#like this is not discourse Lets not get mad peace and love we are all subjects to mischaracterisation and me the first like everyone else❤️ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

missdrarrydawn · 3 years

Note

This blog is why we need post-birth abortion rights for women. Your mother would have made the right choice.

yes wow darling very smart you sound incredibly intelligent for sending this yes yes quite an outstanding achievement you got there, amazingly brave too, yes such courage to go on anon and insult people, wow i applaud your bravery truly

my blog is a HP blog with ocassional diverse content, you're getting mad at a joke post that's probably 4-5 days old by now (i'm not sure about this exactly as i lose track of time easily) that described a real medically documented experience a lot of trans women have been observed to go through as their transition and therapy continues which i said is similar to a period of a cisgender woman because of the very real similarities between the two processes

i very clearly stated twice that they are biologically different but still similar enough to warrant validation

i support trans women and i always have and i always will, they are real women just as much as i am. i also understand, unlike most of you getting mad in the notes of the post, that women are not walking talking uteruses and i do not reduce nor define women by that one thing alone because that would be ridiculous and hurtful, since there is more to being a woman than just having a uterus

i don't really see why everyone is so upset (transphobes gonna transphobe i suppose) that i called a trans woman's cycle period like or a pseudo period, when that is the most accurate term that exists for that process as of right now.

what else would you call hormonal fluctuations of estrogen and progesterone (because guess what? trans women do in fact receive estrogen and progesterone injections as part of feminizing hormone therapy) and other symptoms (abdominal cramping, headaches, acne breakouts, hot flashes, dizziness, mood swings, pain, nausea etc.) happening every 5 weeks and lasting for 6-7 days? that's right, everyone would call that a period, it's just the most accurate way to describe the process.

trans women can not menstruate, they can not bleed because they do not have a uterus (something i very explicitly stated in my post explaining my point but transphobes can't read apparently) but, like I said in my original post, the bleeding is honestly the least important byproduct of a period, or better yet, the entire cycle, because it is just that - a byproduct, a consequence of the uterine lining shedding. it is not the one defining staple of a cycle, a lot of cis women don't menstruate but you don't go around calling them fake so. the bleeding is not the goal of a monthly cycle, it is not the end result your body wants to reach (the end result would ideally be pregnancy), just a consequence of the process, and i argue it is the least important part of it, its nothing more than another symptom, just like the cramps and pain are

do you want to know what your entire argument sounds like? let me demonstrate:

person A comes in with a fever, a sore throat and a runny nose. their doctor tells them they have a cold.

person B comes in with a fever and a sore throat but no runny nose. their doctor tells them they're faking their cold and should stop pretending to have a cold because it is insensitive to people who have real colds since person B hasn't presented every single typical byproduct and symptom having a cold produces unlike person A did

yea? isn't that ridiculous? that's exactly what you sound like

'trans women experience every other symptom of a period i do, on a monthly basis like i do, lasting about a week, like mine do, but they don't experience this one specific symptom that i typically do which is bleeding therefore they're fake'

obviously the cycle of a trans women isn't going to be the same as the cycle of a cis woman, i have not once contested that nor have i equated the two, what i have done however, is defend the fact a lot of trans women do in fact experience their own form of a monthly cycle that actually presents all the symptoms of PMS (if we're going to be super picky about it) and I've stated that there is nothing wrong with a trans woman calling her own cycle a period, even if she does not experience the bleeding.

you all are just incredibly transphobic (i checked out some of the blogs replying and found them to be terfs, ew) and i don't want to cross into your territory any more than i've already ended up doing, and i will not be responding to any of your notes or anon messages anymore because i've moved on from that post and you should too, because it is obvious you will never understand what i'm trying to say and i will never understand the hatred you spew

it is telling though that terfs and transphobes came across my post which was in the 'pro trans' tag, i assume while casually browsing there for people to start fights with? very telling indeed.

i will be a doctor by the end of the year and i do not have time to argue with transphobes online over matters of trans health they know nothing about (my knowledge is far from perfect either because i am not transgender but i have listened to trans people and read about what transitions can be like because i wanted to learn and feel comfortable stating what i have). ive seen y'all constantly talk about indigestion and diarrhea which have absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand and seen some people bring up endometriosis which also has nothing to do with the matter at hand, no one is talking about disordered periods or other health conditions, we're talking about just the regular period of a healthy person

people have asked me to provide proof i'm attending medical school which i don't think i can provide without giving out my personal information which i am not inclined to do to strangers on the internet and a lot of people didn't believe me but honestly that is not my problem

i know who i am and what i stand for and the thing i said is a true factual experience that many trans women go through as their transition continues and calling that cycle they experience a period hurts no one and only helps trans communities

of course terfs and transphobes don't care about that, which is why i urge everyone to go their separate ways. i do not want your transphobia on my posts and you don't want my activism on yours so if you're itching to comment and get pissy with me or send me anons, kindly don't because i truly couldn't care less about your opinion on matters you know nothing about and don't care to learn about either

coming from one cis woman to another, just scroll past me and any of my posts from now on and i'll do the same for you so that we may never have to interact again in any way shape or form

i'm closing my end of the discourse of the post right here with this and i stand by what i said. i believe you are wrong for invalidating the experiences of trans women and transphobic for wishing ill upon the trans community in general and i do not wish to ever associate with any of you ever again

i have said my peace

goodbye

(if any trans woman or trans person in general wishes to correct anything wrong i stated here please feel free to do so, because i am cisgender and you will of course know more about your transition and experiences than me no matter how much reading i do :)) remember you are valid and loved and pls stay safe <33)

#pro trans #positive trans #again i reiterate #PRO TRANS #THIS IS A PRO TRANS BLOG #A SAFE SPACE FOR TRANS PEOPLE #trans health #trans women are real and valid #i am not having this argument anymore #i don't like fighting and i don't care what transphobic women have to say #trans support #this cisgender women stands with the trans communities

8 notes · View notes

strawbebehmod · 4 years

Text

Some potentially controversial headcanons about sexuality and gender in atla

Ok so I have some headcanons about gender and sexuality in the atlaverse that may controdict some aspects of canon as well as many other's headcanons but I feel go pretty inline with the nations, either based on their inspo country's history or the feel I get from the nations in canon culture. If you disagree that's totally chill I just wanna get my thoughts out there to see who else agrees.

So with that let's begin:

Air nomads

This I think everyone agrees on that the air nomads didn't give a shit about gender or sexuality. Love is love and gender is an illusion.

They also were very pro poly relationships

However, cause of the whole communally raising children thing that's a part of canon I don't think all the temples really had a concept of marriage and some groups may have actually given you odd looks if you wanted to be exclusive with someone

But the general 'let it be' culture meant you really wouldn't get any widespread social grief on the issue just maybe have a few arguments with friends or maybe a partner that wasn't used to being exclusive or was used to being exclusive and you weren't, and you veritably weren't going to be ostracized for your sexuality or preferences in a relationship. It's a domestic issue rather than a social justice one.

Air nomads were by far the most accepting of asexuality and aromaticism.

Water tribe

I actually think things very between the north and the south a lot due to their seperation, but a commonality between them is their strong sense of gender roles and other ridged segregations in gender like the whole waterbending thing.

That being said, transness is very much accepted but there are specific ceremonies for transitioning and coming out to the tribe, and it can mean losing some privileges you had from the gender you were assigned at birth.

There's also a third non-binary gender that has its own specific ceremony. This circumvented a lot of rules about who could learn what type of waterbending, particularly up north but also carried a few unique social responsibilities like officiating weddings but could also strip you of some priviledges from your initially assigned gender, such as paticipation in specific gendered rituals such as women's cerimonies or men's cerimonies.

Those members had their own unique cerimonies and celibrations however.

In the northern watertribe specifically homosexuality is very much accepted but under the current cheiftan unions of politics like Yue's will almost always come before unions of love, so gay individuals can sadly be forced into hetero relationships via arranged mairrage, with the only concessions being that they can take on a single same sex lover outside of the union.

The absoluteness of the arranged mairrage rules can change based on who is in charge however.

Biphobia has had a history of being a problem in the water tribes as they have a huge emphasis on separation and opposites in their culture as their two biggest spirits represent yin and yang. Lesbians were long considered favored by tui and gay men favored by la, as if they were living symbols of the spirits.

There was discourse as to how bi and pan people fit into this model, some even horribly suggesting they were abandoned by the spirits, but the current concesus among spiritual experts and elders is they are actually a symbol of tui and la's love for eachother and thus favored by both.

The southern water tribe has always been laxer about the gender specific stuff and never had the arranged mairrage rules.

It was always much smaller however so LGBT individuals were less common. This often made it harder for homosexual individuals to find romantic love as there were just fewer fellow LGBT people that were avalible.

So if you came out as gay/bi/pan/lesbian to the tribe it was often the tradition to complete your ice dodging cerimony soon after and then become a sailor for at least three years to try and find romance while trading goods with the other nations if you didn't have a partner already.

A majority of southern tribe fishermen/women as a result were LGBT. Being a full-time fisherman is now a euphamism for being a lonely gay person.

Southern watertribe mermaid tales were almost always very gay as a result.

Unfortunately due to the southern watertribe's culture and traditions being decimated by the firenation's raids, a lot of LGBT culture in the southern tribe was also lost.

They're still pretty accepting but because of the dwindled population of the southern tribe and the fact that LGBT people tend to only make up 1-10% of an average population in the real world, it's rare for a gay individual to be born into the southern tribe, usually only once every generation now, if they realize they are gay to begin with.

As a result of that and the fact that bringing it up generally brings up the fact that the firenation destroyed what nice things they had, it's often not talked about outside of between elders mourning better times, which has made it even harder for some individuals to even realize they are LGBT to begin with.

The swamp benders are mostly men who wear leaf loin cloths they gay af and we're probs established by southern watertribe gays and bis that got lost in their travels and decided to settle down in the swamp, eventually attracting the attention of other lgbt earth kingdom people who decided to live with them.

Earth Kingdom

There's a huge divide among how it's treated among peasents and aristocracy

Peasents grew up on stories of past earth kings with many lovers, including several gay ones

So depending on where you live homosexuality is either considered something romantic of fairy-tales or celibrated as something unique and uncommon

In some places where people have more spirituality, some joke that gay people were royals in their past lives.

The earth kingdom is big tho, so some small towns can be homophobic but it's much rarer and usually because they were established by homophobes who were chased from areas that were very anti homophobia.

Fetishization of homosexuality can happen but it's again depending on where you are.

The earth kingdom is also very accepting of asexuality but there are stereotypes such as asexuals usually becoming gurus.

In aristocracy things are a bit different

Homosexuality is still pretty accepted but due to how prevalent arrange mairrages are it's heavily assosiated with affairs and running away from family obligations and thus it's a bit taboo to speak publicly about it in high society.

Lesbianism specifically cause China, what the earth kingdom is based on, has a long history of writing off women's feelings.

The upper crust of Ba Sing Se, despite lots of historically gay earth kings, has a big homophobia issue thanks to the Dai Lee slowly becoming corrupted after Kyoshi died.

Long Feng particularly had a hand in making talking about gay stuff practically off the table or seen as only something for filthy commoners.

Transgenderism, again cause of China historically treating women like shit, is a subject of a lot of discourse in the Earth kingdom, although there are no legal issues with being transgender and one can have their passports changed in certian cities and towns to reflect their gender identity if they move there, but only in those specific towns.

Omashu is one of them and is extremely pro trans and in general pro LGBT even among the aristocracy, infact king Bumi in his first year of rule established specific holidays for celibrating trans people, gay men, lesbians, asexuals, bisexuals, agender people, and any other gender or sexual identity Bumi knew about.

He has added to the list since. Whenever he finds out about a new gender identity or sexuality he sets the day he found out as a day for a feats next year celibrating it.

This is why there are so many feasts in omashu.

He also often officiates gay weddings himself because according to him "gay weddings are the most interesting and creative. They all have mad geniuses for their wedding planners I tell ya"

Tbh he will randomly show up to any wedding in his city cause he loves parties but he will specifically officiate gay ones.

The Fire Nation

Ok this is where some people may get pissed cause I disagree that the firenation is horribly homophobic

I know it was stated by one of the creators that the firenation has anti gay laws thanks to Sozin but Japan had a loooooong history of celibrating gay stuff prior to westernization and the firenation is based off of Japan. Also kinda headcanon Sozin as having a thing for Roku that fell apart with the whole war bs.

So Sozin never imo put into place any homophobic laws aside from banning gay writings and plays within the palace out of bitterness of having Roku betray him and just didn't want to have anything around him that would remind him of him. Dude got so mopey over it he neglected his wife and children a lot, despite the whole thing being 100% his fault.

Azulon on the other hand was a homophobic son of a bitch and put a lot of anti gay and trans laws into effect. While none outlawed same sex relations, they included ones that allowed people to get away with firing people or harming people for being LGBT.

Ozai was also extremely homophobic.

But before all this the fire nation was practically a gay paradise. Fire is the element of passion, and so gay sex and relationships were considered for a long time just as normal as heterosexual relationships.

There were festivals and holidays celibrating gay lovers, lots of LGBT writing and art, and many many plays on the subject

There were several folk stories of Agni the sun spirit coming down to earth to meet his male human lovers, including one that explained why we have night and day. (Tui introduced Agni to one of the volcano spirit's sons so that she may rule the night in peace without his constant incercession and annoying boastfulness)

Soldiers were pretty much expected to have a gay relationship with one of their brothers in arms if they were single to increase the loyalty among troops.

The firenation was the only nation where arranged mairrages could be nullified instantly on the grounds that one of the individuals involved was gay, unless you were the firelord and that was only because it was the firelord's duty to produce at least one heir to continue the linage, so it was seen as the firelord's sacrifice to his or her people to take up at least one opposite sexed partner. Romantic affairs were expected and understood in such situations however so long as there was already an heir to the throne born.

Families could even be punished with jail time for knowingly forcing their gay children into heterosexual relationships.

Gay couples could adopt children too and denying one on the grounds of being gay would be grounds for removal of your position in child care and being blacklisted.

There were still homophobes but homophobia was squashed a lot

Azulon managed to "justify" the cultural shift and changes to laws by having newspapers publishing fake news about pedophilia cases being linked to homosexuality as well as other stories linking homosexuality to degenerate acts.

He also used the culture of honor and family loyalty to shame gay children for ending their parent's bloodlines and claiming gay individuals were less likely to take care of their parents in their old age. And that trans children dishonored their parents by rejecting their "birth gender"

He even had certian folk stories changed to be heterosexual

This allowed homophobia and transphobia to spred in the firenation

However many individual towns held onto their pro LGBT roots and still published and performed gay literary works and plays.

And azulon and ozai were unable to remove many nonheteronormative traditions, such as guy friends being extremely physically affectionate, more so than with their girl counterparts.

In some areas it's still customary to greet close male friends with platonic kisses on the cheek

Zuko repealed many of the old laws established by his father and grandfather almost immediately, and reestablished many old holidays and protections for LGBT individuals.

Fixing the damage is still taking time, but with a corrected history of the firenation being now taught in classes thanks to zuko and aang, things are getting back to the way they once were slowly.

#avatar the last airbender #zuko #aang #water tribe #atla #fire nation #earth kingdom #air nomads #long post #homophobia #biphobia #lgbt #transphobia #gay #bi #ace #headcanon

193 notes · View notes

verobatto · 3 years

Text

Destiel Chronicles

Vol. XCII

It was a love story from the very beginning.

What Do I Do Now?

(12x23)

Hello my dear fellows! We reached the last meta from season 12! This is a sad one, my friends, I know. But we embrace the destiel angst, as good shippers, right?

So, let's cry again with Dean again at the end of this season.

Let's start...

The Promise

When the episode starts we have Kelly Kline dressed in light blue.

Gif credit @kingofthecrxssroads

The light blue and white color talks about purity and is related to divinity. Those are the colors weared by Virgen Mary, the mother of God, which is now very meaningful to see Kelly Kline, the mother of the future god, wearing the same colors.

After this beautiful detail in the visual Narrative, let's focus on that promise that changed Castiel's priorities for ever.

Gif credit @mad-as-a-box-of-frogs

This is gonna be the new mission for Castiel. His change of priorities, the cause of the future Destiel break up in season 14. This promise will lead Castiel into his decision that will en with his death, exchanging his life for Jack in Heaven, the deal with the Empty.

Then, in another scene, we have this dialogue:

KELLY: Tell me again. Tell me again what you saw.

CASTIEL: Right, I saw– I saw... I saw the future. I saw a world without pain or hunger or want. I saw the world that this child... that your child...

KELLY: Mm.

CASTIEL: ...will create.

KELLY: Mm.

CASTIEL: And it is a world without fear and without suffering and without hate.

KELLY: Mm.

CASTIEL: I saw paradise.

This is a reflection of episode 15x19, with Jack as the new God, defeating Chuck, creating a new Paradise, Heaven.

Another interesting visual Narrative was Jack's room.

Pic credit @fallenandinlovewithhumanity

The tree represents: FAMILY, each word of his name is colored in TFW colors BLUE, YELLOW AND RED. The meaning is all over that wall, Jack's family, Jack's parents will be Sam, Dean and Castiel. The family settled with strong roots, like a tree.

Noe the rainbow 🌈 in the Bible represents THE DEAL BETWEEN HUMANITY AND GOD, is a promise of no more harm. An example of it, was the rainbow that appeared after The Great Universal Flood.

I will talk here about a little and funny foreshadow... You'll pick it up quick!

MARY: All right, then. Kind of always wanted to punch the Devil in the face. So how do we find them?

Yes, my friends, this was an easy one, right? Is a Foreshadow of Mary Winchester punching the devil, not just once but twice, one in season 13.

Another beautiful and blatant parallel was this one...

Gif credit @godshipsit

Those are the same words Mary said to Dean when she was pregnant.

This marks the Jack as Dean's mirror. The kid will try to be like him, to follow his steps. Because just as Dean is a role model to CAS, he will be the same to Jack.

Another foreshadow of Castiel's dead, and example of those who takes bad decisions to have a win, was Crowley.

SAM: Crowley...why did you do it? Save Lucifer– What did you want?

CROWLEY: I wanted to win.

The desire of a win is remarked as the precursor of bad decision. First we will have Crowley explaining why he let the devil out, which will end in his death, and then we will have Castiel at the end of this episode dying after taking a collection of bad decisions. But for Dean it will mean to get Castiel back in 13x06.

Dean and Cas

The reuniom between Cas and Dean was full of dramatism, jealousy and sassy looks, just to exalt their relationship as romantic.

We all recall the scene in which Case opens the door, and everyone is there: Sam, Mary and Dean, but CAS just calls DEAN hahaahaha. Is just Dean for his eyes, well, that's love.

We have Dean and Sam giving a discourse about loyalty and family and work together... Very dramatic.

DEAN: Look, Sam's right, okay? We'll work through our crap. We always do. But right now, we are here to get you, get Kelly, and get gone.

They heard Kelly, and Mary goes to assist her. But then Dean keeps scolding and talking to Cas, but Castiel replies with his sassy self:

DEAN: Hey, if he shows, can you flame on again? Can you torch Lucifer like you did Dagon?

CASTIEL: I don't know. No, that wasn't me. That was the child. And in case you haven't noticed, he's a little busy.

After this Dean will show himself in pain, just to caught CAS attention, like a annoyed boyfriend that doesn't want to ask for help to his boyfriend, because they're fighting, but whining and moving his harmed knee to his boyfriend, is a great method to get away from the fight they're having, showing Castiel 'look how i was hurt when you weren't there, you weren't there so I had to carry with this pain in my knee.' Believe me, i know this method very well. Hehehehe. So, it works, because Castiel goes immediately to heal him.

DEAN: [bends and grasps his injured knee] Aah. Son of a bitch.

CASTIEL: Here, Dean.

DEAN: Mm.

CASTIEL: Let me.

Gif set credit @shirtlesssammy

So, this is the beginning of jealousy Dean has Because Castiel will put Jack first on his list, just like now, Because is the arriving of a son, and that's a crisis for couples.

Look how Dean accepts his healing, and then smiles shyly, happily, goofily, avoiding Castiel's eyes. He is happy because he got the attention he wanted from his angel. Because even after fighting for the bad decisions CAS had taken, he is still his Cas, and he'ss still caring about him. After feeling Cas was acting odd, this healing is like getting him back.

Another scene full of jealousy, coming from Dean feeling Cas was staying away from him, doing his own life, is this scene:

SAM: Whoa. Cas, what is this?

CASTIEL: As I said, it's– it's Earth. But this Earth is locked in eternal war between Heaven and Hell. There are armies of angels fighting hoards of demons, and the few humans that remain are caught in between.

SAM: How do you know that?

CASTIEL: A friend told me.

DEAN: Oh, good. Now you're makin' friends? That's...

Dean is jealous that Cas is making friends out of his sight.

CASTIEL: You don't have to worry. The child, he opened this door. He'll close it.

DEAN: You sure about that?

CASTIEL: I have faith.

DEAN: Really? In your unborn baby-God?

CASTIEL: Yes.

DEAN: Well, then, you're a dumbass.

Jealousy again, reflected in how Castiel is having faith in Jack, and how he used to have faith in Dean. So Dean is feeling maybe, he is replaced slowly by this child.

After this Castiel explains to Sam and Dean that this Apocalyptic World is a world in which they never born. Trying to remark that Dean and Sam are important to our world.

Then, AU!Bobby mentions bullets that kill angels and Dean goes...

DEAN: Wait, angel-killing bullets? Awesome.

And sassy married look from Castiel...

As I said, everything is so dramatic, because they're so married.

Another important scene was Lucifer appearing in front of them, and saying the following words...

LUCIFER: You're right. What should I do? Oh, God! Don't strike me dead! Come on, Sam. You sound like a virgin in Jesus camp. "We can't. God is watching." No. Chuck "walked." He's gone.

When Lucifer mentions this, Castiel turns around to see Dean. It was filmed that way toake us see that was a thought in Castiel's POV, this is something that will be developed to in episode 14x15 and 14x17. In the first one, Peace of Mind we will have a Castiel's POV, with pink color everywhere (representing happiness) and green all over (representing Dean) as something forbidden, something HE CAN'T HAVE, the second episode, we will have a girl and a boy making out inside a car, and the girl is afraid of her dad finding out their relationship, HE COULD SEE US. As if they were doing something prohibited. Both examples are linked to this scene, and Castiel's Sacred Oath.

Crowley's redemption arc was him sacrificing for the boys. As a prelude of this.

Gif credit @inacatastrophicmind

Castiel sacrificing himself for Sam and Dean, and dying after this...

Pic set credit @akitescoldstrings-blog1

The dead that had been foreshadowed for two seasons is here. Stabbed by the back, the bright light showing he is dying, Dean's desperate shout, and his worst nightmare becoming truth.

Gif credit @they-stare-i-ship

The burnt wings on the ground is another sign that Cas is gone for real. Dean's facial expression is the most sad we an see, defeated, he will bend down on his knees.

Sam will run to the cabin, because Jack is coming, even with Mary falling with Lucifer into the AU, even with Castiel dead, Sam is focused on the mission. But Dean can't. He can't react, because he had just seen the love of his life dying in front of his eyes. And nothing will be normal again for him.

To Conclude:

This episode is linked to with season 15 final episodes. Talking about the new Paradise the New God will bring.

It shows too the role Cas, Sam and Dean will have in Jack's life.

It talks about sacrifice for love, and how Castiel will change his priorities, leaving Dean feeling a little jealous about it.

And this episode ends with Castiel's dead, in front of his lover.

Hope you like this meta. See you in the next one in season 13!

Tagging @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weird-dorky-little-d @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @authorsararayne @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @isthisdestiel @dizzypinwheel @jawnlockwinchester @horsez2 @qanelyytha

@destielle @spnsmile @shippsblog @robot-feels @superlock-in-the-tardis @superduckbatrebel @2musiclover2 @madronasky @anon-non2 @cea1996 @lisafu02 @asphodelesauvage @destiels-canonahhhhhhhhhh

If you want to be added or removed from this list, just let me know.

Of you wanna read the previous metas from season 12, here you have the links:

Vol. LXXV, LXXVI, LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXIX, LXXX, LXXXI, LXXXII, LXXXIII, LXXXIV, LXXXV, LXXXVI, LXXXVII, LXXXVIII, LXXXIX, XC, XCI.

Buenos Aires, December 13th 2020 9:07 PM

#destiel #destiel chronicles #destiel meta #supernatural meta #season 12 meta #vol. XCII #dean winchester #castiel #mary winchester #sam winchester #kelly kline #lucifer #jack kline #crowley

45 notes · View notes

taylorswiftstylequestions · 4 years

Text

hoax discourse

I know it's not the most important thing after getting this amazing album but I'm so nosy and english isn't my first language so I don't always get song meanings... is Hoax a breakup song? I know not all songs are about her life but it's so weird for a closer to be such a sad song. I was expecting a loved up album haha and it seems like the opposite. Do you think her and Joe are over?

---

I know we shouldn’t always speculate, but am I the only one kinda concerned about Taylor and Joe?? Especially since “the 1” and “hoax” were last minute additions to the album. “Hoax” truly breaks me and I cannot figure out what else is could be about, especially since she references “shades of blue”. Thoughts??

---

What are your thoughts on what Hoax is about? I've seen SO. MUCH. DISCOURSE. about it so I thought might as well ask you too lol and your answers and opinions are always so well thought out and expressed

---

Be honest, after this album do you think her and joe brokeup? I mean she alludes to a lot in it and mostly breakup stuff so on one hand it leaves me confused

---

Sarah let’s talk about hoax, a beautiful but bittersweet song, with heart-wrenching lyrics, and it’s album placement. The closing track is a deliberate choice. It makes a statement, closes out the album’s story, and pushes it forward. I would flip the last 2 tracks and end on peace, which is also bittersweet but leans way more positive. What do you make of ending the album with such a sad song? (“But what you did was just as dark” “I am ash from your fire” “you have beaten my heart”)

---

do you think taylor and joe broke up?? i got really scared when i heard the 1 but then invisible string reassured me but then i listened more closely to hoax and got scared again :/

---

I don't know why more people aren't surprised that she just exposed her breakup with joe on this album like firstly: surprise album dropped was surprising but the dark DARK lyrics?? Saying Joe is like the worst guy she's ever met? In a span of under a year from writing Lover about him aka a wedding song? He couldn't cheat during quarantine so what the heck could've happened with them that resulted in a breakup like this? I'm just in awe and true shock how is no one else?

---

Welcome to my inbox - aka “hoax” discourse ;)

I think “hoax” is a tricky, interesting little track made even more complicated and strange by its placement in the tracklist. Below are some of my thoughts.

folklore is best known at the moment for its trifecta of songs depicting a summer love triangle from the perspectives of the three people involved over a significant period of time . Like with anything a singer/songwriter does, I think that even when writing from a fictionalized perspective, your personality, your biases, your thoughts, your -isms trickle into all that you do.

That said, I think there’s another trifecta of songs on the album that correlate to Taylor’s feelings on one issue over a period of time: The dissolution of her contract with Big Machine and the betrayal of Sc*tt. Those songs are (and they are placed ... very strangely on the album):

“my tears ricochet” / “mad woman” / “hoax”

In order, they address her: Heartbroken acceptance, incomparable fury, and initial shock and pain of when it happened.

(I should also be clear that I think that “mad woman”, in particular, has tinges/references to other people in Taylor’s life (there’s a line I think is very much about KKW) and that like a lot of songwriting, a lot of feelings about a lot of people bleed together.

There’s the obvious allusions to Joe and what sounds like a breakup or dissolution or rough patch - so I don’t blame people for this gut punch reaction (“you left a part of me back in New York” = Cornelia Street / “don’t want no other shade of blue” = classic Joe lyrical metaphor she has been building for the last three albums). But I feel there may be some other New York connection to Sc*tt and her recording history (with this in mind, why not mention Nashville?) and that Joe now relates more predominantly with the colour gold (as in his love to her is golden, whereas she was previously “blue” and “red” before meeting him - but we’ll delve into colour theory ... later). Which I think make the song feel like it’s about more than just one singular thing like a lot of her songs are. It’s convoluted and messy and that’s okay.

So to that, the below lines are what stand out to me as more obvious Sc*tt references:

“My winless fight” / She lost the fight to gain back her masters.

“My best laid plan Your sleight of hand” / Her intentions to gain back her masters and continue being on Big Machine and how he ultimately sold her out to the one person she mistrusted most with her masters.

“My barren land” / Her entire life’s work wiped out.

“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart” / Taylor made it clear in Miss Americana how openly Taylor had communicated with Sc*tt about Sc**ter and further in her original letters she penned following the loss of her masters that she had foolishly thought that their relationship was familial and that Taylor represented a blend of something like the daughter Sc*tt had never had. You’d be hard pressed to not believe that they had a close relationship at some point and that Taylor confided in him during reputation all that had happened to her. She was on his label when she released that album that detailed the pain and the hurt of the events of 2016/17. He obviously knew the hell that she had been put through, through her work at the time and also I’m sure through her personal revelations to him.

“You knew the password, so I let you in the door” / Sc*tt was her label head and someone that she thought that she could trust. So of course she let him in.

“You knew you won, so what's the point of keeping score?” / He ultimately won and got to keep her masters. But he dug the knife in even deeper when he sold them to Sc**ter. Their back/forth fight since then is fruitless because Sc*tt ultimately got the greatest prize they all wanted: her masters.

“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart But what you did was just as dark” / Again, let’s reiterate their personal relationship and that Sc*tt must have and most definitely did know all the hell Taylor’s life had been the last few years. That Taylor had dealt with a lot of betrayal, a loss of trust, that she wasn’t even sure her career could recover from the damage that was being dealt. She was losing people in her life at a rapid rate, people who she thought were her inner circle really weren’t. Sc*tt knew and saw all of that. He experienced it at her side. And so doing this to her, knowing all that had already happened, was just as terribly awful. Was just as much a betrayal of that trust.

Plus the direct references to “ricochet” which is significantly more clearly about Sc*tt:

“Stood on the cliffside / “When I’m screaming at the sky Screaming, "Give me a reason" / And when you can't sleep at night”

“I am ash from your fire“ / “And if I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes, too”

There’s also references to “LWYMMD” which I have to think there are some references to the beginning stages of dissolution and lack of faith in Big Machine on rep before everything absolutely fell apart in the following year.

“My smoking gun” / “You said the gun was mine”

“My kingdom come undone / “I don’t like your kingdom keys My broken drum” / They once belonged to me”

Anyway thanks for coming to my “hoax” TED Talk.

#opinion #sarah lyric analysis

152 notes · View notes

transsexualhamlet · 3 years

Text

tg anime vs manga *sighs*

i have the power of hyperfixation and anime on my side! AAAAAAAA

Ok now that we’ve gotten the sins of re post out of the way we need to discuss this. And I just feel that this needs to be covered because I can’t ever get away from constant discourse on this, mostly fueled by manga readers who feel entitled to always think they’re superior for reading the manga, that the manga is the only real canon, that it’s more complex or better, I’m so fucking tired of it. I am also a manga reader, and I tend to get like that sometimes too with many series (for example no. 6 and the promised neverland.) I get it. It can be really annoying to see something butchered on screen to what the original is, changed or represented differently or given a different message or simplified. But just. Some people like the anime and it’s not a goddamn holy war for y’all to fight. It only makes anime fans not want to read the thing even more yknow cause manga readers are pretentious assholes, and I am aware of this as one of them.

(again ok i’d like to mention i know this fandom is basically dead but a certain p*nterest is always like 4 years behind on fandoms so i keep fucking running into Discourse that’s like, still current, whenever i want old random ass content) (and youtube, why do i look at youtube comments, because I personally enjoy being offended? yeah probably)

And that brings me to the point of this anime vs manga.

This is a lot harder to compare than a lot of other series, because there are just... so many more differences not just in the style and vibe but the story itself.

Disclaimer, I’ve never watched the anime for :re and i don’t intend to, because I honestly have no earthly clue how tf you can get from the highly diverged tokyo ghoul root A to re and make it make sense, and I don’t really want A ruined for me. So you can call me biased towards the manga in the case of re, i guess (which makes my eventual conclusion even more strong I’d say) Honestly I just see them as two completely different stories, the manga’s version connecting with re and A just like... ending there. So how we’re drawing the lines is basically tokyo ghoul A versus the manga and :re. God, I know this isn’t a fair fight because I already hate re so much, but I feel like the manga’s story is much more intertwined with :re than the anime’s is, so that’s what we’re going with.

oh god also another disclaimer this opinion is coming from the biggest fucking kanehide whore, you can disregard anything i say if you ship The Straights and/or do not care for my boi hide

To be honest, if I can take my own conclusions and liberties to the story, I like both versions, each have their pros and cons and kind of a conflicting message. They can’t really coexist. Usually I’d consume all versions and then create one consistent canon in my head for what I accept as the true events (for example my main owari no seraph, first season of the anime is canon but after that we only follow the manga since those can come together and make sense.) but it’s very hard to do that in tokyo ghoul, since I must confess... I really like root A. Like of course, it’s a lot different from the manga, but tbh I think it’s super valid. (unlike most Fans TM like this Fan TM who i’m sending this post to just to spite their singular Youtube Comment Section Discourse, yes I did write this post for you and many others like you) But the ideas that make up root A conflict a lot with the ones of the manga, so I just have to accept that they’re separate things and treat them as such.

Now to break it down so people can understand where I’m coming from I guess? God this is already so long here’s a read more

The Case for The Manga (including :re manga)

More Lore + Plot Shit: One of the main reasons that manga readers are pretentious little bitches is a valid reason, namely that, as is the case with most manga, there’s simply more to it than people can fit into an anime. (Although people need to understand that’s because,,, it’s simply a different medium, so it will have different pluses and minuses, such as for example a soundtrack, color, moving pictures,,, you know, all that. Anime onlys don’t say that the anime is better by stating these things that a manga won’t have... because they’re fucking obvious. So manga readers should stop acting like an anime is inherently sub-par for being less in depth, but we digress.) I can understand that reading the manga is kind of important for wanting to understand the lore (though there are like so many other reasons ppl might want to watch it other than to get the lore) and without the explanation of how all this came to be and how it works, everything tends to be really mysterious, confusing, and seemingly random. It’s really nice to know what’s all going on, of course, and stuff like the washuus, rize’s backstory, the explanation for like, kaneki in general, all that- if you’re looking for like, plot shit, manga is definitely your go to. But like, sometimes, you like, don’t actually care about those things.

Haise: Of course one of the most important things about well, including re is that I fucking love Haise. Like he is my favorite Kaneki. He’s just so wonderful, look at him in he glasses and he floofy hair and he striped pants and he energy boxers and he s p i c e and he MOM. And I really like how they took Kaneki’s character and developed it more with Haise, you can see his turnaround from innocent--> Emo--> Trying To Be Innocent Again But Failing and I think that’s really sweet tbh. I rejected that at first because I didn’t understand it but once I actually read re I thought it made a lot of sense and was a logical thing to do with his character. (though, uh, moving forward, after his hair changes again i disagree with it, haise 1.0 is a good take and i love him and i want the best for him) I could go on I’ve already written a post of what I think is wrong with :re so if you want to hear my take on kaneki’s 37 pokemon evolutions that’s in there

Good New Characters: And of course there are my favorite bitches such as quinx squad, oh my god, there was a terminal lack of dumbass squad vibes in the original and ishida fucking gave it to us, I love them, I love them with all my heart and I think that if I wasn’t attached to them I’d probably just cancel all of :re but like this is just my personal problem. God I love them. Ishida always pulls through with characters I’m now too attached to.

Vore Lmao:Ok like hear me out. I just get a laugh out of it every time the manga has to remind me of this little fucking fact. Like ok I just. Cannot get over it. It’s so serious about it too and like I realize it’s a serious deal but o h m y g o d

Ok and now that we’ve got that little rant over I do want to say that it is like actually really important past the “lmao that’s pretty gay” bit, like??? In some ways it’s more fitting than the anime because well, ishida’s point always seems to be “what would mentally and physically hurt kaneki the most right now” and does it because that’s who this bitch is. But it just?? Kind of makes a bit more sense for the storyline if we’re being picky here, it’s so,,, painfully on point? Like the entire reason he gave in to Being A Ghoul and all was so he could save his friends and shit (i actually do not remember if this was a thing in the manga but like? when he was being tortured and he like imagined hide being really mad at him and getting killed by jason and shit?) LIKE AND THEN HE GOES AND HAS TO BASICALLY BE THE PERPETRATOR OF THAT HIMSELF, FUCK, it’s a lose/lose situation of “don’t do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer” or “do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer but like, later” ishida please

The meaning of Hide being alive: Ok this is just me crying over chapter 75 still but like. Instead of in the anime, where hide’s point seems to be that instead of letting kaneki sacrifice anything more he’d be the one to give his life up and such, and save kaneki, in the anime tbh he just really wanted to be with kaneki right then?? and like ouch but understanding that in the manga he wasn’t just planning on dying and leaving kaneki to deal with it afterward he wanted to go on and continue to try to help the guy no matter the shit he had to go through, no matter if the dude just like forgot that he existed for two years and all- LIKE UH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HIDE DOESN’T EVEN EXPECT ANY APOLOGY? like kaneki’s like “OH MY GOD I’M SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON” and hide’s like lmao nah it’s cool i’m thriving- that his big motto was “live” rather than “peace out motherfuckers it’s been fun”. Cause. Fucking. Ishida. Can’t kill off characters well but like at least he made keeping this one alive justified.

The D e t a i l s: Ok well I feel like this is something everyone knows but the anime is missing a lot of really,,, crunchy details that the manga throws in there, like, well, kaneki’s fucking,,, bones thing, and other assorted details, g o d like those are missable if you want to never understand half the memes but also like,,, sometimes you just gotta read that shit. It also like, makes more sense when you do but sometimes it’s just stupid things that aren’t important but are fucking hilarious.

The Flavor: In general I’d say the greatest difference between the anime and the manga is the general flavor of the thing, the vibe in the manga is a lot, to be frank, darker and grosser and bloodier than the anime, which is a lot more focused on being pretty and Tragic than “HOLY SHIT WTF” but like. That’s valid. With that comes it being a lot more, real, and although the art may not be as polished as the anime’s, sometimes that’s exactly what you need, and the really gritty sketchy shit that’s in the manga sometimes is exactly what it’s supposed to be for the manga. (in the anime, i’d say that the colored and polished style fits it better, so we’re good there.) It’s a lot more real, in the manga, when the anime hesitates to “go there” a lot (and well, sometimes that’s welcome, but sometimes it’s like y o u g u y s c o m e o n r e a l l y maybe i DID want to see that did you ever think of that)

So like, to sum it up i’d just like to say it’s more detailed, sharper and darker and is simply So Much. There is just More Content

The Case for Root A

ON THE OTHER HAND, (buckle up fuckers)

Depth of Emotion (that Ishida was too much of a pissbaby for): God like you know what I mean if you read the last post, we spent a whole episode on these gay fucks in root A, with backstory and dreams and drawn out suspense and emotion and GUYS LOOK AT THEM NO REALLY OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS whereas hide’s limelight in the manga is a whole... two pages, oh whoopee, and that’s mostly due to the fact of ishida putting himself in a spot of “oh fuck goddamn if i drew that in i’d get flagged for gay porn” but that’s his own fault, so he downplays the whole scene and really keeps it in the dark, whereas in this anime it’s understandably a lot less,,, like that, but how it plays out here is simply... really nice and makes you cry and shit, whereas in the manga I’d go “oh god oh damn oh fuck” *laughs my ass off because i really can’t take this seriously*. You get just... more here.

To elaborate on this, in the anime, as a gay fucking bastard, I can get practically an endless amount of content from episode twelve, and endlessly stew over all Those Things about it, every hard hitting line, the expressions, the music making it even sadder, the ways the VAs say the words, the cinematic beauty of the blood dripping on the floor and like how it’s supposed to make you think it’s kaneki’s, GOD I COULD FUCKING GO ON, but if we want to get that in the manga...

we get three incredibly basic lines, a blackout, and then a “QUICK LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT HAHA”

So if we want to have more, we need to write it. (sadly) None of it is ever played out canonically so like,,, all we can do is infer and make shit up. It’s like, I am a writer so like that’s my whole job but I really would rather have more content, and have the content that’s there get to be emotional instead of *blank face* “this is plot that is happening, sadly” but like maybe it’s just bc i’m gay

Really Fucking Beautiful (aesthetically as well as story-wise): This kind of just goes hand in hand with the depth of emotion bit, and I think it can’t really compared to the manga here because I’m gay so I see pretty colors and cry so the anime is understandably appealing for me, but I’m also talking emotionally, yeah. There’s a lot of plotlines and implications of the story that are really well played out, I always love to watch the original because it does a very good job handling a lot of the harder topics and stuff that makes the whole thing worthwhile- like the whole point you’re supposed to see that the ghouls and humans are both just as monstrous when you break it down, that there are good and bad people on both sides, everyone just wants to live and feel good in their own life and perspective, everyone has reasons that justify their behaviour in their mind, sometimes you just can’t win no matter what, all that... they’re all really important messages and make the whole story, and they were handled much more delicately and with more expertise in the anime.

It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like the manga was just based more on Fight Scenes Characters OoH Fake Science and kind of just gave kaneki infinite power ups after Trying Harder no offense, obviously those things were there and they were still very good in the manga it’s just sometimes they were cheapened a lot by ishida really not keeping track of what he’s trying to say with his story and sacrificing it a lot for “BUT WHAT IF KANEKI’S HAIR AND IDEALS CHANGED AGAIN” instead of making it a whole cohesive work. (and yes, I am VERY aware of your “well aCtuAlLy the hair represents his sanity” thing i know i know and i’m about to rip it to fucking shreds so)

Understandable Character Development And Staying True To It: Which brings me to this point, character development. This was another thing that was just... handled with more expertise in the anime, whoever was in charge of it. Mostly this has to do with Kaneki, since like, no offense but he’s the only one who ever gets much character development other than like, juuzou (asmr you only get character development if your hair color changes) oh and i guess there’s tsukiyama but he’s someone who shouldn’t have gotten character development. Touka gets character development only before re for some reason, and like tbh that’s kind of it. I do think Juuzou’s character development was valid, because well... it made sense? I complained about it before because I was like “well he just turns into spicy L” but i’ve since changed my opinion, he’s best boy. But Kaneki? They went way overboard with him in the manga, and generally? Calm tf down ishida.

Breaking it down, one of the main things that most of the tried and true manga stans seem to hate about the anime the most is Kaneki going over to Aogiri in root A. Since they’re much more acclimated to the manga, they don’t understand why he would do that (quoting a particular ‘probably made sense in the manga!’ yes i know that whole thing was poking fun at the show and i felt it lmao) and they just pin it to “ahaha he has now become Edgy for the fans ehehe time to make fun of him” and TO BE FAIR YOU’D BE COMPLETELY RIGHT. I love to make fun of Kaneki when he does his edgy bitch thing because that’s what he is. A basic edgy bitch who is just,,, such a main character. But like. He does actually have his reasons despite popular opinion and to be honest I think they’re a bit more valid than in the manga, where he’s just like “well I’ve been tortured, that was not pleasant and i kinda did a bad thing, let’s go back to anteiku but i’m just gonna Try Harder To Fight this time”. I can understand that, but like, it seems like in the manga every Character Development of kaneki is some form of “i will now be stronger” except for the singular “I will now be a different person” which, well, we’ll get to that.

In the anime though, even if it seems like more of a basic edgy bitch move, it’s like?? It makes perfect sense to me, and to be honest more than the manga does? Obviously he doesn’t wanna be best bros with Aogiri, he realizes they’re all bad people who have done really terrible things, but the fact is he now sees himself as the same thing, he now understands their motives because in his mind he is also now Bad TM. His whole character development of being tortured was that peace wasn’t an option no matter how much he wanted it, he couldn’t live being a pacifist and the world was forcing him to give the “i am the only one that understands! we need to stop fighting!” bullshit up because there was no way to achieve it. He realized if he kept himself the way he was more people he loved would be hurt like they already had because he couldn’t, so he doesn’t just Decide To Become Stronger, he gives up his humanity. And that includes basically letting himself defend his own actions and try to do “the right thing”.

Him then joining aogiri makes sense because well. They’re the people who are the strongest, who have the power, who are the same as he sees himself. He still wants to protect the people he loves, he just also realizes he can’t do it by working with them since he now understands that their more peaceful ways will by definition get them fucking killed. His understanding is flawed, of course. He’s not really right. But this is his understanding and from that it makes perfect sense for him to join up with aogiri and try to still do as much as possible from that standpoint, realizing that most likely the people he’s trying to protect will hate him for it. I think that makes sense to me, what do you not understand about it? (I also understand that may make some people mad because he’d Doing Bad Things but I point to you he’s so soft, remember when he was really nice to naki when he was literally the one who killed the guy naki was crying about? remember when he was doing a raid and he saw that guy hiding and he never mentioned it? remember like the seventy times he Cried TM, yeah he’s problematic obviously but if you want problematic I’ll point you to a certain fucking black reaper. Shironeki has nothing on that asshole.)

I think what Kaneki did in the manga was fine, but in general the anime (again) had more depth of understanding and emotion versus a steady Try Harder Get Stronger shonen deal, which, well, fair, but like, nah. Continuing why I think the anime dealt it better is the ending of A, which was a lot more well rounded then *kaneki gets stabbed and then there’s a lot of random plot shit going on in the background*. Here Kaneki then got to round out the end of his character development by realizing slowly through the second half of this season, him becoming a kakuja and then basically deciding like, not to

((kakuja kaneki was dealt with again different in the anime and manga because he basically stopped trying to use it in the anime bc he realized it was a bad fucking idea but this goes along with the ‘his character development of “i’m gonna do bad things for good reasons” --> “actually no wait that was a bad idea” was actually done in root A instead of being dragged out into :re and it’s appropriate for its own medium and the messages it’s trying to get across so manga loyalists hate it’ but we digress))

So in root A we got to see him actually develop and realize himself through the second half of the season starting with cochlea, his interactions with Amon, and ultimately through Hide, that he’d been doing the wrong thing by becoming more monstrous/fighting harder because what he did was ended up forgetting the most important thing, *smiles in gay* HIDE.(well, his humanity. yeah. i cite the terrible opening for root A with the fun ‘the hands taking off kaneki’s mask are hide’s’ bit.) He then remembered again why he wanted so bad to stop the war between humans and ghouls, he wanted to be able to live in peace and not have to be a monster- something that was not dealt with in the manga (though for understandable reasons of We Need To Fuck With Him In Re More, they then didn’t deliver on creating something like that later so I take this.)

That’s most of the difference between the original manga and anime, but I’d also like to discuss (briefly, I’ve already yelled about them) the ridiculous amount of hurdles ishida went through to fuck with kaneki in the manga, Of course there is the fact that well, the slower transition of his character does make some more sense for the manga because if you take :re into consideration, his eight billion character changes are more tolerable when they haven’t like, already happened before in the manga (just the anime). It makes more sense there for Haise to be tormented by past kaneki telling him He’s Too Weak because in the manga he hasn’t already had that development prior to “dying”, and he lost his memories still believing he had to be strong even if he did bad things, whereas in the anime it doesn’t track because at the end like i just said he kind of gives up his ghoulhood on purpose because he realizes that joining aogiri and fighting and shit was really wrong because, hide. So I can see why those character decisions were not made in the original when planning for :re, but... the fact remains that those previous decisions do not make up for how absolutely weak :re’s game ended up being with kaneki.

So tldr this entire section, All the manga’s defense of how they handled Kaneki’s development is basically void because all those choices were buildup for development in :re which ishida then COMPLETELY fell down on. So the alternative is better.

And now comes my yelling about how exactly Ishida fucked it up: hair colors and kaneki’s 80 kanekis. If black is supposed to represent sane and white is supposed to represent insane or, whatever, i dunno, who tf thought black reaper kaneki was sane? Who tf would think kaneki in the end isn’t? I haven’t looked into this really, and I’d really love it if someone explained it to me the way ishida was going for bc I do not understand it. Like that tracks with Juuzou, and with Kaneki up to Haise Original, but they don’t really make a cohesive sense seeing as after Haise’s hair color changed again that whole deal kind of goes to shit. Not to mention... I just... they completely failed to make those character changes actually part of the story, I’m mostly complaining about black reaper haise, none of him makes any sense. What’s his deal? He wants to protect who he loves? Tracks with the ghouls but fun fact he abandoned his kids? He actually cared for them? What then, he wants to be the strongest as possible? Sure but then?? Why?? I don’t understand his motives at all.

We also didn’t get to see him get his memories back either, which I was actually very much looking forward to, it just,,, like all of a sudden he’s talking with eto about yoshimura and i’m like bruh when tf did that happen? It’s bad, and although chapter 74-76 is super valid, and his change back into white hair kaneki makes sense, I also have the complaint about how haise basically disappeared just like he was worried he would. I think that was bad and I’ve said that already, it doesn’t make sense, he just literally throws those entire two years away to go back to the way he was before he was with the CCG and just forgets everything he’s wanted for the last few years? Fiction logic test fucking failed, and you’ve also broken my heart. Love Haise. You got rid of him. I love kaneki too but like. Why don’t they just. Like. Merge. He is one whole complex person, not one and an imposter, god.

This is a big negative for re and the manga, so automatically a positive for root A where I simply Do Not Have To Deal With That Bullshit and the character development actually makes sense. I can understand the decisions in the original manga could have set up for good development in :re, but they completely failed to deliver.

root a didn’t fast forward to re at the end god damn let us process this shit first before you try to connect it to something else: The thing with this point is that it’s really difficult to separate the original manga from the continuing story in :re because the thing intertwines so much and immediately moves us forward with a ton of plot points for the next part of the story before we’re done with this climax and the end of this story. Sometimes that’s ok and I can see doing that from an author’s perspective because you want people to continue reading your story instead of taking that as the end but it’s really annoying on a reader’s end, because I’m picky and I want to be able to just be able to enjoy my original canon without it like, metaphorically touching :re on a plate. It’s something that I don’t even do with my own longer stories, like for example I have like a trilogy of >100k fics that like, well i’m technically not done with them but like.

People really like the first one because it’s more focused on a more popular ship and basic elements people like about the thing, and then by the second book it moves on to talk more about the plot and lore and brings in more secondary characters. And so I knew that a lot of the readers of the first one wouldn’t want to have to deal with a lot of the “oh well stuff is happening elsewhere that will effect stuff later!!!” random plot shit that none of my readers actually cared about. So I kept it to wrapping up the points of the first book and then leaving the introduction of new characters and plot for the people who actually wanted to read it. Ishida didn’t do that, and of course it’s within his right to like?? Want to promote the next series but I’d have enjoyed it more if we ended it at kaneki’s “death” and wrapping up the deals with the rest of the characters instead of quickly shoving in the beginning of seventy more plotlines before the book ends. Like honey I simply do not have the reading comprehension for that. In the anime we get something that... makes sense.

In the anime, however, it’s quite the opposite, for example the reveals like Eto=owl=takatsuki sen were pushed before that and they saved episode twelve for, well, the end bit. Like what was actually the ending. There were detriments to this I had to say (LIKE GUYS I GET IT HE’S CARRYING HIDE HE’S CARRYING HIM I GET IT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR HALF THE EPISODE NOW OK I UNDERSTAND CAN WE MOVE ON) But like, I prefer the concept of a simple idea with as much emotion squeezed out of it as possible to a ton of confusing and contradicting ideas that are touched on for a second before moving on. So the *cries for half an hour* ending was much more appealing to me, and I can keep that separate in my head from any of the ideas that :re creates, letting me pretend it doesnt exist and imagine that’s the end and there’s nothing else to worry about. If we want to move forward and hear more, then we can, but it isn’t necessary like it is with the manga.

No Bad Takes that are hard to pry apart from good plot and characters:This is basically the downsides of the new characters, which is well, if I had to make a whole ~keep reading~ post about how problematic everything in re was that does have to count as a downside. I love the new characters, but they also come intertwined with a thousand really bad takes on like, everything, and of course I can ignore it and just act as though they were written in like, to be perfectly honest, a non transphobic way, it’s a real downside when the original anime was pretty pain-free in the way of their takes on their characters. They fucked everyone up in re and I will not elaborate, we’ve talked about this, it’s just the anime, and which i mean season 1 and root A, don’t really have any bad takes I need to try to get rid of, it’s surprisingly something I have little complaint about at all and I ALWAYS have complaints.

Hide!!!!: Obviously, you can tell that a lot of my opinions are going to be hide based because he’s the only thing I ever think about. But we have to take into account just how... hide???? This goes a lot into the depth of emotion bit but it also offers the other side of the argument for Hide’s part in the :re manga, which well. Was mostly chapter 75 if we’re going to be perfectly honest here. He doesn’t get any other limelight. Even in the chapter where Kaneki meets him again he gets a whole what, three pages? In the manga, he has an extremely valid deal about basically, living, keeping going no matter what, and that is a fitting part for the manga, considering the rest of the points there ride more on Keep Fighting instead of Think About Your Emotions And Morals, but honestly chapter 75 was really valid. So why do I still think the anime’s version where he like (ok I don’t know about the re anime we’ve discussed this, i don’t even know how they choose to explain that) he like, dies in kaneki’s arms is better overall? Again, I would have totally accepted that deal if it was made a part of the story because it made me cry, it was super valid, and if they’d continued in that way I would have agreed with it completely over that. But the fact is again that they failed to deliver, and Hide got largely ignored, suffered so much with so little outcome. There was so much buildup and it was incredibly valid, but when the time came for them to meet again and basically show... why it was important that Hide lived in the end?

They didn’t. They straight up didn’t. Kaneki’s like “oh sorry bro... glad you’re alive and all...” *goes off and fights* and like? Honestly? @everlastingspiral is right, if that’s all they’re gonna do with him what’s the point of keeping him alive? I love every single panel of him and I wouldn’t have read re if he didn’t, but hide gets absolutely NO payoff. For letting kaneki literally vore his entire mouth off, leaving him disfigured and unable to talk, then kind of disappearing for two years and doing seemingly nothing but trying to help kaneki even though he’d forgotten the guy existed, risks his life like a thousand fucking times, eventually gets back to him and the dude’s running a fucking anti-human organization, helps him like Not Be A Volitile Pile Of Flesh Anymore and then what should have been a very important moment of them meeting again gets completely overshadowed by touka and random plot shit and more fights and they barely interact, they don’t even hug or anything, they barely talk, and at the end hide is still there but to be honest he’s gotten absolutely no thanks for all he did and ishida acts at the end as though he’s done very well with hide and gives him a tiny bit at the end throwing in a tragic backstory for fun (which hot take he really didn’t fucking need on top of it all) and... there’s no real hint that Kaneki is better off with Hide there, even though there should be. In 75, in his dream, kaneki is sobbing and crying and all like i’m so lonely without you but when they actually meet each other again? “yo” “hey” “uh sorry about,,, the thing,,, you know” “nah man it’s ok” “let me talk about myself for a bit” “yes you always do do you want to hear what I’ve been up to” “not really” “that’s fine i’m only here to support you”

...So you can understand why I’ve gone a bit sour on that. If that’s all you’re going to give him? Hot take? Let him die. Hide deserves better. (and i will deliver that in writing, but for the purposes of canon.)

In the anime, however (not counting re again... although he still gets the short end of the stick just in the original manga too compared to the anime) he’s properly dealt with! he gets his proper limelight and he gets acknowledged for what he’s done thusfar in the story, which is already so much. Kaneki then realizes that, but it’s already too late (or it isn’t, and they like negotiate with the ccg and then they get to live happily ever after) either way he gets appreciated and he gets hurt, but it’s properly acknowledged. And after all that, after saving kaneki and getting him to the cafe and doing it all while bleeding the fuck out, he gets to spend that time with kaneki and die in kaneki’s arms. And frankly? That’s all I think he’s ever needed. It’s really poetic and pretty and brings kaneki’s character around full circle, and even if it’s overly sappy, cliche, drawn out... he gets the attention he’s due and he gets a fucking break. He wanted to show Kaneki he wanted to do something for him and save him instead of the other way around, but then HE GOT ACKNOWLEDGED FOR THAT, instead of just well, tirelessly working towards it forever and having to be content to be a background character with practically no value to Kaneki anymore.

Keeps The Same Vibe: The big thing about this is that with the manga and with re, shit just goes all over the place, and I feel like I’ve amply showed that already through this essay or whatever this is. Again about the consistency and the professionalism, It’s a concise story that makes more sense than the manga while also being simply neater and more deep, making sure all the points, themes and messages work together and make sense to create a cohesive deal even if it’s not as long. (the manga is like ishida had a TON of good ideas for an essay but then fleshed out the thing ten minutes before deadline and managed to completely lose what his original thesis was even if the thing was 10 pages long.) Basically. yeah. That kind of sums it up, my last point concerns the ending.

Not Cheap Ending: If you want to hear my take about how absolutely terrible re’s ending was, check out my The Many Sins Of Tokyo Ghoul :Re post, and we’ve discussed how the original’s manga ending was bad and well not really an ending, it just leaves you unfulfilled and takes you into “well I guess I have to start a whole nother sequel series ig...” but root A like? Actually ends it? If a reader didn’t know that there was any content after that, they could pretty much infer that hide’s death or almost death whatever you inferred out of that ending (again we’re ignoring re) allowed Kaneki to finish his character development and realize they needed to stop the war, which basically tracks with what’s going on in everyone else’s perspective- eto’s problem with the world because of what happened with everything, is basically like, all of aogiri, juuzou and shinohara, amon and akira and kaneki and they can realize all they have to do is just sit down and fucking stop it because none of them want to be fighting, hide is the catalyst for that because the CCG can see how Kaneki cares for him? And it’s so open ended that you could just like literally believe that and there’d be no way for that canon to tell you otherwise, or you could go onto re and whatever if you wanted to. I think that’s the best thing.

In conclusion, both have valid points, and in general I’d say that the manga goes better with :re and the anime is better as a stand alone but if I had to choose overall, this particular anime is better (taking into account only seasons 1 and 2), for mostly the reasons of favoring a simpler story taken with much more care and depth versus a more complex story with many, MANY imperfect elements, and I am aware I will get shot on sight for this opinion. So sue me.

#tokyo ghoul #hideyoshi nagachika #kaneki ken #tokyo ghoul :re #essay post #god i've been writing this for so fucking long #but i'm right #y'all fuckers asked for a fight? you're getting a fight #rowan's hyperfixation essays

29 notes · View notes

2ofswords · 4 years

Text

Since I am so tired of reading „I know Dankovsky sucks and his ending is horrible“, before every comment that defends him, I will now throw myself into the fires of discourse and write an essay about:

Why The P1 Utopian ending does not mean Danko is an asshole

(A bit of swearing and a lot of spoilers under the cut)

Since I already spoke about being tired of disclaiming a lot, here are some of them. Firstly: This is NOT a comparison and I am definitely not saying, that his ending is better than the ending of the Haruspex or the Changeling. That would be ridiculous and I wholeheartedly belief that the other characters have morally better endings. (Though I will make one ending comparison at the end of this essay just to make myself even more of a hypocrite and there will be a comparison of one aspect of all three P1 endings, that is not made to compare their general quality but… well… this specific aspect of the ending.)

Also this essay isn‘t about Dankovsky not being an asshole. This is not a character analysis, I am only talking about the ending and his relationship regarding his path towards it. There are entirely different arguments to be made about his character that I will not talk about. Surprisingly a character is not only defined by the outcome of their story.

And last but not least the weirdest disclaimer of them all: While my arguments try to defend Dankovsky in his ending I totally understand if you still think his ending makes him more of an asshole. Killing a lot of people is always a dick move and the decision is still a horrible one. I do not really want to argue that people are wrong for judging him based of his ending. I just want to explain, why we also do not have to feel ashamed for deciding to not judge him as a complete asshole based on the main outcome of his route and why his motivation isn’t only based on spite or even ruthless calculation. Also, I think that there is a lot to say about his decision, that isn’t really said and that these are interesting aspects. Sorry to say it, but I just wanted to have a catchy title. I just really love this ending and it’s complexity and wanted to discuss it aside of calling it the evil Danko ending.

So. Let’s start with the easy argument that some people are talking about.

Argument 1: Danko completely lost it and holding him accountable due to his rationality defies the point of his route.

This one is… one of the weaker arguments, but I will still elaborate on it. The entirety of his route is built upon loss and failure. While the Haruspex starts with a mob that wants to kill him and works his way up, the dynamic of his route is him seemingly starting on top of everything and slowly loosing his bearings and by the end of the story this man is already driven to madness. Being used as a pawn in politics, getting daily “fuck you”-letters from the Powers that Be, realizing your lives work is already destroyed and all of your colleagues are probably as doomed (and being the one responsible because he was their leader), realizing that Aglaya – who was the one person who seemed to be his ally at the end – used and betrayed him just like everyone else, having the one truly honestly kind person commit suicide at least partly because of his failures, witnessing his own helplessness against the plague (an enemy that should align with his expertise as a doctor), being hated from day one by almost everybody in town, realizing that the political allies are totally bonkers and also preparing to off themselves (Victor! You seemed moderately sane at the beginning. The betrayal!), getting almost beaten to death while trying to help the town while spending all these days in an hostile place that slips into chaos… yeah I think you really aren’t in the headspace for rational thought. It is a miracle that that guy hasn’t completely broken down and day eleven and to some extend day 9 and 10 are showing him as completely unhinged already, only leading up to a decision, that isn’t really made out of spite or coldness but rather desperation and blind tunnel vision. The day eleven mission involves him going on a rampage against a military squad because of a vague hint and he only checks after the killings, if Andrew is even there. That isn’t a calculated action it’s about a man being completely shattered and making everybody suffer because of that. (Which is also horrible, but an entirely different sort of tragedy.) By now he just shouldn’t be the one handling the situation at all but the local powers sure want to wash their hand of any guilt that they haven’t already attracted. Also – and more importantly – the Polyhedron literally is the one good thing happening to this man. After going into it on day 9 he thanks Khan for reminding him of a childhood he has forgotten! He has a shit week, he is completely beaten down (quite literally) and this is the one happy moment he finds in all this chaos. Clinging onto that is surely not rational, but it is human. We all know that the Bachelor has the tendency to survive on willpower alone and here clinging to the tower and its miracles is literally his only motivation to continue his route at all. Of course he is going to protect it at that point, if thinking about any other option bring nothing but utter misery and the acceptance of complete and utter failure. After all Dankovskys route is about the limits of his rational worldview and how it hinders him more that it serves him in a world, that isn’t defined by rational beliefs. Of course he will be out of it by the end and actually loosing his composure is an important part of his suffering and character development in the story. His ending is not a sign of rational thought but the last consequence of being enraptured in a web of circumstances that forbid him from making rational decisions in the first place.

Truth to be told, I don’t really like this as an argument. I love this thought as a peace of characterization. As much as I love his ending and the horrible consequences and the actual failure it imposes, when we look at the other playable characters. But it doesn’t really help us here. It doesn’t change the fact, that Dankovsky destroyed an entire town just for a dream, a man-made building, a promise of utopia that we never witness ourselves. He still destroyed so… so much! But… let’s look a bit deeper into the motivations behind that exchange.

Argument 2: The Trolley problem

“There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?” (Wikipedia)

There is a variation to this question and interestingly enough it is one of the morality questions Aglaya asks in Pathologic 2: Would you push a man down a bridge, to save the children from a train? The curious thing is, that we can see all healers giving the same answer, (even if we have the choice to choose differently, since it is… you know… a dilemma). Necessary sacrifice is a constant of all three routes and every single protagonist has to kill in order to save a larger amount of people. Still, the game never answers moral choices with a simple answer and here with the Utopian ending we can see the darker side of this moral dilemma in full force (to a lesser extend this also applies to the Humble ending, since it also involves the Trolley problem, albeit on a smaller scale.) If we take the Kain’s studies about the focus and the soul seriously and see the Polyhedron as a method to ensure immortality seriously – or if we at least assume that Dankovsky wholeheartedly believes in that concept – than protecting the Polyhedron at the cost of the town suddenly becomes the Trolley problem at a significantly larger scale. The Polyhedron could ensure the survival of humankind but only at the expense of the town and it’s infected inhabitants. After all death is to Dankovsky but an affliction that can be healed just like the plague and consumes far more victims (if not all of them even if one would survive the disease). And that poses the question: When does the Trolley Dilemma stop working? What if there are two million people on the tracks and one million on the other side? What if there are hundred people on one and ninety nine on the other? What about five million vs. four million and nine hundred thousand? Can a human life be counted against the life of several others? If we look at the game itself and the healers answer in their daily life, it seems kind of simple: Yes, it is possible. The effort of saving is worth dirtying your hands after all. Risking at least your own life seems like a fair deal and no route really works without at least some degree of human sacrifice. But on this larger scale… it seems absurd. And… well… it is. But still. If we just try to empathise with the Bachelors mindset. If there is a possibility to cure humanity’s mortality… if there is a sliver of possibility (and since Thanatica is destroyed the Polyhedron seems like the only possibility at this point)… what kind of sacrifice is worth preserving it?

I myself have my own answer to that question. In Germany the Constitution starts with the sentence “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” or: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” (This is the official translation though a more direct translation would be “Human dignity is inviolable” which is more of a statement and less of a law) Even if the effect of that sentence in politics is very debatable and it is incredibly vague and not really a usable sentence as a law… I really like it. The human rights as a concept as well as equality can be concluded from the fact, that human dignity is something that cannot – under any circumstance – been taken away and is always a thing that must be considered just by being human. It is… nice. And it also means, that a human being cannot be seen as a mere object and has its own agency. A human being is not quantifiable in their existence by any parameter, be it birth, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, interests, talent, job, body, etc… It is incredibly important… and incredibly interesting in our scenario. Because if life isn’t quantifiable at any circumstance… the Trolley Dilemma has a solution. There is no way to tell, if one life can outweigh several others and deciding over their lives is something and judge over the worth of their live is something one should never do. Thus Dankovsky’s choice to save the Polyhedron and outweigh the lives of the infected seems morally wrong.

But… is that the answer the game has? Well… the artbook of Pathologic 2 states that the design of the game is about enforcing ambiguity and I would argue that the first instalment is no different. Firstly: In times of crisis lives become quantifiable. That is part of the tragedy. The healers’ lives are suddenly worth preserving, while others appear as nameless numbers in a daily statistic and caring about the individual dignity seems impossible. As already said the act of killing in order to preserve life is almost mandatory in every single run. So, what about human dignity? Can it even be preserved under such a dilemma? (And there is probably a point to be made about everybody being dolls and thus not even a being with dignity and agency at all… but I digress) Especially doctors have to face this dilemma and they have to make these judgement calls, weather they like it or not. The game doesn’t answer it but makes different variations of the same dilemma that we may judge differently. The Utopian ending is one variation.

What I want to say is, that – if we take the Kains’ believes seriously and see the survival of miracles against the law of nature not only as progress but as a question about human mortality itself – the question if the Polyhedron is worth saving is a very different one. I personally think that the idea of the focus still feels too esoteric to be a real point of interest but on the other hand… it is not like we haven’t some proof when we visit Khan and listen to his testimony. It is not that this place is above it’s miracles, and we know that a lot of the mysticism is grounded in reality, be it by the very real ways of the Kin or the past existence of Simon. So only thinking of the polyhedron as an abstract concept is… well doing it a disservice if we take the other parts as serious. Yeah it is made out of it’s own idea but… you know being like “it cannot exist but it can sure puncture the earth and kill everything” is… a weird way of thinking and it sure is a McGuffin (and even called that in the Artbook) but as we said, the game is about ambiguity and the only way to look at its existence is not only “evil tower of doom”. Is it worth keeping? Eh… I wouldn’t say so myself. I still think the Utopian ending is pretty shit and seeing the tower as salvation for our mortal lives is pretty farfetched. But the question for this essay is: Is it wrong to think, it is worth keeping? And from Dankovsky’s perspective, who sees it as the only possible chance of curing human mortality… Well… the answer at least isn’t as simple anymore. But – and now we are getting somewhere – the argument about the complexity of human value can be also made without even relying on Kain-Bullshit.

Argument 3: The Utopian Ending is the only ending, that completely gets rid of the plague (at least from Dankos point of view)

But wait you say, the other endings also defeat the plague! There even is a cure, something our beloved Bachelor of Medicine never archives. What is this lunacy?

Well here is the catch: A cure does not destroy its disease. Or at least it is an unreliable method. Sure, if everyone is cured and/or the disease helps to build antibodies, then it does help to get rid of it. But the sandpest seems to leave the bodies and not finding these remnants and antibodies is one essential part of the Bachelor’s route. It is the reason Rubin needs a living heart in the first place. The disease doesn’t seem to stay and no antibodies seem to be developed. (And even if I try to avoid material of Pathologic 2 in this analysis since there are differences in the Canon I still at least want to mention, that the Panacea as well as the shmowder do indeed not help against the disease after it is cured and a person can be reinfected. I do not know, if the same is the case in one and if you can test it out.) But if there are no antibodies, the cure could only eradicate the disease if every single infected person is cured at the same time. Good luck with that! That’s not bound to be a complete mess in this town!

This is backed up on day 12 in the Bachelor’s own route. When he is presented with the options the other healers have, he always asks both of them the same question: How does that ensure the future of the town? The Haruspex makes a cure yes. But what if the disease returns? After all the underground water he talks about still exists and there is no telling, if it will ever reemerge. It already happened once… The Haruspex doesn’t answer with “no, that will never happen”. He says that they will have enough cure if this is the case. An optimist, I see. And definitely not a satisfying answer if we consider a scientific perspective. What if the cure runs out? What if they find out too late and the plague spreads outside of town? A cure is not a waterproof system against plague. (You know what works better though? A vaccine.) Daniil’s mission was always to eradicate the disease and this would not do the trick. Having only a cure is risky. And it might not be a permanent solution.

The same applies for the Humble ending. If one asks the Changeling what would happen if the blood of their sacrifice runs out she answers “There will always be people willing to sacrifice themselves” Which is… just great. Constant human sacrifice just doesn’t seem that sustainable. And it also means that there will be constant loss of human life. Something that might even lead to more sacrifice in the long run (although that would be a reaaaaly long run considering how long the sacrifice of the Clara’s bound is supposed to last.) But it sure as hell doesn’t make the plague disappear. What if there are no willing sacrifices? What if Clara is gone and there is no one to perform a miracle? Clara’s ending relies on faith by nature and putting your trust in it is easy from a player’s perspective but even harder when there are lives at stake, the success unsure and these questions to consider.

Dankovsky’s ending is built upon uprooting the plague and eradicating it. The problem is that it is everywhere and not easily destroyed. As Lara very adequately realised: There is no source. His ending is the consequence of that goal and even if it loses in every other aspect, this is the one, where it wins. It actually destroys the problem itself. Building a new town and keeping the tower it cannot reach, actively minimalizes the possibility of the plague reappearing. And a more permanent solution might save more lives than one that sounds more humane at the beginning.

Okay, to defend the Haruspex for a change of pace: In his route he actually does believe that his method eradicates the disease as much as Dankovsky is convinced that his solution does the trick. For him the source is the Polyhedron and the way, it wounds the earth. With it removed the plague will not reappear. But why should Dankovsky share this belief? No one tells him! The inquisitor says that the Polyhedron is the root of evil but there never is any actual proof for that. Even If the Polyhedron is partially responsible and Danko actually does acknowledge this, it is the bloody mess of underground fluids that are in fact the source (which is ironically confirmed by the Haruspex himself). As he tells the inquisitor herself at the last day: The source and the cause can be too different things. It already seeped through Andrey’s spiral to the upper layers. The damage has already been done and in fact the Polyhedron is now the only save place, where nobody is infected. Everything else needs to be destroyed to eradicate the disease but why even destroy the Polyhedron? Wait. Why even destroy the Polyhedron? What good would that even do if we would consider it? What the fuck would Dankovsky even do with the destroyed Polyhedron, how would that save the town?

Argument 4: Dankos ending isn’t about the town vs. the polyhedron at all!(From his perspective. It totally is for the player though!)

I experienced something weird while playing the Bachelor’s route in P1. And with that I mean that I experienced something weird, that I wasn’t already expecting. After hearing so much about the fabled Polyhedron love, assuming that he sacrifices the whole town for its sake and hearing from the inquisitor in Pathologic 2 again and again how obsessed he is, I waited for the revelation. The moment Dankovsky would completely lose it and become utterly and undeniably obsessed with the children’s tower. That moment… never happened. Or well… it happened remarkably late and with less impact than I thought. Until day 9 the tower isn’t even a point of interest to the Bachelor, which is two thirds of his route. But even after you witness the miracles of the Polyhedron yourself, you still can argue against its glory. You can agree with Aglaya on day 10, that it seems dangerous (even if that could also be tactics, but until this point there is not really a reason for that). Hell, you can tell Peter on day 12, that his ideas will always only exist in his mind and blueprints and that the new town they will create will not work out! That is so weird, if the result of his run is, that he sacrifices the town for the Polyhedron! Why is there always an option to speak against the miracle we want to save? Isn’t that completely strange?

If we take the town vs. polyhedron conflict serious then… yeah it is. But is this all, what his end can be about? I would argue against it. Because what finally tips him to his solution and completes his view on the map of the town isn’t the Polyhedrons glory: It is the towns underground water and the Haruspex telling him, that the deeper layers are infected. That is, when he flips his shit and he even has an “oh no, it can’t be!” moment. Weird, isn’t it? If he would be set about destroying the town, why agonizing over this information? But from his point of view it is a nail in the coffin, the realization, that the whole towns ground is seeping with infection and if not eradicated, it will reappear. The Bachelor doesn’t have a cure and the Haruspex, while promising that he has a solution, sure as hell doesn’t explain how that would work and insists on arguing his own case without interference. (Which is completely understandable but doesn’t clear the situation.) The Bachelor has no means on his own to fight the plague outside of destroying the town. This is his only option to call of the bombardment of the Polyhedron and the tower and from his point of view, destroying the tower would archive absolutely nothing. It is free of infection, why destroy it? What would ripping it out do aside from letting even more blood seep out? In his own case, this would be completely useless, thus destroying the Polyhedron does not save the town! When the Bachelor flips the switch and guides the trolley in a different direction, he isn’t guiding it from hitting the Polyhedron to hitting the town. He guides the trolley from hitting the town and the polyhedron to only hitting the town! And by the way to only hit the town which his infected people while everybody else evacuates in the tower. (Which is confirmed by his ending cutscene, where people are actually present. After all it takes the healthy to built the new town). In his own mind, the Bachelor is saving people, not killing them! He does what he can so that the most of them survives and in his case, destroying the town is the only method to ensure victory at all.

If we stick to his own route – as I am doing right now – we have two counterarguments against this theory. The first one: But isn’t that only the failure of finding a better method? And: yes it is. As we already discussed in the first argument, the Bachelors story is about failure and the game itself is about necessary sacrifice, lose-lose situations and making the best out of a desperate hopeless scenario. Which leaves us with the question: Could Dankovsky have found a better solution? And… maybe. If he was more attentive, made different choices, would have been nicer to the Kin… There always are “ifs” but I would argue that the ones in this scenario are… pretty small odds for a change. He does genuinely try to inspect the abattoir and find a solution and ensure it’s safety and is almost punched to death as a result. The Kin regard him with absolute hostility, and for a good reason but it doesn’t help his case. Without Burakh’s knowledge and caste-rights making a cure would be (almost) impossible. He isn’t allowed to do any normal doctoring the one time, he tried to gain some blood from dead people, multiple guards had to die in order to ensure this absolute act of evil to go unnoticed. Thus he has to rely on Rubin’s secret lab. The possibility of Simon and his powers against the plague also aren’t usable… The Bachelor doesn’t even get to see his corpse after all. What choice does he have other than eradicating the cause itself? It’s definitely not the elegant solution that he was hoping for but there is a reason for him switching to inspect everything after ruling out a living plague carrier. These are the desperate means of finding a solution when his own knowledge of medicine has already failed him and the hopes of providing such medicine are already dwindling. Saving the town is simply not an option, the moment itself becomes the source of the plague.

The second counterargument is this one: Why not side with another healer, when they provide a better solution? And this is also a very valid argument. And thus, the moment it becomes an option, we as the Bachelor can choose to do so. If he has the cures that are necessary to ensure another healers victory, it is completely possible to avoid that ending. He doesn’t have to stick with it as well as the other healers do not have to, so judging him based on the other routes being better outcomes becomes obsolete. He has the ability to use these options, but if we lack the cures, his own solution is the only one. (Of course you can also save the other characters bound and then still decide to destroy the town, but using this scenario as his only motivation, when you can totally decide for yourself is a bit harsh, isn’t it?)

Of course, this argument collapses the moment we play any other route and he is trying to convince us to save the Polyhedron and abandon our own plans. However his own route can be considered his own perception of the story and our knowledge, how much he knows about the others paths is pretty limited and dependant of our choices as the player. Also, seeing his character and the changes made with that in mind, we can actually explain, why they appear. Of course, everybody tells Artemy how much the Bachelor is in love with the tower, when we’re not seeing it to that extreme in his route! It is necessary to fulfil his role in the Haruspex route. Of course, both the Bachelor and the Haruspex will appear as demons in Clara’s route. They do offer nothing but destruction from her point of view and both solutions seem destructive and spiteful, if they try to convince her. Everybody seems on board with seeing the characters in her route differently, but I think that the same applies to the Bachelor and the Haruspex in each other’s route, since their roles in the game changes. Or at least the perspective changes based on the others worldview. The Haruspex seems a lot more dangerous and his medicine a whole lot shadier, while the Bachelor seems to be more in love with the tower and ready to abandon everything for it, because it seems that way in comparison to the other persons knowledge of the situation. This is also backed up by the doll ending, where the Bachelor is being called out as the villain most of the time. In other routes he appears more villainous than in his own route, because we do actually have the means of comparison. But this is our perspective and not actual character motivation. We as the player do have the choice to work toward an ending. We can with our knowledge of the game go the extra mile to secure enough cures from the very beginning and help another healer. We are aware of the fact, that Clara and Artemy are other playable characters and we know from the very beginning that their beliefs have to be of value and their solutions will be backed up by their own routes. We know the opposition these characters stand in and while we see the different routes we may judge them for ourselves. And while Clara definitely knows and the other two healers show some sensibility towards this opposition (the “left hand, right hand”-quote comes to mind), at least the male healers are basing their decision upon their beliefs and not some outside point of view (while Clara watches and not-so-silently judges them). They even try to help each other and even provide the key insight to their own plan’s destruction (the Bachelor guides the inquisitor eyes to the Polyhedron and its structure, while Artemy outright tells Daniil of the underground infection). Of course they do not have the full picture! How could they, this entire game is about them not having it and making terrible mistakes! Dankovsky doesn’t have the ability to judge his own solution how the player does. And while judging his ending based on this information is completely valid and sensible, implying that he knows this detriment and still goes through with everything feels… a bit unfair to say the least. The conflict of the town vs. the polyhedron is an important debate in the game. And yes, Dankovsky’s role is being the advocate of the polyhedron, but man, this guy has the tendency to get manipulated into advocating random shit! The town vs. polyhedron debate is as present with him, as it is with the Haruspex. With the Polyhedron being the source in his route, he really has no choice but to remove it. After all, this guy really has no reason, to protect the Polyhedron. Of course he doesn’t! He would never sacrifice the town for the sake of his own ideology!

Argument 5: Let’s talk Nocturnal!

I promised one comparison, didn’t I? Still, we are now diving into abstract talk about the games’ themes and less about character motivation. Consider this more of a bonus and a different thought and less as an argument for Dankovsky himself. Comparing one ending to a different one does not make one of these characters more or less of an asshole. And comparing Pathologic 1 to Pathologic 2 obviously doesn’t tell us anything about the canon of either of those games, since they have vastly different results and we have no idea what the Bachelor’s endings will look like in Parhologic 2 (though I would be surprised if we couldn’t destroy the town and save the Polyhedron. But who knows, in Artemy’s case the army only pisses off.) Still, I think it is very interesting to talk about both of these endings side by side.

And I will begin this comparison by telling you that I love this ending! I am so happy that it exists and I think it is glorious and I think it’s existence is really important. I am so happy that Artemy has a reason to destroy the town. But is this okay? Or – as a comparison – is this a better idea than the one Dankovsky had?

I would argue that these endings have a lot in common. They both preserve their own ideals and establish a radically new order at the cost of the town itself. They both kill a shit ton of people for the miracles they have witnessed along the way. One could even argue that the Nocturnal ending is more horrifying. Firstly, more people die. While the Bachelor saves the uninfected, Artemy saves only those who “live with earths will” which seems to be like… the ten guys chilling in the abattoir and some of the kids. We know that there are only mere hundreds of people left of the kin and since everybody in the termitary doesn’t seem to count… who even gets saved? It’s at least as vague as the question who isn’t infected and can be saved at the Utopian end. But – more importantly – Artemy definitely has a choice in that matter and decides to sacrifice the town for the sake of the past. (If you’re not me. In my playthrough I got the courier note twenty minutes before 22:00 and the game was like “what are you going to do, such a hard choice” and I was like “I literally do not have the time to get this thing to town hall”. And then Aspity was like “you made your own conscious and completely willed decision” while Artemy just awkwardly stared at her…) But even disregarding that, the ending is surprisingly similar. Yet I see no one judging either the Haruspex or his ending for being overly cruel and well… killing a lot. Actually, I only read posts defending it and saying that it is as morally okay as the diurnal ending and could also count as a good end. And… I kind of agree. The sacrifice of the diurnal ending is pretty steep and destroying some species – while the worms, herb brides and albinos definitely show human qualities – is pretty fucked up as well and preserving them can seem worth the cost. (Oh my, do not say we arrived at the problem of human value again!) Still… It is destroying the town for its miracles. That is literally what this ending is about, yet our asshole sense does not tingle at all! Why is that?

I think there are two arguments for this difference between our outlook on the Nocturnal and the Utopian end. The first one is that the Kin and its culture is very endangered and protecting it just seems more morally sound than protecting some rich dudes. Which is very fair and the Kains are very fucked up. Buuuut, it isn’t like there is the termitary quest that preludes the diurnal ending. Finishing the game doesn’t exactly mean that we abandon the Kin. Part of its beliefs and culture, yes. Definitely, and as I said I still think the Diurnal and Nocturnal ending are pretty balanced. But a part of the Kin is assimilated and is coping and while protecting its culture and very real traditions is completely valid, the Nocturnal ending also destroys parts of the Kin (the Termitary part) as ill fitting for living with the earth…. So… hm… It’s not as easy as saying “but you help the Kin in one and some rich dudes in the other”, since the Kin itself are also torn and we are still only allowing a specific way of living. A specific worldview containing the miracles of the town… On the other hand, the polyhedron and its miracles can also be considered endangered and unique. It is a one of a kind structure as is the miracles it can provide. The Stamatins are pretty unable to reproduce it, as the game likes to tell us and destroying it would destroy all hopes of a one in a time event to come to life. Also there are talks about the Utopians being a faction of the entire town with one third of the population agreeing on their beliefs (as it is the case with the other ideologies). And the plans Peter and Maria make do sound interesting, dreamlike and… well unique. Something that can also only happen in this circumstance. But alas… we do not know that much about it and their word is only what we have. And this is the second aspect that makes the Nocturnal ending more relatable: Buildup. We witness first-hand what this Nocturnal world would be (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse), we know the beings and the miracles of the earth. We do not really get in touch which the utopian ideas and only have the rambling of good old Georgji which… yeah that doesn’t help their case! But there are kids calling this new town an “eternal adventure” a miracle that can come to live and I would say, that this thought is quite beautiful. And it certainly is unique, which is the main argument of the Nocturnal ending. Wonders, plague and miracles. Destroy one and the other will vanish. So… what is worth keeping a miracle? The answer now seems even harder to grasp. Maybe even impossible.

But we also do not have every puzzle peace. I still have hope for the two different routes and with them there are the possibilities of new realizations and also new endings. I myself am really curious if we either get an option to save the town or a reason to destroy the Polyhedron as the Bachelor. (And I am very curious as well, if Clara will get a second ending. What would that even be? An all destruction ending to set everyone free???) There also could be more elaboration on the Polyhedron and its inner workings. Maybe we will even understand what the Kains are talking about! There are some allusions to a more concrete Kain worldview. The nut-game while very disturbing makes the entrapment of the soul way more real and gives the focus some context. (It also doesn’t only connect it with the polyhedron since “anything can be a focus. A polyhedron, a room, a nut”.) The same applies to the clocks and their connection to the save system, which makes the miracles of the Kains way more real. And I digress. Only time will tell.

Conclusion:

I think it is clear by now, that this way too long text isn’t really about giving answers and more about perspective. I myself would say that the Bachelor’s choice is terribly misguided most of the time and the only possible method to save anything at best. But I do not think that it is made with its destructive force in mind. What I wanted to show is, that the motives and the narratives surrounding this ending are way more complex and also really, really interesting. (I just wanted to gush about this game!) As are the characters that comment on the situation at hand. And reflecting on how we judge them can say a lot about our own view and the world (this one as well as the Town on Gorkhon).

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #repost because the first didnt show up as a search result

75 notes · View notes

tofiveohfive · 4 years

Note

rafa i love u and ur blog and ur thoughts so much you’re definitely one of my favorite people on here if not my favorite, and i was wondering if you could rec me some of /your/ favorite people (if u want to make it cute and say why they’re ur fave go for it 🥰) so i can vibe check my following list/dash?

oh, bub 🥺 thank you so much. this is so sweet of you to say 🥺 i think we can all agree that fandom has been a bit mad lately, so i'd actually love to say nice things about people. let's go!(i feel like this will be a bit predictable, though)

@stylex @queersue @supportivehusbands @youaremybecause @livehabit @givemewalls @whatevertearsyou @emohabit @tattooedlovers the best group of people i've met here. a very talented bunch, who're also very kind, considerate & supportive. if you need to make your dash a better place, these are the people to go to.

since you mentioned my "thoughts", i feel like it's only fair that i give a shout out to the ones who have taught me a lot about all different kinds of topics, but who are also very respectful & open to have a discussion: @fallenwalls @stangolden @rosesau @aliensyndrome @lesbianlouis

and because the discourse-y stuff can get quite heavy & overwhelming, here are the ones that make me laugh, make me smile or that bring me at least little bit of peace, making this place a bit more joyful: @kindofsharethat @dykes4louis @thepeacering @itsastorm @theparisinterview @hs2live @darkrainbowlouis

#i know this is not a lot and i'm sorry but i haven't slept and i'm. dizzy fhsdjfksf #i hope this helps to fill ur dash with ✨✨✨✨ good stuff #thank u again for the very kind message i hope ur having a great time listening to walls!#answered #anonymous

23 notes · View notes

chut-je-dors · 4 years

Text

So... with a deep, resignated sigh I’m getting back to the discourse that Chiclettes leaves in her wake. i just never get to rest in peace do i. In fact I feel like I’m actually gonna get R.I.P.ed since now the discourse is gonna flame up again, isn’t it? rip

For the record, I’m only writing this ‘cos @imaginebeatles is 135% my impulse control, and she didn’t outright tell me not to do it. So, here we go--

I noticed today while going through AO3 that some authors have written works where Paul is deliberately painted as, uh, well, everything that Chiclettes is standing against -- that is, girly, feminine, etc. etc.,... *insert Chiclettes’ “CJD’s Paul description” list*. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, authors certainly have the right to write their Paul however they want to, but these fics were explicitly gifted to her, almost as if the authors were looking for the discourse -- like, as if they would get glee out of Chiclettes appearing into their comment section..? Like, the only way I can think of this is as if the writers are deliberately starting a war, like, and that’s...... uh. unbelievably stupid? Like, I get that you wanna “show her” and whatever, but that’s........ that’s not how you do it? That is just literally adding fuel to the fire? Write what you want, guys, but don’t do it to irk Chiclettes? A much better tactic is to just ignore her?

On that same note, there have been lately like, so many fics in which the same Paul problem persists, with apparently younger authors taking the old fandom treatment of him and uh, literally make him a “weeping slut”, if you know what I mean? Like, again, the exact thing that Chiclettes is against? And again, that is all fine and dandy, but how come there have been... so many of them? I feel like I’ve said it before but I really get where Chiclettes is coming from, because I don’t like the way Paul used to be portrayed in most of the fics. I thought we were kinda getting past that trend, but... apparently not? Or is it just to make Chiclettes mad? Because that is, uh, not a very good tactic. Are we regressing back to feminine!Paul being the norm? :((((

At the same time I naturally support the author’s rights to write whatever they want to, as well as the reader’s rights to look at the tags and then Get The Hell Out Of There (which Chiclettes DOES NOT do, and thus is the guilty one. The author is not forcing her to read the fics. She chooses to do that, and then chooses to leave terrible, terrible comments. That is on her. I’m not defending that, in case someone thinks so). It seems like a lot of noise is being made over a few selected fics that have ventured into the world of “rarely mentioned kinks”. I was kinda wondering if the problem is that either our fandom is so small that it hasn't seen enough weird shit yet to be able to ignore it (because in bigger fandoms, fics with rare kinks naturally exist on a bigger scale), or then it’s ‘cos our fandom is old as balls, and all the weird shit of the past has been forgotten, or has disappeared from the internet. Like, in the depths of Beatlesslash there’s........ SO MUCH STUFF. SO MUCH. that i’m not touching with a STICK.

I guess what I’m after here is that, uh, writers are allowed and MUST look for their limits, and for some that is by writing fics that might be borderline nauseating for most of us, but on ther other hand some find enjoyable, and who are we to judge? As I said, most of the “weirder” stuff is apparently written by 14-17 year old people? When you're young you're still looking for the things that give you the kicks — more often than not it's things that others might deem "disgusting" and "immoral", because you’re kinda wanting to break the adult rules just, in general, which I get. Like, I grew up pretty sheltered from all things sexual, and for me the kick was simply finding that smut fanfiction, that sex in GENERAL exists, and I was more interested in writing plot-driven stories anyway -- still am -- (but let's not forget my neverending love for the Thighs, which is, okay, a KINK, and which my FIRST FUCKING FIC, written at 15, might MENTION A COUPLE OF TIMES). For some others it's a different thing that smacks them in the face and makes them go "oh yeah" and they're allowed to express that "oh yeah".

But when it starts being more about attacking others that you think are wrong than writing fanfiction that you enjoy.... that's when it goes overboard. Please don’t do it. You won’t gain anything from it, and it is insulting towards Chiclettes. Don’t go down on her level. And Chiclettes, the same-old-same-o: Please stop? You won’t gain anything.

#can you hear how tired i am? i'm tired #cjd rambles #a literal actual musing that i was hesitant to write because i kinda need to stay neutral for the recs' sake #a burden sometimes 'cos i feel like i can't express my opinion freely #me and puck were talking about this and she agrees #it's been a hard time lately finding fics we like because there are so many with bottom!paul who gets...... mischaracterised #so yeah. chiclettes. you have a point. i've said that. you just take the wrong approach #that is the hostile one #authors: do not take the hostile approach either #it's not......... it's not wise #i don't defend chiclettes #but i can't defend you either if you go out of your way to MAKE her attack you #there's been too much negativity around lately #hmh #mclennon #mclennon fic #john lennon #paul mccartney #chiclettes #bottom paul cop #that tag will persist as long as she keeps doing the job #beatles #john/paul #fandom discourse #im gonna regret this aren't i

21 notes · View notes

smokeybrand · 4 years

Text

Zodiac Age

It’s no secret that i am a massive fan of the Final Fantasy series. Essays abut that franchise riddle this blog. My adoration for their world building and storytelling is profound, even is they kind of devolve into a Star Wars-esque retelling at time. Square sure does love that Hero Journey literary trope. Things like that don’t bug me because there are little unique changes to that specific plot, little dashes of creativity that take the form of setting, characters, or overall plot. It might follow the trope in the sense of character development, but the story told to get there is wholly it’s own. And let me tell you, some of these stories are the best that’s ever been told.

Final Fantasy VII is my favorite of the entire series. Great characters, vivid world, and a plot simple enough to follow but embellished to near mythic levels. Final Fantasy IX is another favorite, though, that one is more a fairy tale than anything. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a goddamn masterpiece and epic in it’s own right, but that story is more than at home with those old Grimm tales we were told as kids. It’s mad endearing that way. Final Fantasy Tactics, spin-off title, is probably the best story, overall, told under the FF banner and it’s not even a main title. The War of Lions is a tale of political intrigue, familial bonds, and devastating betrayal sprinkled with magic and demons and summons and dragons. It’s f*cking incredible and can give Game of Thrones a run for it’s money. I imagine, in time, i’ll revisit these stories and gush about why i love them so but that’s not what this essay is about. No, this essay is about the second best narrative in the entire FF franchise; A narrative that has been written off because people couldn’t get passed the gameplay. This essay is about my fourth favorite Final Fantasy title, Final Fantasy XII

The strongest part of this game is easily the story. It starts with a wedding. A beautiful affair between two nations to solidify a peaceful relation and treaty of prosperity but that bliss would not last. War, a bloody coupe, the death of a prince, and the betrayal of a king. All of this happens in the intro to the game. As you play, you take the perspective of a common street rat. You follow along with his misadventures, exploring the oasis city of Rabanastre withing the annexed kingdom of Dalmasca. During his various excursions, Vaan finds himself entwined with the charismatic sky pirate and main character, Balthier, as well as his longtime Viera companion, Fran. After a heist gone wrong, the group find themselves thrown into the same lot as the presumed dead princess of Dlamasca, Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca, and the man framed for murdering her father, Basch Fon Ronsenburg. The party is eventually completed by the final addition of Vaan’s childhood friend, Penelo. What starts as a tale of rebellion and unrest, evolves into something so much more. The dismantling of the current world system, the shattering of chains binding man to malevolent gods, wresting control of human destiny back into human hands, and a destiny laid forth by a visionary painted as a tyrant.

Final Fantasy XII is a grand epic that feels very intimate, very small. You’re never far from the characters or their plight. Indeed, it’s their development and relationships that drive this story. Political intrigue and human destiny aside, the interactions between these individuals are absolutely wonderful. Vaan is a chump but, having played this game several times and looking back on this story with the eyes of an adult who appreciates great storytelling, his blank personality is necessary. He’s the vehicle the audience uses to immerse themselves in this world. He’s our allegory so ll that bland that colors him is simple place holder. an is who we make him. On the other end of that spectrum, you have the “villain” Vayne Carudas Solidor. Vayne is easily one of the best written characters in the entire franchise. His characterization and development can give Delita from Tactics and Ardyn Izunia from XV. Holy sh*t, Ardyn is magnificent. I can write an entire essay on him, alone, but that’s one for later. Maybe. XII is one of the best written of all the FF titles but Vayne, specifically, is written on an entirely different level. There’s never a time when you do not understand his motivation. There is never a time where you do not agree with his logic. There is never a time when you condemn his deeds. They are all necessary for the ultimate goal of human prosperity. Vayne is the antagonist of this story because of circumstance and he understands that better than anyone. He even prepared for that eventuality with his brother, Larsa. Even in defeat, he still wins; A victory for all that cost him everything. F*cking brilliant writing, man. Brilliant.

The world of Final Fantasy XII is absolutely gorgeous. It takes place in Ivalice, the only recurring setting in the FF franchise. It’s a staple, like Chocobos or Moogles. Vagrant Story and the Tactics games all take place here, to varying capacities. I love how meaty the lore and systems are for this universe. The Judge system permeates almost every title taking place here and they are to be heeded. Ranging from consequences of battle to outright characters in the narrative, these judges often have ornate armors and insane strength. Gabranth, the main Judge of XII, serves a rather dubious role throughout this tale. He and his contemporary, Cidolfus Demen Bunansa, the Cid of this game and father of Blathier, work together with Vayne to further his ambitions. Chasing their wake leads our team all over Ivalcie, visiting Ordalia, Valdenia, Kerwon, and Purvma. We follow Fran home to the Salikawood and hunt some powerful monsters in the rolling dunes of the Giza Plains. This world is gorgeously realized with loving passion and gentle renders. It really is a feast for the eyes.

Now, the reason everyone passes on this particular title lies in the fact that the gameplay doesn’t feel like an FF title. In that regard, the discourse is correct. XII does not play like a traditional Final Fantasy title. It skews closer to their MMO titles rather than their offline fair. It can be difficult to learn but is it really so different than what you’re used to? Is it really so alien? XII does a pretty decent job teaching you how to manage your party. Admittedly, yo can’t directly control what everyone does at every second but all titles in this franchise are kind of like this. I can see how that aspect can be disorientating wit the pseudo-action RPG aesthetic. That’s why there are Gambits. These things are little predetermined commands that allow you to program your party while you handle the heavy lifting on wither offense, defense, or support. It’s kind of like the system they use in FFXIII but, you know, good. You still play XII. You still have the ability to control your characters, in a limited capacity. Sure, i would have liked to have more direct command over my party but this workaround is fine once you get used to it. Besides, i think they fixed this in the international Zodiac version or whatever. I haven’t played that one yet but what we have in the vanilla game, the License Board, Tecnicks, Magicks, Quickenings, and Espers, all add a variety that gives you copious amounts of strategy. Building a character strong enough to trust to the Gambit system has it’s own reward.

Final Fantasy XII is an outstanding title that deserves so much more respect than anyone gives it. Your requisite hitters like IX and VII are rightfully mentioned in a much greater capacity but lesser titles like X and VIII have no business holding their position in the fandom zeitgeist in lieu of XII. This game has one of the most epic stories, a brisk plot rarely marred down by melodrama, one of the greatest villains in the entire franchise, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The world is lush, full of life and vibrancy, hiding a sinister undertone that grips your attention until the very end. If you can manage the learning curve of the battle system, if you give it a chance, you’ll be rewarded with one of the all-time great games in the Final Fantasy pantheon.

4 notes · View notes