#out of contextual characters

[heraldofcrow]

*shoves all of my weird-ass, extremely-complicated, white-haired children with too much power into a tiny room*

ALL OF YOU WILL BE FRIENDS AND DO THERAPY TOGETHER NOW OR SO HELP ME GOD—

#sjhsks #this collage gets updated like every two years #there are technically more but it starts to get too muddled and obscure #the fact that they are all of some kind of royal status or high-ranking soldier/knighthood #wtf #and most of them are stabby as hell #and for some i still can’t decide if i wanna simp or adopt #also can i just say #the amount of contextual and/or surface level tragedy in this group of characters could blow up the sun #if they all met i think everything would explode lmao #even crow despite having no clear lore is implied to be from cainhurst which automatically means almost his entire bloodline was wiped out #WHY ARE THEY ALL LIKE THIS #sigh (and half of them look unhinged too) sigh #white-hair blorbos #lady galadriel #queen annalise #king thranduil #prince aemond #lord’s blade ciaran #sephiroth #lady yuria #lady maria #bloody crow #CrowNotes

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (1/3)

So, someone recently(when i started this draft anyway) left a kind of incoherent rant on one of my posts.  It wasn’t actually related to anything I’d said in the post, and just came across as disjointed babble, so it didn’t warrant a direct reply at the time.  But it did bring up a subject I would actually like to talk about:

How Kubo handles gender queer characters.

I think it’s a little easy to look at the most glaring cases, come to the conclusion that he doesn’t handle representation well, and leave it at that.  That’s valid.  And he’s clearly not well versed or tactful in how he portrays these characters, and it’s really not that unreasonable to judge him for it.  But I also think there’s more going on with it than that really accounts for, so let’s pick at it a little...

By and large what Kubo does is some pretty by-the-books queer-coding villains, and what amounts to casting effeminate men in adversarial roles.  In the big picture, it’s not a good trope to be falling back on: it comes from a bad place historically, and even if Kubo doesn’t mean anything bad by it (and I’ll get into why I think he genuinely doesn’t) it contributes to the momentum already behind it that other, less well intentioned creators and readers inevitably stand to do more direct harm with.

The earliest case of this is actually from Zombie Powder.  Very early episodic villain, Ranewater Calder is a youthful and even girlish looking man who is actually an old man sustained by a youth restoring drug.  He’s a villain of the week type, so the fact that he’s pretty and evil is literally all there is to him.  Moreover, his fixation on youth, his vanity, and his deception (he pretends to be a frail, dainty victim at first) all link directly to his moral character.  Although Calder is himself never made out to be gay, the archetype he's clearly based on is a pretty classically homophobic characterization at face value

But even here it’s not totally black and white...  

There’s a snag in that Kubo’s not writing some 1950s American pulp novel where the perils of homosexuality spell self-destruction or divine/dramatic irony on the loathesome villain; he’s writing a shounen action manga, and it operates on the Rule-of-Cool first and foremost.  Calder isn’t a vehicle for moral preaching by religious conservatives, he’s a highlight character taking up valuable print space in a popular comic.  He’s attractive, he has a cool name, he has a cool weapon with a unique fighting style, and even his vanity and deception aren’t there to make him unappealing, they’re there to make him compelling.

And herein lies the root of Kubo’s problem.  He just likes having cool characters, and he crams them in where ever he can fit them, and that often means in villain roles.  Moreover, although some characters get more vilified than others, even within the scope of villain roles, not all of them get to stick around long enough to be developed as either something other than queer and villainous, or to get the full turn around.  After all...

Yumichika was a villain at first.

And you’ll noticed I hesitated just now at calling it a “turn around” and not a “redemption” or “turning over a new leaf” because frankly, the Shinigami never actually changed alignment.  They were circumstantially the villains of the Soul Society Arc until Aizen turned on them to be the bigger "real” villain.  Technically it was Ichigo & co. that changed alignments from fighting against the Gotei13 to fighting with them.  But relatively aside, Yumichika became a good guy and his favorable portrayal got to outweigh his villainous introduction.

Speaking of which, there’s not a whole lot to go over with it, but Yumichika’s original appearance pretty closely mirrored the profile of Ranewater Calder’s bit in Zombie Powder: a kind of “sissy” prettyboy is obsessed with his looks, and other than just being a guy with a sword pointed at the established heroes making him a villain, that vanity and narcissism make them mean, judgy and vindictive.

But Yumichika came back, and stuck around, and frankly became something of a fan favorite.  And I think this particular development says a lot about how Kubo looks at these situations.  You’ll notice, he didn’t actually have to change Yumichika’s character much to shift him from villain to hero.  Yumichika gets a little less prickly, but he’s still vain and it’s not even something that anyone ever frames as a problem he needs to work on.  In fact, the introduction of his shikai brought into play a new facet of his vanity: Deception.  So we’re back to that Ranewater Calder framework, where the prettyboy has something to hide with his looks, but in Yumichika’s case it’s shown as an almost endearing quality.  He hides his sword’s powers, a reflection of his true self, to fit in.  But this isn’t shown to be a thing to pity, his willingness to sacrifice a part of his own identity is portrayed as a kind of noble restraint.

Now, granted, I don’t think those elements all play nicely together. (In fact, the nobility of his self-restraint is a very dangerous thing to uphold as a virtue) But when it comes to trying to draw a line between message and intent, I think the most pertinent thing to consider as context isn’t actually the villain or hero dichotomy, or even your own personal feelings about the themes in play, it’s the attitude ("attitude" as different from “intent,” mind you) of the creator towards his creations: Kubo seemed to enjoy making Yumichika.

He had fun with his design (the feathers and the weird sweater collar thing) He had fun with the sword, with giving him a secret power.  He had fun writing his vanity rants.  He didn’t have to have Yumichika, he didn’t have to bring him back, and he didn’t have to add to his character, but he did.  He invested his own time and effort and space on the page to him and to making him interesting to have around.

But like I said, Yumichika’s the lucky one.  He came in early, got to have a comeback, and had time to stick around.  But consider that when Kubo was floundering around trying to figure out how to salvage the mess that was the late TYBW arc, he didn’t need to bring back Arrancar, and he didn’t need to bring back the ones he did. (in fact, only the Privaron even make sense in-world, Luppi and Charlotte weren’t convenient choices, they were just Kubo’s personal picks.)  And when he did finally get around to cleaning up the Sternritter?  Bazz-B was an obvious choice to keep, sure (following that Renji/Grimmjow mold of the hotblodded rival who bucks his own organizations rules) but Giselle and Lilttoto?  That was Kubo playing favorites.

Luppi was so short lived, it’s hard to really say anything about him.  He was basically just reusing notes from Yumichika’s first appearance, which again also refer back to Ranewater Calder in Zombie Powder for basic aesthetic and demeanor.  (It’s actually kind of weird that Yumichika never really had any kind of dynamic with Luppi when they fought.)

Side note here, but Kubo really loves to build some of his recurring character types around a certain kind of scene or dynamic.  Byakuya and Ulquiorra both do this thing where they’re supposed to be the stoic unflinching types, but they actually get shocked and surprised almost constantly.  Kubo seems to be going into it with the mentality that he thinks it’s cool when the character who predicts everything and always has everything under control, can’t predict something and doesn’t have it under control, and just reverse engineers a stoic person for the purpose of having them “break character” later.  In this vein Kubo seems to have a real love of very pretty characters shifting into a kind of sinister “ugly mode.”  It wouldn’t serve his purpose to just have them ugly or obviously meanspirited all the time, the ugliness has to be served up in its reveal as that “breaking character” moment, even though that “breaking” moment is itself the core of the character.

Not to get too heady about this little observation, but it honestly feels like something that applies even to Kubo’s broader writing habits; wanting the payoff of a twist, and planning said twist first but then reverse engineering the supporting ruse only as a matter of course.  Just a silly little thought...

[1][2][3]

#bleach meta #bleach #kubo tite #zombie powder #ranewater calder #Yumichika Ayasegawa #luppi antenor #oh damn i drafted this forever ago #i kind of never really intended to post it #but i guess i didnt delete it either #i dunno that most of my feelings about not bothering with it have changed #but contextually i've also now made a number of posts about my headcanons with trans characters #as well as bleach's weird glancing relationship with questionable symbols and themes #so i guess while this still feels like an argument not worth making it feels somehow less not worth making??? #if that makes any sense #any way im clearing out drafts so here ya go

[icarianarts]

is the person with white hair and black dress a cunty polnareff. my deepest apologies if they arent

That is sandblasted Astarion. Sorry

#anon #asks #I do understand contextually the confusion though. he was hanging out with two jojo characters

[fearandhatred]

i just thought of a really mean edit idea

#fearandhatred #mean as in kinda not true. out of character. people will disagree #but basically final fifteen with taylor swift's it's time to go #“i gave him my all he gave me nothing at all then wondered why i left” #LIKE NOT TRUE BUT CONTEXTUALLY. THE LEAVING. IT FITS

[burning-academia-if]

I'm late!!! Happy birthday, Em! Did you have a good day?

Thank you!! And yeah it was good! I got to see the new Studio Ghibli movie finally, and while I had a few critiques, it was a solid watch!

#em answers #I actually loved the main kid cause we rarely get prickly main characters in ghibli films #but I wanted more weird! and also I feel like there could have been better transitions from section to section #also it ended abruptly and I felt like even adding a few minutes could have smoothed it out #I did adore the characters tho as always and it did have me a lil emotional at parts #anyway there's my tldr movie review #also having read How do you live? helped contextualize the movie themes better too I think

[mewtwo24]

no thoughts head empty, smth smth the beginning of Florence and the Machine's Seven Devils reminds me of Hua Cheng...

#tgcf #hua cheng #san lang #hualian #hua hua setting things on fire is everything to me #the absolute flex but also spite of burning down the temples of gods who didn't honor the duel they lost against him #he will always be one of the most iconic characters of all time for me because of this alone #like there are so many other reasons of course but every time its brought up in the books/anime #i just lose my shit laughing without fail #*handshake emoji* impeccable san lang continue as you have #i also love the complete lack of contextualization regarding that act of defiance #my mans hua hua out here punishing heaven for mistreating the person he loves most in the world #and the heavenly officials are out here like 'he's just a devastation doing devastation things' #'harassing other beings as those mfs do' #give my man some credit yall yes he's a vengeful spirit but he's got LOVE REASONS #anyway

[sethnakht]

darth vader (2020-), #26 (pak/ienco)

it’s a podrace! darth vader pilots a podracer through an artificial sandstorm to save sabé, the former double for queen amidala, who has been lost in its center. vader flies alone through a maelstrom manufactured by the empire; as he steers and slices his way past dark obstacles, his mind dwells on the podrace he won as a child slave to help queen amidala, then represented too by sabé while padmé masked herself as a handmaiden. 

before he won that race, vader remembers, he could find his mother even in sandstorms, and promise her he would never leave her. in the subsequent panels, we see the contrasting results of winning: it meant separation from his mother, interrogation by the jedi council over his fear of losing her, his mother’s death, his own subsequent choice to murder the villagers who’d held her hostage, and finally, separation from padmé again because of jedi and sith. specifically, vader remembers how she’d fallen out of their ship into a sand dune, and his jedi master obi-wan ordering him to leave her behind (so they could pursue the sith lord count dooku instead). surrounded by sand with his mother, he was never closer to her; alone in the jedi temple, before his mother’s grave, a smattering of sand kernels was all he had left.

[image caption: panels from two different pages showing vader’s memories of losing his mother - first when he was taken to the temple, then when she died. anakin’s hand is shown in close-up, stray grains of sand in his palm.]

vader wins this race as well. as he once helped queen amidala and her handmaidens leave tatooine, so too does he now save the queen’s shadow. when he arrives at the site where sabé disappeared, he finds anakin’s childhood friend kitster (more context below), who learned how to build pods from anakin and put together the pod that vader has just raced. kitster shows him that sabé has been buried alive under a toppled cylinder. vader lifts it with the force; as she rises from the shallow grave, he remembers his power from before he won the tatooine race and was taken to the jedi - the power to tell his mother, “don’t worry, we’re going to be fine,” and, “I’m not leaving you.”

[image caption: vader saves sabé with kitster’s help, and remembers finding his mother in a sandstorm.]

but it’s not that easy. generated by an energy-eating machine (I think? again, don’t ask me about the lore), the storm doesn’t respond to vader’s attempts to quell it with the force. he realizes that sabé will be consumed by it - he thinks back to leaving padmé behind, her body half-buried in sand - if he fails to call on machine power.

using the cylinder-gravestone from which he’d just freed sabé as armor for himself, sabé, and kitster, vader directs his orbiting flagship to fire upon his location with maximum incinerating force. the result: all the sand in the storm fuses and flattens into a smooth ground of glass. 

the sand still caught in his glove slides down his palm; vader looks at it, looks at it for a long time. this time, it seems, it is not all that he has left: he has saved sabé from death. letting the sand fall from his hand, he lifts sabé and carries her over the glass into the light horizon. 

[image caption: vader steps out from an armored shell into a landscape he’s had incinerated; sand has transformed into black glass. some sand that was caught in his glove falls from his hand; he lets it, then takes sabé from kitster and walks towards a sunlit cloud.]

so ... why is kitster here? vader has come to this place because sabé is as haunted by his mother’s death as he is. troubled by the fact that anakin, a child slave, won a podrace to help royalty, and that his mother was nonetheless left behind in slavery, padmé had directed sabé to find shmi on tatooine. never having met shmi before, as queen amidala did not leave her starship on tatooine, sabé failed to locate shmi on that mission. she did manage to free a small number of slaves, however, including anakin’s childhood best friend kitster, and relocate them. the more immediate context is this: these ex-slaves are now under threat from a crimson dawn operative masquerading as an imperial, or something (don’t ask me about the lore-related details of the plot, I can only grasp at relationships between images). and since vader has vowed to end crimson dawn in the name of restoring “order”, sabé was able to convince him to visit this community, and work with people like kitster to destroy the imperial/dawn weapon that caused the sandstorm in the first place. 

in summary. we are here because of shared grief over shmi and padmé, over shared grief about the results of that first podrace. we have a second race with a parallel result - vader has helped the former queen, again; helped padmé, in a way, again - and a contrast: there is no jedi betting on vader’s freedom, now. but in some sense this is another parallel. for as winning the race led vader to coruscant and the jedi temple, the comic now cuts to the former temple, now the imperial palace, on coruscant.

[image caption: it is night on coruscant; the former jedi temple, now the emperor’s palace, is shown in dark profile against a sky lit pink-purple from the city lights.]

the emperor is speaking, speaking to himself, ignoring his red-robed guards, who gaze at each other questioningly. vader, the emperor mutters, couldn’t save his mother, nor padmé. but now he thinks he can -- 

well, the emperor doesn’t finish the sentence. you might say the emperor is betting on failure; he is delighted by what he anticipates, for he closes the issue with his cackles. you can fill in the blanks.

#darth vader (2020) #darth vader #anakin skywalker #handmaiden sabé #kitster banai #greg pak #raffaele ienco #sw comics #comic analysis #these are just attempts to sort out relationships between images #in a very simple way #within the contextual confines of the comics and their references to the films #not character meta #this comic run is perhaps the most poetic of the three #where the internal plot - vader's mindscape - is concerned #i don't really understand the external plot #something something crimson dawn #anyway the way image and text are arranged in this run #what is said and especially what is left unsaid #the sheer amount left to the imagination to fill #speaks to me #long post

[cicadaknight]

Rehashing a pain point with the Horizon franchise…

Why is there no mention of any real tribal nation in the game? No reference at all. The erasure of APOLLO didn’t remove the visions at the Grove, or any of the artifacts Aloy finds in her exploration. You’re telling me it makes narrative sense to have 30 minutes of Dutch artwork analysis and its historical significance, but not a single mention of any indigenous society? There are ZERO datapoints or ruins related to native people throughout the entire world that could have influenced Horizon-era culture?

😒 SIDE EYE 😒 It is that way because the devs made it so. Everything in a narrative is a choice.

#idk i love this game i’m just thinking thoughts #there are so many positives about horizon but i really want them to have more nuance in the 3rd game #not having ANY mention of the history of tribal nations in the US in a game specifically about fictional tribes is just… egregious #and there were so many opportunities to contextualize manifest destiny and our very real history of genocide #(ex. the red raids and the significance of the tenakth successfully defeating the carja i mean come on) #and on that note how about the ickiness of a tribal nation worshipping a US ex-military group #like… yes i love the tenakth and the world building #but………… imagine if the jtf-10 weren’t ex-military soldiers funded by a corpo rat? #what if they were a united front of native tribes of the southwest? #it’s such a simple change but it would give so much more depth to the tenakth and their traditions #also… the fact that you can just wear any tribe’s armor and paint as a cosmetic… grosses me out #they establish from the start that the clothing and paint from each tribe is rooted in tradition and meaning #treating it like a cosmetic is weird?? i get it for the Sake of Gaming but it seems so tactless #specifically that aloy gets tattoos that come and go when you wear tenakth armor #i feel like it wouldn't be as weird if there were quests where tenakth characters invite her to get tattoos after certain deeds #and then they stick with you on any armor #same with the utaru seed pouches #i digress #hfw #okay i'm done editing this post now lmao #my notes

[forevercloudnine]

re: the joker post you reblogged, I always wondered personally if people's unwillingness to forgive him compared to other rogues is cuz he reminds people of their abusers (with his relationship with harley) I tend to find fandom is often less forgiving of behaviour that hits closer to home when compared to potentially worse but more abstract stuff. Like a character who hits their wife will get more hate than one who blows up a planet, bc the latter feels more fictional? Just my theory though

(The Joker post in question)

I think you're definitely right about that. Plenty of people hate Joker specifically because of Harley Quinn (or, predating Harley's conception as a character, because of his mutilation of Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke-- which, though not considered sexual assault by the author Alan Moore, was definitely sexualized in the art by Brian Bolland). And honestly, given the way he's written as an exaggerated parody of an abusive misogynistic boyfriend in Harley's various solo series, it's completely understandable for anyone who reads those comics to want to never see him ever again, because his appearances are not fun to read!

But I think it's also true that people who are mainly fans of other male villains use him to make their own faves look better in comparison. Though it is funny to constantly see posts in character tags that are like "[insert supervillain here] hates Joker and could totally beat him up," because invariably the supervillain has a) been depicted as friendly with Joker in canon, and b) HAVE fought Joker but lost embarrassingly.

#joker #harley quinn #panel is from 'prelude to the wedding: harley quinn vs. joker' #which is just the premier example of how joker is portrayed by harley writers #because in canon an HOUR after he has this convo with harley. he goes and has the church fight with bruce and selina #and the difference in characterization between these two appearances is absolutely staggering #he is genuinely unrecognizable as the same character #anyway there is definitely something to be said about how btas has permanently added 'abusive boyfriend' to joker's character #and that batman media has sooooooo much trouble with figuring out how much that has to factor into any given portrayal #i think the most transparent struggle with that is on The Harley Quinn Show #where joker goes from being an abusive misogynistic creep to Harley's Funny Ex in-between seasons #to the point that he hooks up with some civilian nurse with two young children and it's treated sweet and romantic #instead of like. incredibly worrying. because he's a noted abuser with a terrible track record around women #but he's switched from being the antagonist of harley's Feminist Character Arc to a comedic side character so whatever it's fine now #so many male writers get to write harley quinn content and i feel like they almost never understand anything about domestic abuse #so they just write the most exaggerated parody of it possible and then have harley hit him with a hammer #and then feel like they've made her a strong female character #which like. i guess makes sense as an evolution for a female character who was originally written as side joke eye candy #NOT that i don't enjoy a lot of the stories paul dini has written about her #but like. there's a lot of contextual baggage in her character from day one

[delicatebluebirdruins]

I'm fine... I am not screaming a little on the inside at all I lie. the cause of my break down. not the best comparison pictures but like look at them. LOOK

#resident evil #queen of the south #jeresa #mithan #mia winters #ethan winters #james valdez #teresa mendoza #am i being dramatic? #a little bit and i deserve it because look at these pictures #queen of the south had the characters go on dark routes with a lot of mistakes and a lot of people died but james and teresa? #they get out escape their past and are happy on a beach #and mithan had happy times but their dark past and mistakes led to ethan dying #but contextually the way the pictures are framed and vibes is really similar #valeveira is somewhere between the two in my personal opinion

[prosebushpatch]

Was trying to figure out why Hansel and Gretel randomly appeared in a book I was reading, with candy house backstory and everything, in a story that otherwise was not directly informed by a specific fairy tale. At least to my knowledge, it all felt pretty original, until the villainous antagonist started spinning straw into gold and mentioned being betrayed by a miller's daughter and I cupped my head in my hands like, ah, th-the way to defeat him... they gotta figure out his true name... this whole time... he's been rumpelstiltskin.

#rose and rambles #okay but actually im going to agonize over this choice a bit #like i feel like the hansel and gretel was specifically to prepare us for rumpel but if you took out all three of their names #i wonder #i wonder if that could have been better #because the world building and everything felt *really* spectacularly original and obviously more fae inclined than either #of those fairy tales and the main narrative was not rumpelstiltskin the rumpelstiltskin fairy tale was just backstory #and it was kind of jarring when Hansel and gretel appeared midway for a chapter or two but i guess it contextualized the world for me #Because I *hadn't* been thinking of it as having *direct* fairy tales in it #i think having two characters be like 'ya a woman tricked us with a house made of candy' is obviously a reference to hansel and gretel but #i think it could have felt more natural if it wasn't *directly* hansel and gretel #but a bro and sis with different names that fit the main characters better? #BUT THEN rumpelstiltskin's name does come into play and how else are you going to lead up to the fact that a character has been using a fak #name? you can't have a villain just randomly being like CURSES YOU GUESSED MY TRUE NAME #WHICH IS JOHN #like there's no way. you have to build up to it but once the audience is like oh ya we know hansel and gretel were here and the straw into #gold? got it. know the villain has a different name before the protagonists and also *know* the name to boot. Great #but then the name didn't seem............. necessary in the end anyway because they had him with a contract and they used that to get #the name out him?????????? #So maybe it could have been a different name???????? #idk #i will say i did love the main characters #They were pretty incredible actually

[craycraybluejay]

Hey, anything we could to to try and help you settle in the meantime before tomorrow? :((

Honestly, I have no idea, but I really appreciate the care. I think I will just daydream and maybe do terrible things to that person and their loved ones in the daydream, lol. If you cannot get over shock and other insanity, you can definitely turn it into enjoyment with a little bit of overdramatic violence and other things.

#anon response #honestly it would've been worse if they said something way more specific and up my alley or related to my thoughts on them in that moment #i would've just flat out freaked out and might actually have thrown up instead of mouth just tasting like it #mortifying ordeal of being known #etc etc #like i wouldnt do most of the terrible things. some with consent sure but aside from that no #but if they managed to say something else more accurate i might have actually freaked out and like. violenced them #idk. its really hard to put into words exactly the way im feeling rn #just. feeling. weird. #and sick #will sleep soon that will fix me enough for now #and hopefully i can summon the absolute balls needed to open up more to therapist and maybe friend #im scared either way. im scared ill explain feeling wrong. im scared my rage and disgust and shock is so loud #i wish i could know for sure that whatever i need to say to contextualize is always ok #i guess i could play the 'beating around the bush in 5d' game #where i throw person any mildly related topic in an impersonal and larger than life way and see what they do w it #thats the bare minimum sometimes when im not fucking retarded ab talking to ppl and am rightly paranoid #im just so bad at the correct nt games of parsing a person's character #long games.. rumination.. shock.. hurt.. rage.. #im sleepy from the drugs so its even harder to explain #im rambling. i would appreciate cute fandom memes in the morning or something. and no bad news or anti bullshit

[clowndensation]

something very interesting about switching between reading m!tav fic and f!tav fic and watching the different characterization of their love interest take place. at the end of the day everyone has a gender role to play i see.

#'men behave differently around other men than they do around women' not a groundbreaking statement obviously #but in the game the characters behave exactly as they're scripted to regardless of your gender #so it's interesting to see how people interpret the same behaviors being acted out by a character #based on the gender of their tav and the application of lived experience contextualizing static game characteristics

[computerpeople]

dude if hope meant optimism our examples of hope players would not be jake english and the fucking amporas

#txt #like are you kidding? #the issue is the fandom has like top to bottom thinking so they just assume the associated word is the meaning. so hope is like hurhur #good feelings?! and its like #ugh. god. the way you figure out what the aspects are like is by taking the three (or more) characters we see exampled in canon and #comparing the shared traits they ALL have. and then filling it in with the contextual information about the aspect we hear AROUND them #while also taking into consideration WHOS saying WHAT about the context #are you really going to take what dirk has to say about the hope aspect as fucking fact? really? WHY? #DO YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN THAT GUY LIES JUST ON THE BASIS OF THE FACT THAT HE FUCKING HATES HIMSELF AND LOVES JAKE? #AND ALSO HATES JAKE?

[blades-of-miquella]

Want to drive yourself crazy with theory nonsense? In v 1.0, the Traveler's Set found on the small bloom in Elphael is explicitly said to belong to MELINA. As in the, kindling maiden and implied daughter of Marika. メリナが身に着けていたローブ. And while it doesn't say that in-game in 1.01+ (though it does in the files), the description still fits her and it's still the same clothing set that Millicent and her sisters wear (and only them), so it's unlikely that the connection was ever meant to mean nothing.

so a big caveat of 1.00 that's worth remembering, is a lot of items aren't in the spot we receive them in the final game. it's very likely that when this armor directly mentioned melina, it wasn't intended to be found in the haligtree.

however!

there's some other interesting caveats here like the fact millicent and melina draw strong parallels to each other (if anything, the description of the set solidifies this) - and the fact that millicent is the only NPC to have no concept art at all.

millicent and melina are both on journeys of ostensibly self-discovery, going out to challenge and find their fate, and their stories both end with them making a choice for themselves, solidifying their own identity. you're also given the option to betray both of them, which provokes a transformation of them but also very specifically denies them their autonomy.

millicent is malenia's daughter but she's also the will of malenia, a metaphorical or literal piece of her, reenacting her journey, and melina has the same relationship with marika. both of them are defined by that and how they respond to and process it.

so narratively speaking the connection is definitely there - they parallel each other, and the traveler's set is there to make a deeper connection. it's very representative of a core theme of elden ring. i think each of the empyreans especially embody this idea that's being touched on here, "going to meet your destiny", fate, the aspect of choice and the defining of one's own self (and sometimes the failure or inability to do so)

this is all to say i don't think she's literally tied to the rot and bloom, and never was, more that they shuffled things around to highlight this theme a little more clearly. melina is already sufficiently tied to the twins, especially through the butterfly theming....

#if you argue millicent was originally intended to be malenia i think this also makes more sense #at least in a way... it's just cutting out the middleman here. #because millicent is used to contextualize malenia's character and expound on it #and the core idea very much Makes Up her character #elden ring

[toytulini]

the 3 miles of disclaimers i feel compelled to write to ramble about my oc

#toy txt post #TO BE FAIR TO ME. A FAIR AMOUNT MIGHT NOT FEEL NECESSARY IF I COULD JUST. WRITE THE WHOLE THING #WHICH WOULD GIVE PPL CONTEXT TO THE CHARACTER'S SITUATION AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH EACH OTHER AND HOW THEY ARE LIKELY TO APPROACH THINGS #AND CONTEXTUALIZE THEIR REACTIONS. AND ALSO WHERE I ACTUALLY WRITING #LIKE FOR REAL AND NOT JUST RAMBLING. I WOULD FEEL MORE COMPELLED TO AT LEAST SEPARATE THE DISCLAIMERS OUT MORE CLEANLY #anyway. uh. who said that. you saw nothing #torn between 'the scene i ended up describing isnt even That bad i couldve gotten way more graphic about it' and #'oh i should delete that no one should read that #😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶😶 #i will say. i think im pretty hilarious for headless dove do not eat. uwu #anyway uhhhhhhhhhhhh shout out to that one scene from devilman crybaby i guess. i wont say which one but it sure did lastingly impact my #psyche in a way i will never forget and continue to be haunted by to this day! now im making an oc do it uwu subjecting other ppl to it #with slightly more warning than netflix gave me. uwu uwu #anyway. ugh. need to scrape all that out and copy paste it into a document and clean it up and then never touch it again #and then think about drawing it then decide against it