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sciderman · 3 years

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you have a lot of headcanons about their top/bottom dynamics? ......hm.......*slides a dollar over tthe table*

i can’t believe how horny this place has gotten. i can’t believe i’m feeding you all like this. i’ve repressed all this for like, four years and it’s all bubbling to the surface. okay, so:

- peter is pretty selfless when it comes to love - he’ll fall all over himself to please his partner, and he’ll quite happily neglect his own needs to make sure his partner is happy first. this works just fine for wade, who…

so wade often “comes first”, if you catch my drift. wade gets his way and gets pampered, not necessarily because he demands it (though he does), but because peter is just. an incredibly generous boy, who wants nothing more than for wade to feel good and amazing. and wade’s so, so good and appreciative, that it’s a real treat for peter too.

- wade’s greedy, that’s no secret. he’s not a very good top at all, because he does kind of make it all about him. he can’t help it. that’s the way he is. especially at the beginning of the relationship, when all that’s in his mind is that he wants to be loved and to know that he’s being loved.

truly wade is just a bottom at heart because he craves attention, and loves to feel treasured. this works just fine for peter, who loves to shower his partner in praise and other such niceties. truly. carnal bliss. like jigsaw pieces that fit together perfectly. though eventually wade starts wanting to return the favour, considering how nice and good and generous his boy has been.

- while peter’s not exactly hesitant per say, he’s has a more traditional view on sex and masculinity, which wade thinks is frankly pretty ridiculous.

wade kind of takes it upon him to break those barriers down, piece by piece. he’d never pressure peter into something he didn’t want to do, of course, but little nudges to push peter out of his comfort zone and unleash the wild spider within. peter has never been able to really be himself with a partner before (gwen didn’t know peter was spider-man, and felicia didn’t know spider-man was peter), so wade’s really the first person who’s able to peel back all of peter’s layers. there’s a she-wolf in the closet, open up and set her free. awoo! 🎶

- low-key, it’s a big part of why 9319 wade was so conflicted about peter’s big “I’m Bisexual” moment. he really wanted to be there for that breakthrough. all those years of trying to chip away at it.

(just another of wade’s many, many character flaws shining through. greedy. greedy boy. likes to make it all about him. like he deserves credit for his hard work, or something. wade is a self-depreciating narcissist. complicated man.)

wade does like to take ownership over peter’s transformation. he takes pride in his work. wade’s so so proud of himself when he’s able to undo peter and get him to abandon his reservations and just let completely loose. encourages peter to use his strength, lose himself. stop worrying. switch off that big brain.

part of that is to get peter to accept being pampered and trying new things and new surprises. it’s all a very educational and liberating experience for peter.

other miscellaneous headcanons

- heightened senses. peter’s heightened senses. it makes him so easy to unravel, with a well-placed kiss or wade whispering in his ear.

- wade and peter are evenly matched in wits in any other context, but wade’s able to completely short out peter’s brain on demand. this sucks for peter. peter tries to knock wade off his feet with a few surprises of his own. usually it’s a show of strength or some other clever little use of his powers that wade finds freaky-deaky! (wade: i knew you were holding out on me.) usually, though, the most effective way to knock wade off balance is a show of emotion. wade typically doesn’t know how to counter that.

- as much as wade acts like a brat, or a petulant child when he doesn’t get his way (which peter loves, honestly) wade is very good at doing as he’s told, whenever sex is involved. (which peter also loves.) it’s the only time wade likes it when peter bosses him around.

- wade likes to be told he’s being a good boy. he preens when he’s praised. top or bottom, doesn’t matter. in a sexual context or otherwise. say nice things about him and he’s all gooey like caramel.

- they both like it rough. they love to be hoisted up, tossed, thrown hard against a wall - they love scrapes and bruises and adrenaline. at the end of it, they’re soft and tender, but they love to spar and wrestle for who gets to take charge. (wade lets peter win, more often than not. and he’s not even subtle about it.) (wade: ughn! drats! i don’t stand a chance against your strong, strong arms, and your clever, clever brain! curse you, spider-man!)

- (wade: i do it because i know you’re a sore loser, and i don’t want to wound your ego.) (peter: you do it because you’re a stupid bottom.) (wade gasps, faux-offended.) (wade: i’ll show you who’s a stupid bottom, spider-man.)

- peter simps very. very hard for wade in a pretty, pretty dress. there’s nothing that makes peter feel weaker in the knees than a pretty, pretty girl. and wade wilson? the prettiest girl peter’s ever laid eyes on. the dresses give wade a confidence boost too, so 90% of the time, when wade’s in the dress, he’s wearing the trousers (metaphorically speaking). peter bottoms for wade, all the while wade’s in beautiful, beautiful lace and frills. talk about challenging your preconceived notions of masculinity.

- both of them are very tactile and touchy-feely. wade loves running his hands through peter’s dumb hair. pulling his dumb hair.

- peter, peter loves fiddling with wade’s clothes. his suit, the straps, his belt loops, anything. but specifically wade’s pretty, pretty frills and skirts. none of my artwork depicting this specific headcanon are safe for work. sorry.

- okay and FINALLY have to address the elephant in the room here. web kink.

the answer is: sometimes. it’s not actually a staple, it’s something peter mostly does when wade’s misbehaving. wade has good humour about it, and it’s mostly for a laugh, but it’s really impractical and a bit of a turn-off actually. (wade: i have to wait here. for a whole HOUR????)

truly, they like touching each other far too much for them to be into the whole bondage thing. wade, actually, really isn’t into bondage at all. it’s really not his bag, as much as he jokes about it.

peter’s more into it, in a schadenfreude sort of way. it’s entertaining.

wade humours him - but when it comes to bondage, wade’s actually pretty vanilla. he doesn’t have the best memories when it comes to being restrained, so they don’t do it very often. seeing peter being restrained doesn’t really do anything for wade either, especially since it’s just a charade. peter can’t be restrained.

i can imagine a scenario where peter is tied up by something very delicate, like red ribbons or something, purely for show. that’s something that’ll do it for wade. more of a romantic gesture, really.

okay. that’s all for now folks. this is already so much longer than i expected it to be, oh my god.

#sci speaks #spideypool #ask-spiderpool #headcanons #nsf.w..

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randomsnakesimp · 3 years

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Okay. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take the leap and say: Phobos is the victim (sorta).

Quick disclaimer: I am going to abuse plot holes and cartoon logic for my cause in a very nitpicky way. If you dislike that, I can completely understand, and I hope this warning will save you a lot of reading.

Also, this won't go into just headcanon territory, I'll put those in a separate post. Everything here I'll try to keep based on actual information from the comics and what I made of them.

That said...

Let's take a look at this scene:

(for a quick translation of the important part, the mother says: "No, Phobos, Meridian is meant for your sister. That's the law. The crown is hers.)

What we can see here are a few very important things:

1. Phobos is at most 5 years older than Elyon.

2. The name "Phobos" is not an edgy nickname he gave himself. Five-year-olds don't go around calling themselves Phobos. So his parents, for some reason, gave him that name.

3. His mother is very adamant about him not even touching the crown and reminding him of his sisters' birthright.

So, after establishing what I would call more or less facts, what else can, relatively savely, be deduced here?

- Since Elyon never noticed anything weird about herself, she can't have aged slower than earth children. So neither can Phobos. This would mean that, as she was kidnapped after her mothers death as a baby, he would have been five. So, he either tried his best to rule at age five, or the council we see as Elyon rules stepped in for him for a while

- this would then mean two things: we need an explanation as to why Miriadel, Alborn and Galgheita fled explicitly from Phobos (I'll give my explanation a bit further down) and second, Phobos' reign of terror wasn't even thirteen years, and a lot of that time he was a child/teen and could not even have been mature enough to rule.

- This also means that Kandrakar pulled up the veil when Phobos was at most five, likely younger, and that the so called "Seal of Phobos" also existed at that time, as both the veil and the seal are seen in the flashback depicting Elyons abduction. For Kandrakar, this, too, I will try to explain soon, but as for the seal, I find it most plausible that the theory @ror-witch used in their fanfiction, of the seal being a royal heirloom and named after each ruler, is true.

- His and his mother's relationship was neither as bad as some assumptions go, but neither was it that good, probably, or at least it wasn't in his perception. See how his memory is of her cradling the baby the entire time and talking more about his sisters birthright than about what he has/can do? Yes, it's only a short memory, but I think it's clear that it's a summary of what he remembers of his mother.

- Phobos desire to rule Meridian does not stem from something deeply sinister, but rather from a childish spite. Five year old Phobos probably just wanted the crown cause it looked nice and shiny, and he was fabulous even back then, but after his mothers words, he sulked and decided to show her. That's his motivation.

So, now let's go a bit further and look at some other things we can deduce from the rest of the comics:

- Phobos has a huge dungeon, a wall of roses that turn people into more roses if they touch it and his plan for the annihilation of Meridian is "Well, Cedric and I hide in the castle and...we'll see". He hates the people of Meridian, but he doesn't seem to have it in him to directly attack anyone until Elyon is there and even here, when he has her knocked out in their duel or locked up as Endarno, he isn't unnecessarily cruel. He's not evil in nature, he's more of a very dangerous child throwing tantrums. ( Cedric is kinda similar, and they both start losing it toward the coronation, but I sincerely believe that before that, there would have been a chance for them to come around )

- The only person he ever tortures or even hurts directly is Cedric. Because one, he likes Cedric and so gets more extreme emotions around him, and two, Cedric never says anything, and just plays it of afterwards, so I don't know if he even fully realizes what he's doing, like a child hitting someone. If Cedric ever just said "Stop it, you're hurting me", Phobos would probably need an entire week to process that input.

- Phobos is VERY reclusive, and he doesn't want anyone to have even pictures of him, and while that could be a God complex, I get some highly insecure vibes out of it, in a vulnerable narcissist kinda way, in that he is massively overcompensating. I gotta admit, though, that I cannot put my finger on why, so maybe take this with a grain of salt and decide for yourself if you agree.

- Kandrakar never orders the guardians to help Meridian in any way, just to make sure nothing oozes out. They likely pulled up the veil for their own protection, so Phobos wouldn't be able to spread far enough to become a real danger, rather than to protect innocent people, as clearly the Meridian people mean shit to them

- while the guards are widely feared in Meridian, Cedric seems to be viewed as... not very frightening or important, as some random merchant feels comfortable clinging to his cape (and rightfully so, apparently, as Cedric just tells him to piss off and doesn't care any further). This further leads me to believe that Cedric is rather unhealthy devoted to Phobos and his tantrums while their shitty ass reign leaves a lot of free space for unsuited people to become guards and tyranize the people.

- the King and Queen seem to have died in rapid succession, and shortly after the scene shown above, yet she looks perfectly healthy in that scene.

Now, what do I make of all this?

I believe the line of events to be as follows:

I don't think Phobos traveling back in time is a viable theory for mainly two reasons: I think his mother would be less chill around him if she saw/heard about his reign herself, and I believe that it would have been mentioned somewhere along the way if that were the case. Instead, what I believe happened is that the oracle had a vague vision of Phobos nearly taking over Kandrakar. Deciding in their random mood swings that today was a day of action, they had the people of Meridian informed that the next male born to a queen would become a dangerous tyrant, pulled up a veil and set their guardians to make sure nothing oozed out.

The veil, of course, made the people of Meridian feel trapped and a horror of the unborn prince who would ruin their lives spread.

So, when Weira gave birth to that prince, a full blown panic spread, so much so that she, in a fit of hysterical emotion, named him after that boust of panic. Of course, people tried to kill the prince basically from the moment he was born, and he was met with barely concealed resentment.

Soon after, Weira and her husband died - whether they were killed, or fell ill, or died in an accident, I have no idea, but I wouldn't completely rule out an assassination either aimed at Phobos and accidentally hitting them or the strain making at least one of them fall terminally ill.

Either the people rioted and Phobos' magic panic reaction or the leftover loyal guard was enough to fight them back, or the people succumbed to their fate at this point, slumping into the state of despair seen throughout the comics. But in the end, five year old Phobos had to be handed the throne. I assume the council still had some say at this point, but he did manage to get all pictures of him destroyed - this order was likely due to the fact that they were mostly caricatures.

So he grew up with the very volatile combination of a shitton of power and no one able to tell him if he was being stupid on one hand, and feeling unloved and unwanted on the other. He withdrew, likely also due to countless assassination attempts or things he perceived as such, and went into a negative feedback loop of being unable to mature and take responsibility, therefore being a shit ruler, therefore being hated, therefore having no one to help him, therefore being unable to face and grow from his mistakes, rinse and repeat.

So, Meridian was plunged into chaos, yet he seemed fine more or less just sitting in the new playroom he made for himself in the gardens, sporadically giving out an order or two and having generally no idea about anything that didn't directly concern him.

Enter Elyon. Now, she send him of the rails, as she was a danger to his lifestyle AND a reminder of all the sentiments he'd be drowning in alcohol if he wasn't too much of a recluse and education denier to know of that option. He doesn't even try. He just lets Cedric, the one person he trusts, handle her, like everything else, and somewhat plays along sometimes, when he feels like it. This is where he passes the point of no return and starts actually trying to kill people, culminating in him creating an army to wipe out Meridian. I still believe that even at this point, in his head, what he's doing is just throwing a nice toy out the window just so his sister won't have it.

#w.i.t.c.h. comics #w.i.t.c.h.#w.i.t.c.h. theory #prince phobos #Kandrakar is a shitshow

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synnthamonsugar · 3 years

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savathun for the accurate depictions meme?

Pick a character I am likely to have Feelings/Opinions about and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

Savathun's also a hard one to get a read on. A lot of these are more in the realm of ... concepts and archetypes and vibes that I strongly associate with Savathun rather than cut-and-dry traits that I headcanon her having, though you can definitely derive specific traits from these.

1. Tricksters. Granted, this is not so much a feeling as it is well-established subtext. Hell, Truth To Power elevated it to TEXT, all-caps, shouted from a megaphone:

Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother's-stomach.

Which like, okay, at the time I wasn't sure if this was accurate to her characterization, or Savathun trying to paint herself as the protagonist of her story, but now that we know she's stealing the Light and bestowing it to her people ... she is an archetypal trickster-culture hero.

I think that any accurate depiction of Savathun has to take into account those character types and what they represent: moral ambiguity, transgression, boundary-crossing, refashioning, disruption and redistributing power. Getting into and out of hard situations and suffering the consequences of actions, but never for long.

2. Transformation.

SHE GOT INTO A CHRYSALIS AND IS PUPATING INTO A MOTH. DO I HAVE TO SPELL THIS OUT.

But seriously, that every time we've heard from her she's been different - as Sathona, as a young Hive God slain by her brother to become stronger, as an undercover agent infiltrating a society to study their Wish Dragons, as Eris by letter (and the mask slipping and cascading through a set of identities before looping back to Eris again), as Scribe Savat, as a voice beyond an event horizon, as the Taken Queen, as Osiris, as a big honking chunk of amethyst who croons promises to us.

I like to play around with that idea in my written and drawn depictions of her, having her take different forms for different circumstances, be different things to different people. because that feels natural for her at this point.

3. Esoteric and occult practices, especially alchemy, which is best known for its pursuit of immortality and turning base elements into precious ones, but also dealt with the idea of spiritual purification, all of which are relevant to Savathun's story. That it's arguably the most "scientific" field of magic by forming the early foundation of chemistry is also important here.

I'd also like to give a shout out to chaos magic, which is a results-based branch of magic. Its rejection of absolute truth and objective reality, and its self-proof - that it works because the practitioner believes it does, free of any higher powers - feels immensely Savathun-y to me.

So I like to view and write Savathun as a scientist-magician, a witch, an experimentalist, a proof-writer and programmer of realities.

4. Family issues. As I've said before, I can't not read Savathun's departure from the Sword Logic and her sibling(s) as a metaphor for leaving toxic family situations. Especially when she's attempting to forge new, almost-familial bonds with people (Crow, The Guardian) which reads to me in the same sort of way as people getting out of bad family situations trying to find people of their own.

To that end I think she should have a kind of ... yearning, for her first life with her siblings, before the pact, for the world she destroyed, for the bonds forged and annihilated over the years. And for the life she could invent, for the friends and allies she could make.

5. Niceness. Not goodness but niceness. I think Savathun should always be friendly, always be helpful, even when she's doing the worst thing imaginable, because she's doing it for the right reasons. (Source: Savathun.) Her kindness is her menace, and her terror is her familiarity. There is no contradiction to her between being our friend and destroying us.

#destiny #savathun #asks

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Neverland, the role of “nostalgia” in Kiuzna’s narrative, and the 02 quartet’s unusual immunity to it

In general, the 02 quartet (my shorthand for the four human characters introduced in 02 who weren’t in Adventure, namely Daisuke, Ken, Miyako, and Iori) have a position in Kizuna that you can call “shockingly favorable” in that they’re kept safely out of the most dangerous parts of the plot in ways the others aren’t. This especially sticks out when we get to the Eosmon incident reaching its climax, when Takeru and Hikari are placed in the same situation as their Adventure seniors, despite the movie and its surrounding media generally portraying them closer in line with the others in the 02 group than the Adventure group.

To be a bit blunt about it, the obvious main reason the story is set up this way is meta -- a lot of the climax’s effectiveness depends on the audience getting sensory impact via recognizing things from the original series (including 02 as well; how convenient it is that all of the international Chosen are in the positions 02 fans would recognize!), and so it’s obvious that said climax would evoke imagery related to the series that was Digimon Adventure, while the 02 quartet would be treated extra-kindly by the narrative due to the need to give them compensatory action screentime given certain real-life events. But just because the originating reason is meta doesn’t mean there isn’t also a story reason for it, especially considering the relevance of 02′s themes in Kizuna’s narrative, and the surrounding circumstances regarding both series.

Before we get into anything else, the first thing that needs to be established is that Menoa and Eosmon’s lure is pretty obviously depicted as working on a subconscious level. This is why everyone else in the narrative agrees that what they did is “kidnapping”, despite her insistence that she’s just doing what they wanted. While they can’t not admit to having moments of weakness, nevertheless, it’s likely that most if not all of the people Menoa kidnapped consciously knew better and had learned better lessons than this a long time ago; if Menoa had consciously offered Neverland to her victims, most of them would have probably said no! But as Daisuke said back in 02 episode 49 -- when he witnessed his own friends being subjected to something similar at the hands of BelialVamdemon -- there’s no sin in having feelings of worries or troubles (and, by extension, irrational feelings in general), and Eosmon’s abilities and Neverland happen to be able to directly target them. In fact, we ourselves got to witness this internal conflict when Menoa made her direct offer to Taichi and Yamato to join Neverland; they briefly considered it because of the circumstances, but were snapped out of it quickly with Agumon and Gabumon’s intervention, and were really, really mad at themselves for considering it shortly after.

We saw the process of how Ayaka became one of the kidnapping victims at the beginning of the movie -- it happened right after she complained that she wasn’t fond of the idea of becoming an adult at this point. So it does lend some truth to the idea that Menoa’s working off something with these cases, and that Eosmon did specifically target people who had those wishes to some degree. Moreover, note carefully how this kidnapping (and some others in the movie) is portrayed; Eosmon doesn’t actually emerge from the device in question (it’s obvious that nobody notices the giant butterfly monster), and the victim’s consciousness and partner are whisked away thanks to being caught by the device camera. In Ayaka’s case, because her phone was sitting on the table, pointed at her. The fact that this is not how the kidnappings are portrayed all the way to the end of the movie is a very significant point.

So let’s talk about Neverland and its construction. The whole thing is based on Menoa’s own very, very warped view of what “happiness” is. This means that Neverland is only an “ideal world” or “utopia” in a way that makes sense to her -- and once you learn the full extent of her backstory, it becomes apparent how she came to the mentality she did, and, more pertinently, how she ended up projecting that on everyone else. Hence, how she came to decide that she knew better and should decide for everyone, because she thinks she gets the right to decide on everyone’s happiness based on her own experiences. (She doesn’t.)

The way Neverland is constructed is that everyone has “their own places” -- their own individual islands that recreate “memories” of everyone being able to be together with their partner, forever. So in other words, it’s not just that everyone’s being turned into children; it’s that they’re being kept in an eternal loop of their best memory and unable to “move forward”.

Here are three very significant parts about this, which will be important to keep in mind as we go deeper into this analysis:

Menoa’s view of this utopia requires people to be separated -- for all she claims this is a utopia where people can play together, she discourages fraternizing and encourages everyone to stay only with their own partners. This is, presumably, to lessen complications with said memories, because what might be one person’s best memory might not be for another, and also because she thinks one person being alone with their partner is happiness enough in itself. As we’ll be seeing later, this is very much not the case for everyone.

A lot of these memories in Neverland -- and Menoa’s own mentality, as we eventually find out -- are heavily dependent on the concept of rose-colored nostalgia, or, that is to say, conveniently omitting or forgetting about all of the bad things about one’s past in order to portray it as such a wonderful thing that nobody should ever move on from. And in the end, that probably applies to real-life childhood in general, too; as much as it’s so often put on a pedestal for being a time when “everything was simpler”, you can also easily argue that it wasn’t actually all sunshine and roses, it’s just that the process of forgetting things or the grass-is-greener phenomenon makes you conveniently forget all of the bad things and frustration that came with it too.

Because the concept of needing to stay in the past forever is based on the idea that it’s preferable to growing up, these memories thus have a strong premise of “things you cannot do anymore” -- something that, bar going back to the past and never moving from it, you will never get back or be able to sufficiently recreate. It’s unlikely the islands themselves are one-to-one recreating their specific memories in the way they happened, but rather seemingly presenting them the opportunity to “constantly do over” things they want to recreate or do again, as long as those things are associated with a happy thing that isn’t as easily accessible anymore.

In the case of the five Adventure group members who were brought into Neverland, these “memories” that they’re seen trapped in are, of course, from Digimon Adventure.

It is of course foolhardy to pretend that the main reason for this wasn’t meta, since, of course, there’s a huge point to be made here about the relationship between Adventure and nostalgia, plus the simple fact that this is what we’re most likely to recognize and be nostalgic for, but it also makes sense within the context of the narrative; Menoa has an extreme bias towards the happiness of her childhood revolving almost entirely around her partner, and, of course, Adventure was when these kids first had their most formative meetings with said partners. (This is also probably the in-story explanation for why the other international Chosen from 02 appear at or close to their 02 selves; beyond the meta reason of it being a way to make them recognizable when we only knew them for such a short time, it also approximates when they met their own partners.)

On top of that, Adventure was not all sunshine and roses for its cast! After all, there was a ton of drama and emotional trauma and stress from running away from enemies trying to kill them, or trying to save the universe, and glossing over that is also foolhardy -- but this is also where our concept of “rose-colored” comes in. Menoa’s not offering the kids the entire adventure; she’s offering them a small slice of the moments when they were able to be happy, the moments that made them want to stay in the Digital World for a whole 110 years’ worth of time at the end of Adventure -- she’s basically offering them that very thing they wanted and had ripped away from them at the end of Adventure when the time dilation phenomenon stopped. Take out all of the bad stuff, and suddenly, the events of Adventure seem outright romantic -- it’s the whole school of thought that fueled Adventure’s inspirations of Two Years’ Vacation and Stand By Me, in which a lot of stressful stuff happened and yet you still can’t help but think there was something magical and romantic about it. (I cannot emphasize enough how much of a cultural impact Stand By Me in particular had in Japan, to the point where it’s considered the epitome example of a “coming of age story” and “summer adventure”.)

Let’s take a closer look at what’s on each of the Adventure kids’ personal islands:

Hikari is probably the one in the most unusual position among this group, since she didn’t join until over the halfway point, and the first arc she got involved in revolved around everyone wanting her and Tailmon dead. Thus, the memory we get to see her involved in is the Numemon factory in Adventure episode 49. Although this was in the middle of the Dark Masters arc (and, uniquely, very close to the end of the series where a lot of stress was involved), due to the limited amount of time she got to be in the Digital World, this was the one time she got to do something really cool and awesome and impressive for herself that had nothing to do with the others (again: see how the requirements for these islands require not fraternizing with friends and being isolated).

One thing that the Adventure kids got to do that wasn’t in play in 02 was that there were a lot of “romantic experiences”, involving strange adventures and things like phone boxes on the beach, and, very significantly, “Digimon friends” -- ones that the kids made a huge note of bonding with over the course of the series. This contributes to a certain sense of whimsy that was involved in this adventure that the 02 quartet ultimately never ended up getting to foster, because the lack of the time dilation phenomenon meant that they spent much less time in the Digital World overall (more on this in a bit), and once the time dilation stopped, it meant that these kinds of “whimsical” experiences were ones the Adventure group was permanently torn away from once that adventure ended. That dropping of the time dilation phenomenon not only cut that initial adventure short, it also prevented any future ones like it from ever happening again.

And, of course, this is an extremely rose-colored memory, because shortly afterwards, the Numemon ended up all sacrificing themselves for Hikari. But hey, when you’re in a space that can eternally loop good memories forever, everything’s fine as long as we conveniently never get to that part, right?

From this point on, you’ll notice that all of the memories that show up on these islands are from before the halfway point of the series, because after that, things started getting increasingly pear-shaped and much more difficult to disentangle the stress, mental breakdowns, and witnessing of deaths from. (Hikari’s probably wouldn’t have come from such a late incident if she hadn’t joined the party so late.) Although there still were looming threats around the horizon in the beginning of Adventure, they weren’t always immediately apparent to the kids at every turn, and in fact, the beginning of the series involved more of a “well, we’re in this situation and probably need to get home somehow” aura than it did a “the world is in danger and all of us might die” aura. (It’s also in direct contrast to the 02 group, who were given the details of the crisis and what they needed to do roughly from the get-go.) So in other words, if you want to have some rose-colored nostalgia about the romanticism of this adventure, these are some of the best episodes to pull from.

Takeru’s is obviously from the Village of Beginnings, corresponding to Adventure episode 12, when he and Patamon got to have a fun romp through the village, play together, meet Elecmon, and learn about how Digimon are born. It’s also very much something he did without the others, only with Patamon, and had a lot of “fun and happiness” associated with (later solo episodes with Takeru had a lot more upsetting events more intrinsically tied with it), and, again, it’s extremely rose-colored -- it wasn’t even a day later when Angemon died in front of Takeru’s eyes. But hey, that’s even more reason to pick a moment from before then to stay in forever! Can’t have trauma if that trauma never happens, right?

Also, note that Takeru is one of the few here who’s confirmed to be aware of the partnership dissolution issue at this point, and, unlike Koushirou, isn’t confirmed to have accepted a forward-thinking mentality about it yet -- this is a very, very prime time for his fears of being separated from Patamon again to have a nasty relapse.

Mimi’s is the closest to the midpoint of the series, from the affair with the Geckomon and Otamamon castle (from Adventure episode 25; the metal railings here resemble the stage railings from that episode). It’s from the period of time that was a “lull” -- when nobody actually knew about the encroaching threat of Vamdemon quite yet, and for all it was worth, there was no longer any danger. So Mimi got to live happily in the comfort of the castle and play around with the Geckomon and Otamamon...which, of course, also conveniently excludes the affair where she went on a power trip, made everyone miserable due to her selfishness, and immediately felt guilt over it.

Mimi’s associations with this incident are not entirely negative; she was clearly still having fun singing for them in the end (note how her clothing during that scene involved her regular outfit, which she has on here), and she still had a positive impression of her relationship with the Geckomon and Otamamon as per Adventure episode 47 and 02 episode 6 (and as per 02 episode 15, even though everyone’s initial encounter with TonosamaGeckomon ended badly, nobody actually has any lingering grudge against him). So if you filter out that whole affair with the power trip and the resulting embarrassment, it was a meeting with a bunch of fun Digimon friends, a romantic little castle, and a fun stage session where Mimi got to sing.

Jou’s refers to the Infinity Mountain incident in Adventure episode 7, and even from the get-go you can already see the level of rose-coloredness in Jou’s gesture -- in the actual incident depicted, Jou went to the mountain out of a sense of obligation and stress, and the initial climbing involved him having a bit of a bickering moment with Gomamon. But once they did get up there, it was actually their first time the two of them got to really “bond” -- and not only that, their encounter with Unimon had Jou even look on it with fascination, before the Dark Gear had ever come into play.

So in the end, Jou really would have found the incident enjoyable and worthwhile if not for that, and from there you can understand why it would be appealing for him to revisit that setting and finally get to have a bit of calm fun with Gomamon there -- especially since, again, the Neverland islands have a very strong preference for isolating the kids from others, and this was one of the few times Jou got to have a major moment of calm like this alone with Gomamon, with a slight reprieve from the constant feeling of stress and duty.

Koushirou’s most prominently resembles the “sealed room” in the factory in Adventure episode 5, and while Koushirou certainly continued to make a large number of exciting discoveries after that, this was the situation where Koushirou, with no one else but Tentomon to worry about in the immediate vicinity, got to have the largest sensation of “novelty” -- where he first came upon the fascinating discovery of data manipulating reality around him, and he actually got to see the world change around him by wiping things off a wall.

And, of course, there were other things going on like Tentomon confronting him with his first existential crisis, and how things quickly went south with Andromon...but we don’t have to remember that part for now, right?

An interesting thing about Koushirou: the circumstances of how he was “kidnapped” in the first place are actually somewhat obscured compared to the other four in this scene, since Menoa presumably needed him conscious in order to get his list out of him, resulting in his kidnapping scene also involving an emerging Eosmon and not having him be instantly taken the way we see Takeru and Hikari (more on this in the section below). It’s thus unclear whether he’d be in their boat had his position in Menoa’s plan not been unusual -- said memories in Neverland involved “gathering information and learning more”, something he still actively involved himself with even after the events of Adventure, and he’s also the first one to reach a forward-thinking mentality about the partnership dissolution phenomenon. Either way, once he was already dragged into Neverland, it’s natural that the place could find a good memory for him in the same way it did for the other kids who were “manually” dragged in, but the actual method of entry and whether Koushirou's post-Adventure life put him in a mindset similar to that of the 02 quartet (again, see below) is a bit ambiguous.

So here’s an interesting part about how the 02 quartet gets involved in this story: their own encounters with Eosmon happen during a part where the method of kidnapping has abruptly changed. As many have pointed out, this is also when the degree of the targets Menoa wanted had also suddenly escalated, because while her previous claims had involved the idea of kidnapping like-minded adults (who, indeed, were entertaining thoughts of nostalgia to even some degree), she was now kidnapping actual children, ones who weren’t even nearly at the point of the supposed drudgery of adulthood that Menoa claimed they would eventually have, and with her arrogantly deciding she knew better for all of them. The part that becomes particularly intriguing about this is that the exact same thing happens with Miyako -- she is explicitly stated to have connected her laptop to the Internet, resulting in an Eosmon physically emerging and chasing her instead of instantaneously snatching away her consciousness through a camera like her own fellow 02 group members Takeru and Hikari.

So in other words, the 02 quartet’s favorable position in this incident doesn’t just have to do with being lucky enough to have gotten Koushirou’s warning about the Eosmon early; they (or at least Miyako) also seem to have a certain degree of outright immunity to it, much like the young children who aren’t old enough to have nostalgia yet. (Also, keep in mind that Takeru was caught thanks to a security camera; “excess caution with electronic devices” alone wouldn’t necessarily have guaranteed their safety.)

Recalling that, for the most part, Takeru and Hikari are usually treated more like 02 group members in the context of this narrative yet are, in this one case, treated as being potentially nostalgia-prone, it stands to reason that the main difference between the two of them and their fellow members in the 02 group is the fact that Takeru and Hikari went on the adventure in 1999, and the quartet did not. So in other words, the reason the 02 quartet isn’t as prone to this is not so much that they’re fundamentally different-minded people, as much as they have a distinct lack of an experience they can be attached to the way the Adventure group is to their own 1999 adventure. (Remember that Menoa’s kidnappings work heavily on subconscious feelings; you can’t blame anyone for having these kinds of feelings no matter how much they’ve consciously learned.)

As I said earlier, it’s foolhardy to pretend that Adventure was all sunshine and roses, and, likewise, it’s also foolhardy to pretend that 02 was nothing but suffering for everyone involved. Both series involved a lot of balancing of funny, silly moments to be treasured as much as they involved stress (which is why people are so attached to both, after all). So the question is not so much how happy they were in their childhoods as much as the nature of what that happiness came from, and what relation it has to their current lives. And when you look at what experiences the 02 quartet had back in 02, you might notice a thread of the fact that it is significantly harder to romanticize the events of 02 than it is Adventure.

Let’s put it this way: Let’s say that the 02 quartet was kidnapped into Neverland and placed onto islands that fit Menoa’s view of happiness. What, exactly, would you pick from 02 itself that would work? What kind of “happiness” did they have back then that’s so romantic, so impossible to replicate now, that they’d want to go back to because it’s better than their lives now once you disentangle all of the bad stuff?

...Not much. Not much at all, actually. Hanging out in the computer room together? Doesn’t seem like they cared that much about the computer room part as much as the fact the others were there bantering with them (which would put a huge nail in Menoa’s islands mandating isolationism). Going out on a picnic together? No reason they can’t just go on another picnic again (and if the BD box is to be believed, that’s exactly what they did, and they even added Ken to it while they were at it). Hanging out with their Digimon in real life and doing silly hijinks? They’re...probably still doing that now, actually. Getting to find true happiness at a Christmas party? That’s a party from the real world (again, something they most certainly continued to do thereafter), one where the happiness came not from the romanticism of anything that happened to do with some adventure, but just the happiness of being surrounded by true friends, which, again, Ken is still clearly getting to do by the time of Kizuna.

Once you look at the circumstances of what the “adventure” of 02 was to the 02 group, you may realize that it doesn’t really resemble the traditional romantic image of an “adventure” much at all. Sure, they were blessed with being able to regularly go back and forth between the Digital World from the get-go, but it meant that -- especially without the time dilation in play -- the Digital World became much less of a picturesque area associated with a one-time memorable adventure as much as something they had to squeeze in their after-hours while juggling it with their school. The circumstances they encountered their Digimon and the Digital World in were at a point where it had a certain level of “mundane” to them, compared to their seniors; it wasn’t a “fantasy adventure in the Digital World” when so much of the story also revolved around real-world events as well, and you can’t really find many “mysterious fantasy” events in 02 that resemble much of those in Adventure. The closest might be...Daisuke seeing Numemon pile out of a vending machine in 02 episode 1? (Not very romantic.) Daisuke getting chased around by a Tortomon in 02 episode 22? (Really not very romantic.) Iori getting to tour the ocean with Submarimon? (Implied to more about relief from how much he was holding himself back than the uniqueness of the experience in itself.) Ken’s long-time-ago flashback from 02 episode 23 about meeting Wormmon for the first time? (Defeating a Gazimon is hardly that impressive; the important part was him bonding with Wormmon, which he’s...uh...still doing now?)

There weren’t any lasting relationships with Digimon friends like the ones in Adventure, maybe encountering some civilians once and not seeing them much again after that, especially since the lack of time dilation meant not getting to spend as much time visiting them much at all (think about all of the really fun experiences that the Adventure group probably had that weren’t shown in the actual Adventure TV series, just because it probably didn’t have enough drama that would make a good TV episode plot). This means that there’s very little, if at all, of 02 that represents something this group would want so badly to recreate that they can’t already do now; everything from back then was either something comparatively mundane, or something they actually would not want back. Unlike with Adventure, where a lot of the kids had irreplaceable moments that only happened to be spoiled a bit later, a lot of the “really awesome accomplishments” from the first half of 02 were explicitly against Ken, someone whom they’d probably rather not dwell on fighting again because of how much they love him now; many of those good memories are “retroactively poisoned” because of that, and it’s much, much more difficult to make a rose-colored version of those memories disentangled from the bad, because of how fundamentally intrinsic that retroactive poisoning becomes.

And, when you think about it, the mandate of “you have to be alone on your own island” would pretty much break these four in particular, especially since the 02 group is portrayed as the type to need mutual support more than anything else, and so many of the events that represent “happiness” specifically involved the happiness of each other being present. It’s not to say that the 02 quartet had no moments of happiness when alone with their partners, but, rather, being with each other provided so much more fulfillment to them that Menoa’s offer of a memory of their past that requires them to be alone probably pales in comparison to anything they could do now in each other’s presence. Maybe, like with the other kids depicted in these scenes, they could be buttered up with something nice if you successfully got them into Neverland, but it’s not like they have any real wistfulness about anything from back then to the point that they’d be subconsciously drawn towards it instead of having to be dragged in kicking and screaming -- and especially in the case of Miyako, the same one who managed to evade an Eosmon here, who was offered a similar “chance to be alone” back in 02 episode 49 and didn’t take very long to decide she hated it because of how much of her happiness comes from getting to be with others.

By the time of the end of Adventure, the Adventure kids’ ideal situation was to have a romantic and fun 110-year adventure with the sights and fun of the Digital World, with all of the weird fantasy surrealism and less of the world-saving, and that’s something they never got to have (and that Menoa was inherently offering them). By the time of the end of 02, the 02 quartet’s ideal situation was...to find a way to get back to normal life and hope their friend feels a little better, and that “ideal situation” is still persisting even into the time of Kizuna, so it’s hard to imagine they really want more than that.

And, again, when you extrapolate this into what Kizuna’s trying to say about real life, adulthood, and nostalgia: it is true that Menoa’s projecting a belief that absolutely does not apply to everyone. While it’s true that many people feel that childhood had a certain kind of magic that you can’t get back in adulthood, there are possibly just as many people who aren’t really all that nostalgic to begin with, either due to trauma or something about their childhoods being miserable, or, even in the lack of such miserable events, simply enjoying the added freedom and expanded range of ability that comes with adulthood to the point they consider it to be more than worth the tradeoff. The 02 group basically represents this crowd -- Ken’s life right now beats out his past in pretty much nearly every respect, and while there are certain concerns about not being able to meet up as often, they’re finding the same ways to do the same kinds of over-the-top hijinks they did back in 02, with arguably even more range now that they get to exploit Digital Gates to do world travel and act without worrying about their parents. They’re basically like the adults who see Menoa’s creed of “childhood is better because adulthood sucks” and go “sorry, can’t relate.”

That said, remember: this isn’t because the 02 quartet is somehow mentally stronger or anything, but rather just a byproduct of what experiences they've had and haven’t had. Takeru and Hikari’s position is unique here -- for all intents and purposes their mentalities are portrayed as closer to the 02 group’s, but they did still have the experience their seniors had and are thus still capable of being close to their position in this one regard. In the end, everyone is different, it’s no sin to have feelings based on those differences, and “being able to relate” to one’s position is also an important key here; because the 02 group’s position is so alien to Menoa’s, it’s unlikely they could have tackled her problems nearly as intimately as their seniors could.

What we learn about Menoa’s backstory establishes that she forced her vision of nostalgic happiness on everyone based on her own perception of her past in such a warped, rose-colored manner. She conveniently omitted or forgot about details such as the fact that her life as a “child” involved feeling ostracized from everyone and that she herself was guilty of neglecting Morphomon. Not only that, she herself claims that she’s the only one who knows what this feels like -- that nobody relates to her -- and thus, you can see that she came to her conclusion that her experiences are universal by the power of sheer extrapolation, hence why she thinks everyone inevitably loses their partner upon reaching adulthood despite pretty significant amounts of evidence to the contrary. (For all it’s worth, the fact that she still considers herself as having “become an adult” at 14 just because she got into university at that time is pretty conceited.)

Menoa’s existence as being so starkly in contrast to the 02 quartet’s is very likely because her entire character was built up from the ground that way -- her entire backstory of skipping grades into university is heavily based on 02′s initial development premise and Ken’s own backstory, meaning she explicitly represents the path that Ken and the other 02 kids chose not to take, and the timing of certain events in her backstory seems almost deliberately engineered to prevent her from witnessing some of 02′s important answers to Kizuna’s conflict, most notably her inability to witness the final battle and the important lessons everyone present learned about following one’s dreams without restraint, and how that relates to one’s partner. Menoa’s mindset is basically that level of incompatible with 02′s themes of “moving on from the past” and “not caving to arbitrary societal expectations”, to the point her character could only get to this point by going out of the way to exclude her from 02′s story and events, because she’s fundamentally built as a character who started off on a very similar path as them (getting to integrate her Digimon partner into normal life, having a similar backstory to Ken) before veering off on a very different one.

Moreover, about that backstory, and the reason why 02 was conceived as such a criticism of the concept of “skipping grades into university”: the concern that someone in this position will be kept from making any friends their age. Menoa puts the moment of “being with one’s partner” on such a pedestal and considers herself to be “the only one who knows what this feels like” partially because she has a fundamentally warped view of friendship itself. Even the Adventure group, which may not have had quite the absurdly tight level of bonding the 02 group had, still broke out of the illusion via Taichi and Yamato reaching out to them, and Taichi and Yamato giving each other mutual support helped them make the decisions they did in the movie. The movie is titled “bonds”, and “bonds” doesn’t just refer to those between human and Digimon partner, but also bonds between each other; Taichi, Yamato, and Sora slowly drifting away from the others at the start of the movie has very strong relevance to their respective existential crises, and the role that Taichi and Yamato play in supporting each other, and Mimi’s in supporting Sora in To Sora and even beyond that, say a lot as to how they’re already expected to be much better off than Menoa was.

It’s not that adulthood is inherent drudgery; it’s that Menoa’s own circumstances really are that warped to the point where she sees her very unusual experiences as fundamentally synonymous with how life is supposed to work in general. She was so obsessed with “being independent”, “being useful to the world”, and “being on her own” that she had no mentality of making friends or connecting to others besides her own partner, and once her partner disappeared, she seemed to make no attempt to rectify that. So of course her life in university following that ended up being not nearly as fulfilling as she’d hoped, since she was getting no real emotional support from anywhere, and, as 02 itself also drove home, apparent “approval from society” only ever makes you as “happy” as a Dark Seed-implanted child if you’re not also being supported by your loved ones in the process. Her adulthood sucked, and she decided that everything about her rose-colored childhood meant that childhood is fundamentally superior in every way, and thus decided that keeping everyone else in it would be “saving” them from the terror it involves -- even though (even if they’re not aware of the specifics of everything) the 02 quartet is not the kind to be able to relate to this at all, and, eventually, Taichi and Yamato, who do understand her position a bit better due to their own experiences, are able to get her to reconsider a little.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers #shihameta

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep15 [FINALE]

For better or worse I think Ryukishi achieved exactly what he set out to do with this series, and I guess everyone’s just gonna be forced to reckon with how they feel about his own perspective on this franchise versus how they feel about it, lol.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I’m not entirely sure where to even start with this, but I guess the TL;DR is that I honestly think Gou/Sotsu was ultimately just fine despite it’s issues, and part me of can’t help but be like ‘I told you so, lol’ about how this really did end with this episode, and also committed pretty hard to the Umineko prequel elements.

It’s not like all of my theories were correct in the end, but I at least think I was pretty spot on in my prediction last week that this would end with the miracle of them side-stepping the sword issue entirely and choosing the third option of forgiveness and reconciliation. And also them ending it with an epilogue where we go back to the Matsuribayashi timeline and get a happy ending for Rika and Satoko that provides a ‘non-magical interpretation’ for the story while also giving us an idea of how Bern and Lambda formally split off into their own entities and start the relationship we see in Umineko.

I didn’t quite expect them to go down the route of having them agree to just spend a few years apart and accept that they don’t need to literally always be together, but I think that was a really good way to wrap things up between them. It’s pretty much the healthiest compromise to their conflict that doesn’t come across like it completely invalidates one of their dreams. I get why it feels too anti-climactic and convenient for people, but when you pull at that thread you get into wider topics of what the entire story is about, since this was always going to end with Satoko being redeemed and forgiven. People might not have taken him seriously, but Ryukishi was 100% genuine about his regrets about Matsuribayashi’s ending, and how part of why he came up with this new story was to create a better ending, while also doing more with Satoko as a character.

Basically I think a lot of the fandom negativity towards this boils down to people fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that Matsuribayashi was even ‘flawed’ in this sort of way to begin with, or that Satoko was badly written. It’s valid to disagree on this stuff, but at the very least we all have to grapple with how Ryukishi has his own specific relationship with this series.

People like to focus on how he’s a troll who likes to mess with people, but I feel like this is a bit of a wake-up call for people about how he’s actually extremely sincere, almost to a fault, and he likes to use his stories as a vehicle for expressing his personal philosophies and ideals.

This whole story is also a good example of how he just sees this as ultimately being a fictional story about fictional characters, and not literally a matter of real people who need to be sentenced for their crimes or whatever. As early as the original VN he was almost being outright preachy about the message that nobody is irredeemable, and that philosophy carries through to this. But to be more specific, nobody *in this story* is irredeemable. He’s pretty open about the fact that in practice you can’t apply this sort of ideal to real life, but fictional stories are their own separate matter.

I think this whole issue of how he views this as a story first and foremost is also the central reason why this ended in a way that comes across as Satoko being let off too easy for her crimes. One way or another, Ryukishi’s made it clear that he sees this as being no different to how other characters had arcs where they committed crimes but still got forgiven, or how Takano is basically a straight up war criminal who also got forgiven for her crimes.

Anyway, this episode at least committed to the Umineko stuff, so that was satisfying. Sure there’s people that still want to deny it, but at this point I think a lot of people are just being stubborn, so it’s not like anything would have really convinced them, lol. I’m also genuinely not sure what people even would have expected them to do beyond what we saw her, aside from having the two of them literally put on their gothic lolita outfits and turn to the camera and go ‘we are literally Bernkastel and Lambdadelta from the video game series Umineko When They Cry’. I almost feel like there’s some kind of misunderstanding from people who aren’t familiar with Umineko when it comes to the idea of what it even means for this to be ‘an Umineko prequel’, or ‘a Bern/Lambda origin story’. I mean, this is quite literally exactly what I expected and hoped for in that regard. It’s not like I was expecting them to incorporate anything related to, like, Beatrice or the Ushiromiya family.

I think this is also one of those things where you just have to decide for yourself whether or not you want to earnestly engage with the story that’s being told, or if you want to assume that there’s some level of malice or trickery going on.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to literally have Rika and Satoko recite part of Bern and Lambda’s final conversation with each other word for word, lmao. Combined with the scene at the end where ‘Witch Satoko’ talks to herself about how she’s going to give her body back to Satoko while she goes chasing after Rika, it was literally just the exact origin story of their relationship as it’s depicted in Umineko.

I still feel like this would all only really be ‘worth it’ if we actually get something like a full on anime remake for Umineko, but at this point I can’t help but feel satisfied with this part of it all.

It’s not like I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is perfect or anything, though. I don’t hate it as much as basically everyone else does, but I think Ryukishi’s the sort of VN writer who really struggles with the shift to writing for an anime. I think a big part of the frustration people have is just from how this is formatted as a weekly anime series spread across basically an entire year, instead of being something like a stand-alone VN chapter that you can read at whatever pace you want, even if it ultimately takes the same amount of time to read as it would to watch all of Gou/Sotsu.

There’s also the whole issue of this being a sort-of-remake, which snowballed into a whole list of structural problems. They absolutely tried too hard to have their cake and eat it too, and they should have just committed to it being made for old fans only, instead of trying to sincerely incorporate elements from the VN that old fans don’t care about anymore because they’ve gone over it already.

And as I’ve said several times before, it was a major issue for them to decide to put Nekodamashi in the middle of Gou and then spend like 20 episodes on flashback answer arcs until finally getting back to that cliffhanger. I’ve been waiting until this all ended to decide exactly how I feel about that, and now that it’s all over I still think it was a really bad idea. I don’t think it was an issue for them to reveal that Satoko’s the culprit that early, but having the gun cliffhanger specifically happen that early just gave people misguided expectations and tainted the answer arcs because people were just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. And then the cliffhanger itself ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, which is what I’d been fearing would happen. It would have worked fine if they shuffled it around so that the cliffhanger happened right before Kagurashi and was followed up in the very next episode, or if this was a VN where you could binge your way through the flashback stuff, but spending like half of an entire real-life year to get back to that point only to have the resolution be ‘Satoko just shoots Rika and the death loops keep going’ just didn’t really work properly.

I’m a lot more generous towards the Akashi arcs than most people are, since I think they really over-estimate how much re-used content there is there, but they still suffer from the central issue of the show trying to be accessible for new fans. It could have been heavily condensed otherwise, without losing anything in terms of Satoko’s whole character arc.

On the other hand I think the first half of Kagurashi was awful specifically because it highlighted how bad of an idea it was to put Nekodamashi so early in the story. They still ended up having to go back to that arc and repeat it anyway, in the most 1:1 recap-y way in the whole show, but that wouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place if that was instead the first time that arc happened in the show.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would rearrange the story to make it flow better while still following Ryukishi’s intentions, and I think they could have condensed it into a 2-cour season with this sort of structure if they did something like this:

-First arc where Rika gets thrown back into the loop and quickly figures out that somebody intentionally caused this to happen, and it’s not Takano because at least in this idea of mine she’d try and investigate her only to find out that this version of Takano regrets everything and is planning to flee the village with Tomitake.

Basically I think this could tie into the idea of Satoko initially wanting to just concoct an idea world for Rika so that she won’t want to leave this time, but sort of like what I think happens in Saikoroshi, Rika would still reject it, and this time around there’d be the additional layer of her knowing that somebody did this to her for an unknown reason. Maybe they could even initially market it as a new adaptation or a remake of Saikoroshi, and then reveal that it’s a sequel, to keep that whole element to the series. Either way I think this would end with everything going to shit when Rika rejects that fragment and wants to go back to St. Lucia’s, and Satoko basically snaps and kills her, and that way the audience can find out about her being the culprit without Rika finding out about it yet.

Maybe there could even be some dramatic irony where Rika’s attempts to meddle with certain ‘trigger events’, and her displaying her looper side, inadvertently triggers people around her to get paranoid, and the whole fragment would start to spiral into tragedy from there. I think they could at least use the whole conflict in Tatariakashi about Teppei actually being good this time as a starting point for that sorta thing.

-Second arc, rounding out the first cour, which is basically just Satokowashi. I don’t think there’s much that you’d need to change here, but like I said above I like the idea of her initially trying to just invent a perfect world for Rika and her to live in, instead of jumping straight to murder. But maybe instead of her literally just watching Rika’s loops, she could instead just be stuck using her looping powers to try and figure out how to create that ‘perfect world’ in the first place, by personally investigating all of the different tragedies and how to prevent them.

-Staring the second cour, a third arc where we basically just get to see those loops Satoko goes through, and her whole process of solving the tragedies and ‘purifying’ characters like Teppei and Takano, until we eventually see her perspective on the first arc, and how she reacts to Rika ultimately rejecting the world she tried to make for her.

-A fourth and final arc which is basically just Nekodamashi + Kagurashi, where she just totally snaps and tries to just torture Rika into never wanting to leave the village again, and eventually Satoko gets exposed and they have their direct confrontation with each other.

With that sorta story structure, you’d keep all the relevant bits of Gou/Sotsu as it is now, while being more focused on Rika and Satoko instead of doing kinda half-assed reruns of the Rena and Shion arcs. It’d also push the big cliffhanger between them until near the end of the show, while still revealing to the audience relatively early on that Satoko’s the culprit.

I’d also like them to do more with Satoshi and Shion, so maybe like with how Teppei gets redeemed and Satoko almost gets to have a happy life with him in Tatariakashi, the central question arc of this hypothetical story could also involve Satoko making sure that Satoshi wakes up from his coma, and Shion also gets to have a good relationship with all of them. You could probably do something interesting with the idea of Satoshi and Shion being in the camp of not trusting Teppei and his whole redemption arc.

Honestly I could spend a long time talking about how I would have done things differently, lol. For one thing, I think the Akashi arcs would have been much better if they just changed it so that Satoko used psychological tactics to make people paranoid, and we completely cut out the whole syringe plot device. I get how it fits with Satoko’s whole certainty gimmick, but it made those arcs way too predictable. Even if we knew the outcome, it’d at least be entertaining to see exactly how Satoko might go out of her way to set up the different tragedies. We kinda got glimpses of that sorta plot point in Wataakashi when things seemed to go outside of her control, but they didn’t really do much with it.

Anyway, this is a whole lot of words to say that I think that in spite of the serious structural issues going on, I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is fine, and was at least working with a lot of perfectly good ideas that could have been executed much better.

Also, on a side note, that one scene during their fist-fight at the start where the art-style changes a bit was kinda weird, but I really liked how it looked, and part of me almost wishes the whole show looked like that, lol. I like Akio Watanabe’s character designs, but I feel like that sort of stylized, almost TWEWY-ish art style would have been really fitting for this series, especially in the horror/action parts.

Oh, and the new rendition of You was so good it almost felt emotionally manipulative, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu #this got kinda long but I still feel like there's so much more I could say about this if I wanted to

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alextir-creates · 3 years

Text

Zutara Fankids by Tigrette-of-Fire

…Look, I’m a little embarrassed about the fact that I ship zutara, given how polarized the atla fandom can be about shipping, but I had so much fun designing Taiyin and Arnaaluk I just couldn’t resist.

In all honesty, this was more an exercise in mixing genetics and expressions of two cultures than anything else (I mean seriously, I wasn’t exactly inspiredor anything when I named them lmao). Like I said in my Sukka fankids piece, I’m a mixed-race, multi-ethnic person – and getting to design characters that are of more than one culture and thinking about how to best visually express a connection with both sides of that character’s heritage is really fun for me. Zutara fankids are a goldmine for that kind of thing.

More info and image ID under the cut!

Unlike Taiyin and Arnaaluk, these guys can’t exist in a largely LoK-compliant verse. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would’ve changed on the cultural sensitivity front in LoK, and honestly if I’m going to put the time and effort into doing that… I’m going to be self-indulgent and add my preferred ships, even though – and I cannot stress this enough – shipping has no bearing on why I dislike LoK.

So, welcome to the Hijack!Verse, I guess (which is to say the AU where I hijack the AtLA post-canon and do what I want); it’s completely self-indulgent and I’m sorry in advance. Taiyin and Arnaaluk absolutely exist in this verse too – and tbqh, most of the content I plan to make for them will be Hijack!Verse, not LoK compliant. Sorry again.

In any case, onto the Zutara kids! Let me give you a short run-down.

Kya (pictured at 16 in this drawing), Crown Princess of the Fire Nation and firebender, is the eldest. She’s outspoken, cheerful, and is a touch more mischievous than she perhaps should be (all in good fun or in the name of fucking with bigots, of course – she and her cousin Taiyin are two peas in a pod about this. I already have ideas about a Fire Boomerang Incident in mind when it comes to the two of them putting their heads together). Izumi (pictured at 15 in this drawing), is the second child. She’s likely a non-bender, and trains to mastery both with a spear in the Southern Water Tribe’s style and with a bow and arrows under the Yuyan Archers. On the more introverted end of things and fond of organization (Izumi is definitely on the autism spectrum), she likely grows up to be Kya’s Minister of Finance. Lu Ten (pictured at 13 in this drawing) is the baby of the family – on the shy end and emotionally intuitive. He’s a waterbender and chooses healing as his focus. As an adult, Lu Ten probably moves to the Southern Water Tribe pretty much full time – though, of course, he makes time to visit his sisters and vice versa.

I uh, honestly have more planned, but this is getting really long so I’ll save that for another time. I do want to say though that Kya, Izumi, and Lu Ten split their time growing up between the Fire Nation and the South Pole. It’s really important to me that they get to have equal connection to the Southern Water Tribe and its culture as they do to the Fire Nation – and frankly, there’s no way Katara wouldn’t make sure that they did. (This also means that Katara – and to a lesser degree, Zuko, given his responsibilities as Fire Lord – is splitting her time as well. There will be no cutting Katara off from her homeland OR stymying her drive to interact with the world/be a major global figure in this verse, no siree.

Avatar: The Last Airbender © Mike DeMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon

Art © Me

[Image ID: Neck up headshots of three teenagers. The teen to the top right, labelled “Kya,” has light-to-medium brown skin, black hair, and blue eyes. She’s smiling widely enough that you can see her teeth, and is drawn at a three-quarter view facing the viewer’s left. She has two looped braids hanging from each of her temples, which are each secured with dark blue ties with gold trim. The rest of her hair is pulled up into a topknot, on which she is wearing a crown consisting of a red band and two stylized gold flames – the same hairpiece Avatar Roku is depicted wearing. To the lower right of her is a stylized drawing of the Fire Nation’s pre-imperial insignia, drawn in red.

The teen to the middle left, labelled “Izumi,” has light-to-medium brown skin, dark brown hair, and gold eyes. She is also drawn at a three-quarter view but is facing to the viewer’s right. Her expression is somewhere between concerned and amused, and her mouth is open as if to comment on whatever is causing that reaction. She sports the same “hair loopies” Katara does in the series – each adorned with a pale blue bead. The rest of her hair (and where the ends of the ‘hair loopies” are secured) is in a high ponytail (in universe called a phoenix plume) reminiscent of Zuko’s pre-banishment hairstyle. Her phoenix plume is secured by a red ribbon and has a small hairpiece shaped like a flame (similar to the crown we see Azula wear) in front of the tie. The motion of her hair implies that she is turning to look in the viewer’s direction.

The teen to the bottom right, labelled “Lu Ten,” has light brown skin, dark brown hair, and gold eyes. His expression looks vaguely surprised. He is also drawn at a three-quarter view, facing to the viewer’s left. His hair is shoulder length, with the top portion tied back into a warrior’s wolf-tail. His wolf-tail is decorated with the same, flame-shaped hairpiece Izumi wears. He is wearing an cream colored necklace akin to the one Sokka wears in the series. To the immediate right of him is the Southern Water Tribe crest, drawn in pale blue.

All of these headshots are circumscribed by a purple rectangular “frame.” The artist’s signature, reading “AlexTir” is in the bottom right corner

End ID]

#atla #fanart #digital art #captioned #my art #cartooning #original character #fandom ocs #my ocs #fanchildren #let me know if I should tag as lok critical

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lesetoilesfous · 3 years

Note

For DWC: "These chains never leave me, I keep dragging them around" from the Florence prompt list for Anders/Fenris?

Ah I had so much fun with this, thank you! I hope I did it justice!!

(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Fenders

Characters: Fenris, Anders

Tags: hurt/comfort, angst, canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, graphic reference to infanticide, Tevinter is awful, graphic reference to abortion, oblique reference to sexual assault, self-hatred, mention of self-harm, suicidal ideation. Basically post-Danarius, and all that entails. Characters dealing with trauma, PTSD and survivor’s guilt.

Rating: Mature

It’s been one week, two days and three hours since Fenris killed Danarius. He is sitting with Hawke and her friends in her mansion, because he had not been able to conceal his discomfort when they’d visited The Hanged Man, unable to remove from his recent memory the stain of blood on the floorboards and the sting of his sister’s betrayal. Corff had, at least, worked a miracle with the former. As far as the latter was concerned - Fenris did not think that Isabela was the only one who’d noticed him startling in the Lowtown crowd at the sight of every redheaded elf. The trait was, blessedly, a rare one. There was that, at least.

In the beautiful marble fireplace, Hawke’s fire roars loud and red, crackling with heat that licks gold light over the sandy, muscular back of her mabari, half asleep on the wine purple rug laid over the stone. Sandal is humming somewhere in one of the rooms nearby, and occasionally, under the loud sound of Hawke’s voice and her companions’ laughter, Fenris can make out the soft sound of Bodahn talking to his son. Orana, of course, is inaudible. She knows better.

Fenris bites the inside of his cheek, hard, and drinks deeply from his cup. The wine in it is thick and rich and velvet. Fenris can feel Marian’s eyes on him, but he can also see, from the corner of his eye, the way that her muscular arm is looped casually around Isabela’s shoulders. As he lowers his cup, he catches the way that Isabela tilts her head back, thick black hair falling over Marian’s tunic as she brushes her lips against her ear. He can see the way Marian flushes.

Fenris gets to his feet, and by the fireplace Dog raises her great sandy head. He gives her a small, calming gesture, and next to the low table onto which they’ve scattered their cards, Marian frowns at him. “Fenris?”

Fenris motions vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. “I need some water.” He tries to ignore the eyes of his companions on him as he goes. Instead, he leaves the warm, firelit parlour and walks into the cold, empty rooms not baked gold by fireplaces. Fenris feels his shoulders lower as soon as he gets to the second room, standing in the grey and black dusty shadow of an utterly deserted music room. Through the narrow stone windows of the Amell Estate, he can see the deep black sky of Kirkwall, scattered with stars. Houses fall like broken marble down towards the sea, which crashes with a distant roar against the cliffs. At the edge of the horizon, moonlight races silver across the waves. Fenris stares at it, and thinks about being a younger man, on an island, thinking that it would be the last thing he ever saw.

“Nice view, isn’t it?”

Fenris whirls on instinct, limbs moving with muscle memory as the lyrium sewn into his skin sets his nerve endings on fire and he plunges his hand into the intruder’s chest. In the dark, Anders’ blonde hair is grey and silver. If he’s bothered by the pain about which Fenris’ victims had so often complained to him before their grisly demise, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he raises his eyebrows at Fenris over the wrist plunged into his chest. Fenris squeezes his fingers, and feels the frantic, shuddering jerk of Anders’ heart in his palm, the warm, wet sensation of it dulled by the distance of the Fade.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

Anders breathes out, a long, shuddering breath that belies his calm demeanour. Fenris had not previously thought him capable of such a poker face. His heart beats in Fenris’ hand like a bird, struggling. “I don’t know.” Anders meets his eyes, and in the dark his are almost black, but his blonde eyelashes are gilded silver by the moon. “I guess I trust you.”

Fenris’ fingers uncurl around Anders’ heart, and the mage’s shoulders lower from where they’d been scraping his ears. Fenris’ gaze falls to his long, crooked fingers, but there’s no telltale spark of magic there. Slowly, Fenris withdraws his hand, watching it fade through the frayed fabric of Anders’ coat as he tries to ignore the burn of a hot, embarrassed flush pushing up into his cheeks.

Outside the mansion, on the streets of Kirkwall, a pair of mabari start barking, great bellowing things that echo against the stone buildings. A cat yowls, and far off there’s the sound of people shouting. Fenris stares at his bare feet on the stone floor of Hawke’s mansion and hates the fact that his eyes are burning as he tries to untangle his tongue, and dispel the impression that Anders will do something awful to him for his trespass. (Hadriana’s smile flickers behind his eyelids every time he blinks. Her fingers curl, wreathed in green light. His own screams echo in his ears long before the pain hits.)

“Are you alright?”

Anders’ voice is rough and soft, and Fenris jerks his head up, falling back on the easy confidence of anger and letting it buoy him up out of his despair.

“What do you care, mage?”

As Fenris speaks he surges forward, feeling his lips curl back from his teeth in a sneer. Anders doesn’t back away, and it leaves their faces mere inches apart. Anders is looking at him oddly, and abruptly Fenris wishes for more light: knowing the man well enough by now after almost a decade to be able to read the spiderweb cracks of wrinkles in his face as the giveaway they tended to be.

“You haven’t been yourself since -” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hates him for it, and abruptly cannot look at him. So instead he turns away, throwing his hands into the empty air as if that will satisfy his urge to hit something.

“Since what? Since I killed him. Tell me, mage, what is my ‘self’? What am I?” Fenris means it as a challenge, but his voice cracks, and when he turns back to Anders, chest heaving, he’s horrified to realise that tears are running down his cheeks. He glances at the open door, leading into the dark and deeper into the mansion. He takes a step in the direction of the doorframe.

“Brave.” Anders says the word quickly, and Fenris stops, unable to force himself to turn around but unable to leave either as some stupid, childish part of him that he had long since thought irreparably ruined rises in delight. “Funny. And you know it, though you pretend you don’t.” It’s getting hard to breathe. Fenris stares into the thick shadows of the next room, where Orana’s drawn the curtains across the window. Elsewhere in the mansion, there’s a cheer and a crow of triumph from Isabela as the rest of their friends laugh.

“Smartest man I’ve ever met, probably.” Anders goes on, but doesn’t move. “Fucking stubborn. Annoying. Terrifying, with a greatsword. And without one.” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hears the catch of his breath as clear as a bell struck at daybreak. “My friend.”

Fenris clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt, and shuts his eyes. More tears fall down his cheeks, tickling his chin as they go.

“A good man. That’s what you are, Fenris.” Anders delivers the proclamation with the same certainty with which he insists on his desperate, hopeless, flawed revolution.

Fenris whirls on him. “And what do you know of good men?” Fenris means it cruelly, and he tries to take satisfaction in the way that Anders flinches. But then the stupid, stubborn, ridiculous man lifts his chin.

“Enough to know one when I see one. And know when he’s being an ass.”

“You know nothing of me!” Fenris almost bellows, and cowers when the words echo. For a moment, both he and Anders hold their breath as they wait for one of Hawke’s servants - or worse - their friends, to come and investigate. But a minute passes, tense as a knife edge, and no one does. Fenris goes on, and tries to ignore the prickling in his sweating hands. “You don’t know what I am. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Dust motes dance silver in the starlight as they fall onto the piano. Anders purses his lips. “Alright, I don’t. But I know that you dress up as Fen’harel for the kids in the alienage every Wintersend. I know you win more often at cards than you say you do, and that you let Merrill win. I know you’re a little bit in love with Isabela, and a little bit in love with Hawke, and it kills you that they chose each other because it kills me too. I know that you have more reason than any bastard I’ve ever met to hurt me until I forget how to breathe and you’re one of very few people who never has. I know that I’ve known you for a decade and you haven’t killed me yet.”

“I might.” It’s not a threat. Fenris doesn’t look at Anders when he says it, staring dully instead at the painting on the wall: some rainy Fereldan landscape, the details of which he can’t make out in the dark.

“But you haven’t.” Anders steps forward, and Fenris steps back, and feels dizzily as if they’re dancing. The moonlight catches on Anders’ chin, and Fenris can make out the faint tooth of a scar just below his bottom lip, hair thin in his stubble. Anders swallows, and breaks Fenris’ gaze, eyes tracing over a lute hanging on the wall. “You know mages don’t get to keep their kids.”

The subject change is so abrupt that Fenris feels as if he’s been physically thrown off kilter. “What?” He’s been standing here long enough to feel the cold, now, and taste the wood polish in the air. Anders goes on, still not looking at him, massaging one hand with the other as his fingers flex.

“They take them away. Can’t abort them, not under Chantry law. I’m a Spirit Healer.”

Fenris’ frown deepens, the back of his head already aching with the dull constant stress of the last fortnight and the sleeplessness that came with it. “I know.” He tries not to make his frustration obvious. Judging by the small grin Anders gives him, he doesn’t succeed.

“I started working with the Circle Healer when I was 17. Day after I was Harrowed. First day wasn’t so bad. A couple lashings. Attempted suicide. Self-harmer. Some kid who said he walked into a wall.” Anders rolls his eyes, huffing a laugh as his hands move to massage his wrists. Fenris watches him carefully. “Second day. There was this girl. Fifteen, Templar father, obviously. I helped deliver that baby.” Anders’ expression shutters. “She wasn’t allowed to see it. I did. I got to hold it, give it to some lieutenant who held it like it was contagious. I don’t even know if it made out of Kinloch. But she begged me to let her hold it and all I could say was that it was already gone.”

“That -” Fenris picks his words as carefully as he would navigate a floor covered in broken glass. “I do not think that you were the one at fault, there.”

“I know.” Anders says the words simply, and reaches up into his hair to pull the tie loose, scratching the tangled waves that fall around his head as he does so. “My point is, when you’re a prisoner, most of the time, the burden is on your gaolor. And you aren’t Danarius’ crimes.”

“It is not the same.” Fenris grinds the words between his teeth as his fingers tighten into fists hard enough to hurt. “I was - the things I did - I did not take babies. I killed them. I broke their skulls on his altars. I aborted them from their mothers before I killed them, too. I cannot - there are not words for the marks that what I have done, what I did, has left on my soul, and I do not know if I will do them again, and I fear them and I fear him, and I fear myself, and I hate them and I hate him and I hate myself, and every hour of every day I live with these cursed chains on my body that I cannot shake no matter how far I run and I do not know how to make it stop.” Once Fenris starts speaking, he can’t slow down, the words falling from his tongue with the tears that run thick and fast down his cheeks as he tears at his arms hard enough to make them bleed. Anders startles forward, and Fenris jerks backward, thrusting his burning hands into the air between them. “I would tear it from my skin. I would rip myself apart piece by piece if I did not know that killing myself would only be a mercy that I have never deserved.” Fenris breathes, and it splinters in his chest. He finishes in a hoarse whisper. “You know nothing of what I am, or what I have been, or what I have suffered, or what I have done. You never have.”

Behind Fenris, through the window, the sound of the ocean beats incessantly against the land. Elsewhere in the mansion, their companions are quiet, and the sound of Sandal’s singing has ceased. Fenris can feel his blood roaring in his ears, and doesn’t bother to brush the tears from his cheeks. Standing in the middle of the room, Anders stares at him, his tall thin figure swaying like a sapling in a breeze.

Then he says, “You’re right. There’s a lot about you that I don’t know or understand and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes. But, Fenris? I need you to know this.” Anders steps forward and gets, stiffly, to his knees, one leg bending more slowly than the other. Fenris stares at him, bewildered, and steps backward until his head bumps softly against the wall. “Forgive the melodrama but uh, I don’t get on my knees for just anyone.” Fenris doesn’t think he has ever seen Anders on his knees, and he realises abruptly that he had never wanted to. Anders gives him a small, nervous smile, and takes a deep breath, swallowing before he speaks. “Fenris. From a mage, on his knees, asking you to listen to him. You deserve to live.”

The sob that works its way out of Fenris’ chest is a living thing, and Fenris chokes on it, sliding down the wall as he begins to cry in earnest. Anders, mercifully, doesn’t move. Fenris doesn’t know how long he cries, only that at the end of it his throat aches and his eyes burn and his head is pounding. But when he opens his eyes, Anders is still there, silver in the dark on his knees next to the piano. Fenris stares at him, and tries to clear his throat.

“You’re a very strange man.”

Anders shrugs, and moves with a visible wince to take the weight off his left knee, leaning against the piano stool as he gingerly unfolds his leg. “I’ve been called worse.”

Slowly, he reaches out into the space between them, scarred, crooked, calloused hand palm upwards, fingers outstretched. Anders looks at him, and his brown eyes are almost black in the dark. Slowly, fighting the sensation that this must be some kind of trap, Fenris reaches out and takes it. Anders’ fingers are cool against his, and his knuckles are bumpy and uneven. But he squeezes Fenris’ hand so hard it’s almost painful, and Fenris feels more tears stinging at the back of his eyes.

For a moment, they sit like that, peaceful in the quiet. Then there’s a soft knock on the doorframe, and Bodahn ducks his head in, face lit by a candle in a brass dish. “Sorry to interrupt messeres, but Mistress Hawke wanted to know if you’d like some libation to keep you company?”

Fenris glances at Anders, half moving to pull his hand back. But Anders’ hand tightens on his, and instead, feeling strangely childish, he nods at Bodahn. “Yes, please. That would be appreciated.”

Bodahn gives him a small, kind smile and ducks his head. “Very good, messere.” He turns, and leaves, and Fenris watches Anders as he shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the barstool, hair fanning out around him like some Orlesian princess.

“I thought you didn’t drink.” It’s not an accusation, motivated more by curiosity than anything.

Anders’ lips curl, and he opens one eye to look at Fenris, fingers tightening in his. “For you? I’ll make an exception. It’s been a long week.”

#dadwc #my fic #fenders #da2 #fenris #anders #tsuraiwrites

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theriverpersonshadow · 3 years

Text

Lamia Drama Part 5

It’s ya boi Oozy. Apparently my brain deeply desires to touch on some potentially uncomfortable subjects today. Warnings for a completely made up medical condition - that is NOT meant to depict anything irl and any similarity to such is completely unintentional on my part - being treated with some seriousness as a chronic condition that does impact Oozy’s life.

Also skirts the line a bit between Corny laziness, general Sansitude, and feelings of guilt and depression. And touch starvation. But thankfully the snake DOES get pet in this and he ends the chapter happy ^u^

The Corny species of lamia belongs to @vex-bittys

< PREV | BEGINNING | NEXT >

Oozy was laying in his hammock, a thing patched together from whatever they make raincoats from, as almost always. He could get down, but then someone would have to deal with the mess. Besides, one of the staff had gotten him a waterproof phone long ago. The hammock was coated in a layer of slime… as was he. As always. Most people found it gross, but he’d been born with it.

Despite what some might think, snakes aren’t slimy… usually. He was a rare exception to that. No one could figure out why, it wasn’t anything wrong with him physically… So far as they could tell his soul just thought he was an amphibian or something. Maybe he should join the Kraits, but they didn’t seem overly fond of his weird magic-mucus either (not that they’d ever say it). Heh. But for real, the best theory anyone had was either that he did have some kind of amphibian magic-gene that wasn’t working right, or that for some reason his soul couldn’t process magic quite right, making a sort of buildup of inert magical sludge. Possibly both. So yeah, he was a slimy boy.

If he showered more often it’d probably be manageable, but then some worker would have to clean up after him on the way to the shower and they’d have to rinse the hammock off too or else there’d be little point in showering in the first place, and if he was taking two or three showers a day, when would anyone else? Plus that’s just a lot of showers. Nah, it’s easier for everyone to just not. Or maybe those are just excuses, but hey, he’s a lazybones, born and bred.

Oozy sits there in a half-daze, only partly awake as his hammock slowly sways. There was a podcast going on in his ears but he was only half-listening. Somehow he’d gotten from DnD advice to doctors? More likely he just hit a button by accident. Regardless of how he got here, her voice is soothing, even if he probably doesn’t need to know much about orthopedics. It’s enough to make him want to nap…

Until footsteps come by. He waits for them to pass, but they don’t. He peaks an eye open to see a girl pacing back and forth, occasionally stealing glances at the nursery. Looks like they’ve got a new volunteer. Well, he should introduce himself then.

“Yo, sup,” Oozy says. He stretches his arms and neck, joints popping, and pushes his upper body up onto the fake-trees holding his hammock up so he can get a better view of her. His nose flicks and he impulsively says, “Ya smell like dirt.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I work in a greenhouse.” Dear lord she was loud. Not upset or yelling or anything, but she could rival a full grown Papython.

“Ah, they bring you in to get us more real plants or something? I don’t know if they can have indoor trees though.”

“Probably not. Most trees aren’t really shade-plants anyways, and even if they were, they can’t grow strong enough without wind.”

“Really? Huh, weird. But I’ll take your word for it,” Oozy says. He removes a little more of himself from the slimy confines of his hammock, draping himself over the tree and leaning his upper body down so he’s closer to her level. “So, why are you here then? Looking to adopt? I think you’ve gone too far then.” There weren’t many to adopt this far back. There wasn’t officially a “permanent residency” ward or anything, and theoretically anyone could get adopted, but let’s face it, they weren’t going to. They were hidden in the back for a reason, you’d have to be looking for a special case to even reach him.

“I heard there’s DnD.”

Oozy blinks a few times, then chuckles, “Well alright then!” Not the answer he expected, but okay. “They advertising it now?”

“I mean, apparently yeah! Though in retrospect, I think you were expected to come with a lamia…” The girl looked down,

Oozy shrugged, “Maybe. They have community events now and then and stuff.” Or maybe they were trying to get some of them out of there. No reason it couldn’t be both.

The girl nodded. “So, uh… I followed someone, they had gold teeth? The DM. Then one of the cobra ones wanted me to leave, and, uh… Should I go?”

Keith had taken her to the nursery, hadn’t he? “Nah, Keith just did something dumb. Whatcha thinking of playing?” He was curious how she was going to be worked in. They pretty well had their bases covered already. Red was the Tank and melee fighter, Trousle was the party face, Nikolai had healing and support covered, Liam was the other party face who really liked fireballs (freaking sorcerers), and… Well, Oozy himself was mostly just there to goof around. He’d made a ranger and had an Giant Owl (maybe not on the list, but Keith was nice enough to give him an upgrade since rangers were kinda bad in 5e) as his animal companion. The “hoo” jokes flew left and right! What could he say, him and his Giant Owl, Hoodini, were birds of a feather.

“I mean, I figured I’d see what you guys already have? Warlocks are one of my favorites – patrons are basically built in lore – but Druids are a mood and Martials can be fun too. Sometimes you just wanna smash stuff with a big hammer, y’know?”

“Mood.” Oozy said. “Well, we could probably use another full martial, but ask Hux, that’s sorta his thing, y’know?”

The girl nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Heh, yeah. Name’s Oozy by the way. Who are you?”

“Alex.”

“Nice to meet ya Alex. I’d shake your hand, but, well…” He held his hands up, shrugging. A drop of slime hit the floor.

“Are you okay by the way? You’re kinda…” She made a vague hand motion, squirming in place.

“Eh, I live with it. Called Oozy for a reason, y’know?” Oozy said.

“… can I touch it? Or you? Both?”

Oozy blinked a few times, surprised. “Uh… sure? If ya want?” He crawled a little further down, looping around the tree to keep himself stable. The girl’s hand reached out and touched his head. It was rather nice, actually. He found himself leaning into it, the gentle strokes feeling warm and tingly despite her hands being cold. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts, right? His tail relaxes some as he sinks into the feeling, eyes shutting.

…

Well, if she wants to keep petting him, he’s not going to stop her. This feels great. Hopefully she’s not just trying to be nice, but she seems pretty wrapped up in it herself, running her fingers through the layer of goo that had built up and down to the bone below. Oozy was vaguely aware that he was dripping all over the floor (and probably on her shoes, but they were caked in dirt and scuffs anyways), but y’know what, it was someone else’s problem. He started to reach out instinctively, wanting to wrap around her and cuddle, but she drew back.

“Uh… sorry. I don’t really like my clothes getting wet… It’s really uncomfortable.”

Something in him deflated, soul feeling heavy, but he put on a lax smile and nodded, “Eh, don’t worry about it.” Just keep petting him, please…

“It’s alright. Heh, it feels kinda cool, y’know? Maybe not exactly like slime, but, like… It’s fun to play with.” Pause. “That’s a weird thing to say, huh?”

Oozy snorted, “A little, but I ain’t gonna complain.”

“Can I…?” She pointed to his tail.

“Go for it.”

Her fingers stroked down the length of his scales and he shuddered. It didn’t feel bad or sexual or anything, but it’d been a while since anyone had stroked him. Dear lord how did he go so long without this? He wanted nothing more than to wrap around her in a full body cuddle, to just run fingers through her hair and vice versa, to just get any kind of physical contact from someone. He was starving for it. Tears sprung to his eyesockets but he blinked them away before she could see. It was just so nice…

“Thank ya,” he whispered, voice coming out choked.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah… Yeah.” His soul felt a little lighter and he smiled in earnest, “Heh, feels good to get some of this off me.” Maybe he should take a shower today… The floor was a mess anyways after all. But it’s fine, it’s tile. It’d mop up. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I think you feel cool.”

“I mean, I am a reptile.” He snorted at himself, finally just saying fuck it and crawling down to sprawl on the floor like a limp, happy noodle. “I mean, probably.” There was a slight chance he was an amphibian after all.

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 5 of 26

Title: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) (2019)

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Mystery, Horror, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist (?).

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 1/31/2021

Date Finished: 2/06/2021

Alex Stern's had the ability to see ghosts for as long as she can remember-- and it's led her life in a terrible direction. At twenty, she is the sole survivor of a gruesome multiple murder case in Los Angeles. In the hospital, she's given a chance to turn her life around. She receives a full ride scholarship to Yale, but in return has to serve as an apprentice to Lethe House, an organization tasked with monitoring the shady magical dealings of the university's secret societies. Determined to leave her past behind, Alex accepts the offer.

But things start to go wrong partway into the school year. Her mentor Darlington disappears under mysterious circumstances. Months later, a young woman named Tara Hutchins turns up dead on a ritual night. Alex suspects the secret societies of Yale are involved in the murder, but no one seems willing to believe her. Going off a hunch, Alex decides to investigate on her own. But the past she's running from threatens to return and change everything.

“All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.”

Full review, minor spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic violence, gore, murder, death, etc. R*pe, p*dophilia, grooming, abuse, and associated trauma depicted/discussed. Drug use, including recreational drug use, underage drug use, addiction, overdoses, and drugging without consent. Mind control/altered mental states. Body horror. Depictions of racism, antisemitism, and misogyny.

Ninth House is not the book I expected it to be. It has a generic-sounding concept; urban fantasy murder mystery! Protag with mysterious powers! Secret societies! I really liked Bardugo's YA Six of Crows duology, so I went in knowing she's a good writer and hoping for the best. Ninth House exceeded expectations for sure. This is one of those stories that has a lot going on beneath the surface, full of interesting twists, turns, and all-too-real social issues.

While this might seem like a “dark academia” kind of story, Ninth House is actually critical of the whole concept. The story takes place around Yale, stars college students, and focuses on the real-but-fictionalized secret societies of the university. But these details often feel incidental. Alex’s (and to some extent, Darlington’s) past, the murder investigation, and her ability to see ghosts is more important to the story. The societies are groups of privileged rich kids using magic for stupid and selfish ends. For example, one society kidnaps a dude, performs involuntary surgery on him, and reads his intestines to predict stock futures. Magic is apparently dying, and the societies have built themselves on top of the few nexuses of magical power in New Haven. The fact that a bunch of asshole college kids have near-exclusive access to a limited and powerful resource sure is a big problem. They’re also ultra pretentious, using certain languages or appropriating certain mythologies just because they seem more magical.

That’s not to say true mythological symbolism is totally absent. Water is a notable part of Ninth House, along with its associated meanings -- change, death, rebirth, cleansing the past, and so on. Lethe, the titular ninth house, gets its name from the river in Greek mythology. Anyone who knows its role there will have a fun time with certain story developments. There’s also a lot of tarot imagery not directly addressed in the story. So history/mythology is significant, but it’s not spoon-fed to the reader.

There’s a lot of social commentary in the story told through a fantasy lens. Probably the most obvious one is r*pe culture and its horrific effects. Considering the numerous scandals centered around sexual violence, especially in colleges, it all feels very timely. There’s also a more general discussion of privilege and how it affects one’s access to a school like Yale. Alex is notably a victim of racism, misogyny, and poverty to some extent. Bardugo clearly did a lot of research about Yale and the social issues in the novel, and this comes through while reading. She even cites her many sources in the acknowledgements.

While Ninth House is written in third-person, I still consider it an unreliable narrative. At the beginning, we know two major things about the past. (1) Darlington (the deuteragonist) disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few months ago and might be dead. (2) Alex, the main protagonist, was the sole survivor of a multiple murder case, but was cleared as a suspect For Reasons. Other than that, the narrative reveals few specifics about either event until much later in the story. When this finally happens, it changes a lot of things. There is also an interesting, character-driven reason why this information is obscured for so long-- but it's a big spoiler.

Bardugo also takes advantage of perspective limitations when switching between the Alex and Darlington chapters. One character might assume something, only for another character to introduce new context about it much later. This might be a simple concept, but it’s great when executed well. In particular I remember Alex doing something in an early chapter that seems in character at the time. Then a much later Darlington chapter throws it into question with a one-off line. I really like this kind of stuff in stories! It's an interesting way to characterize and worldbuild that's just plain fun to read.

My LGBT Protagonist tag is a little vague because, while I'm reasonably sure Alex is bisexual, there's no direct confirmation in the story. Her relationship with Hellie does NOT come off as platonic, though. And while I'm pretty sure Darlington is meant to be the romantic interest character, Alex’s interactions with Dawes certainly give me Vibes. I have some suspicions where this might be going. Future volumes will probably address this more.

While I really liked the book, it's not quite a 10 because it's really dark, even for me. There are several (intentionally) disturbing and disgusting scenes that made me uncomfortable. Sexual violence is repugnant, and I appreciate that Bardugo depicts it in such a negative, traumatic light. But unlike Six of Crows (which explores this as well), Ninth House is pretty graphic, and I had a hard time getting through several scenes. It's a personal thing but did affect my overall enjoyment of the book. I can easily see other people having problems, too: it depends on your sensitivity to such content.

In addition, Ninth House’s pacing drags after the big mid-story reveals. There's two exciting twists in a row, then a good quarter of the book to go after that. It's nice to view the story with new context in mind, but it feels slower and less interesting than the reveals themselves. The story also takes on a predictable "we SOLVED the mystery! ... or did we?" story loop, which I feel I've seen a million times. Alex does some real dumb/out-of-character stuff near the end in order to keep this going. That being said, while I predicted some of the final ending, I think it all comes together in a satisfying way. There's lots of little hints that are fun to go back to; Ninth House is one of those books where looking stuff up as you go REALLY helps.

Ninth House lays the groundwork for an interesting series, and the ending is obvious sequel bait. I'm interested to see where the story could go based on some of the reveals and conclusions of the ending. There's also the impossible-to-ignore social commentary of the book; I have to wonder if that will continue in future plots, and what form that will take if so. Either way, whenever the next book comes out I’ll probably read it!

#9/10 #2021 reading challenge #taylor reads

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clearturtletrash · 3 years

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Horikoshi’s writing of Shouto and the problems I have with it

If you’re a fan of the way Shouto’s treated in the manga, don’t read, we’ll end up disagreeing on everything and you’ll probably end up offended lol. Because I’m not (satisfied, that is).

This post is spoiler-heavy for anime onlys, and for manga readers not up to date with the last arc (and last chapter for that matter, which is 301).

So, about Shouto and how he’s handled, along with ‘his’ story.

I don’t get how Horikoshi, whose writing I respect immensely, managed to depict such an incredible and alluring storyline with the Todoroki family, with some of the most complex character writing I’ve seen, but fumbled the one character he had to actually focus on.

Literally more than half the people in the Todoroki storyline are more interesting and more developed than Shouto at this point. Hawks, Endeavour, Dabi, Rei… a good bunch of fans are way more invested in their story than his, and I am too. It’s really sad, because if you asked me two years ago Shouto would have probably been one of my favorite character. But he was completely shafted, given no internal conflict, and at this point, I have the same interest in him as I do for Fuyumi and Natsuo, which basically means his only interesting feature to me is that he’s Endeavour’s child (oh, and he does have a cool design, but that can only get you so far).

Deku and Katsuki are more popular than him by a landslide compared to before if we believe the Japanese popularity polls, because Hori actually bothers to give them focus, conflict, and cool moments (even though, sometimes I feel like Horikoshi forgets Deku’s his main character lol). It’s a testament to how great Shouto was and how much potential had that he’s still that popular despite everything. Because, let’s be real, Endeavour and Dabi have taken the focus because they have much more emotional energy, while Shouto is just stuck in the crossfire, as a punching ball and stress relief (and eventually as the person who’ll save him I guess) for Touya (see how he was relegated to first aid during the big fight against Tomura? how he did absolutely nothing against Touya who was burning him alive? And how Touya had no interest in Shouto outside of the fact he was Endeavour’s son? Story of the way Hori treats him). He has no particular interesting insight to give on the Todoroki family either as he was too small to remember the important events, so even on this point we can’t count on Horikoshi to write something for him, everything comes from Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Rei. He's really had one great moment in S2 and S3 and that’s it. The way Horikoshi struggles to give him a personality doesn’t help either (he admitted some time ago he was hard to write sometimes, and… yeah, I can see that). I’m really trying to like his character but the manga gives us nothing, and keeps developing Endeavour, Dabi, and Hawks, which is great (I really love all three of them) but makes no sense given who’s supposed to be the main focus.

In the Endeavour agency arc, Endeavour’s thoughts and struggles were heavily touched upon, and Bakugou and Deku are in sync for 90% of it while Shouto’s just… there. as fodder for Endeavour, and maybe as a link between Endeavour and Bakugou/Deku too. He’s supposed to be a part of both these storylines, but instead, he just ends up as a way for them to overlap. we don't even take a peek in his thoughts, even though it's supposed to be an arc about the Todorokis!

I say all this as someone who eagerly waited for the day Horikoshi would portray Shouto, Katsuki, and Deku as a trio, but yeah, Shouto feels more like a third wheel than anything. if he wanted to establish them that way, he should have done it right after the sports festival arc, but after this arc, they have no scene together, and the focus shifted on Deku and Katsuki. Too little too late I guess.

To come back to the Todoroki storyline, I feel like Horikoshi simply woke up one day and decided Endeavour was more interesting to write lmao. at this point, it’s more Endeavour’s storyline than Shouto’s, even though Shouto’s supposedly one of the main characters. it has come to a point where, even though I know it ought to focus on Shouto because he’s (at least he should be) the main focus of this particular storyline, I’m hoping it won’t, because that’s just the least interesting aspect of this whole thing.

I’d say even Ochako’s treated better by the story, because at least Horikoshi tries to challenge her views and beliefs (even though for now it’s not very conclusive), while Shouto’s inner growth hasn't been put into question in how many chapters?

(btw, by inner growth, I’m not talking about his problem with his fire side, because that’s just been rinse and repeat for more than 200 chapters. I mean, srsly it’s been already 3 times since this problem has caused him to lose/fail... and it's not even satisfying like Katsuki or Deku (except for the first time in the sport festival, because that was when his character was still handled very well by Horikoshi). Why? Simply because when he loses, the stakes aren’t high, it’s all training or exams, so he’s just like, "oh, I have to maybe learn how to deal with it!", but there’s no real pressure he’s under. It’s not like Deku, who, if he does not progress, will break all his bones, and who failed to rescue Katsuki because of his broken arms (=and had a mental breakdown immediately afterwards and blamed himself). It’s not like Katsuki either, because Katsuki has a personality that makes low stakes feel like high stakes, which isn’t the case for Shouto. just compare Shouto's reaction when he loses because of his setbacks to Katsuki's reaction when he lost to Deku the first time (mental breakdown), or when Katsuki failed the provisional license exam (another mental breakdown, not caused just by his failing, but yeah). And anything else about Shouto's inner growth is tied to his reaction to Endeavour’s arc, which isn’t a flaw, and 100% depends on the way Endeavour acts. Apart from this, he has 0 internal conflict).

Sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent lol.

To get back to the point I was making, and to further develop my analogy with Ochako, let’s look at their relationship with Deku, because there’s a major difference there, which is clearly in favor of Ochako. Deku has a big impact on Ochako, yes, but the reverse is also true. People complain she’s all about him (which, yeah, probably), but at least, she made a big impact on him too. She was the main reason ‘Deku' became his hero name. Shouto and Deku have a nice friendship, and Deku clearly considers him one of his best friends. but... it’s all one-sided in terms of impact, I can’t think of a single thing Shouto has done who changed/motivated Deku, while Deku literally changed his life. Because of this, he’s not one of the people who’s intrinsically tied to Deku’s character development, because he’s not Ochako, Inko, Katsuki or All Might (and probably soon Tomura).

His writing feels so fast compared to the others too. Shigaraki / Deku and Toga / Ochako have been paralleled for ages, have had a conversation at least once, and have had deep encounters early on. Nonetheless, both Deku and Ochako are just coming to terms with the fact these villains aren’t so different from them. However, Shouto’s only interaction with Dabi is a ten second eye contact when Dabi kidnapped Katsuki. Dabi had more interactions with Endeavour for fuck's sake! Shouto then learns Dabi’s Touya, and speed runs the development of Ochako and Deku. He doesn’t even need 10 chapters to process they’re ’the same'. Where were all the reflection and doubts? Okay, it’s his brother, so the parallels are easier, but still, it shows Horikoshi doesn’t allow Shouto to have that much introspection, and I feel it’s because Horikoshi just doesn’t care that much. Even worse! Horikoshi introduces another hero parallel to Dabi in the character of Hawks. A parallel much more interesting and compelling, because it parallels Dabi MUCH BETTER. They’re opposites in every ways (particularly in regards to their relationship with Endeavor), and know each other. Touya and Shouto don’t even seem to have spoken to each other...

And so, the only thing that still was interesting and that Horikoshi still bothered to develop was Shouto’s relationship with Endeavour, but in the end, even that was overshadowed by the much more complex, fucked up, and challenging relationships of Endeavour and Touya (and Endeavour and Hawks) as seen in 301 and before. Clearly the one Dabi’s fixated on is Endeavour.

one last thing: Shouto's stuck in a weird loop where Horikoshi kind of makes him comes close of the Bakugou and Deku duo, and then when we start to think they’re an actual trio, he does everything in his power to make it very clear how that’s NOT where he belongs either, since OFA/All Might/Deku/Katsuki is another storyline. It’s as if Horikoshi doesn’t want him here (see: how he decided the ‘win all might’ scene didn’t have to include him), but puts him there sometimes anyway. It’s probably because Shouto’s so popular, which, yeah, would be fine, if he could stick to it!

His supposed admiration for All Might (I feel like everybody forgets it's a part of his character, and I don't blame them) is brought up once every blue moon, which compared to Deku and Katsuki, is just ridiculous. And, once again, All Might has a much deeper and more interesting relationship with Endeavour than with Shouto. At this point, I don’t even know what Hori could do to make me want to read about him. I much prefer the dynamic of Hawks/Endeavour/Touya and Katsuki/Deku/All Might.

I hope the future will prove me wrong for his character. Actually, I hope everything I’m saying is wrong and idiotic, and Horikoshi will make every scene I criticized worth it and a means to an end. I mean, he clearly has the talent and writing ability to pull off some of the best character development I’ve ever seen, so anything’s possible. but yeah, I don’t really believe it for now, and I’m frustrated, because Shouto had so much potential.

tldr; I liked Shouto as a character, but he dwindled after some time, and now I feel as if he’s not the focus of his own storyline, because this place is occupied by the much more dynamic relationships of Endeavour, Touya and Hawks. And I’m not even mad, because their dynamic is much more interesting. However, I feel like Horikoshi grew bored of Shouto, and has put much more soul into Katsuki and Deku as of late.

I’m welcoming any responses, if people are seeing an aspect of his character I don’t, please enlighten me! I miss enjoying his character, and I’m not opposed to seeing him in a different light. I just needed to put down my thoughts in writing to make sense of them lol.

#bnha manga spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha 301 #todoroki family #endeavour #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #todoroki touya #ochako uraraka #I guess #im kinda new please inform me if I'm crosstagging I swear its not on purpose #todoroki shouto meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #boku no hero academia #my hero academia

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