenticed to their Clan leader and causes Honeypaw, the daughter of the Clan leader, to become enraged with jealousy. She is one of Frostpaw's worst tormentors in the early parts of the book and eventually, during a battle, tries to off Frostpaw herself....but is killed by Frostpaw's love interest, the dashing and handsome (if a bit stupid) Eaglepaw of [INSERT RIVAL CLAN HERE].

The two hit it off (Honeypaw is an after thought at this point) and work together to stop the eeevviilll leader of uuhh eviiiiilll clan. They win, live happily ever after, Frost is actually their Clan leader's daughter and Honeypaw is her half-sister and blah blah blah.

At least, they're supposed to. Honeypaw, out hunting, is hit by a truck at the same time a human is. Human wakes up as a cat about to be buried because everyone thinks Honeypaw is dead and freaks the fuck out.

A lot of the plot points are kind of just me working through my gripes of the subgenre lmao:

"the person who is reincarnated is more adept and cool and better than their character and everyone loves them" -> Honey is awkward, neurotic, and can come off as rude to those who don't know her. Even her coolest trait, her wrestling ability, is off-putting because oh my god why are you putting a cAT IN A SPIDER GUARD THEIR SPINES DON'T BEND LIKE THAT HONEY PUT HIM BACK TO NORMAL-

She reread the story before she died but, because she has no pen, no paper, and sadly of all, no thumbs, she's unable to write it down to keep remembering it when she gets sent to this world. It's awful and she desperately wishes she had thumbs back.

she stands on two legs, makes weird comments alluding to being a human, and just is a bit of a weirdo. Honeypaw was isolated for being mean, Honey is isolated for making everyone uncomfortable (unintentionally). However, her isolation allows her to slip under the radar and do some more investigating, as she's noticed that some of the details in the story aren't adding up...

The story is strange and the characters aren't as she remembers now that they're in the flesh. Of course, her main priority is to thwart Honeypaw's assassination attempts, the spirit being intent that the way to get her body back is if she dies again. It's only from a near death experience that they realize that that's not gonna work and have to work together to change the story so they don't die!

and, as many people have pieced together, they're not alone.

#warrior cats #wc isekai au #deer rambles #tysm for asking about it #sorry it devolved into me rambling about my thoughts #but the story is kind in progress #so there isnt too many fine details to discuss beyond the plot + general character overviews #honey's horrible time

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liquidstar · 2 years

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absolutely no one asked but im thinking about the “i love emilia” scene and how misunderstood it is by nerdboy fans that kind of miss the whole point of the series. subaru’s rejection of rem is narratively a rejection of the typical isekai power fantasy.

when subaru was first summoned to lugnica, he instantly assumed he was getting his very own isekai power fantasy, he thought he would have the coolest magic powers and his own harem and whatnot. and well, those tropes are still somewhat there, but its a deconstruction so hes not really getting what he wants. not only is his return by death ability a very very isolating one but also a painful and traumatic one, and its not even a flashy cool superpower, its literally one that only works so well because hes weak enough to constantly die.

so by arc 3 subaru feels somewhat robbed. he always had a bit of a tendency to treat the people around him like characters (literally, he calls people NPCs) and he had a tendency to boil them down to tropes and sort of expect that they act a certain way, that things would go a certain way because hes The Protagonist. but things arent going according to his script. the final nail in the coffin is when he gets humbled by julius at the royal selection hearing, julius is literally the “knight of knights”, an ideal subaru will never have.

subaru claims he entered the royal selection hearing and fought julius for emilia, but emilia sees right through this and rightfully calls him out- she tells him he only did it for himself, that he doesnt really know her, that hes constantly projecting his own will onto her. shes right in every sense, subaru has placed her on a pedistal and can no longer treat her like a person, the “special treatment” he talks about isnt something she wants but he doesnt care what she wants. he only cares about what he thinks she wants, whatever works best for his fantasy. he’s literally objectifying her, its not subtle. so she packs her bags and leaves.

so subaru sulks in the capital while rem watches over him. and rem stays with him and supports him and comforts him despite his terrible fucking disposition- arc 3 subaru becomes borderline unlikable at times, especially when he decides that the witch cult attack on roswaal’s manor is a good thing because he can play the part of the hero and save emilia and force her into a princess role once again (remember shes running for KING). but eventually hes faced with the grim reality of the situation, like, its really fucking drilled into his head how messed up this is.

and he realizes hes not a hero. he breaks down in front of rem and confesses what a pathetic loser he actually is, how stupid and lame hes been, how much he hates himself. and she tells him that she loves him and....

actually, let me go on a tangent here, im going to skip ahead to arc 4 because... arc 4 subaru actually perfectly mirrors arc 3 rem. so forgive this rambling for not being linear. anyway, in arc 4 subaru has overcome his feelings of entitlement, but he loses rem, the person who encouraged him, the person who he still did love very much (maybe not in the same way, but he did love her). and now he hates himself twice as much. he hates himself so much that hes actively suicidal.

his most obvious parallel for suicidality is beatrice, yes, but the way in which he’s self-sacrificial parallels rem. rem, who literally calls subaru her “reason to die” and throwing herself into danger- thats the same shit subaru does in arc 4 to save everyone. subaru sees no value in his life in arc 4, neither does rem. for some reason people ignore rem’s inferiority complex, her lack of self confidence due to just being ram’s little sister. ram is LITERALLY the reincarnation of a god so we cant blame rem for feeling a bit... sidelined compared to her twin. her love for subaru is selfless, but selfless to a fault.

but subaru is also a fantasy for rem; one of the series biggest themes is “self recognition through the other”- essentially the way people see you vs the way you see yourself, and how in a sense both of those are equally real. rem literally sees subaru as her hero, she sees him the way that he expected himself to be seen when he came into this world, she sees him as the fantasy he wants to live out, and as her own fantasy as well. she literally tells him about the fantasy life she imagined for them in the future and everything.

subaru initially offered her this fantasy in an attempt to run away from the events at the manor, he told her they could run away together and live out their lives. and rem rejected him, because her love is selfless, because she understands that this fantasy isnt right- she puts that over her desires. and she still confesses her love, to show them that hes worthy of it for who he is too.

and through this its made even more clear that rem IS the fantasy, the girl that would stick by you no matter what, worship the ground you walk on, see you as a perfect power fantasy hero no matter how plain you are. but shes still a realistic character, she only works as a fantasy if you refuse to see her as one (like subaru used to) and ignore the fact that her love is also flawed, self-destructive, and co-dependent one. meanwhile emilia is the reality, the girl subaru cant force into a box, wont solely depend on him, and wont be projected upon- she demands to be her own person, with every fiber of her being, because we all know how much emilia hates being treated like someone shes not.

so... after some encouragement from rem, subaru chooses not to take the easy (slothful) route. he tells rem straight-out “i love emilia” and this time he means it in a true way.

and a million nerdboys who wanted to fuck rem cried their eyes out that night because they wanted to live the fantasy vicariously through him, missing the entire point of the series. subaru crushed the fantasy by choosing the reality.

and the character development really reallt stuck- arc 4 subaru and emilia are frankly kind of adorable. not perfect given the horribly traumatic shit going on, but when emilia had her mental breakdown in the trial and started to act incredibly dependent on subaru, he was absolutely horrified to see her so traumatized because he knows she would never want this- he no longer wants her to depend on him especially at the cost of her on sanity. and subaru would later reference rem’s “i love you” speech to him by giving a similar one to emilia, giving her the same encouragement rem gave him.

#re:zero #long post

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charlie-artlie · 9 months

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opinions on cassidy five nights at freddies and the golden duo theory

anon do you realize you’ve asked me about my favorite topic?

TLDR, i dont like either of these theories! but i love talking about them, and if you WOULD like to read about it, i will ramble at length under the cut

so I’ve already spoken at length about my issues with the cassidy theory but here’s a quick rundown:

if shes real, she is one of the most important characters in the entire series and we know literally nothing about her. her name was gotten from a cypher in a word search, and her popular fanon design was just a random kid on the same page (or a different page that was also cassidy relevant? idk) (also also, i have seen a great theory that midnight motorist is actually about cassidy, and honestly id love it if that were true and this was hidden cassidy lore all along, but the character is only referred to with he/him pronouns, which leads to my next issue)

every character that refers to her uses male pronouns. the only argument i could see for this is retcon, because im not going to argue with people that republican scott cawthon made a character named cassidy with he/him pronouns. this would have to mean that sometime between the security log book and UCN scott changed cassidy into a completely new character, which to me, is a much bigger leap than the retcon from “SAVE HIM” to charlie, but, thats just me :/

her name was removed from princess quest, which signifies to me that she is not supposed to represent the princess in that game. steel wool has hidden lots of easter eggs and lore hints in the code, but to my knowledge the only one they’ve removed is the princesses name as cassidy (renaming her just ‘princess’ i believe). imo, it makes more sense if the princess represents vanessa, seeing as they follow the same path, both collect the vanny mask, both get trapped by glitchtrap, beating the game frees vanessa, etc etc etc

my honest opinion? everything she represents in the story would be better served to a pre-established character. i KNOW im biased as a charlie stan, but literally why isn’t TOYSNHK charlie? shes already established as having more control and awareness than the other spirits and likely was the only one who personally KNEW afton when she was alive, giving her even more motive to hate him. or even CC would make more sense! arguably the very first child to die to an animatronic, narratively, it’d make way more sense for it to be him. hes been stewing in agony and remnant for decades, seeing everything his father does, the one character who ACTUALLY has a connection to the golden freddy suit, and! now that we have a slightly more concrete answer to the fnaf 4 cameras from sister location, could actually be counted as one of his fathers victims!

okay, now with that out of the way, onto why i specifically dont like the golden duo theory, because, here’s the thing, even if I could accept cassidy as a Thing in the franchise (which i can! she’s been acknowledged by scott so I have to accept that shes at least real in some capacity [cassacity]) i STILL have issues with the golden duo theory for different reasons

the first and biggest reason is simply that CC is a hugely lore relevant character, who has an actual backstory, a tie to the main villain and the main protagonist (if you consider michael the protagonist, which i personally do), and makes narrative sense to possess golden freddy (the animatronic that killed him, not to mention his father possesses its counterpart, i mean come ON that is just a delicious parallel!!) cassidy, meanwhile, is a name you can find in a word search. and thats pretty much it. (not counting the yandere simulator chica mini game as actual cassidy lore. im literally just saying no. you cant make me.) im sorry, but it just cheapens CCs role in the story. there is literally no point in making him share golden freddy

its just not present in the games at all. there was every opportunity in UCN to hint/tease/confirm this but none of those things were done. the ONLY thing i’ll grant is that “The One You Should Not Have Killed” and “The Vengeful Spirit” COULD MAYBE be different characters, but why would they be? that sounds like two similar descriptions of the same character to me, personally.

the only evidence for it in the books is that, if you ALREADY believe that cassidy and CC are both possessing golden freddy, you can then reverse engineer that theory into “cassidy is TOYSNHK” by saying its a parallel to the stitchwraith plot line. feels more likely to me that TOYSNHK was originally just going to be andrew from the books? i just dont see how any of this actually ties to cassidy

the security log book. i hate the stupid security log book. everything in it is so arbitrary but its also the lynchpin for major fanon accepted theories. sorry but the “two spirits are talking to each other and also michael i guess” just doesnt hold water for me. why is the dialog on random pages out of order, and why does some of it not even line up with each other. the logbook honestly made more sense to me when the theory was bite victim=michael, the way it is now just seems like people deciding it means whatever they want it to mean

okay now this one is a little more nitpicky but im including it anyway (this is again more of problem with cassidy in general but stay with me) including cassidy in the missing children incident would mean we have five missing kids (cassidy, fritz, jeremy, gabriel, and susie), and then separate from that incident i guess, is charlie, and then also separate from that incident is CCs death, so seven dead kids in total (ignoring elizabeth since shes at SL, and also the “second missing children incident”, which is another theory i dislike but thats a rant for another anon messenger). with that math, that means someone HAS to be excluded from the fnaf 6 gravestone ending and i hate that. if cassidy is one of the missing children then shes the obscured gravestone, and then only charlie or CC could be the one in the distance, and excluding either of them feels wrong. CC is (arguably) the first kid to die in a freddys and (arguably….) what started everything happening, and charlie is the one to help the others possess the original suits. they are both more established characters than cassidy, who, again, we know nothing about.

all of that is to say this: if cassidy is a thing, why does she have to be in golden freddy? can i tell you what id prefer? what i think would be so much more narratively satisfying? what i lay awake at night staring without blinking up at the ceiling gritting my teeth wishing was real? i wish…cassidy was possessing freddy. freddy, og brown freddy, is the face of the franchise, and has literally zero lore significance. the only reason we know who possess him is from inference from the fnaf 6 gravestone pic lining up with the fnaf 3 ending head placement (does this sentence make any sense? can anyone hear me?) if cassidy is freddy, then charlie is the fifth missing child (i see no reason why she couldn’t be, theres nothing to indicate that the kids all died on the exact same day) and CC is golden freddy and the narrative is satisfying. cassidy can still be important, can even still be TOYSNHK for all i care, and CC can continue to writhe around in golden freddy in the 5020 ending.

deep weary sigh. i think…. thats actually all i have to say on the subject. if you’ve read this far thanks and also sorry. i just wanna cap this off by saying im not mad at anyone who likes cassidy theory or likes cassidy as a character, i have absolutely no problem with any of that! my problem is entirely with scott, who has just dropped this deus ex machina william-afton-seeking-missile on the table in front of us and refused to elaborate.

#charlie chatterbox #anon how could you do this to me #i had things to do tonight……….#im joking but im actually thrilled #not an exaggeration this is my favorite topic #fnaf theories in general are my favorite and this one really does keep my up at night #cuz like….as much as i hate it and dont think it makes sense #there isn’t really a better explanation?? except andrew theory but thats almost more unstatifying lmao #fnaf #fnaf neg #what’s the tag this has gotta be a tag

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weirdhunterangel · 6 months

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Here comes the random ass thoughts that nobody asked for but I will put out here anyway.

Please be warned my opinions are whack and I'm just here for the fiction I want.

I started watching Strong girl Nam Soon because I saw that Bo young and Hyung Sik cameo clips and then I was swayed by edits of the cutesy villain. Ahahha.

I have gotten to the point where I skip random episodes and scenes and mostly just watch the ones with Si-o because the others just dont interest me as much. This is coming from someone who loved Do Bong Soon okay??!!

And personally I feel like the only character that has any depth (even if the depth is crazy villain-ness mostly, yes I accept that the actor being good and hot does add to this) is Ryu Si O. I am only here for his minor redemption arc which is him somehow ending the Russian Mafia and going off into the wild. Yes I get that he has killed a bunch of people, he is still my favourite. His presence isnt bland. And I love sunshine boys and sunshine girls!

Initially it was a little sad that Nam Soon wouldnt give him the time of day no matter what he did. But I am over that now. Tbf her romance barely fits into this whole narrative. Her and hee sik dont have any development together. Except that theyre really nice to each other which would be ideal in real life but this is fiction and I am here for the wild wild west where a crazy villain does not end up dying but reels it in a little bit, enough to get the nice protagonist who by that point should have slightly not black and white character developement.

Basically, if they kill Si O i will be sad. No matter all the chaos he has caused which is yes not great.

So all I will mostly be doing is scrolling the internet trying to find out what happens to my boy and then I will hope kdramaland kinda progresses a bit into the villain is the hero of this show kinda thing and this boy gets to act in it. Somewhat like devil judge. They went places with that show. Even the glory tbh. But those shows had a different deal.

Okay im doneee.

Come yell at me if you also have opinions on Ryu Si O xD

#strong girl nam soon #lu watches #kdramanetwork #netflix #ryu si oh #gang nam soon #yes I love villains #should have seen this coming after tom riddle #can people write some amazing fanfic to satisfy this craving #why cant i find fics yall #help a girl out

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understandableparadox · 26 days

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Bottom of the barrel isekai: b-rank adventurer with an evil look becomes a daddy to the protagonist and his childhood friend.

Well if i'm reading it, that's a goddamn lie, hello! Pull up a chair, drink my tea, piss on my wife, you have the most control in this world because you are the specialist lil fella that can do not a lick of wrong! It's time for another bottom of the barrel isekai review! Today, you can read the title above, go fuck yourself if you think im going write it out every single god damn time.

Come out boys, girls and some other thing, frogs? Is that what the enbys like these days? Frogs? Anyways let's do the song and dance!

Our titular main character is a dude from japan, they wasted their live away being a disgusting fucking neet and playing video games all the live long day, being a whale in pirates 101 and domeing me from across the map as widow maker on royal!

Anyways he fucking Dies and gets reincarnated in the game he and his singular friend dearly loved known as bright fantasy, now as we can see in the picture above, perhaps he reincarnated as some sorta giga god, perhaps his party abandoned him because they didnt understand the monumental boon a tax accountant has in another world… perhaps he was summoned by the king to Fuck his wife for him!

Wait a second… is that a sharp detour…? FU-

Anyways gray is reborn as a Thug Npc, or someone with a dark background, his looks mean, he has a average appearance and some fucking sick shoulder gaurds. He is a moody lil nobody, which is why it's such an insane hook to see it open with two children begging to be adopted by him in the opening

Now before you get too scared that we are running into uncharted territories since we haven't had anyone betray anyone and the MC has not turned god inside out, we get to dive back into the cool cocoons of familiar fantasy tropes with the adventuring ranking system. I'm not going to bother to explain it, if you got a letter grade in school then you know what it means. Get close to the A and that means you are the Big Boy adventurer who does the Big Boy quests.

Now i do appreciate the authors restraint and only making him the Second Biggest boy and attempting to make him Not A Twink

We almost have a guy who is on a bulk and not a cut, sigh, one day.

Anyways we pull back ground tall dark and who cares to learn that these two are matchstick kids. Dead broke kids who are attempting to sell flowers they have picked to the people on the street. They were attacked by nobody you are going to remember and get healed by gray. They then decide to beg him to save their ailing parents because I guess wonka isn't around to give golden tickets to get them out of bed or whatever.

They tell them their names, one of them has the super special name of the Super Main Character. What a coinkyDink. Gray knows that if he is to be a villain (???) then his job is to avoid it. Luckily he went to the Katarina claes school of villainy and decided that ethical action is actually more important than meta narrative logic.

Cut to Tiny tims lakeside property and we see the rest of the family living the fucking dream!

I'm so sorry, i have this mental tick where i accidently say “dream” instead of “nightmare”.

Also Stella is a vampire, why? Fuck you thats why.

They explain that they have been getting by by the skin of their teeth through a combination of the street urchin grind set of selling flowers and getting church donations. Gray beats up some assumed child abductors outside and gives a somewhat creepy smile.

Next chapter is about Gray stealing an orcs' balls to create a high end potion (viagra) to nobles so he can get enough money to buy something called a “home”? I'm not sure what that is exactly, i'm not sure what the translator was talking about, i've certainly never heard of someone “buying” or owning one for certain.

I don't actually have much to say about this guy, this is the guy who makes the ball potion for gray, I just like him, he has a funny face, I like looking at it. He looks like someone I would trade yugioh cards with while he tells me about his super cool oc and I would listen because he is a fun dude.

But yeah, the manga is mostly about this guy being a slightly more psychotic late stage kratos, being a dad, trying to raise a bunch of random kids he found, trying to give the main character a taste of normalcy before the plot kicks and and shit goes sideways, oh and sometimes he brutally kills people.

His main goal is to have a family and that's about that.

So let's start getting into things.

The title has no interest in creating an expansive world that is original, everything of it is meat burrowed and stitched into its own narrative to support its own plot line and to explain why this happens and why that is occurring at this point. Now I do not believe that this is inherently a bad thing. In fact it's fine. Not every single manga needs to be the next genre defining piece of media. In fact we need things that are average, we need things that build the genre or else we can never have exceptions to the rule. The magic system, the team system, the classes, the guilds, the plot, it's all what you would expect from something with final fantasy inspirations. Semi (not really) complicated fighting systems that only make sense to pad out the loving tedium of a game. “Complete this many quests of this level to rank up.” “collect this many monster parts to complete the quest” and so on and so fourth ad infitum until god has to pop out and ask what the fuck is going on.��

The art is great in places. Most of it is very bog standard, you aren't going to get that much out of it if you are expecting groundbreaking designs that really make you scratch your chin in wonder at how they made something like that up. But it's very clearly competent and knows how to give each of its characters that needed cover before you read the book. People that need to look like unlikeable thugs look like unlikeable thugs, children that need to look sweet and innocent look sweet and innocent. The artist is really good at goofy expressions but they are a bit few and far between to really satisfy my desire for evil fucked up faces, oh kekegurui… if i didnt hate your plot so much i would be so much more obsessed with you…

The tropes I've already gone over. It uses every single trope but more so in the way someone would do if they were playing a new game plus. You don't want to do the rigamarole of the heroes rise so you make them overpowered and whatever so they can get to the stuff that you have deemed important, that being fatherhood simulator and housing market simulator. The world is secondary to the plot the author wants so they grab the tropes they want to ensure they can focus on that part of the story with impunity while hand waving some other things and give ol daddy gray his badass moments to make the editors happy that this is infact enough of a power fantasy. You know, to keep those freaks that actually buy the manga happy.

As for kink stuff, none that I can see. The author only seems to want women to fawn on the main character so they can complete the golden vision of the dead emperor abe of the nuclear family, perhaps hoping to tempt his blessing from beyond the grave…

This was a little bit of a boreing read. I cant entirely recommend it, but if you want to see some edgy boredline twunk be a dad to a bunch of random kids he adopted then yeah, go for it lmao.

#manga #manga review #bottom of the barral #isekai

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blueiight · 1 year

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kircheis spaceboys

thinking about siegfried kircheis is so uniquely painful bc if we're meant to think of lotgh as a meta narrative within a narrative then kircheis is a character who's legacy was enshrined in his death, his absence and the questions of how much better would it be if he was here (to the point that it became a joke in of itself). it rly makes me wonder what kind of character, what kind of young commoner boy would give up his whole life in every sense of the word for the sake of a minor noble's ambitions. he came from a stable home, was his parents’ only child. so its truly love for reinhard & annerose that drives him, which is the most altruistic motive of all the space generals & gunners we meet here. annerose and kircheis by virtue of being reinhard’s most cherished people occupy this saint-like quality in the narrative, but we learn annerose is a bit tortured. in talking to hilda we learn annerose blames herself for kircheis’s death, bc shes the one who told kircheis to be a good friend to reinhard, and annerose herself cant stand to even meet reinhard for 3 seasons /8 books over this. ‘now you have nothing else left to lose,’ annerose told reinhard at that juncture. which is remarkably cruel for reinhard in that shes saying kircheis is all u cared for, but also cruel for annerose bc shes essentially killing herself off metaphorically with kircheis. reinhard rationalizes annerose’s unusually cold words in these moments as her being a grieving lover. and its hard to say if she could do anything with her own love & how much of her love in the first place is rooted in annerose looking up to the only guy who didnt treat her like a concubine or a mommy. im reminded of book8 commenting on reinhard’s fraught relationship w annerose here. ‘In losing that which should not have been lost, Reinhard had allowed past to be severed from present; the brilliance of that long-ago spring light… were now far beyond.’ which is something reinhard also says in the ova.. in reinhard’s mind, he has to place annerose as dead in the past with kircheis to bear living. he has to place annerose with the ghost of kircheis, bc confronting how he lost his two most beloved people at such a critical success in his rise to power is too painful. bc we lose out on kircheis’s voice so early, his ghost quite literally haunts the narrative bc of his significance to one of the protagonist’s reinhard. reinhard’s other half literally is what everyone, including kircheis’s killer ansbach, calls kircheis. reinhard’s entire emotional stability was quite literally built on kircheis. but u have to wonder how things wouldve went if kircheis remained alive any longer than what he did considering that this is where he was at.👇🏾

kircheis is a commoner here, whos entire rise to power was so intimately tied to his proximity to reinhard & annerose. so him asking this is not only a matter of his doubts on reinhard’s specific actions here but also implicitly meant to think on how hes dedicated more than half of his life to reinhard’s cause under the belief that reinhard was doing the right thing. a quest to overthrow a 500+ year old dynasty, to liberate ur cherished sister/friend who was sold in sexual slavery to the king, that r just causes. kircheis needs to believe reinhard is of the right character to be the steward & master of space. someone can readily rationalize their involvement in the war apparatus as fighting the ‘other’ side of the war, can readily rationalize their rise to power as a means to these righteous ends. but reinhard’s cruel acts in s1 like starving out the civillians of the fpa, cosigning the attack on westerland as political pretext , the lives of millions he couldve saved but chose to let braunschweig kill to use as proof of the boyar nobility’s evil , cannot be so easily excused , and reinhard’s hunger for power is now hardly related to liberating annerose or annerose at all bc he dont even have to do anything to free her. annerose is liberated by friedrich’s death. the ova puts the choice of ignoring braunschweig’s attack westerland on oberstein lying to reinhard about when the attack would take place. which is, weak! it makes reinhard look incompetent for keeping such a seditious subordinate, and morally whitewashes reinhard in this incident. oddly enough (or thankfully?) the ova treats it as if the book’s line of events occurred in that scene from then on, with kircheis unafraid to question reinhard for his complicity in this act & cutting no corners in their final confrontation. reinhard responds so cruelly bc he has no rebuttal to kircheis, he even says ‘kircheis will just have to understand the need for spilling blood’, and delegates him to being the ‘same as the rest’.. but the central questions kircheis raised here would not have the easy answers kircheis needed to stay as reinhard’s heart, as his other half. bc barring sending the fortress where kircheis died into the shadow realm , reinhard still wouldve done all the things he did in later seasons. and kircheis who has his own moral compass would have to diverge with reinhard inevitably. forever reminded of tanaka saying that this split was inevitable.. sad as it sounds, it was best for kircheis to die at this juncture. he is the legend inside a fictional legend, the balm to all of reinhard’s troubles forever n ever, the other half of reinhard’s heart thats left forever empty, with battle + blood used to fill reinhard’s lonely little soul. and kircheis even on the verge of death knew reinhard would destroy himself without him which is why he reminds him go take the universe. live for something without me. bc i couldnt bear to live to see what u would become.

#yn.#hes just my little boy....#lotgh #siegfried kircheis

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c0rpseductor · 10 months

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like i do understand the appeal of reincarnation romance. i know why people like emetwol. i love emetwol. but i think a lot of people write emetwol to the detriment of the narrative that it comes from because they didn’t pay any goddamn attention to anything but emet-selch, and obstinately refuse to even ATTEMPT touching any of the actual themes of shadowbringers, even in like. Retellings of shadowbringers.

one really important like. I don’t want to say theme necessarily but a topic and subsequent aesthetic decision that’s like extremely important to shb’s narrative is the reversal of cultural markers associated with “dark” and “light.” Light, angels, that kind of shit, it’s all seen as corrupt and frightening and deadly and bad, given that light as an element is the force threatening to kill the world. So darkness takes on the association of purification and holiness. both WoL and emet-selch have strong associations with both, because the muddling of preconceived notions also extends to the “hero” and “villain” roles. you still get tons of Light Is Good And Associated With The Demure Female Protagonist Positively And Vice Versa For Darkness And Emet-Selch, Who BTW Is Masc Now, and im always like this is low hanging fruit but also like only low hanging fruit outside of the context of THIS NARRATIVE, one of the few where these associations are INTENTIONALLY REVERSED.

or as i mentioned earlier the way people tend to act as though azem and WoL are literally the exact same person Because Reincarnation and that emet’s conflating them is GOOD or true and correct, because by virtue of having known azem he and he alone knows WoL’s “true” identity, and pushing this dead person’s sense of self on WoL isn’t seen as controlling or as ignoring their OWN identity but as handing them the keys to their self-actualization, which he ultimately controls. The Point Of The Entire Narrative Was That This Mindset Of Emet’s Is Bad. he does this to the world at large and he’s wrong, he does this to wol and he’s wrong, thancred and ran’jit do it to ryne in differing degrees and both of them are wrong, and thancred’s arc relies on his realizing he’s wrong to do it and the player agreeing. WoL is no more Actually Azem than ardbert is, and they’re no more azem than ryne is ARR minfilia. they’re different fucking people with different lives — the POINT of this entire game is “you have to let go of the past, you can’t stew in grief for what Was or what you’ve lost forever, the world changes and people change and there is no permanence or eternity and that’s why life is vibrant and good.”

and people played THIS GAME and were like “But what if the villain was right and there was a permanent, eternal version of the self HE was sole arbiter of and could pass down to me so I didn’t have to confront the fact that who i am in this moment is a temporary state and there is no deeper ontological immutable Essence Of Me? and so i didn’t even have to decide what or who i am?” like sorry but deciding what and who you are for YOURSELF and the impermanence of identity is actually one of the greatest things about being human, and if you can’t stand the idea that maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow and decide you want to change maybe this just was not the narrative for you

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insufferableprotagonistpoll · 3 months

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Round 2

Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

Propaganda why Erika Shinohara is insufferable:

Doormat of a character

Impulsive liar, would rather take candid picture of a boy she didn't know than to admit friends that she's single, Naive to the point of being stupid, worst masochist rep since the 50 Shades of Grey protag

#dean winchester #supernatural #erika shinohara #ookami shoujo to kuro ouji #insufferable protagonist poll #insufferable protagonist tournament #tournament poll

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halucygeno · 11 months

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The Strugatsky brothers: general notes on style and storytelling

Heya. If you want something to disagree with right out of the gate, here’s my tier list:

Ok, but seriously, I'm about halfway through the whole Strugatsky bros bibliography, and it's been kinda hit-or-miss. Some books are fantastic in terms of both storytelling and themes, some are a bit confusing and start very slow, but stick the landing with the drama and philosophy kicking into high-gear towards the end, and others are just... meh.

Anyway, here’s a loose, disorganised list of things I’ve noticed:

1) The Strugatsky's style of narration feels a tad homogenous after a while. Their POV character is usually a pragmatic, goal oriented man, intelligent enough to analyse themselves and the world around them, and often cynical to the point of distrusting simple, comforting narratives (voicing their scepticism through dry wit or sarcasm). The main variation seems to be in the protagonist's level of refinement vs. crudeness (some of them have a short fuse and poor manners), and how much they are motivated by a sense of duty vs. self-interest. The other character archetype they sometimes do is the "inexperienced young man with ambition and spunk" ("Space Apprentice", "Monday Begins on Saturday"). Yet there's some crossover - Sasha from "Monday" often shifts between bewildered novice and confident snarker, depending on the scene - and it all still "sounds" quite similar. I guess you could say this is their authorial voice - the "Strugatsky style", if you will - but to me, it makes reading their books back-to-back feel a bit... same-y.

2) Mystery is everywhere. Im surprised the Strugatskys only wrote one detective novel (which kind of turned out not to be a detective novel anyway), when tons of their works start with some inexplicable, mysterious event which then goes on to be gradually unravelled. I mean, half of "The Waves Extinguish the Wind" is just reports from an investigation into the motives of a mysterious alien species. "Beetle in the Anthill" is one long hunt for a mysterious fugitive, gradually finding out who they are and why they're so dangerous, and "The Final Circle of Paradise" is about busting a crime ring peddling a new, mysterious drug. But even when it’s not explicitly about detectives or investigations, they still often focus on an unexplained event or series of events ("Space Mowgli", "One Million Years to the End of the World").

A lot of the appeal which keeps the stories engaging for me is that they either set up a big question and slowly reveal pieces of the answer, or set up a lot of small questions that get much quicker answers, which then lead to more questions (sometimes both). In one case, they even nested a mystery within a mystery! “Beetle in the Anthill” is both a question of “where is Lev Aboukin hiding and what is his next move” and “who is Lev Aboukin and why was I ordered to track him down”?

Maybe this mystery focus is just part of the wider space fantasy sci-fi genre. Alien contact, phenomena beyond our understanding... these are very conducive to mystery; A few other sci-fi authors I've read have very similar set-ups. Well, whatever it is - authorial style or genre trope - I love it. It gives stories this feeling of discovery and learning, often with only half-satisfying conclusions that leave room for interpretation and reflection.

3) Holy shit, their representation of women is (mostly) terrible. I've heard a few people call the Strugatskys' writing misogynistic, and while I was sceptical at first (Guta from "Roadside Picnic" struck me as pretty cool and strong), after reading more, I definitely see it now. Most of the time, they depict women as trivial side characters, love interests for the protagonist, or worse, symbols of promiscuity, decadence and stupidity. I could maybe argue that some of these portrayals are more nuanced than it would first seem, but others are just... blegh.

A handful of their works ("Space Mowgli", "Monday Beings on Saturday" and "Space Apprentice") show women working alongside men as equals - suggesting some progressive ideals. "Space Apprentice" even has one chapter where they take down Shershen - a controlling, misogynistic professor who tries to sabotage his female student's career because he doens’t think women should work in space.

But none of this counters the causal sexism displayed generally, even in these seemingly positive examples. Stella's introductory scene from "Monday Begins on Saturday" shows her cowering in fear from Vybegallo's upiór, screaming hysterically. While she goes on to be much cooler in Story 3 of that book, she's still a rather lowly employee of the institute - not as experienced as the magisters (who are, you guessed it, all men).

Maya Glumova in "Space Mowgli" - the female character with perhaps the most screen time and agency from everything I've read so far - is still hinted to be more emotional and motherly towards the alien which the team discovers. So even when the female character is important and actively participates in the plot, she is partially defined by her femininity. And when she comes back in "Beetle in the Anthill", she's basically just a childhood love interest, acting as another clue to the mystery of Lev Aboukin's identity.

Natasha from "Space Apprentice" is the only time I've seen the Strugatskys write from a female POV, and even so, it only lasts two chapters, with her being completely irrelevant for the rest of the story. For the short while we get to see from her perspective, she mostly sits around and listens to other people, rarely taking the initiative to do anything. Some of her scenes feel like they could be commentary on workplace sexism, but they're too short and fleeting for the message to read clearly.

All these baby steps towards decent female representation are even harder to appreciate when you consider... everything else. Most egregiously, some visual descriptions of female characters are just gross, focusing on the lips, curves and skin in a very sexualised way. At first I thought that maybe this was a condemnation of the POV character, showing that we're following a crass, tactless protagonist who isn't above ogling someone they find attractive; a contemptible person who doesn't reflect the opinions of the authors. But without clear textual elements criticising this creepy behaviour, it really feels like it's being treated as normal, which... no, it really, really shouldn't be. At least the Strugatskys had the decency not to use this kind of sexualised, beauty-obsessed language when describing the aforementioned respectable worker women - Stella, Maya and Natasha.

On two occasions, women are shown arguing in favour of shallow, self-interested hedonism - an ideological foil to our responsible, socially-minded male protagonists. While this is a fine direction to take a character (and some male characters are criticised in a similar way - mostly in "The Final Circle of Paradise", where hedonism is a central theme), it feels like a waste to use an already small female presence as fodder for this philosophical debate.

So yeah, even though I love these stories, my appreciation is heavily dampened anytime a female character is introduced and turns out to be underutilised and irrelevant (which is disappointing), some dumb bimbo for the protagonist to sexualise (which is cringe), or a proxy for an ideology the Strugatskys want to criticise (which is disappointing).

4) Bromance! While the Strugatskys’ depictions of relationships between men and their female love interests are rather underdeveloped (a side effect of women having so little prominence, I think), the way they write emotional relationships between men and men is quite amazing. Most of these stories are brimming with a sense of camraderie and emotional closeness, with the male characters inspiring each other, guiding each other, criticising each other, learning from each other, etc. My three favourite dynamics have to be from "The Inhabited Island", "Space Apprentice" and "Monday Begins on Saturday".

In "The Inhabited Island", Maxim manages to gradually deprogram Guy from his nationalistic, fascist ideology by just being there, acting kind and showing him that an alternative way of thinking is possible. He points out inconsistencies in the government’s propaganda in a non-confrontational, innocuous way. Then, we see Guy's inner conflict when Maxim defects from the military and joins the resistance - having to view this close friend as a "traitor", despite having a lingering affection for him. And when Maxim finally gets Guy to defect and join his side, this affection is twisted into something monstrous and horrifying in a scene that I dare not spoil. It's an emotional roller-coaster, that one.

"Space Apprentice" has an interesting tension between two role models. Young Yura Borodin, despite his somewhat mundane job as a space welder, is eager to travel the stars and self-actualise. He's hungry for action, and would rather die than retire. Due to unfortunate circumstances, he's unable to catch his flight for the planet Rhea, and has to join the crew of another ship as a trainee (kinda like hitch-hiking, but in space, haha). He ends up under the supervision of Yurkovsky and Ivan Zhilin, both of which try to impart different lessons onto him. Yurkovsky is the embodiment of Yura's ideal - a world-renowned planetologist past his prime, still yearning for exciting work and hoping to make the "discovery of his lifetime". Zhilin is the ship's engineer, and has a far more cautious, protective attitude. Both of them like Yura's youthful enthusiasm, but while the former encourages his ambition and adventurous spirit, the latter tries to temper his expectations and teach him about responsibility. The stops along their route form a series of unrelated vignettes where we see the two philosophies in practice, and the ending resolves this tension in a really beautiful, heart-wrenching way.

"Monday Begins on Saturday" is just one huge "me and the boys" meme and I fuckin' love it. We have the confused yet curious newbie, Sasha Privalov, the measured and wise mentor figure, Roman Oira-Oira, the talented but rude snarker and critic, Vitya Korneev (who is still affectionate in his own way - he doesn't actually hate people, just enjoys banter), and the polite and helpful sidekick, Edik Amperian (+ a whole bunch of other colourful characters). The shenanigans these lads get up to are just a wonderful romp, as they juggle their own eccentricities and the absurd bureaucracy of a magical Soviet institute. Despite the chaotic nature of their work, often wrought with disagreement and a lack of resources, everything has this undercurrent of mutual respect and affection. I swear, this book has the most idyllic workplace culture I've ever seen, to the point that it makes it actually fun to read about office politics.

5) They start in medias res and fill the gaps with natural-sounding exposition. This is one of the core things that I believe makes the pacing of (most) Strugatsky novels feel very brisk. Characters are dropped into already unfolding situations - no lengthy backstories or elaborate speeches about the history of the world. Flashbacks are relatively rare and often contextualised (some focal point prompts the memory, making for a smoother transition). The majority of what we learn about characters comes from clues in their speech, thoughts and actions. Same applies to the world - details are drip-fed to you as they become relevant.

That's not to say that the Strugatskys never drop exposition dumps on the audience, but it's less common, and even then, is usually done intelligently. Most often, a character will see something and, in the process of expressing their opinion, bring up background details that show how they feel about it - we get both world-buiding and characterisation at the same time.

An even better way they disguise exposition dumps is by having characters casually debate something - in a moment of respite from the action, they sit together and bounce arguments back and forth: “is X thing ethical”, “what would happen if Y”, “these Z activists are starting to get on my nerves”, etc. As they make their points, they bring up examples, facts, anecdotes, and very quickly, not only do we know what they believe, but also learn about a whole bunch of things that exist or happened, all while never being explicitly told.

This is probably the best lesson you can learn from the Strugatskys - if your setting has interesting elements, either show them directly in the action of the story, or make them a talking point which characters have conflicting opinions on (better yet, do both - the Zone in “Roadside Picnic” is a masterclass in being a springboard for both characters and plot). If not, don’t bother - you’ll just distract the audience with pointless guff.

* * *

That’s about it. I could probably go on, but I’m too tired to continue writing. I’d love to pick apart more specific examples of points 2), 4) and 5), so maybe I’ll make separate posts for them in the future (lemme know if that’s something you’d be interested in). Mostly, though, I'm desperate to find other people as obsessed with the Strugatskys as I am and discuss their lesser known works. I personally feel that "The Final Circle of Paradise" is a hidden gem of theirs, one that has flown under the pop-culture radar but is well worth discussing.

Peace.

#Strugatsky brothers #Arkady Strugatsky #Boris Strugatsky #Strugatskys #My writing #Roadside Picnic #Monday Begins on Saturday #The Final Circle of Paradise #The Inhabited Island #Prisoners of Power #Space Apprentice #Beetle in the Anthill

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