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deadliestgalaxy · 1 year

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SPOILERS FOR GOTG VOL. 3 - DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET!

I have a feeling that everyone (who calls themselves fans) that didn't get the meaning of the ending in GOTG Vol. 3 has never read a single comic of them or is only a fan of some characters/relationships. Many complaints I've seen are about the end and Gamora and Peter’s romance, which sounds kind of childish. You don't need to agree with me, but I’d like to elaborate on that.

James Gunn's writing is always about the detail of things and he is not afraid to do something “bad” if it is the best for the STORYTELLING. This is what most of these people don't get: the most important part of these movies is the story they are telling. The characters help the movie tell the story, it's their story after all — but there's no protagonist or greater good that puts them above the narrative.

(This is different from Gamora’s death in IW btw. It was not the only way they had to make the story flow; they just wanted to “humanize” Thanos and by that, they chose to kill her character. It was an action ADDED not CRUCIAL to the story.)

Vol. 3 is about found-family and growing up; finishing cycles. They will always be family, as we will always be part of their story (that’s why we understand Groot now). However, life chapters end just like in real books, and these Guardians as a TEAM “chapter” has ended for them and for us.

This is very common in the comics. Most times they are all separated, doing solo missions, until something goes wrong and they reunite again. They never stop being friends, why would it be different in the movie universe?

But the end suggests they are not family anymore.

Did we see the same film? No, it doesn't. We can see that in James’ subtle writing: the way they all still respect each other, their understanding of one another, and how they all would die for themselves if needed. That won't change just because they are not physically together — just like when you finish school you won't ignore your best friends, even if you create new relationships (which you will).

But Gamora is not part of the family anymore.

Well, if you see it this way, I can't change your mind. What I can say is that the story IMPLIES that she still is, in fact. And the number one clue is that she (in 2 days) understands Groot. Remember, we also understand him because the fans are now part of the Guardians family — so understanding him and being family are correlated.

Anyhow, I know this is not enough for most people, so hear me out: Gamora’s arc is about respect and healing. She starts the movie skeptical about working with the guardians — she just wants the money— when in reality, she acts like this because she is AFRAID and feels PRESSURED to be around her “old” family.

Imagine: you died but then another version of you comes back without knowing anything of your present life. People will expect you to act in a certain way that maybe you started to act after you met them; they will expect you to like certain things you don't know of; people will EXPECT you to attend to their needs. It is a lot to swallow at once. You are afraid because you don't know them, you don't think you deserve all this love and commitment out of nowhere. So you run away. You run away to find things on your own, to grow out of this pressure you feel and discover the whole universe of possibilities you have ahead.

That's what Gamora did. But then, the mission went south and now she is stuck with her “old” team. The film shows us her character exploring the ship, listening to music... trying to understand them. At one point she even says to Rocket “You must be a very loyal pet for them to do all this for you” (or something similar). This is her way of putting into words how she visualizes the current scenario she was put in. Slowly she recognizes that they are a family, and by the way they act she finally gets how and why she also must have loved them in the past.

She goes from “I don't give a fuck”, not open to them, afraid and pressured to “I bet we were fun”, understanding and respecting them, even fighting for their family to survive.

(If she still didn't give a fuck she wouldn't have fought for them and with them when she could have just run away again.)

But she has already created new relations, so she goes back to those for now. It is what she is familiar with in this timeline. Does that mean she will never contact the guardians ever again? NO. Remember: James’s writing is about DETAILS, nuance. She is open to them again, and the final part of the movie shows this to us, especially her last interaction with Groot, Peter, and Nebula being friendly.

Oh, but Peter and Gamora will never be a couple again, their romance ended when she went back to the Ravengers.

… Again, if you see it this way I can’t change your mind. What I can confirm is that she doesn’t close herself to the team — especially to Peter — in the end.

When she says “I bet we were fun” it's the first time she acknowledges their former relationship without distancing herself from it. She could've said “I bet you were fun” or “I bet she was fun”, but instead she prefers to include herself with “we”. She pauses before letting go of Nowhere, stopping before entering her ship — what moves her forward is Nebula, who can see her sister’s changed attitude but still encourages her to take a step forward and go explore the galaxy, because she knows Gamora is not mature and ready yet for those feelings; just like she wasn't ready to be openly sentimental when Gamora joined the Guardians back in 2014.

And Peter is also not ready. Just like Gamora needs to find herself again and discover who she is, Peter needs too. He is lost without her after IW, we can see it during Holiday Special and in the beginning of Vol. 3 when he passes out because of alcohol abuse. Both don't know who they are in this new reality — and they will only find out with time. Time heals and reveals.

In the end, Peter doesn't have the same thought as in the begging: he doesn't want her to be who he once knew, he wants her as she is, this new version whom he still loves so much and wants to know more of. Although he wishes she could stay, he knows that she has her own time and while she learns about herself he will go do the same.

So yes, they’re not explicitly together as a couple in the final scene — neither they kiss nor make out, whatever you believe a relationship is made of — but they’ve changed and are open to one another. The last scene does not appear to me as an “I’ll never see you again”, but as a “Goodbye, see you soon”.

(Aside from all the small bits we had through the movie of a developing relationship between them; my favorite one being when Peter activates the auto-destruction code and Gamora smiles at him.)

Besides, you can't force anyone to fall in love in 48 hours!!

Yes, I also have some minor complaints about the story, but I can recognize that — with all the turbulence the characters and the production faced in the last few years — it was a satisfying end with a limited amount of time to a badass trilogy. The end is definitive but also open to future possibilities for all our favorite characters in their universe — some we might never see and it will only be to our imagination.

Again, you don't need to agree with me, but I had to do this, or else I would implode with thoughts. Thank you if read up here! My ask box is open if you want to talk more <3

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aq2003 · 4 months

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I find the decision to write the first Doctor as sort of cartoonishly bigoted in the episode with Twelve fascinating, because it shifts the blame for the racism, sexism etc present in early Doctor Who from the writers and producers to the *character*. It wasn’t the Doctor who wrote limited character arcs for female characters in comparison to male ones, and it wasn’t the Doctor who decided to use yellow-face for the characters in some episodes - that was the writers and production team. Y’know, real people. People whose legacy the current writers and producers of the show - who have also largely been white men, just like their predecessors - owe their jobs to.

And the persistent problem with continuing to sideline and tokenise the characters of some of the female companions and characters of colour in the service of centring the doctor as the (until recently) white male protagonist - that continued for most of the modern reboot in some form. Some of the elements of that were even new innovations under the modern writers (looking at you Moffat but you are not the only offender.) I mean, we’re talking about the portrayal of One as the past’s ambassador for sexism in iirc the exact same episode where Chris Chibnall reversed the previous episode’s ending of Bill surviving with Heather and re-buried the lesbians by sending Bill directly to the ‘your soul is canonically dead’ zone.

I absolutely can’t speak for the whole of the first Doctor’s tenure because I’ve only seen about 2/3 of his surviving episodes, but from the episodes I have seen, he didn’t even talk like that. There was a very big problem with that run of the show, but it was a different problem to the one the episode with One and Twelve is describing. One was weird as hell, but he was much less overtly hostile, wished much less bodily harm on minority groups and even dipped into less microaggressions and dogwhistles than most older white British people do now. That isn’t to say One’s behaviour in Old Who was something to aim for, it’s to say that a lot of the improvement in the attitude of white people in Britain over the last half-century has been performative at best, imaginary at worst, a lot of our dogwhistles are new and especially alarming for that reason - and it comforts white people to imagine that the racism and sexism of the past was overt and vulgar and unlike theirs, and that their bigotry by comparison is lesser and better and therefore doesn’t need further work; that now people affected by it just need to learn to live with it, because you’re lucky we’re not like our grandparents.

But that excuse doesn’t really work if (tw racism, anti-blackness, Islamophobia, death) some sects of British society talk more positively about drowning immigrants in the English Channel than they did 100 years ago, does it?

That excuse doesn’t work if your grandparents were actually quite a lot like you.

I live in the UK, about half the people I know watched the special with Twelve and One, and considering that vanishingly few modern viewers have seen or remember the first Doctor or any early Old Who, there was this odd awkward relief from most of the white people I watched the episode with, like they’d been absolved from Britain’s historical and current racism by the burning of an effigy. Like that bigotry coming from One’s mouth was a reassurance that this country’s bigotry had always been as cartoonish and ineffectual and easy to see as the lines Chris Chibnall and his colleagues wrote for One; that white people living in the UK now are fundamentally different than they were; and by watching Bill and One’s (still white) successor refuse his cartoonishly awful worldview, white Brits had somehow cleansed themselves and buried the past completely.

But the vast majority of the racism, bigotry, sexism in the original run of Doctor Who and still present in various forms in the show now did not actually take the form of nice clear, simple statements of bigoted beliefs from the characters’ mouths - it was in the writing. The way characters and especially cultures were portrayed. The yellow-face in one of Two’s story arcs really stuck in my mind, but the way Old Who handled nonwhite cultures in general was often horrific. The first Doctor was often perfectly polite, but women and characters of colour were sidelined and (even in instances when it was clearly accidental) dangerously misrepresented throughout the show in ways that persist well into the post-2000 reboot, because the sexism and racism wasn’t in the character.

The sexism and racism was in the writers’ room.

I don’t have any sentimental attachment to Old Who, I was born about a decade after it ended, but deflecting the cultural problems in the BBC that persist to this day onto one of the show’s characters, by having him express an easily-digestible form of bigotry much less dangerous and insidious than the one that was actually present in the early show, feels like a dangerous form of scapegoating.

Something I think would have meant much, much more would have been an apology *outside of the show* from the BBC and the show’s current writers for the wide variety of sincerely-held bigotries that were actually present in the first run of the show, and a public acknowledgement of the pervasive, insidious forms those bigotries actually often took in the show’s writing - and also an acknowledgement of the show’s continuing shortfalls in its handling of race and gender over the last twenty years - because that would have been much more productively challenging for viewers of the show (more or less the whole of the British public at some point in their lives) to have to consider. Which I have to assume is why they went down the reassuring ‘the first Doctor has died for our sins’ route instead.

This is just my two cents, I am also white and British so please take this perspective with a grain of salt.

Mm. I don’t know. This country loves letting ourselves off too easily, and the writing of One in that episode feels the like easiest and for that reason least effective way of reckoning with the way we were in the 1900s. Don’t worry everyone, at the turn of the millennium both the show and the country of Britain were reborn without sin!

this is such a good writeup anon. i don't have a lot to add - just that im asian-american and a lot of what you said aligns with rhetoric i've also seen in the states - that being this sense that racism is just something of the past rather than a fundamental, systemic issue that the country was built on. and yeah one thing that really struck me while watching twice upon a time was how one's bigotry was always framed as a joke. bill straight up says to twelve "i hope we laugh about it for 20 years" or whatever and it just reeks of "To Our White Audience: be not afraid. you're not racist like the 1st doctor who lived far into the past. see? the one black character knows we're not racist now. please give yourselves a pat on the back". and like, it's not funny to any people of color that might be watching. it's just prioritizing the comfort of white people. and it's pretty terrible that moffat (he wrote the episode, chibnall just wrote thirteen's first lines. but also i know chibnall took nuwho into its least progressive era so...) felt like he had a right to make light of this stuff when he has committed some pretty egregious crimes in his tenure himself

#doctor who #dr who #ty for sending this i wasnt aware of how.. white audiences reacted to the episode and now like #my suspicions abt it were def confirmed #12 era

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a-tale-of-legends · 2 years

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Okay idea:

Team skull being perceived as the evil team and the aether foundation actually being the evil team but it's for a different reason.

The Aether Foundation is feared among Alola. Not because of any cruel acts( however they may go unnoticed), but because of the sheer presence the Aether Foundation have. They have quickly built an entire island for themselves, as well as placing different facilities around Alola. They have eyes everywhere and it's been that way for a while. Generally, the Alolan people fear/ feel the pressure of the Aether Foundation, specifically things are mixed. There some that are are angered by them and are hoping that the Tapu's just smite them already. There are some that are completely neutral towards them. Some thing that they are good for Alola, giving them resources they didn't have before. And some, mostly elderly folk, who knows there's a problem and actively ignore it. Both in fear of what would happen if they did intervene, and also in having the mentality of " if we don't bother them, they don't bother us"..... despite the fact that said foundation is clearly taking more recourses than giving. It's a problem that has been plaguing Alola and they all come to a point of just accepting it and rolling with the punches. But for some people, that shouldn't be the case.

Enter Team Skull, the only people ballsy enough to actively go against the Aether Foundation. This could cause a change in events, as Guzma wouldn't necessarily be working with Lusamine. Maybe, idk, his big weakness is wanting acknowledgement for his strength, so who knows. In this story events, the people of Alola don't dislike Team Skull because they are just rowdy and annoying ( okay maybe a little) but because they are actively disturbing the "peace" between the Alolan people and The Aether Foundation. Especially the elderly people, who some ended up just accepting their circumstances and push for others to do them same.

This idea would also affect the characters. Hau would be affected and give him more reason to be more relaxed and happy go lucky, just to distract everyone ( and himself) from their situation. But that doesn't mean he isn't bothered by it, but his grandfather doesn't seem so bothered, nor do any other adults, so he just forces himself not to be bothered as well. It doesn't work.

Lillie and Gladion are interesting in that their mom is the one running the whole thing. I feel like them rubbing away is just a huge wake up call to how Alola is currently being treated. Like they very well know how cruel Lusamine is, given her abuse, but they never really thought about how she affected everyone else. This isn't to undermine their abuse!!!! That whole plotline is still a thing that will be addressed, and this is not for either Lillie or Gladion to go " man, I guess I got off lucky". No. Absolutely not. This is mostly to incorporate Alola's struggles more into the main game that just the Aether Family plot. Gladion joining Team Skull would also makes sense, as he is now actively going against his mother, instead of ending up joining a team that joined forces with the aether foundation.

Kukui building the pokemon league makes even more sense since it would be his way of fighting back. Subtly of course. If Alola has something to rely on that isn't just tourism and the Aether foundation for money and resources, they probably won't be as afraid ( tbh, I'm not sure if fear and afraid are the correct terms to use her, but I can't think of anything else) when it comes to the Aether Foundation. It still has it flaws and backlash, of course, but it's an Alola Original.

The protagonist is a bit harder, but the one idea I have is it going back to their mom. Maybe she ends up working for the Aether Foundation since she needs a job? Thus making the protagonist involved by default? Idk, but the protag is still there.

I also want to make it clear that the problems from the Aether foundation is more about how it's run and not every single person in the foundation. Like I believe they're done workers who genuinely want to help Alola! Some may be Alolan themselves, and want to see if they can change things from the inside. But with Lusamine and Faba at the top seats, it's very hard to do so. The end goal is for the Aether foundation to have less power than the already have. They can still exist and help Alola without having such power, you know?

Anyway, that's my idea. I hope you guys liked it!

#r rambles #pokemon sun and moon #pokemon sm #team skull #aether foundation #legendverse #i guess??? not sure if i would go through with it but i like the concept #rival hau #pokemon lillie #rival gladion

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inkysqueed · 11 months

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summer reading/writing/arting tag

Tagged by @hannahcbrown thank you! yippee!

1) Describe one creative WIP you plan on working on over the summer.

Ahhh, trying to narrow down to one work in progress is agonizing but luckily for me I technically don't have to do that! hehe.

My current work in progress, I would then say, are fics focusing on Oblivion (and maybe a few Skyrim!) NPCs that I like or found interesting (or both). The fics are probably not going to be 'connected' themselves but they're all a blast so I'm having fun! Currently picking at several, each involving a different character. Right now those poor souls would be the Jemane brothers, Volanaro (with a side of J'skar), Aurelinwae (with a side of Calindil), and Julienne Fanis (with a side of Raminus-- is this joke getting old yet?).

2) Recommend a book!

I haven't read an actual book in a while but I'm gonna go with something I read in my childhood-- The Goblin Wood, by Hilari Bell.

Makenna is, as far as protagonists go, vengeful. And from what I recall-- resourcefully clever right from the beginning. I remember delighting in watching how she'd go through the book's events; and it's not always that the protagonist captivates me so.

The books are now a trilogy from what I remember but I'd still recommend reading just the first book regardless. Not because I think the other two are bad but because I feel like the first stands on its own fine. (And if you like the first one then you can see about the other two yourself! Huzzah! ^u^)

3) Recommend a fic!

I wanna recommend Lost and Found, not only because it focuses on Falion as a character but because it features the father-daughter team of Falion and Agni becoming a team!

Who wouldn't love warm fuzzies like that? (Also it doesn't need massive amounts of Elder Scrolls lore knowledge but if you DO know what Falion studies or what he's talking about, it's even better for it.)

4) Recommend music!

House of Sacred Remains from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. (The extended version because if you're like me 3 minutes isn't enough.)

Really though, a lot of the music from that game is stellar. I kind of miss playing Lament of Innocence to be honest. It's the only other Castlevania game I've played, besides Symphony of the Night.

5) Share one piece of advice!

Learn to love yourself. And I don't mean in a jokey or insincere/cold way-- I mean genuinely, with my whole heart and chest. Love yourself. I know sometimes it's hard to for a myriad of reasons, I do get it, but if you can manage to cultivate that inner appreciation for who you are without needing other people to prop you up... you can learn to let go of the past and look forward to who you will be in the future.

It was something I had to learn myself and the way I learned isn't going to be the way you learn, perhaps, but in an age where airbrushing and other celebrity-related media percolates culture I feel it's even more important to remind others that they're not just an empty sum of their faults and flaws.

People make mistakes and people change, that's just going to be people from here till the end of time. You're a person, you're going to make mistakes. And that's perfectly okay.

So please, love yourself.

TAGGING (not a must, do this if you want to!): @solnishka1927 , @redadm1ral , @dibellastan , @julskylyly , @genericswordsmaiden , and anyone else who wants to steal this from me! :D

#squeed speaks #tag game #if you want me to untag/refrain from tagging you let me know!

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bestworstcase · 2 years

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It's true, Cinder needs to find trust in something that'll give her the security to disengage from the absolute extremes of destruction to something more balanced, something I don't think she and Salem can negotiate between them in of themselves? That's the main conceit your posts seem to imply that I don't think works, because they're on a toxic loop that needs boundaries, and RWBY constantly shows that two person relationships exist in the context of, and benefit from, the community around it.

mm the way i see it, the most pressing issue for both of them is that they simply don’t have anyone else. cinder kinda, sorta had emerald, but em bounced and frankly i don’t think em would have been able to speak to the heart of cinder’s problem if she tried, because at the end of the day 1. em has moral qualms cinder doesn’t, and 2. cinder’s fear of salem is wildly overshadowed by the things she WANTS from salem, so emerald’s position that salem is terrifying and dangerous is just… like… cinder knows that and she’s decided it’s a worthwhile risk.

in another story cinder might have an out in the form of the heroes making overtures—they get a glimpse of how bad her situation is from emerald and offer to protect her if she leaves, that sort of thing—but rwby doesn’t really go in for the whole magnanimous noble heroes thing. sure, they’ll give their enemies chances to BACK OFF, and when the villains do flip they’re willing to provisionally accept that. but they’re not, and they’ve never been, especially driven to “save” villains. this is a story where two protagonists shanked an abusive dickhead who refused to leave them alone, and nobody on Team Good blinked twice. there’s a pragmatism to their compassion, and cinder has proved over and over again that she is too dangerous to mount a serious campaign to ‘rescue’ her from her own choices.

(also ruby was at “silver glare blast cinder on sight” even before cinder murdered penny.)

likewise salem is—well, salem. one hundred percent of her enemies believe she’s an immortal monster who can’t be reasoned with because she’s driven by insatiable desire for destruction and/or apocalyptic suicidal ideation, and her remaining allies at this point are 1. a lunatic who slavishly worships her as a goddess of destruction, 2. a cynical nihilistic mercenary whose attitude is “welp can’t beat her might as well fall in line,” and 3. cinder, who is too busy trying to drag emotional validation of salem to be properly terrified of her.

their relationship is a toxic, abusive dumpster fire and unfortunately also the best relationship that either of them *has* right now. (with the usual corollary that summer remains a potential wildcard here.)

and it bears repeating that—all jokes about them power of friendshipping each other aside—i don’t foresee them fixing each other so much as i think 1. salem’s foremost problem lies in believing that no one will ever perceive her as anything but a soulless grimm, so why bother even trying, and 2. cinder is embroiled in this one-sided emotional warfare for salem’s attention/validation/indulgence that salem is on the cusp of becoming aware of, and therefore 3. cinder fall is currently the only character in the cast who can pose a credible challenge to salem’s self-perception and the apathetic cruelty it engenders.

there’s this emotional logjam happening with salem where she is on a path of total destruction because she has been hopeless for so long that she cannot conceive of any other way to move forward, and it isn’t in her nature to be able to stop moving forward. breaking that logjam, giving her even the smallest, tiniest spark of hope that things could be different, is what will make it possible for her to at least try to find a different path.

and, like, we’re talking about a woman whose first instinct when the gods hurt her and she decided to DO SOMETHING about it was to… go out and rally people to her cause. her isolation is a symptom of apathetic despair. fundamentally if the inciting force that gets salem to turn away from this path is cinder cracking through the walls of “no one will listen, why bother” then the obvious next move is for salem to break her silence. to stop letting ozma’s narrative define her.

like, at this point i’m positive a ceasefire or enemy-of-my-enemy truce is gonna happen, but i’m 50/50 on which side the offer will originate from because, as i see it, if salem can clear the enormous first hurdle of finding enough hope to try, it’s pretty likely that she would land on “your gods want us all dead and unlike you i have an actual plan to defeat them once and for all, let’s talk.”

which is to say, loosely the sequence i anticipate here is:

1. cinder continues escalating the volatile/defiant behavior while salem tries to maneuver around it and fails, pulling their dynamic further out of balance

2. until salem figures out that the root of cinder’s problem isn’t frustrated hunger for power, it’s all this festering emotional junk that cinder can’t or won’t talk about, at which point salem has to confront what it *means* that this girl she’s done nothing but hurt and use is nevertheless looking to her for emotional fulfillment

3. which by extension incites a serious reckoning with the apathetic despair she’s imprisoned herself in, and—salem being salem—a reckoning like that DEMANDS actionable change. (salem isn’t a “ruminate on my mistakes for a year before finding the wherewithal to apologize” kind of character, she is a “i’ve realized that treating you this way was a critical mistake that cost me your loyalty and i am going to announce this in front of my whole inner circle before taking immediate, dramatic steps to correct my error” person, and while that was primarily a tactical decision on her part i see no reason to think that her response upon realizing she’s made an emotional mistake would differ significantly.)

4. cinder goes ???!??!? because she is in no way prepared to deal with salem doing this and; her emotional turmoil probably leads to outbursts, and as we’ve seen already cinder’s frustrated outbursts often take the form of questioning salem’s decisions, which potentially makes cinder the first character to just come right out and ask salem what the hell she’s really trying to accomplish

5. i cannot conceive of a scenario in which cinder hears “the gods want us to grovel for the privilege of existing” and doesn’t immediately decide that killing the gods sounds fucking swell.

6. which in turn reinforces salem’s emotional swerve towards believing that it is, at least, POSSIBLE that somebody might listen to her—and therefore that it is worth trying—and that creates an emotional foundation from which the narrative can build to:

7. salem decides she’s done letting ozma make her the scapegoat for the cruelty and tyranny of gods he serves and, never mind the sword of destruction for now, her ends will be better served by getting more people on her side. “your faith in mankind was not misplaced; when banded together, unified by a common enemy, they are a noticeable threat…” <- like. these are salem’s own words and she has got one hell of a common enemy in her back pocket.

8. while the brutal reality of her past actions and the narrative ruby constructed when she revealed salem’s existence to the world are significant obstacles, they are not insurmountable ones—and besides the looming danger represented by the gods salem can probably also leverage vale surviving the fall of beacon and mistral taking the skirmish at haven more or less in stride despite having been abandoned by its own allies (thanks james!) to her advantage here. if summer rose is a) working for her and b) presentable for public appearances, so much the better, but even without that i think salem *could* get a coalition going if she exerted herself.

so *waves vaguely* it’s… i can see cinder being what salem needs to have a shot at breaking the cycle, and vice versa, and if they can clear that hurdle salem… like… she has this impulse towards movement-building, you know? she’s not like ozma, who’s wasted thousands of years trying to ‘unite’ humanity by [checks notes] molding a few hand-picked individuals per generation into lone guardians because his own natural inclination runs toward knight errantry. salem rallied armies to take the fight to the gods. salem heard ozma bemoaning how divided humanity had become and went okay have you considered… that we could… do something about that…? hjscvjk

i’m talking in circles a bit here hdhdjs sorry the point is: salem is desperately lonely because she’s convinced that trying to make connections with people is pointless, and cinder is obsessed with power because she’s convinced that she’ll never be free or safe without it.

what salem most needs is to be confronted by someone who engages with her as a person—not a monster, not a goddess—and right now, by dint of seeing her as a dangerous but fallible rival/mentor, cinder is in a position to BE that person. their toxic convoluted dumpster fire of a relationship can only exist as it does because cinder isn’t terrified of the “monster” or in awe of the “goddess.”

likewise, what cinder most needs is for someone to see the lacerating pain at the center of everything else—the terror of powerlessness and the desperate rage it fuels—and validate it. she needs SOMEBODY to, figuratively, look at the shell-shocked fifteen-year-old girl with blood on her hands and say it’s okay, you were protecting yourself, you deserved to fight back, it’s okay. and… salem hasn’t seen past the power hunger yet, but as soon as she does? she’ll get it. of course she gets it; she WAS that girl. she’s spent millions of years trying to escape being that girl.

and for both of them, getting these things—that’s not what fixes them, that’s not what heals them. it’s just the spark that shows them the possibility of change. in salem’s case at least i can’t see her not lunging for that possibility as soon as she knows it’s there; and… like, if salem makes this genuine effort to change, then cinder has very little incentive to leave her, because that effort would necessarily have to involve salem relinquishing the abuse.

SIDEBAR. i am also thinking it’s… pretty likely that salem’s next move is hauling cinder back to vale, rather than going to rendezvous with tyrian + mercury in vacuo; 1. salem is clearly getting nervous about the crown still being missing, 2. it’s in salem’s best interest to give cinder something to distract her from the other maidens, and pointing cinder at the vault only she can open is an obvious way to do that, 3. vacuo is like half a dozen powder kegs stacked on top of each other and tyrian has got so many matches that adding salem and cinder to the mix feels like risking threat fatigue, and 4. 99% summer rose is stationed at beacon and she’s about due for a reveal.

and if that ends up being the case, hypothetically the lion’s share of this sort of mutual-rekindling-of-hope and subsequent change arc(s) would play out in the context of salem+cinder… searching for the relic of choice in the rubble of beacon academy… which would SURE BE A WAY TO DO THE CHOICE ARC WOULDNT IT

#tldr most of my speculation hinges on #the presumption that salem is *capable* of dramatically changing herself for the better #and the reason she hasn’t yet is she believes it’s pointless to even try #thus cinder’s role amounting to being the counterexample #the one who demands something from salem that only a person could give #the one who listens #and therefore the one salem can look at and go: alright. for you. i can try for you #breathe fire into the hearts of the weary etc

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Would would you say the similarity and differences are between Taichi and Takuya? (Since I've seen a lot of negative comparisons between the Adventure and Frontier cast and I'm curious with your thoughts on that)

One thing I really gripe about when it comes to the way people tend to approach the Frontier characters and compare them to those of other series is that, since Frontier is (unabashedly so) far more of a "conventional" series than the three before it, somehow that makes it and its characters worse or lacking in depth. Not at all! Firstly, there's pretty good reason to do something like this; the Adventure and 02 characters being a bit too unconventional means that you're still getting people who struggle with understanding their behavior patterns and blaming anything that doesn't "seem consistent" (actually "doesn't fall into neat fiction patterns") on "bad character writing", so Frontier being a bit more trope-y is probably just to make it a bit easier to understand the characters' progression. Moreover, even conventional tropes often have some root in reality; sure, Tomoki being a child who gets emotionally overwhelmed and cries more often may definitely seem "too conventional" compared to Takeru or Iori, but, uh...that's also extremely accurate to how a lot of real kids his age would behave. Many different kinds of kids exist! Representing all of them at once is hard!

At first glance, yes, the Frontier characters fall closer into the usual tropes (especially Super Sentai ones), but when we're talking about Digimon under Seki, it's never just been about what the characters look like at first glance but also the little nuances that they don't always put in words. The Frontier characters have a surprising amount of depth if you're willing to sit down and look at the little things, how they behave in different situations, what their motivations are for doing what they do, and while I don't think they go nearly as deep as Adventure or 02 do in this regard, it's not because I think Frontier was inherently lacking in this but because Adventure and 02 were just that level of ridiculous in terms of bias towards character writing (at occasional detriment to other aspects). Kind of unfair to expect everything else to go that far. So if we're talking about characters with this level of depth, I'd put it in between Adventure/02 and Tamers in terms of fleshing characters out this deeply. (No, I don’t actually think the Tamers characters are as "deep" as they're often claimed to be; they're just less subtle. No, that does not mean I think that's an inherently better or worse thing, given how I've always referred to this kind of thing as a double-edged sword.)

Rant aside! (Sorry, it's a bit of a long-standing point of frustration I've had with how Frontier constantly gets treated.) I think Takuya is definitely more "conventional" of a typical shounen protagonist than Taichi is, being more impulsive, hot-headed, and occasionally belligerent; Taichi was "impulsive" in the sense that he was kind of playing things by ear and could sometimes even be too chill, because his focus was often too much on the big picture instead of what was in front of him, whereas Takuya definitely comes off as the type who defaults to more aggressive solutions for the most part. However, one of the first things they point out very, very early is that Takuya's actually an older brother -- he's had to take responsibility for Shinya in the past, and it also reflects in how he handles Tomoki (and how Tomoki immediately senses that into him and latches onto him most as a surrogate older brother). While Takuya, being a bit of a misfit, isn't necessarily perfect in the role, he shares this trait with Taichi, and in fact, much like Taichi, his tendency for sometimes being insensitive or being too aggressive isn't because he's callous or doesn't care about others -- he is empathetic, he does hear others out, and he doesn't fight people for the sheer sake of fighting them but because he simply happens to disagree with others (mostly Kouji) in terms of the best way to approach things.

One thing that's really interesting about Frontier is how it starts off its cast as outright misfits; Adventure and 02's cast was made up of fundamentally selfless people, and Tamers had a cast that kinda got dragged into the whole affair, but Frontier starts off with a cast that practically seems taken out of a detention hall. The kids start off very shallow, self-centered, and not taking the concept of throwing themselves into an adventure seriously; in fact, you get the impression they took it on so easily because of how out-of-place they felt in the real world, and their adventure allows them to understand what they need to change about themselves. Given that, while Takuya didn't seem to be much of an outcast in comparison, you still get the impression he was a bit of a misfit like the others. Interestingly, as of the most recent drama CD, Takuya remains our only currently known Digimon protagonist to seriously pursue soccer beyond hobby purposes, and there's something quite fitting about that; Taichi's position in soccer was mainly meant to indicate his position as a "leader" and "someone who brings people together", and Daisuke wasn't even implied to be particularly exceptional in soccer anyway, with it having more pertinence to his relationships with Taichi and eventually Ken. In the case of Takuya, him actually enjoying the sport enough to take it seriously to the point of a career implies a genuine, unfiltered passion for what he does, that he does enjoy the thrill of climbing ranks (and for a team sport, at that), and...also, that his "aggressiveness" is actually him having a lot of boundless energy and passion that needs some kind of outlet, rather than him actively being belligerent purely for the sake of blowing things up.

#digimon #digimon frontier #kanbara takuya #takuya kanbara #shiha's ask box #ask-anguirus

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cloverthirteen · 3 years

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Was Ace Attorney made as a satire on Japan’s legal system? -- An analysis

I wouldn’t really call myself an Ace Attorney fan--I’ve never played any of the games, the closest I’ve come being watching other people’s let’s plays. I do like reading about the series on wikis and interacting with fan content for it, though, so I do know a fair amount about it.

One thing I see being said pretty often by fans is that the series was intended as a satire/parody of the Japanese legal system, which is why the courts are ridiculously biased towards the prosecution, prosecutors often care more about perfect win records more than putting actual guilty people behind bars, etc. If you’re familiar with this, you’ve probably heard of Japan’s 99% conviction rate. This interpretation of the games and the way they work definitely makes sense.

But after hearing this many times I eventually noticed something. There isn’t a single actual source (creator statement, interview, etc.) that backs up this claim. Every time I see someone online say “the series creator made Ace Attorney to parody Japan’s actual legal system” there is never a link to an interview or anything that proves their statement correct. If someone has an actual, verified source from Shu Takumi or someone else who had significant involvement with the series, please prove me wrong and show it to me. But according to all of the creator’s statement’s I’ve read, there’s no evidence of the series being an intentional parody.

So, what do we know about the creation of the Ace Attorney series? Well, it was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. After working on the dinosaur survival horror game Dino Crisis for Capcom, he was given the opportunity to make any kind of game he wanted. He really wanted to make mystery and adventure games, and from that came Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

MC: Before developing Ace Attorney you worked on Dino Crisis. How does one go from dinosaur survival horror to virtual courtrooms?

ST: Dino Crisis was the brainchild of my then boss, Resident Evil creator, Shinji Mikami. Working on his projects taught me not only how to make games, but also how to think about them. After Dino Crisis 2 wrapped, Mr Mikami gave me six months in which to create any kind of game I wanted.

I was still pretty wet behind the ears, but as I'd originally joined Capcom with a desire to create mystery and adventure games, this was a huge chance for me to make my mark as a creator. In the end it took a team of seven 10 months to produce the first GBA Ace Attorney title. Having the freedom to create exactly the kind of game I wanted was amazing and it was a real pleasure to work on that project.

MC: Can you remember when the idea of Ace Attorney first came to you? How did your bosses respond to the idea of a lawyer-based adventure game when you first described it to them?

ST: It was in 2000 when Mr Mikami said I could make my own game and my original idea was a fairly typical adventure with a detective as the main character. Most mystery adventures have the player choose from a number of different dialogue options for their character in order to progress the story, but I wanted a new gameplay style that enabled players to deduce for themselves what was happening, rather than just selecting canned responses. I developed this into the concept of facing off against the suspect in a crime and exposing the contradictions in their statements.

I was sure my new idea would be a fun and original take on the genre, so I started to revise the main character, since a detective would be too traditional for such an original concept. I asked myself, "What kind of professional would face off against a suspect and expose their contradictory statements?" The answer, of course, was a lawyer and so the Ace Attorney concept was born.

(source, from an interview on the making of the series)

Takumi’s original concept for the game involved Phoenix as not a defense lawyer, but as a detective. The gameplay was to consist of “facing off against the suspect of a crime and finding the contradictions in their statements.” However, Takumi eventually realized that taking apart contradictions wasn’t really a detective’s job, and decided to change the protagonist to a lawyer and the setting to a courtroom instead. And thus, the game’s concept was finalized.

Janet: As you know, “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy” is coming out world-wide this winter, and as I was brainstorming what to write about for this week’s blog, I remembered your tweets from 2010.

Takumi: Tweets from 2010?

Janet: …Well, it was a long time ago…

Takumi: ???

Janet: I-It’s OK if you don’t remember…

Takumi: …Oh, THOSE! Yes!

Janet: I remember reading them and being shocked by how different the original draft of the game’s story was – how Phoenix wasn’t even a lawyer, but a private eye!

Takumi: Yes, AA was originally supposed to be a detective game, so naturally, Phoenix was to be a private eye. But then, one day, I made a startling realization: the gameplay concept I was going for was for players to enjoy finding and taking contradictions apart, but that was hardly related to investigating or detective work at all. In that moment, I had it – I realized that the main setting for the game should be the courtroom.

Janet: That’s quite the jump, but you know, I can’t imagine this series being anything else at this point.

(source, from an interview by Janet Hsu about the game’s early development)

During the development for the game, Takumi actually knew very little about the intricacies of the legal system--and in fact, he’s been very transparent about that fact in interviews. There’s even a story he talks about in a blog post where he was asked “shouldn’t we do some research on law before we make this game?” and agonized over it for a bit before deciding that being accurate about courtroom processes wasn’t important--what was important was that the game made the trials exciting and fun.

November, 2000. The characters were coming together, and I was working desperately on my first scenario (the current Turnabout Sisters). One day, I was asked about the one thing I didn’t want to be asked about.

“Mr. Takumi. Don’t we need to do some research on law?”

The knowledge I have about the law, pretty amounts to the one fact that in Japan we have the Roppō Zensho ('Complete Book of The Six Major Legal Codes').

“Don’t bother with that. This is a detective game. “

It should have been over with this one line, but…

“But this isn’t a detective game, it’s a lawyer game!”

“If it’s not going to be realistic, I don’t see why this should be about trials.”

“People who play this might get wrong knowledge from the game!”

“We might get sued by the Bar Association!”

“They’ll start complaining!”

…Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) is simply a “mystery game.”　“Being realistic” is not what is important. What’s important is emphasizing, and recreating the unique “atmosphere” and “tension” of the courtroom. That is why the judge uses a gavel, even though no judge uses that, and why Naruhodō shouts "Objection!" even though nobody does that either.　This game does not need a “realistic courtroom”!

Chasing the true murderer down to the end, and then getting applauded for that in the courtroom. That feeling of thrill and excitement. It was only by February of the following year when we finally manage to recreate that in the game. The couple of months after this had happened, we looked around, got lost and troubled our minds in search for the answer of the big question of “How do we make a trial into a game?”. Fall was passing by, and the cold winter was close upon us.

(source, from an archived blog post by Takumi)

So, realism and knowledge of law wasn’t important to Takumi during the development of the series. But there’s also the fact that Takumi has actually personally denied that the Ace Attorney series was an intentional satire or criticism of the court system at any point. In fact, according to a blog post (done as if Phoenix and Maya were reading the column and commenting on it), he actually dislikes people seeing his work this way, as he never intended the games to have any big political statements.

A major prerequisite for Gyakuten Saiban is it’s so simple “even my mother could play it”. So there is only one point at the core of the game: “Seeing through lies”.

Naruhodō: It wasn’t even supposed to be a game about the trials at first. Mayoi: Eh! Really?! Naruhodō: “Simple” is basically all this game is about, according to TakuShū. Mayoi: What do you mean? Naruhodō: He didn’t want to add all kinds of elements for the player to think about, like alibis, tricks or about the culprit. It’d just confuse them. Mayoi: Really. Naruhodō: Basically, you can proceed in the game if you just think about where the contradiction is. He figured that with that, the controls of the game could also stay simple. Mayoi: But, but, why the trials then? Naruhodō: “A story about a detective seeing through lies” wouldn’t be any different from the other games out there. So that’s why he decided to have someone whose job is seeing through lies as the protagonist. Mayoi: So a defense attorney. Naruhodō: Occasionally TakuShū sees magazines introducing the game as “a work that dared to take on the theme of trials”, and that actually hurts him. Mayoi: He never meant to be something as big as that….

(source, from the mentioned blog post)

Ultimately I see how easy it is, if you know a good amount about both Ace Attorney and Japan’s legal system, to come to the conclusion that the games were made as a dig against the latter. However, somewhere along the line, people apparently stopped seeing this as merely a theory and instead as a definite fact. Now, that doesn’t mean that the theory is entirely unfounded--given that Takumi focused only on making trials interesting and fun in the games, you could say that the games work as an light, comedic parody, not meant to make any political statements. And hey, maybe there’s something I missed--maybe there were other people working on the series who did have significant knowledge of law and wrote some parts of the games as intentional satire of the system. Again, if anyone has evidence of this, don’t hesitate to provide it. But with what I know, I don’t think going “well actually” to people who point out the ridiculousness and unfairness of Ace Attorney’s court system is necessary. It’s simply that way to make the games more fun.

#ace attorney #phoenix wright #this was actually kind of fun to research and write!#kinda felt like i was making a statement in a courtroom...

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hacawijo · 3 years

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SJM ACOSF Live Event Notes: Canada

I’m not Canadian but this is the stream that worked in my schedule lol. Also sorry if any of this is redundant, I didn’t want to leave anything out in case this is the first you’re reading about any of these lives.

NOTE: she specifically didn’t give confirmation about who the next book will follow, she knows, but she said her publishing team will probably want to find the right time to announce it! Thus, we can only guess for now what the NEXT book will be about.

SJM Live - 7PM EST. Wed. 2/24/21

Indigo — CA Live

— Sarah began writing this while writing the third book in the ACOTAR series. She wanted to look at what happens after, Cassian and Nesta’s chemistry made her want to write them first. “It was almost like writing fanfiction of my own stuff…”

— Accidentally pitched the sequels — wanted to tell the stories of all these other characters, wanted to explore the world, and what happens when the big battle is over, who makes a play for power. How will the Night Court involve or not involve themselves?

— World-building meets steamy romance - her two favorite things

— She knew from the start that Nesta was a lot more than you were seeing, she’s actually the one person who saw through Tamlin’s glamour. Someone who is closed off and appears as if she doesn’t care - but she does, and deeply, she just doesn’t know how to express it.

— Her own mental health journey informed her work on Nesta’s - things got worse for her and this was around when she started Nesta’s story over. She finally decided to go to therapy and started meds and coping skills and went on this journey that happened to be similar to what Nesta was going through. None of it is autobiographical though!

— Honestly going to cry about how she’s talking about Nesta, she didn’t need to be redeemed, she just needed to be able to understand what she had done and experienced and move forward.

— How do you face the things you’ve done that you’re not proud of and how do you face the people you’ve harmed?

— She’s come to realize that she has a giant soft spot for the tall goofy guys that seem tough but are big softies. She has a big crush on Gronk, which is hilarious. She described her husband as tall and goofy. She immediately loved Cassian and understood him more-so than some other characters.

— OMG this interviewer. “Tell me a little bit about their sex…”

— Her father is currently reading the book, Sarah begged her mother to take the book away from her father. There’s a big difference between her mother and her FATHER reading the sex scenes.

— BJ SCENE: Nesta’s sexuality is a way for her to express herself through her body and in a way she understands and is good at.

— Sarah wants to write in the sweet spot between really steamy and epic romance and epic fantasy and world-building.

— How does Sarah world-build? She actually builds it while writing the story, but starts with a vague understanding of the world - she wants to know how they get the fruit for their breakfast every morning, and all of those little details. She comes across little details that just live in a magical place in her head - she discovered the Weaver in the woods while she was in New Zealand.

— She was inspired by her own New Zealand hikes to write Nesta and Cassian’s.

— She takes notes on all of her experiences so that she can use them later in her books (i.e. when she has a fever and is sick she even takes notes so she’ll be able to describe that sensation accurately).

— Sarah loves world mythology and she loves the really messy, terrifying fairy tales and folklore - stories that taught survivalist lessons. The Scene with the kelpie is one of her favorite scenes she’s ever written because it took her to a place of primal terror. This scene was barely edited from the first draft, it has basically stayed the same since she initially wrote it.

— Yeah this interviewer is behind, she asks the mega-verse question again. Sarah took the scene out of ACOSF where Rhys sees Aelin, but she did confirm that he was talking about Aelin when he told people he saw a star - he saw Aelin but was spooked and didn’t want to tell everyone.

— She identifies with Nesta’s emotional journey the most, Sarah feels like she’s the most like Bryce (but her parents might say she’s like Aelin). It’s like a personality test, sometimes she feels more like a Feyre or an Aelin. They all have parts of her.

— Sarah pictures the fight scenes in her mind, but with Nesta’s book she actually paid attention to how someone builds those skills (her other protagonists were already trained fighters). She talked to her personal trainer who taught her a bit about swordplay. She went through sessions and she paid attention to where she was sore afterward and such.

— What would Nesta’s beast form be? Sarah says something feline, like a snow leopard with gold wings and iron teeth and silver claws. Mesmerizingly beautiful and dangerous.

— She’s currently editing CC 2, about to get edits back! She says a lot of the side characters will get their own subplots in the second book- it will open up the world a lot more.

— Writing through COVID was hard for her, she felt guilt going off to play in fantasy worlds when so many people were struggling with job loss and sickness. But now she can work and is grateful for that escapism.

— Plans for next ACOTAR: She has it plotted out in her head and knows exactly who it will be about and what will happen. It’s in the queue. She won’t say who it’s about because she thinks her publishing team will want to weigh in on when to announce.

#sjm #sjmaas #sjm live #acosf #nesta #cassian #crescent city #throne of glass #acotar #nessian

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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No one should of trusted RWBY+ with fucking anything, let alone saving the world (LIKE REN SAID THEY SHOULDN’T BE MAKING DECISIONS ON) and now look. Two cities destroy, millions dead or homeless, and Salem half-way to completing her goal that might get everyone killed. Yeah, Ozpin totally should apologize for not trusting these idiots.

At the very least the story might have pulled some plot strings to "prove" that Ozpin should have trusted them from the start. Like with Oscar succeeding with Hazel. We know that success required him to go OOC and that in a story with more consistent characterization/realistic reactions from its cast, Oscar would have definitely failed... but that doesn't erase the fact that he didn't. No matter how badly executed, the story essentially argues, "Oscar was right to trust Hazel because look, Hazel helped him" and we might have gotten something similar with the group: "Ozpin was wrong to mistrust them because look, when they learned the truth everything got better."

But, uh... things got so much worse.

The group drove Ozpin away rather than proving that they were actually different from everyone else who learned about Salem. Then they nearly lost the Relic at the farm. They tested the fragile trust between the kingdoms by stealing from Atlas and in doing so got a Leviathan to attack a city. Then they lied to Ironwood - the exact thing Ozpin supposedly shouldn't have done to them. They actively divided their allies - you know, the thing Salem wants. Not splitting the group to complete two separate tasks, Ruby - by turning on the Ace Ops and Ironwood. Ruby told everyone about Salem, which realistically should have caused massive grimm attacks across the entire world. They lost the Relic because they never bothered to put it in the vault. They also ended up losing the last question because of that. They lost the Staff because they stupidly took it out of the vault. Their Maiden was killed, again. An entire populace is displaced and currently getting picked off by grimm. They knowingly, willingly, and deliberately destroyed an entire kingdom when they didn't have to.

Oh, and then five out of ten “died.” If there was any part of Ozpin that held back out of worry for their safety, that’s been proven correct too. They weren’t strong enough, or smart enough to survive this war. Within just a few months they were (we’re meant to believe) killed.

Putting aside, for the moment, that a story needs conflict and failure on the part of its protagonists, everything that has happened since Volume 6, to my mind, proves Ozpin right. Not just in terms of "Wow, when I tell people about Salem they hurt and betray me" but also "Wow, somehow I don't think this group of teenagers with one year of training is ready to be the linchpin of this war." Because that's what they wanted by demanding every secret: to be at the very center of the fight, to be making the tough calls, to play at being the world's hero. The problem is, their idea of a hero is still someone who fixes everything with an epic punch to the face. When that fails... they crumble. Cue Ruby sitting around in the mansion half the volume. Should Ozpin have trusted his inner circle? It's debatable. Lionheart ran to Salem the second he learned of her immortality, Qrow sunk deeper into his alcoholism and gave up the fight, but Ironwood took it in a stride and kept pushing forward. Theodore we don't know yet. So it's pretty up in the air whether that would have assisted Ozpin, or just made things worse that much faster, but then that's not really the question here. Should he have told the group? Should he have deliberately made these teens generals in this war? The plot says, "Absolutely not." Because when they made themselves the generals through force - stealing the question, lying to Ironwood, defeating the Ace Ops, hijacking Amity - things have consistently gotten worse. Nothing we've seen on screen the last three volumes says, "See? Look how much better things are once Ozpin was forced to trust love and put his faith in this team."

And what slays me is that the show so desperately tries to backtrack on this with the fight between Ren and Yang:

Ren: Are you kidding?! We don’t know the first thing about being Huntsmen. We clearly weren’t ready.

Yang: Were we not ready when we saved Haven? When we took down a Leviathan? We got the Lamp to Atlas.

Ren: And then we lost it! And after that, when we had to make real decisions, we got every single one wrong.

Yang: I’m not going to pretend like we did everything perfectly, but if we’d done nothing, things would be even worse than they are now.

Ren: How could they possibly be worse? We are stuck out here while Salem has the Lamp and Oscar. We’ve got no plan, no army.

Yang: We’ve got the Maiden!

Yang is forced to omit so much information to make the team look good here and Ren is only allowed to point out one (1) thing she omits: "And then we lost it!" Yang fails to mention that they didn't save Haven, Blake's army did. So yeah, one member of the team, but it's not like they got in there and kicked epic ass. Weiss nearly died. The Relic was only saved because Raven decided she didn't want it anymore. The group barely held their own and then won due to good timing and the bad guys taking each other out/changing their minds. They were going to defeat two Maidens? Lucky them one Maiden took the other out and then decided to hand them the Relic.

Took down a leviathan? Funny how she fails to mention that they drew the leviathan there in the first place and that Cordovin's drill is what did it in. Even Ruby's eyes is a single person ability that only works on grimm, not at all useful for the human-based problems Ren is talking about. They got the Lamp to Atlas? Yeah, and then you lost it. Getting it to Atlas is literally meaningless when the villains still managed to steal it, that victory a direct result of the group's stupid decisions. It's like going, "I successfully got water out of the boat" and failing to mention that the boat still sank. Oh, and also you could have plugged the hole at any point and just... didn't. The boat sinking is absolutely on your hands. When pressed just the tinniest bit, all Yang can come up with is that they've still got the Maiden, someone who will be attacked, hacked, and murdered by the end of the volume. Everything else? "but if we’d done nothing, things would be even worse than they are now."

That's a very big claim from someone ignoring all her failures. And of course, soon after this Ren dares to use Jaune's lack of training as an example of how unprepared they are (valid), he gets mad, the duo later tells him to open up more (he literally just did), and then the story drops his anger for a semblance upgrade instead. RWBY banks on us just believing Yang, carried along by everyone - all the way through to Nora - going on about how Very Very Wrong Ren Is - because if you actually consider these themes of trust and ask whether Ozpin was wrong to hold back... there's not a lot to challenge that decision. The go-to argument would be, "The heroes made things better once they knew the truth, ergo, they should have known the truth from the start" but the group has continually made things worse. It's not even a temporary problem anymore. No matter that they'll inevitably win, Atlas is gone. They've done irreversible harm to the world and yeah, they're trying to do good, they're trying, but this isn't the story of some teenagers forced into a conflict and doing what they can with the hand they've been dealt. This is the story of some teenagers who forced their way in, so when things go wrong... that's on them, no matter their intentions. They are now responsible, just as much as Ozpin was responsible. Except the story refuses to admit that, continually positioning Ruby as an innocent child in need of reassurance, not the licensed huntress who stole control from Ozpin, lied her way into a new inner circle, attacked former allies to avoid the consequences of her own actions, and presented herself as the world's savior... only to then cry because she never had a plan to begin with. We've got a fantastic story here about how Ruby wasn't ready, none of her friends were, and their naïve belief that they were the heroes of this tale - running after the White Fang, then Cinder, then Salem herself - has done incredible harm within a delicate, multi-generation war. We might have started telling that story if the group had actually sat with Ren's accusations and admitted their mistakes. Instead, we're left with this ridiculous claim that no matter how bad things get, it's always better than the alternative of the group not being involved at all. Because they're the heroes, remember. Their goodness they provide is, supposedly, inherent. The only problem is we no longer have a plot that supports this claim.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

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snatcher-no-snatching · 2 years

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Ok so. Chicory was a really fun and cute game that absolutely sucker punched me multiple times. I expected nothing less from the team that made it, but still

In summary, you play as a little dog in a world that's naturally black and white, but coloured in by an ancient tool called the magic brush. The brush has been passed down through hundreds of different wielders over the years, and it's their job to keep the world coloured and beautiful. The current wielder, Chicory, suddenly resigns, so the brush and all it's responsibilities now fall to you, the protagonist.

I'm sure any artist can connect with the themes and narrative of the game, but I really like how it presents creation as something than can be damaging to us as well as liberating, especially if you do art for a living. For talking animals, all the characters are so human in the way they have stressful expections, both from themselves and others. It's really nice getting to see them talk about this stuff and find the support they need, and really figure out what happiness means for themselves even if it means "letting down" others.

Now, despite that entire last paragraph, the game itself is still overall very cheerful and fun to play, I really liked getting to colour in the whole world and talk to the cool NPCs. Your colour choices are actually very limited, just 4 per area, but I think this forced simplicity was paradoxically very liberating for me? It was kinda nice to not even have the option to overthink it; you know, just make art because it's fun. Other than that, there's also a bunch of cool mechanics for exploring the map and finding secrets, and there's even bossfights! Yeah, that took me by surprise tbh. VERY reminiscent of JSaB bosses in playstyle, and even music. Oh right I forgot to mention, the music for the game as a whole is amazing. Again, as expected, but really I can't overstate how good it is.

There's just SO much to talk about when it comes to this game so I think you should just experience it for yourselves. Go play it. There's a lot of accessibility settings you can tweak if you're mostly just interested in the story. But seriously, 10/10, totally recommend, go play Chicory and also Wandersong if you haven't already

#chicory a colorful tale #chicory #cam's game recs #long post #you all know being concise isn't a strong suit of mine #but I seriously don't even know how i'd talk about everything in this game without writing a novel lmao #oh also there's more LGBT+ rep!#like a character SAYS ''i'm bi'' no ambiguity about it #it's nice to see y'know #anyway the worst part of writing this was having to spell colour the american way. disgusting.

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makeste · 3 years

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if there is a timeskip, how far ahead do you think horikoshi will move along the story?

okay, so... I sat here for a while trying to work out how to phrase this less harshly lol, but I think I’m just gonna be blunt: I really, really hope that Horikoshi does not give us any kind of timeskip. there are precious few things that could potentially push me to quit this series, but a timeskip is one of them. I’m not saying that to be dramatic, I’m saying it just as a fact, because it’s happened to me multiple times before. in my experience, nothing else out there ruins a story as easily or effectively as a timeskip.

but let me try to break down and explain my loathing of them a bit more in depth.

1.) they make it so the audience misses out on character development. this is probably the thing I hate the most about timeskips. so here’s the thing; there are two different kinds of shounen timeskips. the type where the characters (mostly) stay together throughout the timeskip (think Naruto), and the type where the characters split apart during the timeskip (think One Piece). and I hate both of them equally, and let me explain.

I am reading the series because I am invested in the characters and their relationships. I want to see these relationships grow and evolve. timeskips make that impossible, because the whole point of a timeskip is that it skips right over everything so the audience doesn’t get to see it. and so, if the characters stay together during the timeskip, that’s a huge chunk of time during which their relationships are continuing to evolve, and the audience is missing out on all of that. that’s like starting a book and then finding that the entire middle section of it is blank. like, sorry about that, we decided this part wasn’t important enough to write down. if you’re lucky we might show you little bits and pieces of what happened during flashbacks, but otherwise you’ll just have to deal with it. boooo.

on the other hand, if the characters all go their separate ways to train on their own during the timeskip, then in a way that’s even worse. like yes, we’re technically not missing out on any relationship development, because no relationship development is even happening. those relationships are just put on hold for the duration of the timeskip. like, to use One Piece as an example, that means that the crew was together for like six months or however long, and then they all split apart for two whole years. they were apart for four times longer than they were ever together as a crew! like, you brought this found family together and bonded them so strongly only to rip them apart again?? for two years?? and for what! so that they could become boringly overpowered?? well, speaking of --

2.) they make fights predictable and/or disappointing. now for me, this one isn’t quite as bad as the character development one, but that’s mostly because I don’t care about fights as much. that said, post-timeskip fights are usually a dime a dozen, and I hate it. because here’s the thing: the whole purpose of the timeskip was to power up the character offscreen, so that they come back ready to kick more ass. which is great in theory, but in practice, post-timeskip fights tend to feature one of two brands of disappointment. either the protagonist character powered up so much that they easily win the fight, or else they still struggle even after all of that training and effort. the latter is just frustrating, because it’s like, so then what even was the point? but meanwhile, the former is also disappointing in its own way, because there’s no challenge anymore. yes it’s cool for like two seconds, but then what? if all I wanted was to watch someone reliably and effortlessly kick ass all day, I’d go become a fan of a bandwagon sports team. for me, the appeal of shounen is that the characters are learning and growing and struggling. if you make it easy for them then where’s the fun in that? if your character no longer faces any real obstacles then it stops being an interesting story.

and last but not least, 3.) they change the tone of the series (usually for the worse). so this one is interesting because this is one of the main reasons why a lot of people advocate for timeskips in the first place. ‘they help to make the series more mature’, or something along those lines. people are interested in seeing what kinds of storylines would open up with an older, more experienced cast of characters.

except that when people say more mature, what they usually mean is one of two things. either more romance, or else darker/grittier story content (read: more character deaths). which, just speaking personally, I have approximately zero interest in either of those things. if I wanted a grimdarker shounen series I’d be reading Attack on Titan instead. if I wanted more romance, I would read... well actually don’t really know what I’d read lol, because that’s kind of the point I’m trying to make here -- I don’t read romance, because I’m not interested in it (insert aromantic disclosure here). as an element of a more complex story, sure, that’s fine. but as a focus, I’d just as soon not. nine times out of ten I will lose interest in it. that’s 100% a personal preference there of course, but yeah.

anyways, but the point is, I started reading this coming of age story about teenagers at a superhero academy because I like coming of age stories! I like reading about younger characters and their adventures, learning about themselves and the world around them, making mistakes and getting stronger and the like. this is a specific genre that has a specific appeal to me. there’s an idealism and an optimism inherent in it, and I really don’t want the series to go changing that up. especially if there’s no need to change it up. which imo there really isn’t. as it stands, BnHA is already an unexpectedly mature story in a lot of ways, and it’s already exploring a lot of darker and more complex themes as it is, and doing an excellent job of it imo. basically, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. most of the time you’ll just end up ruining what was so appealing about the series to begin with.

so yeah! thus concludes my impromptu rant post about timeskips lol, and I’ll just belatedly add in a disclaimer as well that this is just my own opinion of course, and ymmv. but for me personally, I think that shounen series in particular rarely come out better after a timeskip (in fact I can’t think of any off the top of my head to tell the truth). also in BnHA’s case I really don’t think there’s any need for one at all. maybe if we get another short one, like the three-month timeskip that took place just before the start of this arc. but even then, there is just so much going on currently in the manga that it would feel weird to just fast-forward through it. TomurAFO is still on the loose. Dabi just blew up hero society as we know it. All Might is prophesized to die in the near future. the entire Billboard Top Ten was pretty much wiped out. and so on and so forth, and that’s not even getting into all of the character development that recently took place.

it just feels like things are too chaotic right now to skip ahead very far. I want to see what’s going to happen in the immediate aftermath of all this. and I don’t feel like the villains will leave the heroes alone to recover for very long. like, I can’t really figure out where someone would even put a timeskip, I guess is what I’m saying? there’s nowhere that feels natural. I could see them skipping a few weeks ahead maybe, but no more than that. anything more, and one has to assume that Tomura simply comes back to wipe out the rest of the heroes and/or the world lol. unless they shove him into another cryotube or something, I suppose.

so yeah, I think we’ll either get a very short timeskip or none at all. at least I am keeping my fingers crossed for as much. I don’t think it needs to happen or should happen. again, ymmv, but at any rate that’s my answer.

#bnha 295 #bnha meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #long post

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picturejasper20 · 3 years

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Debunking common misconceptions about the Ben 10 Reboot.

A mutual of mine asked me if could write a post debuking common critiques people have of the Ben 10 Reboot. Some of these critiques are based of misconceptions and misinformation about the show while others are more subjective, meaning there are a matter of personal opinions.

I’m going to divide this post in different sections. In each section i’m going to try debunking a misconception and explain why i think this isn’t correct. If anyone wants to give their opinion on the subject, feel free to reblog the post or leave a comment.

I’m going to add a ¨Read More¨ since it’s going to be a long post.

1) ¨The reboot only has fart jokes as humor¨

I’m not sure from where people got this idea that the only type of humor the Reboot has are toilet and fart jokes. Does it has some jokes that are based on this? Yes! But Reboot’s humor has more variety than that.

Many of the jokes come from the characters´ reactions to certain events, how silly some situations are and from the dialogue. For example: Episodes focused on Xingo as the antagonist have tons of slaptick and old cartoon humor.

Since the series doesn’t take itself too seriously, it uses this to its advantage to make fun of tropes, franchises and popular culture. It also has many references to current trends such as youtube and social media, things that the new generation is more familiar with.

If these jokes land or not is up to debate but to say the Reboot only has fart jokes is a bit of a stretch.

2) ¨The Reboot has no plot or worldbuliding¨

This is one of the weirdest arguments for me because if you watch the show you’ll know this isn’t the case. The show has a main arc as well as some subplots.

I think people get this idea due to how the show is mainly episodic in season 1 unlike the rest of the seasons. The thing is that even season 1 has continuity that is quite important if you want to understand the rest of the series. It introduces villains as well as secondary characters that become important in future episodes. It also has tons of character development for the main protagonists, so, skipping this season would mean missing out their character growth.

By the end of season 1, Ben gets a new Alien called Gax which is the same species as the original Vilgax. It turns out this alien was half of Vilgax’s original power and Vilgax was trying to get it back. The finale is has interesting surprises and plot twists that change the status quo of the series in some ways.

In season 2 is mainly about Vilgax teaming up with other villains to steal the Omnitrix from Ben. These episodes are quite entertaining and help to develop the main characters. What’s more is that Ben gets a new alien called Shock rock and isn’t able to transform into Upgrade, which becomes important in the season finale.

I could talk about Kevin’s character arc, Charmcaster, Glitch, the Forever Knight’s arc, Animo subplot and tons of other stuff. My point is that saying that ¨the Reboot has not plot¨ would be a huge misconception about the show. It would make more sense if someone complained about how its episodic structure hurts and distracts from the main story arc and it would have helped the series to not have so many episodes centered around the characters going on random adventures.

3) ¨Shock Rock is a cheap copy of Ghostfreak¨

When i first heard about this complain it suprised me a bit. Look, i get why a person could think that "Shock Rock is just Reboot's Ghostfreak" since they share similar stories.

However there are a few differences between the two:

Ghostfreak was possesed by an evil entity, Zs'Skayr, who later escaped from the Omnitrix and did terrible things. This was so horryfing for Ben that for a long time he didn't turn into ghostfreak out of fear of their conection with Zs'Skayr.

In the original series it wasn't really explained how Zs'Skayr got inside the Omnitrix and for how long he was concious about being trapped.

Shock Rock was introduced as a result of a terrible glitch caused by the Omnitrix being rebooted. They replaced Upgrade's DNA pod and allowed Ben to give the aliens stronger versions of themselves.

Shock Rock isn't completely evil and never really tries to escape from the Omnitrix. All that they did was to build that tower to send a signal to the Fulmini. Once the protagonists reboot the Omnitrix again, Ben was able to transform into Shock Rock without any problem.

Both aliens are a bit similar but on a deeper analysis they have different execution in their respective series.

4) "Glitch is a copy of Ship".

This is one i get why people complain about it. Glitch and Ship have many parallels in common. (Both being mechamorphs, they are both sidekicks)

The main difference is that Ship acts like a pet and is able to transform into many electronic devices. On the other hand, Glitch lives inside the kart and can't transform in the same way that Ship does. (However he can in the future, years after developing his powers).

Their backstories and origins differ. Ship was born from a mechamorph that needed help after he crashed his own ship. Glitch was the result of Ben using Upgrade to reboot the Omnitrix in the season 1 finale which forced Upgrade to fuse with Ben's DNA to survive.

Another point i want to add (based on speculation) is that Glitch resembling is Ship seems to be very intentional. I think the creators wanted to Ship to appear again in the Reboot. So they decided to create Glitch.

Keep in mind that the Reboot makes tons of references to the original series and its sequels. It wouldn't be suprising if Glitch is a reference to Ship.

5) "Max is not clever/ is dumb"

I don't really got the impression of reboot Max being "dumbed down". He is one of the characters that acts almost exactly as he does in the original series.

I think this complain come from Max being less serious in this series: He isn't so strict with the kids and gives them more freedom to do what they want. He is also more open minded and has less "black and white" mentality that he had in the original series.

He is still almost the same character, just more easy going and down to earth in comparison. He still acts as a guide for Ben and Gwen. He still has a few arguments with Ben for not listening to him in some episodes.

@theangrycomet made a post a few weeks back about Reboot Max. I think people should check their post because they explain many things that i mention here in more detail.

Here is a link to their post: X

6) "They cancelled Omniverse because of the reboot"

This one is a somewhat old argument. Again, i don't know where people got this idea that reboot was the main reason they cancelled Omniverse.

I have been trying to find an article that could explain the reason behind its cancellation. All i was able to find were fans talking about how it ended because of the low number of toys getting sold. Nothing about the reboot.

It could one of the things lead to Omniverse being cancelled but not the only main factor.

If anyone has more information about this feel free to leave a link in the comment section or by reblog.

7) "Ben is out of character in the reboot"

This something i don't really get at all. Reboot Ben behaves pretty much the same way he does in the OS. He is still cocky, stubborn, competitive, impacient and gets into a trouble.

Is it because he appears to be nicer in this series? If it is because of that then i personally like this change. I found Ben to be more likable in this version. As well as capable of regretting his actions and learning his lessons.

Reboot Ben is a complex character. It has so much development that i would find it difficult for me to sum it up in just one post.

I think fans get this impression since they are more used to Alien Force Ben than OS Ben. That's why they believe Reboot Ben is acting OOC when in reality is he isn't much different from the OS Ben.

If anyone has a better explanation, please leave it in the comments section/reblog.

-----

Okay, those are the most common misconceptions i found after talking with some mutuals. While a few things are a matter of doing fact checking, others are based on my perspective on the series.

Keep in mind that i don't think the Reboot is perfect by any means. It has its issues like slow pacing in the first season or characters that are annoying.

However, if someone wants to give a serious critique, they should try doing a bit of research and fact-check to see if their points are valid. Otherwise,they might look misinformed at best and making bad faith arguments at worse. That's all.

#ben 10 reboot #ben 10 2016 #ben 10 shock rock #ben 10 reboot vilgax #ben tennyson reboot #glitch ben 10

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mittelfrank-divas · 3 years

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so i'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there's an interview with developers of the game and they pretty much say point blank that edelgard was intended to be a villain and not morally grey at all (and this is shown more clearly in the jpn version). what's your take on this? does intent matter if it comes off differently in the game itself, esp in the localization?

If we’re thinking of the same interview (that Nintendo Dream one) then that isn’t what it says at all.

Q: Can you tell us which route was made first in order to expand and explore the world?

Kusakihara: The first and second parts of the Empire route.. which is called by the userbase as the “Church Route”, Silver Snow. The progression of Class Leader Edelgard to become the antagonist… that is what we initially decided upon. [...]

Q: Please tell us about how Edelgard and the Empire’s current status brought about the details seen in the story.

Kusakihara: The character that guides the story has mostly been male characters up until now. The antagonist being a male character as a setting has also been often the case in my opinion… which is why we wanted to release something that is the opposite, to which you can say, a story that is hard to predict, and as such we ended up with a female character.

Yokota: Not only is she a strong character on the front of thrusting the story’s direction, the gap with her cute/endearing points also were present, which has resulted in her becoming a good character in my opinion. And other than that, due to all the previous titles in the series, the thought/impression that the Empire = Antagonists is left upon the playerbase. When you think about the “Empire”, you usually get some sort of “Bad/Evil” image, I think. And as for the story, it really feels like it started from the Romance of Three Kingdoms, but we force them all to take part in school life. In other words, a period in which there was peace must exist, before starting the fires of war. And because of that, someone evil (Villain)… or rather, someone who has to bear a role close/similar to that has to exist, and so we had the Empire bear that burden.

I know this is a translation, so we have to take it all with a huge grain of salt, but the word used above is antagonist, not villain. An antagonist is simply a character who stands opposed to a protagonist. An antagonist can be morally grey or even perfectly good -- protagonist and antagonist are simply about whose perspective the audience is following and sympathizing with. Edelgard is an antagonist in three of the four routes. That’s just a simple fact. Just like Rhea and Dimitri and Claude are antagonists in hers.

The translation seems to get a bit fuzzy, but it seems like the devs went on to say that they chose to call it the Adrestian Empire because the word “empire” has the perception of being bad or evil. But is that any surprise? With all the red and black and the militant imagery, it is clear that you’re supposed to look at Edelgard and the Empire and get the impression that they’re bad. But this is an entire game about how perception and reality are not the same thing.

And this line: “someone who has to bear a role close/similar to that has to exist, and so we had the Empire bear that burden.” If they wanted to say the Empire is the villain, they could have just said that without talking around it like this, and even correcting themselves when they said the word evil/villain! To me, it sounds like they’re saying that the Empire took on a villainous role but they don’t actually consider it evil.

I didn’t want to paste it all here since it gets long, but the devs also go on to talk about how even within their team there was a lot of desire for the Crimson Flower route despite Silver Snow being written first. So it would seem odd to me if they saw Edelgard as evil but still had this strong wish to side with her.

All of that said? No, I don’t think intent matters as much as what’s actually there in the game. I find Word of God to be insightful and interesting, but all it does is provide a bit of background and context. I’m still going to treat the final product as something that I can interpret how I wish.

Even if the above was a mistranslation and it outright said “we set out to make Edelgard an evil villain,” that is not what she is in the game. And like, why would we treat interviews like this as sacred texts but not unused assets? Knowing that Felix could have betrayed Dimitri in AM is an interesting fact that gives us a lot to think about, but the fact is that Felix chooses to remain with Dimitri in canon. Imagine what a jerk I would be if I yelled at every Felix fan that the devs “really” meant for him to leave Dimitri, so they need to stop enjoying their AM Felix content. They have a right to enjoy what is actually in the game just like Edelgard fans do.

#Anonymous #edelgard von hresvelg #meta

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theanimeview · 3 years

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Hazbin Hotel's Double Plot: Charlie and Angel Dust - Or - Why Charlie and Angel Dust are Both Main Characters (And I love one more than the other)

By: Peggy Sue Wood | @peggyseditorial

Welcome to Storytelling Class, everyone. Now, who remembered to brush up on their Shakespeare? No one? Not to worry, Prof. Peggy (not official... yet) is going to explain it all anyway with a bunch of unnecessary questions she plans to answer for you. Ready?

Here's a question: What is a double plot?

It's a more common occurrence in storytelling than you may think and is sometimes mistaken for subplot though the two are not the same. Shakespeare used double plots in several of his works, though King Lear is the most common example. We generally call a double plot structure that which takes two stories with combined plotlines. The two stories could stand alone but are purposefully combined to depict complex situations mirroring each other, often to comment upon or reinterpret events that transpire in other dramatic situations. "Often this takes the form of relatively minor characters and plotlines doubling events and situations from the 'main' dramatic narrative" (Reinke 1, LINK). The main characters of the "second" plot are often supporting characters in the "main" story and vice-versa, meaning that the main characters in the "main" story may act as supporting characters in the "second" plot.

Subplots have entirely different focuses that ultimately guide the main plot, such as on a hero's quest, the hero's party must split into groups to find different items for a magical spell. Following the group that went away from the party in different chapters is an example of a subplot, as this is a subordinate "plots" that serve the progression of the main one. A good indicator of a double plot instead of a subplot is figuring out whether or not the two plots could stand alone.

John Lithgow, far left, with Clarke Peters in the Shakespeare in the Park production of "King Lear" at the Delacorte Theater. Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Using King Lear as an example, our "main" plot features King Lear as the main character of his tragedy, and the "second" plot features Lord Gloucester in a tragedy mirroring King Lear's story. In both plots, the main characters suffer from their past choices. A more modern example would be that of Netflix's Russian Doll, in which we follow two distinctive main characters suffering from, and traversing, a similar path. We can define them as double plots because splitting the two stories in each work to create separate works with connected characters would still work. (Essentially, the two stories of each work can stand alone--we don't need to know what is happening to Lord Gloucester to get what is going on in King Lear's story. It helps to know that Lord Gloucester's story, but it is not required to understand Lear's story since what will be important to Lear’s plot will be revealed to Lear’s character later on.)

Another example of a double plot structure in a modern work would be that of Hazbin Hotel--let's discuss.

We often define a plot by three things. First, the main character; second, the question that said character needs to answer; and, third, the problem(s) that led them to seek an answer to the asked question. In a double plot, you have to answer the first and third questions twice, which we can easily do with Hazbin Hotel.

Let's start with Question 1. Who is/are the main character(s)? I've stated that it is Charlie and Angel Dust, but why? Two reasons. The first is how each character is introduced, and the second is that they are both asking the same question, though with different reasons behind it.

In the Prologue/Chapter 1 of the Hazbin Hotel comic, the first character we are introduced to is Angel Dust. He is our introduction into this fictional world, and his story follows the hero's journey narrative making him one of the main characters and defining his story as at least one, if not the main, plot in our double plot structure. Charlie is one of the two main characters for the same reasons. She also appears in that first chapter near the end (just like King Lear, who comes in after Lord Gloucester's introduction), and is beginning a hero's journey of her own. Both their stories ask the same question but have different reasons for seeking the answer.

Beginning with Angel Dust, we see that his story starts in a comfort zone--that zone being a criminal lifestyle shown with him trying to make a deal with some demonic mafioso-looking dudes. We soon find out that he's actually acting out despite appearing comfortable in this kind of situation because he what? Wants something, that's right (I knew you were a smart cookie).

When the deal with the mafia-demons doesn't go so well, we see him thrown into a familiar though much worse situation with his abuser and pimp, Valentino. This is our introduction to the main problems in Angel's current life, the issues that are making him want something outside of his comfort zone. To get what he wants, Angel must enter an unfamiliar, perhaps dangerous, territory and adapt to it until he achieves the goal or fails trying, and the person that provides the opportunity for entering the unfamiliar world, the Hazbin Hotel, is Charlie.

With Charlie's introduction at the end of chapter one, we begin seeing her hero's journey unfold. At present (her meeting Angel Dust), she is seen in her comfort zone. She's in a chauffeured limo with her bodyguard girlfriend, comfortably giving money to Angel Dust and acting as a somewhat naive and rather hopeful princess you might find in any fairytale story. She wants something but has yet to enter the unfamiliar situation (at least until episode 1, where Alistar steps in but that's not important right now). This closes the comic, but perfectly sets up the double plot narrative moving forward, thus helping to identify our two main characters.

What fully defines them as the main characters, my second reason for claiming both Angel Dust and Charlie to be one, is that second question we have for defining plot (the question that the main character needs to answer).

Charlie says that the goal, or question she seeks to answer, is whether or not a sinner can be redeemed once they find themselves in Hell; however, I would argue that the real question is whether or not salvation (preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss) is possible for Hell's population. Charlie's "redemption" is instead a method to seek the answer to the question rather than the question itself.

I argue this because that seems to be the end-goal Charlie is seeking for the citizens of Hell--salvation from being slaughtered on an annual basis. It is also the goal of Angel Dust, who seeks to be saved from his current life through his own hands or by someone else (though he doesn't seem to believe that someone else would help him without costing him something in return). For those of you wondering, Angel seems to be seeking an escape from many things, such as needing to trade sexual favors to his landlord because Valentino doesn't pay him well, an escape from hunger, and potentially other physical dangers.

The two are both seeking answers to this question but going about it in somewhat different ways.

In a recent video by Diregentleman, Why Angel Dust Should Be The Protagonist In Hazbin Hotel (it's brilliant, btw--a highly recommended watch if you have the time because most all his points are great), he argues that because Angel's story is more compelling and interesting, he should be the main character and while I agree that Angel's story is more compelling to myself as a viewer (just as I felt Lord Gloucester's story was far better than King Lear's parts), I still think Charlie's story worth the focus it is given in tandem with Angel Dust's.

WITH THAT CONCLUDED, I want to talk about my favorite character, Angel Dust! The lesson is over--let's nerd out.

I have been thinking about this A LOT since Episode 1 came out, and when "Addict" dropped, I was pumped. In October of last year, I uploaded the first draft for the review into the Google file our team shares but had been writing said draft for a long while already, and watching Diregentleman's video pushed me over the edge to scrap the planned post that should have gone up at 7 AM this morning and instead re-write and post this. Because as much as I loath spiders--I LOVE Angel Dust.

Gosh, where do I begin….

Angel has been beaten down to the point that his character is a tad bit all over the place. Is he the villain? Sort of? At least, he comes off as one since he's not working very hard to fulfill his end of the bargain with Charlie and since he is a demon--but he also has qualities that are very much fitting the "redemption" Charlie is aiming for without any prompting. In fact, it's what made him so likable to me before the music video release of "Addict"--which just made me love him more. What do I mean?

Well, in the first episode, we see him just coming back from prostituting himself--a job he appears to be forced to do by Valentino (one of the big-bads of Viziepop's Hell):

Valentino: Did you get my money, Angie Baby?

Angle: I'm wittha John now [sic]. I don't get why this needed to happen so soon after the extermination tho, Boss

Valentino: Just do it. No sass k sugar.

Angle: yes Val

He then buys drugs, which get stolen only to see a large piece of a building fall onto the would-be thief. Is he worried about the thief? No. Angel is only concerned with the drugs. Immediately after that, he joins a turf war with a friend of his, Cherri Bomb, and participates in wrecking what remains of the city from the previous night's purging (when Angels descend upon Hell and kill off a bunch of Hell's populous).

Cherri is his friend, and it is at this moment, we see his first redeeming quality in the animated pilot--a self-sacrificing protective nature for a friend. How? You may ask, well, Angel is shown saving Cherri. It happens when Angel sees a weapon pointed at them, something that Cherri doesn't notice. He pushes her out of the way, unsure of what may happen, thereby allowing himself to be captured (or potentially injured) instead of her.

That's self-sacrificing and is generally considered a "righteous" quality.

It's not like she could be killed--they're already dead and, from what we've learned, the already dead demons of Hell can only be killed by weapons the angels use or that which is made of the material angels use during the culling period that just ended the night before. The egg creature is not using one of these weapons at this moment, meaning that Cherri is not in danger of death, only injury.

Despite knowing that Cherri would ultimately be fine, Angel pushes her out of the way and takes the injury risk. (If he suspected that the weapon might kill her, then even more kudos to him here as that means he threw his life before his friend's.) This moment shows that Angel does value life outside of himself, which doesn't immediately come across when we meet him given the crushed thief moment we had prior.

This act of self-sacrificing, which is generally considered a virtue, shows that he has potential to change.

Expanding from this, we see him empathizing with Charlie and expressing a moment of guilt. The scene happens after Angel, Charlie, and Vaggy return to the hotel. Angel is presented with the opportunity to "change" (offer an apology to Charlie that he actually means), an opportunity he doesn't take, but the fact that he's considering it when he previously felt no guilt for his actions shows that he is capable of it.

Once Alistar comes into play, we see more of Angel's potential to change. For example, Angel is shown holding Vaggy back from attacking Alistar, which could be read in two ways. Either he holds her back because he doesn't want Alistar to leave (unlikely that Alistar would leave over Vaggy's attack), or Angel is preventing Vaggy from running at Alistar and potentially getting hurt, a very strong possibility that we learn through Vaggy's comment about how powerful the Radio Demon is and how he's grappled bigger demons on a larger scale to take over parts of the underworld.

If we're to believe the story elements pictured in the music video of "Addict," then Angel is in a horrible spot. He's being abused and treated like a working slave to Valentino with little hope of escape on his own and few options to reach out to for help (if one can even ask for help openly in Hell given the place and the people).

While Charlie is nice, shown by her giving Angel money and helping him avoid having to sell himself on the street that night for Valentino in the Prologue/Chapter 1 of the comic, she too has expectations for him or does it with an ulterior motive in mind. He's a big name in Hell, and she wants him for her program. While it may not be intentional, Charlie asking him to try the program in exchange for money sends the same message Angel points out during the offer: Nothing is free--even kindness, particularly from the Princess of Hell. No matter how cute and lovable she appears...

Charlie's story is less compelling, and it's not simply because she comes from a place of privilege, as I've heard some say. I mean, I love lots of stories with the rich and powerful, and if the many seasons of Dynasty can stand as an example--so do a lot of over people. Charlie's story is less compelling because we can't relate to her choices given the situation we see her in or the problems she's facing. For example, she has great political power that goes completely unused. She's a princess of hell, obviously not struggling too much since she's chauffeured around and seen atop a tall--safe--tower overlooking the purged city below in Episode 1. She isn't in a bad situation, from what we can tell, not the same way Angel Dust is, at least. Her problems are more like a passion project from what we've seen so far, and we don't know why she is motivated to make this redemption program work outside of wanting to help her people. But if she wants to help people, why the hotel?

She has power as a princess that she could use to help correct injustices in her kingdom, such as attempting to put an end to the turf-wards since it seems that the demons fighting for territory still follow and respect the royals and nobility to some degree. But, instead, she's created a program to change people into what she thinks is Heaven's ideal--a thing that may stop the culling by allowing demons to transition out into what? Angels? Spirits? Who knows. Regardless, it's a small-scale venture that doesn't attempt to use the influence she's been given to make sincere changes in the kingdom. Instead, she uses it to get publicity on a news station, and even that is a weak attempt. I mean, if she was doing this right, that new-caster shouldn't have been able to make a single nasty comment towards her during the whole process. I mean, I doubt the newscast would have said a thing had her parents been up there, which shows that she's walked all over and that she's let it happen.

My point is that Charlie's story doesn't yet make sense. It's harder for us, the audience, to put ourselves in her shoes than it is with Angel Dust, and that's why I love him more than other characters, and certainly more than his double plot counterpart, Charlie.

I look forward to seeing more of this series going forward and hope that Episode 2 comes out soon!

#angel dust #charlie #hazbin hotel #king lear #lord gloucester #shakespeare #double plot #hero journey #hero's journey #hero #protagonist #lit #literature lesson #literature #storytelling #angel #analysis

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Shiramine Nokia, and her role in Cyber Sleuth’s narrative

This one’s on request! Cyber Sleuth is quite the interesting game and a rather landmark entry in the franchise, mainly for being a love letter to the franchise and its long history itself, and for being the franchise’s very first work exclusively aimed at adults, meaning that it can explore different topics that wouldn’t normally be Sunday morning timeslot material, while also being a little more willing to assume that the people playing this are familiar with a lot of older parts of the franchise (not that it’s advisable to have complete lockout, but the game benefits greatly by not needing to assume lockout by default).

One of the ways Cyber Sleuth exhibits its “franchise love letter” status is by starting off the game all the way back at the franchise’s roots, before Digimon Adventure changed the game and everyone’s perception of Digimon and Digimon partnership, when the V-Pet lore was intertwined with Digimon as elements of hard sci-fi. As the game proceeds, the atmosphere slowly starts to resemble the more fantasy-like version of the franchise established by Digimon Adventure and its follower entries -- and that change is represented in none other than Nokia herself.

Before we begin: As anyone who follows my meta work has probably noticed, I generally prefer to have my analyses use tons of references and screenshots so that it’s easy to follow and the evidence is concrete, but Cyber Sleuth is a game, and it’s much harder to get those things without replaying the entire game, so I hope this won’t be too hard to follow despite being mostly text.

Nokia’s background and personality

If we want to apply the producer’s statements on Twitter, Nokia is 17 years old at the time of Cyber Sleuth, and has a backstory of having originally been a shy, bullied child who broke out of her shell thanks to the influence of her cousin (who, of all people, happens to be none other than Date Makiko). The flashback we get with Nokia in chapter 18, however, portrays her as just a fairly cheerful, go-getter child, but (although we only get to see her hair) she’s not quite as “flashy” or in-your-face as the description entails.

A possible hypothesis for rationalizing this all together comes from a what we learn about the process of memory wiping in Cyber Sleuth chapter 14: even if memories are extracted from the person, there’s some kind of residual memory left behind (the producer’s above statement also states that the same thing had even happened to Suedou). In Hacker’s Memory chapter 16, Arata confesses to Ryuji that the first Under Zero incident and Jude's loss to the Knightmon had re-triggered his trauma from having lost Yuugo years prior -- “not the memory, but the feeling.” So in other words, there was some feeling of loss that came after the loss of Yuugo that impacted those involved -- and it’s very possible that this deeply impacted and traumatized Nokia as well.

Assuming we’re still following this line of thought (since, again, this background point wasn’t actually in the game proper), Nokia eventually decided to break out of her shell thanks to Makiko’s influence, and become eccentric and assertive, and thus, the game begins.

While we’re here, I also want to point out that Nokia is also voiced by Han Megumi, possibly the Digimon franchise’s most notorious “promoted fangirl” who freaked out after getting to meet her childhood characters’ voice actors while cast as Airu in the Xros Wars crossover and ended up casted in a handful of major Digimon roles thereafter as a result. Which is not to say that her voice performance wasn’t also absolutely perfect for the bright and aggressive Nokia, but, you know...considering the below analysis, food for thought.

Nokia as a representative of “the conventional franchise”

Cyber Sleuth opens on a world where Digimon are largely seen as hacker programs, and even the hackers themselves only see them as non-sentient programs; there are ones like Chitose who treat them with empathy, but his attitude seems to be kindness towards them in a way not entirely unlike a family would treat a Roomba. Although he doesn’t admit to it at first, Arata himself also comes from this “world” of hackers, and we later learn that Yuuko herself is as well (via her “Yuugo” persona), meaning that, other than the playable protagonist, Nokia is the only “outside-context” person -- a completely ordinary civilian who’s gotten dragged into all of this.

Much like, say, the protagonists of Digimon Adventure.

With this background behind her, once she’s thrown into the world of hackers, she immediately has a “fateful encounter” with Agumon and Gabumon, instantly recognizable as two of the franchise’s most prominent Digimon (and complete with their Adventure voice actors, too). And I do especially bring up Adventure specifically, because while Nokia’s position in the game does end up taking in certain elements that roughly came around that era and possibly slightly predated it (mostly Digimon World and V-Tamer), Agumon and Gabumon weren’t particular mascots of the franchise until Adventure basically blew everything to pieces.

Right off the bat, Nokia does not have a single shred of doubt that Agumon and Gabumon are living beings and should be treated as such (again, much like the protagonists of Digimon Adventure; even Taichi in his “is this a game?” mode never doubted this). And they open up their meeting with this conversation:

Agumon: Umm, who are you? Nokia: It... It can talk?! It's so... so... so adoooooorable! M-M-M-M-My name's Nokia. What're your names? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

And on top of that, Agumon refers to Nokia as having a “familiar” scent. Remember this for later.

Nokia’s second encounter with Agumon and Gabumon in Cyber Sleuth chapter 3 involves her properly partnering herself with Agumon and Gabumon, and learning about the existence of the “Digital World”. Note that, for all intents and purposes, EDEN had been treated like the functional equivalent of the Digital World in this narrative up until this point -- cyberspace with hackers, coming from the network, it’s basically a “digital world” from top to bottom, and yet here Agumon and Gabumon are introducing the concept of a more fantasy-esque incarnation of a digital world. (And, in fact, despite EDEN being right there, many long-time Digimon fans playing this game often complained about how little you get to see the “Digital World” in this game, because of how associated that term is with something more fantasy-like.) So, again: here we have Nokia, who’s forming a partnership with Agumon and Gabumon as equals instead of recruiting them as hacker tools (even the protagonist wasn’t immune to this method), and being indirectly responsible for introducing the more fantasy-like concept of the Digital World that the modern franchise is currently associated with.

Nokia embarks on the conventional shounen anime character arc of starting off cowardly, but eventually learning to have her own inner strength, with her Digimon evolving in accordance to her emotions. And, eventually, in Cyber Sleuth chapter 8, she decides to form her own hacker team, called the “Rebels”. She ostensibly bases it off the old creed of Jude, having heard that they were a team that never caused trouble for others, but we later learn via Arata turning out to have been its former leader, and the even later portrayal in Hacker’s Memory of its spiritual successor Hudie, that this is an extremely rose-colored image of them -- Jude (and Hudie) was not a well-intentioned team by any means, but rather a sort of mercenary group meant to enforce the “freedom” of EDEN, often taking on shady jobs and “punishing” entities they considered to be causing chaos. But in this case, Nokia forms her team under the idea of legitimately fighting for justice and good will -- again, much like a Digimon Adventure protagonist.

In case the metaphor weren’t clear enough, Nokia decides that the members of her group will not be called “hackers”, but “Tamers” -- the same lingo used by the franchise to refer to a human who partners alongside a Digimon to help them get stronger -- and that she wants to promote the idea of humans and Digimon working in tandem (complete with emotional bonding exercises). For this, everyone looks at her weird, and yet her methodology, initially naive as it seems, keeps working, because Nokia’s natural charisma starts bringing people from different places together and making quite the formidable team. Everyone is perplexed by this, but perhaps it’s only natural, because Nokia has just independently invented the modern concept of Digimon partnership in a world where it did not exist. And this is eventually solidified by the Under Zero invasion in Cyber Sleuth chapter 10, in which Omegamon is finally formed (from sheer guts on her part).

Omegamon is yet another symbol of the modern franchise, but it’s important to remember that he hasn’t always been so; even his appearance in V-Tamer was as more of a tactical piece than any kind of game-breaker, but the impact of Our War Game! has led him to constantly make a resurgence in major franchise roles (maybe a little too much these days). However, on top of Nokia basically embodying the modern franchise itself by doing this, Nokia and Arata’s positions are an obvious reference to Our War Game! in particular, being Omegamon and Diablomon Tamers -- but they’re not seen directly fighting each other. In fact, Arata’s partner only ever reaches Diablomon when he’s at the highest point of his morality, so the reference is more ideological; Nokia represents the more idealistic and heroic side of Digimon, whereas Arata represents the more dirty-playing and cynical hard sci-fi side of it (remember that Diablomon himself was rather detached from the fantasy conflict of Adventure, being a mysterious entity that sprouted out of nowhere on the Internet and wreaked havoc). Moreover, Nokia’s usage of Omegamon embodies a theme that’s central to both Our War Game! and Cyber Sleuth itself as a whole -- while most people associate Omegamon with Taichi and Yamato these days, the original method of formation back in Our War Game! came from “bringing people from different places together”. Nokia managed to bring together a formidable army in a place where everyone else in the hacker world was trying to promote a dog-eat-dog philosophy, and the sense of cooperation is arguably making her stronger than anyone else.

(I should also point out that Nokia’s name is, obviously, a reference to the Finnish telephone communications company, and this has a lot of relevance to the game’s theme of connection, along with her phone Digivice...and, also, the method used to bring everyone’s powers together in Our War Game!’s spiritual successor, Diablomon Strikes Back. Feels a bit too on-the-nose here.)

In the second half of the game, when the world starts falling apart due to the Digital World portal opening, Nokia becomes one of most important people holding everything together as Arata goes off the deep end and Yuuko starts fixating on her own personal problems and revenge -- because she’s the one most in tune with treating Digimon as the living beings they are, she’s most active in advocating for them and helping them bond with humans, and and she’s the one making the chaos be a little less chaotic. The second half is basically the more fantasy-esque version of Digimon leaking into the sci-fi, with the sidequests progressively resembling your average Digimon anime monster-of-the-week episode, and holding that all together is Nokia, who becomes a vital figure in maintaining that fellowship by being in tune with the modern franchise’s philosophy.

Through all of this, Nokia ends up taking a role rather similar to a Digimon protagonist, which is highlighted very strongly in Cyber Sleuth chapter 18 when she ends up literally becoming the player character while the main protagonist is out of commission. During that time, Yuuko and Nokia learn the truth of what happened during the EDEN incident eight years prior -- and we also learn that the five children involved had an extremely conventional “first meeting in the Digital World” experience that could have been pulled right out of the first episode of a Digimon anime, with them having a lovely adventure meeting new creatures. And at the center of that “first contact” was none other than Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon themselves:

Agumon: Um... who are you? Nokia: Ahem! I am Nokia! And just who are you? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon’s meeting at the beginning of the game had been an (accidental) reenactment of their first meeting in the Digital World eight years prior -- and, in the flashback, Nokia invites them to go on an “adventure” with them. So in other words, Nokia getting involved in the hacker conflict at the beginning of the game was, unknown to all of them, her attempting to restore that beauty and idealism of the Digimon Adventure-esque philosophy and fun in a world where the Eaters had torn it away and EDEN had turned into a haven of cynicism and hacker battle royale.

In the end, the game’s conflict is only resolved by bringing everyone together; Arata has to be retrieved from the deep end, and Yuuko has to settle her deep-seated personal grievances. Everyone makes a promise to return together, in the sense of making things right and repairing the connections between them that had been cut in that incident. The final battle (momentarily) causes the playable protagonist to literally fall apart, and the one reaching out to them and sending her message to them at the end of the game is none other than Nokia herself -- again, in the absence of the game’s protagonist, Nokia is the one with the closest role, because in the face of the new world going forward, she was the one who contributed most to restoring its idealism.

Ultimately, all of this is especially because Cyber Sleuth works under one of the most terrifying imaginable premises for a fan of a kids’ franchise: “we made an entry for this, but for adults.” Many of us can testify that this kind of premise can go very well, or very badly -- the latter especially in the case of things that decide “taking the opportunity to do things that you can’t do on a Sunday morning kids’ timeslot” means “going out of your way to put edgy violence and sexy things and cynicism just because you can”, or, in other words, looking down condescendingly on its kids’ franchise roots with malice and deciding that something for adults means “more suffering” and not “issues that require more life experience to understand”. The reason the game ended up getting as much acclaim among longtime Digimon fans as it did was that despite being the franchise’s first venture into this territory, it did end up setting itself up as something that took that opportunity to do something new and unique that would have never made it into any of the prior entries (holy hell the doll quest) and yet never gave up on the idealism and themes of connection that make up the franchise at its core, and paid respect to everything that had contributed to all of that while it was at it.

And at the center of that is Shiramine Nokia, who is effectively the spirit of Digimon Adventure, condensed into a single character.

#digimon #digimon story cyber sleuth #shiramine nokia #nokia shiramine #shihameta

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