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missmentelle · 5 years

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Let’s talk about Instagram “influencer” culture.

My younger brother and his girlfriend are Instagram influencers. They aren’t household names with a million fans apiece, but they each have a decent following. They’ve been featured in various lists and roundups of people whose lives and relationships are #goals, and they both earn a steady income from Instagram. Not enough to make a full-time living, but enough to make pouring hundreds of hours into their Instagram careers worth their while.

Despite being so close to an Instagram influencer - several of the most popular photos on my brother’s account were taken by me - I have some serious qualms about Instragram “influencer” culture as a whole. I studied the impact of platforms like Instagram in graduate school - I have a master’s degree in clinical psychology, and I spent part of my time in grad school working with a professor who studies the impact of social media on mental health. A recent study found that out of all social media platforms, Instagram is the worst for your mental health. I’ve also had the chance to see firsthand what a life lived on Instagram has meant for my brother, and the toll it continues to take on him.

So what makes Instagram influencer culture so toxic for both the people who create it and the people influenced by it? For starters: It’s faker than you think. Instagram stars intentionally market themselves as “authentic” and “real” - you are led to believe that you are getting an unfiltered glimpse into someone’s daily life as you follow along with their pictures and their daily stories. In reality, however, a huge amount of time, effort and money goes into the images you see. My brother and his girlfriend take hundreds of photos in order to get one or two shots worthy of posting. Outings are often little more than photoshoots; a “hike” is often just a short walk to a scenic location, followed by hours of photos. Ditto for ice skating, beach days and photos from music festivals. They don’t get to enjoy many of the activities they are depicted doing with big smiles on Instagram, because the focus is on capturing the perfect photo. Photos are often planned weeks in advance, vacations are booked based on which locations will make the best backdrops, and the fancy food in their pictures often goes cold while they get the perfect shot. The fact that they want to create beautiful images is not an issue - after all, the pictures in many mainstream ads are stunning. The issue is that they’re specifically pretending not to be models or advertisers; they are intentionally leading you to believe that what you’re seeing is candid daily life. Which leads me to...

It presents unattainable ideals as everyday life. Instagram influencers roll out of bed in perfect and tastefully-decorated apartments, eat nutritious and visually stunning meals, and lead full, active lives of glamour and adventure. Their skin is never flawed, their hair never out of place, and their outfits never tacky. Again, this isn’t a problem if you are creating an advertisement or a TV show - something that your viewers know is manufactured to look perfect - but Instagram stars hinge their success on pretending that that level of non-stop perfect is their average, daily life. In reality, my brother’s girlfriend piles dirty laundry and books in her bathtub so that her bedroom looks “minimalist” in her photos, and the two of them post weeks-old starry-eyed couple photos with gushy captions even when they are on the verge of breaking up. Influencers themselves tend to be young, attractive, white, thin, able-bodied, middle-class cis people - an ideal that is already unattainable for most people - and yet they present themselves as totally average people. When flaws and problems are revealed, it’s often in a very controlled way, and generally tied in with some kind of pithy advice or mantra. Which brings us to...

It encourages people with no credentials to hand out “expert” advice. This is probably one of the most damaging aspects of influencer culture. 22-year-olds with absolutely no formal training in nutrition, mental health, medicine, dermatology or fitness are handing out “expert” wellness advice - or even designing diets, skincare routines, and workout regimens for others - and feeling increasingly comfortable doing it. Vulnerable people who may have very serious issues lap this advice up, regardless of how unsound or untested it may be; after all, these influencers appear to have perfect lives, and it’s easy to assume that they must know the secrets of health, happiness and clear skin. There are a couple of huge problems with this. For one, many people aren’t actually aware of why they are successful - if a conventionally attractive cis white woman whose parents financially support her tells you that the secret to avoiding stress is meditation and mud masks, you should be skeptical of that advice. People in positions of relative privilege are often blind to the many advantages they have, and will attribute their success to their “wellness routines” or “positive thinking”, rather than the social advantages that are not available to many of their followers. Also, influencers are often peddling advice that they themselves do not follow. My brother’s girlfriend makes money by selling advice on how to make a full-time living while travelling the world, despite the fact that she isn’t actually able to do that. Many influencers who promote extremely restrictive diets and health regimes have admitted that they themselves do not follow these diets. People who are feeling deeply insecure about their bodies, relationships, careers, lifestyles and productivity are turning to advice from people who aren’t qualified to help. And why does every Instagram star suddenly seem to be offering themselves up as a “wellness” expert? It’s because...

It exists to sell you things, while pretending otherwise. As much as the influencer community presents itself as being all about “authenticity”, “expression”, “empowerment”, or “wellness”, at the end of the day, it is all about trying to sell you things, even if that means exploiting your deepest insecurities. A company that employs plus-sized models to represent their $90 leggings is still a company that, at the end of the day, is trying to sell you $90 leggings, and if they have to pay someone to convince you that these leggings are the only thing standing between you and finally loving your body and having the courage to chase your dreams, then that’s exactly what they are going to do. It is an advertisement, dressed up as self-help and inspiration from an ordinary person who just wants you to succeed. If you find that you feel bad about yourself after a couple of minutes of scrolling through your instagram feed, that’s the impact that the app is meant to have on you. People who are completely satisfied with themselves and their lives don’t buy things they don’t need - making you feel like your life should be better is the key to selling you a wide variety of products.

Does all this mean that Instagram is evil, or that influencers are bad people? Of course not. They are people trying to make money through self-expression, and many produce interesting and engaging content. Many of them are very young, and may not think about the impact that they might be having on their followers. I certainly don’t think that any of them set out to deceive people. But it is important to think critically about the media we consume, the purpose of that media, and the message it carries. I have known many people, both personally and professionally, who find that they feel worse about themselves after spending an afternoon scrolling through social media, and I think it’s important for all of us to examine why that may be, and take steps to protect our own mental health.

#askmissmentelle #missmentelle #instagram #insta #Social media #mental health #mental illness #self esteem #self love

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mmmonie · 3 years

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I have obey me brain rot and I physically cannot take it anymore so here are some random HCS I fucking busted out about demons under the read more (and some angel stuff thrown in. For fun. Spice is the variety of life or whatever) I formatted this on mobile so forgive me for my crimes pls..... 😔

Also as an fyi I have never written anything in my life <3 (and also I’m dyslexic) so if something sounds stupid I’m sorry lol <3 also I’m sure u can tell but I never know where to put commas so if that bothers u........sorry again lol

*There are (at least) two demonic languages: one is a bit like Latin albeit way more fucked up. The second one is spoken only. A human can learn to understand both but the second one requires a lot of concentration to discern due to the subtlety in the growls, clicks and other noises demons are capable of making. It’s also very dependent on body language, especially in demonic form.

*It would be nearly impossible for a human to be fluent in the second one because of that. (unless you’re like. A really good mimic?)

* the second one is the oldest language. The new language and it’s written counterpart are derived from it with a little twist, so you’ll still hear some interesting noises thrown in there. It would take some dedication to learn, though the written part is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. It was made to be read quickly and efficiently. The speaking part however...................good luck.

* Demons and angels can instantly pick up human languages including reading and writing. Wouldn’t do you much good to be summoned in like. Germany and not know the language LOL

* Demons purr LOL you can’t click and growl and NOT purr. Like cats, it is both a happy thing and a self soothing thing.

* There is a slight difference between a happy purr and a self soothing purr, but the difference depends entirely on the demon.

* Demons (and angels) are nearly impossible to kill. It’s also very hard to damage them in any meaningful way. They also heal very quickly, so even if you did get a good hit on one, if they managed to get away chances are they’d heal in a matter of hours.

* Stronger demons like the brothers are even MORE impervious to damage. The amount of times Beel’s reached into the oven barehanded just to pop a piping hot cookie in his mouth is insane. He swears it’s the best way to eat them.

* Angels are very stiff but very physically powerful. They have a lot of control over their bodies and are trained from a young age to be able to wield that power responsibly.

* Demons on the other hand are incredibly flexible and bounce back easily. Though your average demon might not be the same physical strength as an angel, they have agility on their side. Angels are heavy hitters where demons rely on their ability to strike multiple times very quickly.

* This was a very weird transition for the brothers, though the amount of strength they had barely changed between realms. Fallen angels don’t change that much strength wise, but a little bit is burned up in the fall (to protect themselves.)

* Angels may be strong but demons also posses a massive amount of strength and have to learn to control it over time. This is known as a “juvenile phase” but it happens at different ages depending on how they were born. Fallen angels do not go through this as they have already learned to keep a grip on their power. Do I have an entire separate post ready about this bc I just couldn’t shut up? Maybe...

* There are four ways of being “born” a demon. Fallen angels, half demons, human borns and natural demons.

* Humans can choose to be turned into demons, but it is a very painful process and they won’t be able to gain any strength, what they get is what the get. They are referred to as “human born” and were considered the lowest of the humanoid demons until Diavolo came into power.

* Human born used to just be made whenever by whoever but that caused problems. Demons would make human borns and then just leave them to flounder about by themselves in an unknown territory. Diavolo’s father put an end to that during his reign, but “accidents” still happen. Now you have to do paperwork if you want to turn your human friend/lover into a demon lol.

* The ceremony for turning humans into demons is incredibly complex, which is why banning making human born unless given permission is less of a problem than you’d think.

* Half demons are just that, they’re only half demon. Most are half human but there are a few other kinds of magical creatures mixed in there. They aren’t as strong as a natural demon nor a fallen angel but they can gain power through their other ancestry. Many of them specialize in unique kinds of magic.

* Half human/demon children aren’t as rare as you’d think they are. This is due to the fact that demons have all sorts of ways to keep a demonic baby alive. Ranging from shapeshifting and (magically) taking the baby themselves once it’s grown enough to handle the transition to various forms of potions and spells to help a human along.

* Half demons and natural demons have the luxury of being born already (mostly) acclimated to the devildom, making some of the transitions that come with a demons lifespan easier on them than human born and fallen angels.

* Angels are taught to control/ignore their instincts where demons are taught to rely on/embrace theirs. Because demonic instincts often work against the things taught in the celestial realm fallen angels have a hard time adjusting to their new environment. Though, as their sins overtake them, their instincts become easier to fall back on.

* Demons have multiple forms, not just the two shown in game. All in all, the brothers have 5, each becoming less and less humanoid.

* Half/human born demons are more likely to have both a tail and wings in their first demonic form. Stronger demons like the brothers are merely showing off the strongest of the two, but everyone has both. (Bc I think they slap LOL *points* u get a tail and wings! *u get a tail and wings*)

* •a demons features can be influenced by what sin they are, but it’s not a hard or fast rule. Don’t be surprised if a demon who looks more akin to Mammon is actually a Sloth demon.***this does not apply to little Ds who’s look is entirely dependent on their sin. Little Ds are an entirely separate conversation 😈

* human borns/half demons can have two sins assigned to them, though this makes them less powerful in both. Usually there is a more prominent sin.

* Diavolo’s rule has helped quite a bit with bringing humans into a new better light, and many natural born demons who haven’t been able to interact with the human realm have become increasingly curious about humans and the way they work. Much of this is due to media that was brought from the human world to sedate Dia’s intense curiosity.

* In the eyes of many older demons, humans are merely playthings and it is expected that most demons will eventually mate with at least one other demon. A human and a demon dating is seen as just infatuation on the demons part, and it’s often thought that there are no real feelings behind a relationship like that. However there have been/are many successful and happy human/demon relationships.

* Demons don’t really have a concept of marriage. They live so long there really isn’t a point to tying yourself to one single person (or a few people) However, that’s not to say that there aren’t relationships like that. There are binding ceremonies for expressing love and devotion to other beings and it has its own unique culture.

* though the gates to the human realm are still technically closed and have been for a long time, demons can still be summoned by witches (sorcerers, wizards, warlocks, whatever you call yourself.) They can also be successfully summoned if you are not a magic user, however this is rare and often can go wrong, much like horror movies.

* Summoning very powerful demons like the brothers is incredibly hard even for an extremely experienced magic user, so often the demon you get claiming to be Satan really isn’t LOL. There are demons who are actually assigned to go to summonings in the place of the seven lords of hell, but many demons will just take on the role to fuck around with whomever summoned them. You think a prince of hell has time to just go possess some object or person for fun? (Ok...Mammon Satan and Belphie might.......if they’re bored enough LOL)

* Demons are actually relatively cuddly creatures. They might be a little rough with strangers but base instincts with family members will always be to coddle rather than fight. They’re more like humans in that right.

* Angels don’t do much casual touching, they’re very uptight. Beel and Belphie being as close as they are was a bit of an oddity in the celestial realm. That’s not to say angels don’t need causal touch lol just that they were trained to avoid that “temptation”.

* the brothers had a hard time starting out in the Devildom because of this. They still have a hard time with casual touches, which is why they seem so touched starved with the MC.

Things I might elaborate on later:

* There is a difference between demons, incubi and succubi but it’s not what you think it is.

* Demons, angels and humans all have very different takes on gender.

* The juvenile phase (DO not tempt me I wrote out like 1000 words about it bc I couldn’t shut the fuck up)

* Animals in the Devildom are fucked up. I WILL fucking talk about this bc it’s my passion.

* Pacts and how they work..........

* Maybe I’ll also elaborate on the hierarchy/power structure of demons sometimes

#I was like that kid WHOS trying not to cough meme I could NOT fucking keep it to myself anymore LOL so now u will all SUFFER my shitty takes #I think abt obm constantly so........if I don’t delete this out of embarrassment tomorrow I might post more.....we’ll see.........sincerely #I fucking might LOL I’m already sweating.#anyway it’s 2:40 am I’m gonna eat this fucking cheese stick and go to bed goodnight bestie (<-u if ur reading this mwah)<3 #mental eelness...........#obey me!#obey me headcanons

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ilikekidsshows · 3 years

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Could you talk more about Adrien and Lila being foils?

Okey dokey.

So, I haven't seen the original dark mirror meta about these two, so I might end up treading some of the same ground, but hopefully I'll be able to bring some manner of new material to the table.

Lila and Adrien are constructs of similarity and opposition. I talked before about how similar they both are in their social goals and methods for reaching them. Adrien and Lila are both "beautiful people", not only attractive in looks, but compelling, interesting and charismatic in persona. They're the two characters most likely to be seen surrounded by others.

However, the people who surround them aren't really their friends-friends, and only get to see the parts of them that they deem socially acceptable. Lila constructs fanciful tales about her wild adventures and talks about how she's oh-so-helpful without ever actually helping anyone in any way. Meanwhile Adrien is the picture perfect gentleman, soft-spoken and kind, always willing to give someone his time. They both want to be liked, but Lila wants to be the center of attention while Adrien wants to fit in. Adrien also does genuinely do nice things for others even if not always for selfless reasons, while Lila never helps anyone out in the show ever. In fact, when she was trying to win Adrien over in ‘Volpina’, she stole and dumped the Grimoire. Lila actively harms people.

Their behavior also leads to them forming parasocial relationships. Adrien gets hounded by crazed fans when he wants to do nothing more than see the rare movie his mother starred in, because they're under the impression he's everyone's friend so of course they're entitled to his time and attention at any given moment. Everyone believes Lila's stories without a speck of scepticism even as they get increasingly wild, because they have the impression Lila is such a nice, helpful girl, she could never be a liar. Lila is very much like an online influencer, who also often exaggerate or even lie about their money or social situation to appear more interesting on camera but their audience never even thinks to question it because they have this cool online "friend" who always has such interestesting stories to tell.

The most important difference between these characters, as it is the reason they come into conflict, is in their relationships with Marinette and Ladybug. While the two would eventually come into conflict over Lila being a wannabe supervillain while Adrien is a superhero, the reason they have come into conflict in the show so far is over Marinette. Adrien adores Marinette, while Lila despises her. Adrien is the one who voiced exactly how much Marinette means to their entire class in the season two finale, while Lila makes it her mission to tear Marinette and her position down in 'Chameleon'. Similarly, Ladybug is the love of Adrien's life, while she's also the single person Lila hates more than Marinette.

This show does a lot of good vs bad contrasts, and Adrien and Lila are no exception with Adrien being a chosen protector or Paris while Lila is an aspiring supervillain. However, they are similar in this too. The similarity comes in how willing they are to take on these roles. Cat Noir is a lot more hyped about being a superhero than Ladybug, from the very beginning in 'Origins', and Lila is also a more willing villain than Hawk Moth. Gabriel became a villain to get his wife back, Lila wants to become one to get back at Ladybug.

Adrien also puts other people ahead of himself at all times even outside of his role as a superhero. This is because of his abuse background, so he's basically been trained to be selfless to a fault. He has to really want something and/or have Plagg egging him on to act selfishly. This trait is what gets him chosen as a hero, since Fu sees him put helping a random stranger over his own happiness (getting to go to school). Meanwhile, Lila's first priority is herself and she thinks kindness doesn't exists, labeling kind people as either "gullible" or "stupid" in 'Chameleon'.

Also, their rooms. Adrien's is wide and most often shown fully bright or with a half-bright-half-shadows dichotomy, while Lila's is almost claustrophobic in how it’s always shown in darkness, despite being a pretty regular size. There’s also other symbolism in how light is used to depict their rooms. Lila’s room has a single window with the blinds down but not closed: she’s shutting people out but always observing them for weaknesses. Meanwhile Adrien’s large windows create shadows that make the room resemble a prison, which it has the potential to turn into, so the threat of being locked up against his will constantly looms over Adrien like a shadow.

However, there are still similarities. Adrien and Lila are both collectors. Adrien's collection is one of video games while Lila has a collection of masks. These collections showcase important aspects of their characters: Adrien values having a good time and Lila values always keeping her true self hidden. Adrien just wants to have fun with other people and loves having other people in his room to play with ('Party Crasher' and 'Félix' showcase this). Lila places value on the different masks she wears themselves. Does she even remember why she wears them anymore?

This one is going fully into wild theories territory, but Lila's bracelet looks like a friendship bracelet. I've made a bunch of these at various camps as a kid by weaving different colored strings together. They're commonly traded between friends.

Did Lila have a friend and the bracelet is either a token from one of her more memorable victims, or was this hypothetical friend the one using Lila and served as Lila’s Cynicism Catalyst?

I'll also briefly cover why exactly the story would want to use these characters as foils. That's because, ultimately, Lila is Adrien's opponent.

An important aspect of Lila and Adrien's relationship is the power games they play with each other. Each step of the way, they have been trying to figure each other out, and every time Lila is a step behind Adrien. Adrien figured out Lila was a liar way back in 'Volpina', but Lila didn't figure out that Adrien was onto her before 'Chameleon', when Adrien also started to realize the potential danger that Lila poses, which was further enforced by what he saw in 'Oni-Chan'. Then, Adrien realizes she's an actual threat to Marinette specifically in 'Ladybug', while Lila realizes that Adrien is completely capable of playing the same games she does.

Lila lets her guard down much more easily than Adrien, we see this in how she repeatedly lets her mask slip to show just how nasty she really is for Marinette and Adrien in 'Chameleon', while Adrien has never slipped with anyone to show just how damaged he is (the number one thing he is hiding). Everything he's told others is pretty innocuous stuff (e.g. "my only friend was Chloé"). Because Lila is more sloppy, she also allows herself to be smug with Marinette, thinking she has the real Adrien figured out already. However, she doesn't realize that she still hasn't figured Adrien out completely. Adrien might be wily, but he's also kind, and Lila messed with the people he wants to protect.

As we've seen from their interactions so far, ever since Adrien knew what she was like, he's been a step ahead of her. He's the one who sabotaged her original plan to get rid of Marinette (which was just waiting for Marinette to attack her publically and turn everyone against her) and he also stepped in to make her give up her second plan (framing Marinette for misdemeanours). So, while they're now focused on each other, Marinette is still right in the middle of the battle. The fight is between Lila and Adrien, but it’s about Marinette, so Marinette is still technically the main consideration in this sub plot, so it doesn’t sideline our main character entirely.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #lila rossi #adrien agreste #ml meta #ml theory #long post

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 3 years

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i mean??? the whole first chapter of “damage control for a walking corpse”?? i find it hilarious

lol me too anon! i really can’t emphasize how much of that entire story was driven by the question of what i personally found funniest to do at any given time… it was actually really interesting to discover from the other end something i already knew as a reader/viewer (but somehow those lessons never just automatically carry…), which is the way that humor and drama can really feed each other. in the very early feverish blurtings of ideas, eliot’s line about therapy in the first chapter was something like “i went to three whole therapy sessions while you were dead,” which worked okay as a gag about eliot, but when i was starting to write it for real i realized that actually the scene would be funnier if that contrast between them was real and meaningful, because then the humor of it was connected to the central issue of the story - the more well-adjusted eliot was, the more it heightened quentin’s disaster state of mind. that also made the scene darker (i was really fascinated by the split in reaction between those who found the story funny and then increasingly less so, and those who found it excruciating the whole time - both are valid! but it was interesting to see), because it really highlighted where quentin was, and that choice also wound up really influencing the way i thought about the particular color of quentin’s anger and resentment throughout the story towards eliot & eventually julia, how infuriated he is by the simple fact that they’re basically doing okay… it was a really interesting learning process, to let myself chase what i found funny and find that it led to things that deepened the story, too. 💜

#askbox #writing tag

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nathanieldorsky · 3 years

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Interview with Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky, May 2021, Leeds, U.K. to accompany an outdoor screening hosted by Will Rose

WR The screening of your work in Leeds will be outdoors in a field at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm. It will be dark of course, but the films will be set against the backdrop of the city and accompanied by the sound of the outdoor environment. I’m interested in how these local conditions might affect your work. What do you think about this, and have you ever screened your work outdoors?

ND When Jerome and I were in our early twenties we would leave New York City for a summer evening at my parents’ house where there was a backyard bordering a forest. We would have outdoor screenings using two projectors and enjoy the superimposed images and their many chance occurrences. San Francisco does not have windless warm evenings and the summer nights are particularly cold, so the inspiration to do this type of screening does not come naturally. But this summer, with the Covid crises restricting our social and screening lives, we had two screenings for six people each on the backyard patio of filmmaker Scott Stark. We were all dressed for a winter sleigh ride and masked with distance between seating. I showed three films I had made so far during the lockdown, one of which, Temple Sleep, you will see this evening. What was particularly lovely were the swaying tree shadows on the screen from the surrounding window lights going off and on. The film felt like it was floating within a larger cinema.

JH Of course, silent films are extremely vulnerable to ambiance, yet there are always margins, and some are larger or smaller so it’s impossible to predict what is too distracting or not. Every screening is a law unto itself. No two are alike – even when there’s an immediate repeat screening. When I send my films out to be rented, they’re like children old enough to be on their own. I wish them luck. That’s about all I can do. Back in 1964 I roomed with Gregory Markopoulos and we were always trying to find some spacious outdoor setting for a night time screening. It never came about, but I feel now that I saw the beginning of an idea that eventually led to his Temenos events in Greece.[1]

WR You have each largely kept your personal filmmaking practice separate from your ‘day jobs’ (Jerome as a carpenter and documentary director, Nathaniel as a film editor) – to what extent did/does your daily work influence or affect the films you make, and vice versa?

ND As an editor one has to be very strict sometimes with a client for their own good … you witness the naked self-deceptions … so when you are working on your own film you almost laugh when this dialogue takes place all within yourself … you see the importance of not deceiving yourself … you see the way you fib to yourself …

JH It has been some time since I worked as a carpenter. The work was all-engrossing and I hardly had a chance to have my films affect that particular work. However, the money I made certainly allowed me to make films. When I was young, I admired the filmmakers who had day jobs that supported their work. I also worked on documentary films and there it was a case of my personal films influencing my documentary style.

WR Your work is very much concerned with the act of filming in the moment – an idea which also seems to extend to the way you would like your films to be experienced. I’m curious about the role history and memory play into this presentness. When you film somewhere, is the history of that place important to you? And are your own memories of that place important to the way you respond to it in the moment with your camera?

ND For me it is the presences and dissonances of light that guide my camera into the world. Generally I am not trying to evoke a place, but in the film Temple Sleep I shifted in that direction; in this case seeing a series of fly casting practice pools as the flooded ruin of an ancient temple of the past.

JH I generally wander at random. Driving in my car – particularly in places that I don’t know, hoping to get lost. I will react to a location. I don’t set out to make a statement, rather I learn and am tutored by the film as it develops. My film has more to say to me in the long run than the reverse. All art works seem to be self-portraits.

WR I understand that you often show your work to friends in private salon screenings. Until relatively recently this was the only situation that Jerome’s work would be presented in. Can you tell me more about these private screenings? And when you make your work, is it is useful to have a particular viewer (someone you know) in mind? 

JH Now that I’m shown publicly, I’m often asked why I “withheld” my work. But, as far as I was concerned, I was sharing my work as much as I could. Living in San Francisco, I was ensconced in such a vibrant and busy film scene with many visiting filmmakers coming through and showing their work. There were many impromptu screenings at different people’s homes. For my part, I would create tailor-made “films” from my camera original to suit the person or people who were attending that night. Then, I would dismantle the reel and re-purpose material for another occasion. This process of using original film resulted in much loss over the years. But, as for making a finished film, I had not found a voice and my attempts, I feared, might be pretentious. Suddenly, I was asked to be in a film show and I quickly finished a film in progress. In this way, I had found my very casual voice.

WR You have been life-partners since the mid-1960s and make films principally for each other. Can you tell me more about how your work converges and diverges?

ND Jerome taught me half the things that I know. His earliest filmmaking awakened me to the open glories of self-symbol montage, that a film is something in itself! Jerome is a bit more the painter and I, a bit more the poet.

WR During the pandemic I have increasingly had the urge to be somewhere that I don’t recognise. I was fascinated to find out that your work is almost entirely filmed within a very small radius of your home in San Francisco. Why is this the case?

ND This is an exaggeration … although it is true that many of my films are shot in walking distance from my apartment. But I would often in normal times go downtown with my camera in a car, park and walk around in a variety of neighbourhoods and environments. I could no longer shoot street or human scenes as if the Covid was not happening. The real issue is that when you travel and shoot footage the footage is seldom as good as something you shot that you are very familiar with. When it’s familiar you have to work harder to make it touch something in the psyche … but a new place is all awe and seduction of the new but the footage one might take there is often not really so interesting as cinema. I have some travel films I’ve made on Kodachrome and have occasionally shown them in my apartment and once publicly at Anthology Film Archives. They looked gorgeous with the original camera Kodachrome going through the projector – now that is a heart stopper.

WR You both have a close affinity to poetry and have found ways to create an equivalent sensation using the medium of film. Nathaniel, I showed your work in Leeds a few years ago in the presence of a very wonderful local poet. Without any prior knowledge, he appreciated it instantly as the filmic equivalent of a poem. Is there some intrinsic essence you can identify which makes film poetic?

ND When film can create for the viewer feelings and intuitions, associations and discoveries, things that cannot be directly said, then it has poetic qualities. Not the false poetry of sentimental narrative, but the sharp present alert quality of light and the screen.  JH I think my films are more akin to music than poetry. Some musicians can tell me what tempos and dance forms my works employ. My subject matter is so truly personal that I doubt anyone else could follow a “narrative.” Though, I have heard a viewer’s re-telling of my film that was both true and sidesplittingly hilarious. You might wonder, “Do I have no regard for my viewer?” Actually, I hope that there is always something for the mind of the viewer to engage with along with the feeling that what you see and feel is, indeed, the heart of the film. The film is really yours. I remember, over so many years, tedious post-film discussions where a viewer stated their reaction and asked the filmmaker, “Was that intentional?” My answer would be: If that’s what you saw, yes, it was.

WR The way light, weather and vegetation are measures of seasonal change is important in almost all your work. How do the seasons play a role in structuring the way you make films?

ND Like poets for many thousands of years, the change of seasons stirs the soul, awakening primordial feelings of birth, death and desire and the need to “sing” of such things.

WR The pandemic has put a temporary stop to public screenings of work that necessitates film projection. This screening of your work in Leeds is a gentle re-connection with a type of art that has been in hibernation. What has been your response to the last year? Have you worried for the future of your art form?

ND I just kept on shooting and vaguely wondering what damage the Covid crises would have on handmade films in public arenas. Luckily my film lab was allowed to stay open as an essential business … I could not agree more … and Eastman stayed open for purchasing raw stock. I found it very difficult to make a film during this crises – though I ended up making six … many quite short as the world had become smaller. I spent weeks at various places in Golden Gate park, a half block from my apartment. After three weeks or so ideas for making films in those locations took place and manifested. It was hard photographing things with this ominous lurking presence, but I found a way by relating to the oppression and trying to make films that were a purification for the impending claustrophobia.

JH This is a very good question. The issue of impermanence has arisen most powerfully this past year. I find myself at an advanced age. I read complaints that my films are impossible to see outside of the larger venues in film capitals. My attention, as usual, has been on the making of films and not at all on their exhibition. I have never felt that video was akin to film. For me, it did not present itself as a substitute. I am considering, very seriously, transferring my films to a digital format. I do dislike the light of digital projectors, but I have to face the fact that loyalty to my first love is taking too large a toll on my work’s appearance on any screen at all.

[1]. Temenos is the name filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos gave to a remote outdoor screening site in the Peloponnese region of Greece. Markopoulos spent the last decade of his life working on Eniaios, an epic, 80-hour film cycle created exclusively for projection at this site. The next presentation screening will take place there in summer 2022. See: www.thetemenos.org

3 Films by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler | Outdoor Screening, Fri, 21 May 2021, Leeds, U.K. link

#Nathaniel Dorsky #Jerome Hiler #interview #william rose

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gofancyninjaworld · 4 years

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The Changing Structure of the OPM Story -- and the Challenge of Adaptation

I've been thinking a lot about the structure of OPM and how it's been changing as we get into the story. I really don't envy anyone who has the task of adapting OPM for screen, particularly as the story advances.

Something that Shingo Natsume says in his interview with AnimeLab Australia really brought it home for me. He says that it's not correct to call the characters around Saitama a 'supporting cast' as they all have their unique roles (start around 2:30). And that got me thinking.

youtube

I think we can broadly divide OPM’s story so far into four phases (the divisions are arbitrary, but I hope useful)

Phase I: INDIVIDUALS

When OPM starts, it's all about the individual characters and there's little focus on the world in which they exist in. It's natural, because we're just being introduced to them. We start out, it's just Saitama, wandering around in splendid isolation. He’s in a world that’s bizarre with giant brothers and underground civilizations, but nothing is explained to us. He exists.

Then it's Saitama and Genos, and it all gets very cosy. Then we add another character. And a few more. We see how they do, we see what some of the people of the world make of them, but we have to take everything on face value, we don’t have a lot of history or context.

Still even at the end of the first phase, we've got not that much context other than that the Hero Association exists to deal with the monsters and threats we see, we've met the Class S heroes and the wider world isn't really in focus as to what their relationship to it means.

The alien invasion really marks the end of this phase as we can’t help but hear what the world makes of the world-shaking fact of having been contacted by aliens and the tragedy of the destruction of a major city.

To adapt it, Shingo Natsume decided to frame the story as a drama first and then a superhero story only secondarily. By doing so, he really made the best of the characters as individuals. We didn’t know why they were the way they were -- in fact, we still don’t entirely know -- but we could come to understand who they were and care about them and be bothered by their relations with the world. We see a lot of it from Saitama’s place and the inhabited world looks remote, fickle, difficult to understand and even hostile. And yet, we get lots to laugh about too.

Interview with Shingo Natsume - Animation Director [Episode 3]

It’s only a couple of minutes long, you’ll want to watch it all.

Phase II: INDIVIDUALS and the world

When King gets introduced, things change. Unlike all the other characters, we don’t get to know King himself, what he says, what he does. Rather, we get what other people around King see in him. What he means to them.

This is where I start not envying people. The first phase, if you’re doing an adaptation, you can largely get by by focusing on the individual characters and their interactions with each other. The second phase is a lot more balanced between the individuals and the world.

As Garou starts cutting a swathe through the heroes and the Monster Association makes life hell for people, the world shares importance with the individuals we're following.

I think that's where season 2's adaptation really struggled. It didn't do such a good job of portraying what all that strife meant to people, the terror and confusion they were feeling, and what a threat to the reputation of the Hero Association it was. Every corner JC Staff cut in not showing the crowds of people, in not showing the extent of destruction or public consternation, every last bit hurt the impact of the story.

When the Monster Association directly challenges the Hero Association, they’re not just out to destroy a group of heroes. We started this phase understanding how people have been able to trust that even in this chaotic world, there are heroes who can end the evil threatening them, or else save them from the danger. And that faith is what is very directly under attack now.

Of course, a certain teenage jerk thinks he’s got what it takes to be the most important individual in the world.

If I were thinking of a frame for this phase, it’d be the loss of innocence and really made the linkage between Amai Mask’s yelling at the heroes at the end of the last season, the faith we saw people have in King and the growing sense of dismay and even betrayal as monsters arose and heroes were nowhere to be found. It’s an increasingly urgent background against which to set the very personal struggles of the various characters we’re following in this part of the story. One that will have a lot of relevance later.

Phase III: Individuals in the World

Whoever takes OPM forward, that problem is only going to get worse. The story moves around ever more relentlessly from scene to scene, from individual to individual and along with it, the world does too. Where to place the weight of our attention is a matter of choice and mastery. Succeed, and we have an epic conflict. Fail and it’s ‘all these things are happening and I can’t keep anything straight.’

Some of that weight needs to be put on the world. Almost from the start, the story frames the individual actions in the context of what it means for the world. We've got the Monster Worship Party, the people so scared of what's happening that they'd rather limit the damage than risk being all destroyed. Garou’s dismay when he realises that he’s not going to be the biggest thing in the world is sobering.

reality, it bites

It’s in this phase that world-building gets serious. We learn about what monsterisation is, are introduced to the concept of a limiter and how individuals may gain power. The manga also builds out more in terms of just why the conflict is happening in City Z, linking together the apparently random dreams of Saitama to the location and the history of just why that part of the city was deserted.

The stakes are clearly drawn by the manga. We literally have two towers rising out of the ruins of a city opposing one another. The Tower of Justice built out of the ashes of City A and the Tower of Despair hauled up through the ruins of City Z. It’s not just the physical struggle between hero and monster that we get, there’s also the philosophical and even spiritual strife between them. A struggle seemingly for the well-being of humanity. All with bonus Garou going through both like a wrecking ball.

and of course, set against all the titans battling, the ordinary little man who has broken past the rules of the world

Phase IV: THE WORLD and its individuals

And now, after the Monster Association, we have the WORLD and the individuals are much smaller. It's become about the movers and shakers and the organisations that influence the world and the individuals are actors going about this changing world. The Hero Association has come in for a critical re-evaluation by the media and public. A rival organisation has arisen. Other organisations start to flex their muscles with varying degrees of covertness, all looking for power and influence.

The history of the world starts to come to view. We learn about the peculiar physical and human geography of this world and a lot more about the role monsters play in the world.

Individuals aren’t forgotten. We start too, to get more background on many characters whose behaviour had hitherto been rather difficult to understand.

It’s been interesting to see Garou’s actual impact. He never became the greatest monster the whole world knew and feared. Rather, he served to potentiate the resentment and strife between the various classes of heroes.

to be fair, this has been a long time coming

We started OPM with all these weird individuals and we loved them as the slightly crazy eccentrics they were. Now one by one, we're getting the contexts they come from and it's beginning to make sense.

all those crazy individuals -- the insecure and empire-building Fubuki, the needlessly antagonistic and over-possessive Tatsumaki, the obsessive ninjas -- all of them are starting to look a lot less crazy. even the cyborg ranting and raving about a mystery cyborg who devastated his life isn’t looking quite so far-fetched any longer. Their truths look to be sadder and wilder than we’d imagined.

The world of OPM is bigger and weirder than any one person within it is able to experience or understand. ONE so far is doing an interesting exercise in telling us about the world, but showing us what it means for the individuals affected by its various aspects.

How an adaptation will keep the story interesting and human and focused while bringing in the sense of scale and context is going to be a real challenge! I do not envy the director. But it's going to be so worth taking on.

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#OPM #meta #story structure #the changing emphasis on the individuals and the world in which they exist in is interesting to observe #ONE has permitted us to enjoy a lot while still keeping it human by focussing on what it means for the individual #but the world does matter -- how an adaptation keeps the balance is going to be good to see #30th #June #2020 #June 30th 2020

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dontasktheradiodemon · 3 years

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Private Chat Log - 11/30

Follow-up to the argument that Alastor and Valera started a few days ago at movie night. TL;DR: they don't hate each other, but Alastor's not as keen on going out of his way to make friends with Valera as he was before.

Valera

Ah, how incredibly comforting to be back in the familiar territory of not quite knowing where one stands with the local radio demon. And by comforting, one of course means, not remotely comforting in the slightest. But that's hopefully going to change today, if things go well. Stepping into the agreed on location, Valera plasters a smile on their face and offers a friendly fin waggle.

"Alastor."

Alastor

Alastor stands the moment Valera enters—same room as last time, seemed easiest that way. What’s one room compared to another in an empty hotel, anyway? “Valera.”

Valera

They step closer. Not close enough to be within the zone of offering the dreaded handshake, but better than shouting across the room at each other. "So, shall we stand here in front of all these chairs and exchange pleasantries, or get right to it then? I believe I was meant to pelt you with questions, as I put it."

Alastor

Alastor holds up a hand. “Before you start,” he says somberly—as somberly as he can, at any rate, with that smile—“I have something I need to tell you.”

Valera

"Oh? Alright then, I'm listening." Their interest is piqued. What could Alastor have to say that was so important?

Alastor

Alastor straightens himself, adjusts his monocle, clears his throat, and begins with the tone of a consummate professional reading the news on air:

“The leading political story out of England in the year 1910 was the death of King Edward VII and his succession by his son King George V on May 6th—although perhaps of greater historical importance was the introduction of the House of Commons’ bill to remove the House of Lords’ legislative veto, which the next year would culminate in the Commons gaining supremacy over the Lords. There were several strikes of note, the largest being a coal miners’ strike beginning in November—it resulted in several days of rioting and lasted ten months, and the strike only ended when the government enacted a minimum wage. Among the suffragist movement—the part you’ve been waiting for, I know!—after seven years of increasingly violent protests and demonstrations, the Women’s Social and Political Union saw hope in the introduction of an act that would allow a million women to vote—only for it to get stuck in political limbo due to budget issues resulting from that tiff between the Commons and Lords. When the WSPU attempted to march on Parliament in protest on what would come to be known as Black Friday, the courageous ladies were met with violence, from both civilians and police, that frankly is unfit to repeat on air. Some three hundred suffragettes were arrested and two died. In the future, the WSPU would shift back to airing their grievances in a more hit-and-run manner, such as via bricks through windows. And finally, in a subject near and dear to my own heart, the very first arrest was made on the basis of orders sent via wireless telegraphy, another step on the road toward the full maturation of radio.”

He waits with his hands clasped behind his back, smirking.

Valera

It takes a moment for them to even remember why he was suddenly rattling off 1910 news, and another few to process the information because, damn it all, they *were* still curious despite themselves.

Several seconds of silence follow Alastor's monologue, Valera quietly staring at him as their face remains carefully neutral. Followed by a slow, deep inhale, and exhale. Another few moments of quiet pondering.

Then their lip twitches, and all Hell breaks loose as they start CACKLING hard enough to nearly fall over, hands clutching their stomach as they bend over double. Oh, no, there they go actually. 300 some pounds of fish struggling to land on a couch before their limbs give out. Congratulations, Alastor, you've downed the Autocrat of Okkylk.

Alastor

Right now he’s the envy of who-knows-how-many ambitious alien politicians.

He’d been worried how that one was going to end. That, he knew, could have very well ended the discussion before it had a chance to start. But he thought the bit was so funny it was worth taking the risk. A performer to the end.

He’s lucky Valera agreed. He half bows—thank you, thank you—then takes a seat across from Valera to wait for them to recover.

Valera

A few weak coughs, a rattling breath, and Valera sits up to scrub at their face. Alright, alright. They're good. It's fine. Or maybe not, the second they lay eyes on him they start giggling all over again.

"Alastor you *smug little know it all*. That was beautifully done."

Alastor

Another half bow from his seat. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”

Valera

"I'm sure you will be, considering you live here." They pause. "DO you live here? I've actually got no idea if you stole one of the hotel rooms the way Penny did or if you commute over here from some secret house of yours."

Alastor

“Oh, goodness, no! Wouldn’t that be sad, to live in a *hotel* of all places.” He quickly makes a placating gesture. “Exceptions made for temporary residences while repairing a damaged home, of course. No, I only work here, just like Husk and Niffty.”

Valera

"Is that sad? I wouldn't know. I've only ever lived in either a nursery in a military compound on the moon, or an assortment of palaces that I inherited from dead people." If they had any tea, they'd be politely sipping it. Unfortunately, they have to settle for shrugging their shoulders like some savage. "I figured Niffty had a nest of towels in a cupboard somewhere that she crawled into at night. Maybe with a Live Laugh Love sign tacked to the backboard."

Alastor

“It is for humans.” He pauses. “Americans, at any rate. I wouldn’t be surprised if she does, truth be told, but I’ve hardly had a reason to check!”

Valera

"Huh! You'd think it'd be a luxury. Shows what I know." But who has time to worry about how sad it may or may not be to live in a hotel? That's not what they were there for. "Regardless! Thank you for the history lesson. I do appreciate it, genuinely. I'd completely forgotten the initial question."

Alastor

“Of course! Always happy to educate.” He sobers up a bit. “But I’m sure that’s not one of the questions you wanted to ask me.”

Valera

"No, but before I get into the questions, there *are* a few things I want to say." They sigh, tucking themselves against the arm of the couch and pulling their legs up. A coil of their tail, and Alastor is sitting across from a neat little bundle of fish.

"Pentious keeps me up to date on your conversations. Not *specifics*, of course, but anything significant tends to come up. And with that in mind, I want to thank you. You've been a good friend to him. I know you don't need my thanks of all things, but I've seen the way your influence has helped him, and I'm grateful regardless."

Alastor

Oh, damn, now he’s self conscious. Awkward smile. Which things are they alluding to? And is the praise about to be followed up by a *However...*? “Of course. After all, it’s what he deserves! That, and... so much more besides.”

Valera

They hold up a hand. "You're right! And before your mind goes racing anywhere, there's no hidden agenda here, I'm not about to follow up with scolding or demand that anything change. I'm just grateful that my spouse has a friend in you. Your conversation last night, for example. It got him to open up more. Which, frankly speaking, is incredible. Three months ago he'd have never."

Alastor

Three months ago, Alastor would never have either. "Ah, well, you know, I do have a way with people." Deflect that praise. What else is he supposed to do with it, say "thank you" again? (He didn't say "thank you" the first time either, but he sort of feels like he implied it.)

Valera

"That you do." Now now Alastor, what did we learn about assuming and implications? But no matter, Valera seems content to leave that conversation where it is. "Now, as far as questions go, I don't have as many as you may think. Most were answered a few minutes into our conversation, luckily for both of us. Before I completely dominate the conversation, did you have anything to say or ask aside from a summary of 1910 English politics?"

Alastor

"Not at the moment." Maybe later, depending on how this went; but that was conclusion stuff, not introduction stuff.

Valera

"Good! In that case, I'll be as direct as possible. Some of these questions will be obvious, try not to be insulted. I'm taking not assuming things literally until I've got confidence in my baseline." Valera shifts, still wrapped in their own tail but leaning in towards Alastor. "Assuming this conversation goes well, would you like to try being friends again, or would you prefer to avoid each other in a civilized fashion?"

Alastor

Alastor makes a thoughtful clicking sound. Well, there's the bulk of what he'd planned to address himself. "At this point? Neither, per se. I don't see any reason to avoid you—but I can't say that I'm currently thrilled by the thought of *trying* to be friends. The whole putting in effort part." A wan smile. "I haven't gotten very good returns on my investments, you see."

Valera

They raise an eyebrow. "That's fair. I wouldn't expect you to go pay to get thrown down the stairs again. What would you have us do then?"

Alastor

"Oh... The same as we've been doing, I suppose. If we're going to end up friends, we'll get there eventually."

Valera

Hum.. "That seems like the most reasonable approach. Alright, next up. Do you plan on ever telling Pentious about your feelings, or is this going to be one of those 'to your grave' scenarios?"

Alastor

Alastor suppresses a grimace. Is that *relevant* to this conversation?

But fine. It's not like he's never thought about it. "If there's ever a point where it will do more good than harm, I'll tell him then. I don't know how it works on your world, but here among us humans, friendships don't tend to last when unequal emotions get exposed. I *want* him to know—but then we'll both be short one friend. And he doesn't have room to lose any."

He shrugs, his gaze on some piece of boring generic hotel wall art. "Fifty-fifty odds it won't be relevant for long anyway—so why ruin what little time we've got left? If everything goes right, I'll be gone and the person that will replace me will be just as happy to be his friend without the uneven attachment. He'll *find out* then," Alastor laughs wryly, "but it won't be aimed at *him* anymore."

Valera

They bite their tongue before they can start pointing out their ongoing friendship with at least three people with feelings for them, it always sounds too self congratulatory when it gets brought up. Instead, how about they just nod along and let Alastor explain his side of things? That's *much* more helpful.

"You've got a point. Though I suppose part of me is still worried that the replacement you that comes to be wont be as good a friend to him as the you he knows now. Perhaps that's irrational. This isn't me trying to get out of it, mind you, this is me asking for reassurance. Do you truly believe this alternate path of yourself will be as good a fit for my beau?"

Alastor

And that's a question he's been trying *not* to think about. He's quiet longer this time as he considers it.

"Your fiancé will be my second priority. And I won't be able to directly empathize with his lowest lows. But, I won't have had half a century to get used to *seeing* him so low—so the biggest risk is that as soon as I find out the story, I'll go eviscerate my duplicate." He huffs. "And I'll be a less wretched person myself. That should help." He hopes.

"I'll be leaving a message for myself to receive after everything's changed. If I can't trust advice from my own self, then who can I trust advice from? But—I can't give a 100% guarantee. The person I was fifty-four years ago would be his friend, but I can only make educated guesses about what I'll be like after fifty-four years to grow in a completely different direction."

Valera

It wasn't the reassuring, resounding yes they were hoping for, but life is rarely so comfortably absolute. Valera frowns, a hand wrapping around one of their barbels to gently worry at the scales. Sorry Alastor, Valera's out here ready to ask questions they really shouldn't.

"... Alright. I suppose that will have to do. It isn't ideal, but it's the best either of us could do in that set of circumstances. Though the idea of you hearing yourself out and then immediately ready to go engage in some fisticuffs with yourself is funny. You're one of the people I see *avoiding* getting involved in fights when possible."

Alastor

"To be frank, the only thing that kept me from trying to exterminate him when I heard the story is the fact that I did the same thing."

He would have liked to offer a resounding yes. Under the circumstances, Alastor thought honesty would be the more courteous option. "Just don't be careless with your half in hopes of sparing your fiancé the disappointment. Remember who's the one who suffers if this fails—and I don't mean me."

Valera

"Well, I suppose I can't blame you. If anyone betrayed Penny now that I'm involved, I'm pretty sure I'd try to smite the bastard two steps in."

They shake their head, waving their hand reassuringly. "I've got no intentions of throwing our deal, Alastor. It's a fifty fifty shot, but I'm going to do my best to help you fix things. Hopefully it all works out, everyone walks away happy, and we all talk very nicely about how great our respective snakes are while they preen in the background."

Alastor

The possibility sounds unreal. "Hopefully." Trying to think about it too hard fills him with a vague sense of dread—the better it sounds, the less he feels like they have the slightest chance of achieving it.

So don't think about it too hard. "You had other questions?"

Valera

"Ah, yes. Lets not linger too much on that. Lest the universe listen in and brace itself." They shift, stretching a single leg out until it shakes before curling back into their little ball. Yes, very good.

"Alright. Let me see... Those teacups. Did you make those? Buy them? They're very nice."

Alastor

"Oh! The ones with the fingers and eyeballs?" This is a weird-ass interrogation. "No, I stole them! Aren't they lovely? Very lifelike!"

Valera

"Oho! Magnificent. Have you animated any of them to skitter around yet? It seems like it'd be great for a laugh."

... Wait, they were supposed to be asking *serious* questions, weren't they? Ahem. "... I don't think I have any more burning questions relevant to our current discussion. Or if I do, they've escaped me. I think I understand things more clearly now than I did before."

Alastor

"Not yet! Don't tell anyone else this, but truth be told, I enjoy everyone's fear from knowing I *could* but not if I *have.* As soon as they see the teacups moving, they know they can. But *until* then... there's always that uncertainty. A delicious, lingering dread." Welcome to Alastor's twisted mind.

"Then I suppose we're just about done here?"

Valera

Alastor's twisted mind happens to be, unfortunately, hilarious. But no time to sit here and praise his penchant for mischief. "I believe we are, yes. Quick and.. Mostly painless. Though I'm sure some of those questions were fairly unpleasant."

Alastor

"If 'fairly' means 'for all of ten seconds.' You're too concerned about other people's minor, fleeting discomforts."

Valera

They give him a quizzical look. "Of course it wouldn't be a lasting feeling, I'm not holding you at gunpoint. I'm not sure why my comment seems to bother you."

Alastor

"I'm simply worried about your preoccupation with how uncomfortable you're sure I must be! You do seem inclined toward micromanaging my mood when we talk like this." A shrug. "I did mention last time, didn't I, how eagerly you pour the compassion out. Perhaps that's related?"

Valera

"Perhaps so." Valera uncurls her coils, feet hitting the floor as she gets ready to stand.

"I'm not interested in keeping a steadying hand on your mood, Alastor. I was acknowledging that my questions delved into personal territory, nothing more. You answered them, so _clearly_ it wasn't _that_ bad."

Alastor

"Then that makes the both of us!" He stands to get the door, all gentleman-like. "Shall we?"

Valera

"Of course." Oh, how very polite of him. They'd planned on just vanishing like usual, but they'll indulge him this time.

Two steps into the hall seems far enough to be polite. A quick glance around, and the fish is gone in the blink of an eye.

Alastor

Hm. He needn't have bothered.

He shuts the door and heads off. Back to work, he supposes.

#autokrates

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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February 9: Mr. Robot 3x10

Finally watched the last episode of Mr. Robot season 3. I was actually on the ball today so I’ve done lots--worked a full 8 hour day, read at lunch, went on a walk, read some fanfic for the first time in literal months--and now I’m exhausted.

So I don’t have too many coherent thoughts.

I remembered a few things from this ep--mostly the Dom part, the Angela and Price reveal, and the very last shot. But there were still a lot of details I forgot, and honestly I think I forgot everything after they leave the barn. I completely forgot all that stuff with the finding the secret magic code keys to undo the hack. I think that’s because it’s actually rather anti-climactic versus a lot of the other stuff that happened. What does restoring the data do? As Grant says, the Dark Army doesn’t care because 5/9 was just a part of the bigger plan that served its purpose. And everything in the past 2 seasons has shown that the Prices and whiteroses of the world will come out on top no matter what, because even tragedy (esp. tragedy) is open to being manipulated. And finally, as the Lady of the Night at the end says, it’s just too simplistic a plan. Just like 5/9 itself. So I mean it’s very IC for Elliot and there’s a certain amount of satisfaction to something, at least, being nice and clean and tidy, but it doesn’t feel like this BIG big moment, especially compared to the earlier scenes. Like the point from the subway on doesn’t match anything from before, where I was so tense my stomach hurt.

I remember finding the Price and Angela story really emotional and surprising the first time I watched it, not because him being her father was so shocking--it’s the sort of twist Esmail does well, where you’re like.. oh DUH and it actually makes more sense now--but because I’d been so willing, in my own naivety, to believe that literally anything, even perhaps time travel itself, was possible-- I mean all the hints! And here he is saying, definitively, no, this is still a realistic universe, in fact probably one of the most realistic universes on tv, and there is absolutely no way we’re suddenly going to become Back to the Future--sometimes people, even/especially ridiculously powerful people, are just out of their minds. The reason was pettiness--it was really that small. There’s something so effectively gut wrenching about that, to me. Such big things, happening for such small reasons.

I felt sort of similarly about Dom being flipped, actually. In some sense, it was a big operation to get her on the side of the Dark Army: a lot of research and so on. But ultimately it was also so simple. She said nothing would make her betray her values and her country and her job, but when they showed her just how far their reach went, how they knew and could find literally her whole family, well that was it. It’s not a complex scheme, is what I’m trying to say, it’s just threats--but it’s also the worst threats imaginable, coupled with some classic emotional manipulation. And so just like that she’s ruined.

The show is just so good at balancing the big and the small, the personal and the organizational and the political. Elliot is just one, often naive, person, and the show doesn’t make him bigger than he is--but it does acknowledge that he’s the protagonist for a reason. So he is good enough to have whiterose’s project moved to the Congo, for example, even though “hundreds of people like” him couldn’t do it. His character and his influence on the world is just... so well calibrated. Big enough to warrant this being HIS show, but not so big as to ruin the realism of a show that’s so much about the puppeteering ability of the rich and powerful.

To circle back to Angela... I haven’t seen S4 but I do know that she dies in 4x01 and I read at least one article that was very unhappy with that narrative decision. I don’t know exactly what I’ll think of it in context yet but I will say... rewatching this season and especially the last couple of episodes, she’s just so damaged, and so lost, it’s hard to see how there could be a redemption or recovery arc for her. I’m talking strictly from a narrative point of view. I do see how the character has come to her end place.

The parallel between Angela and Elliot was so strong. I mean I should have seen it straight off with the way her scene with Price was edited in with his scene at the barn, but like... when Price says “You have to recognize you’ve been conned and learn to live with what you’ve done” I just felt like that could apply to Elliot too. Except Angela’s instinct is to get revenge and Elliot’s is to undo his bad decisions and start again, and Angela is held back from her instincts and Elliot is given free reign. So she ends the season with, essentially, nothing at all, and he ends it with a new purpose (and a new/old antagonist, with Vera coming back....)

So yeah, something here with my Elliot and Angela theory lol... increasingly from the first season on, they’re separated but parallel--like in the scene where he talks to her through the door. They sometimes approach but never quite meet--like when the Cyber Bombings episode ended with them finally face to face, unable to hold both of them together in the frame. They’re so important to each other, but this importance is so often unsaid or out of focus. And I still don’t know what I think... is the love for her that he has located in Elliot or in the Hacker? Or both?

Anyway. I started thinking about how well plotted this show is and how poorly plotted other shows are and now my brain is somewhere else. I need to get ready for bed because I am very tired.

Final thought: I saw you there Ms. Lulu Ferocity!

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts #2021: mr robot

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Attack on Titan Season 4: Questions Part 2 Needs to Answer

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This article contains spoilers for Attack on Titan season 4 part 1. But not for season 4 part 2, or the manga (that we know of).

Many anime come along and leave an undeniable mark on the industry, yet every season of Attack on Titan manages to dramatically increase in quality as well as deepen the series’ scope and themes. Attack on Titan season 4, dubbed as Attack on Titan: The Final Season has pushed these limits more than ever before and the anime’s latest collection of episodes brilliantly play with the audiences’ perception of who they should root for in this increasingly deadly conflict. Attack on Titan season 4 doesn’t just thoughtfully detail how war can twist minds and pollute a nation, but it forces the audience to reckon with Eren Jaeger’s questionable descent into what might be the anime’s greatest villain rather than an underdog hero.

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Attack on Titan: The Final Season lays impressive groundwork for the final battle between the nations of Marley and Eldia, but the end of the season comes with the news that audiences will need to wait until Part 2 to get the full story. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 will surely be full of even grander twists and surprises than Part 1, but some hints towards what’s coming next have already been teased.

When Is Attack on Titan Season 4 Part 2’s Release Date?

Attack on Titan’s fourth season started with the exciting claim that it’s the “final season,” yet the conclusion of the 16th episode, “Above and Below,” comes with the announcement that this is only half of the story and that a Part 2 is on the way. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 is promised to arrive at some point in the Winter 2022 anime season with the series’ 76th episode, “Judgment.”

An exact date and episode count has yet to be confirmed, but Attack on Titan: The Final Season adapts around six volumes of the manga across its 16 episodes. Hajime Isayama’s iconic manga is soon about to wrap up and that leaves roughly another six volumes left to adapt. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 will either be a tight ten episodes, like the approach taken with the second half of season three, or be allowed the room to breathe and end up around the same length as Part 1. When Attack on Titan is completely finished, it should have somewhere between 85 and 91 episodes.

What Is Eren And Zeke’s Master Plan?

The second half of Attack on Titan’s fourth season pulls off the major twist that Eren and Zeke have been working together and have an intricate master plan that they’ve spent years working towards. As the season comes to a close it’s revealed that this plan involves physical contact between Eren and Zeke to trigger the Rumbling, which will unleash major deconstruction on the world as a serious “warning shot.”

The finale explains that Zeke and Eren’s plan is actually more thorough and incorporates a genocide-like approach that will change the shape of the world more than any Titan ever has. The later stages of Eren and Zeke’s plan involves the euthanization or sterilization of all Eldians so that their race will just slowly die out and cease to be a problem since they’ll no longer exist after a few generations. It’s a wild development to everything that’s far more aggressive than an enormous act of destruction or manipulation.

It’s unclear exactly how Zeke intends to carry out the second half of the plan, but Eren and his Founding Titan are integral ingredients. The most chilling aspect of all of this is that Eren and Zeke have convinced themselves that the existence of the Eldian race is the true cause for everything that they’ve been put through. They’ve gone a step further than even their father’s elaborate plan to eliminate the Reisses. They’ve developed a narrative that justifies the extinction of a whole group of people essentially because “they started it” and that hundreds of years of war are just the continual fallout of that opening act.

Characters like Yelena and the Jeagerists have turned to idolize this destructive strategy as the necessary spark to move humanity forward, whereas the surviving members of the Survey Corps and the Marleyan Warriors are determined to make sure that Eren and Zeke’s plan doesn’t come to pass, but to also rip away his Founding Titan power and reshuffle the deck so that they’re the ones that hold more cards in the ultimate end goal to gain control of Paradis Island.

Are Levi And Zeke Still Alive?

The cliffhanger that leads into Attack on Titan: The Final Season’s finale involves an intricate torture that Levi has inflicted upon Zeke that involves a gruesome application of a Thunder Spear. Zeke calls Levi’s bluff and refuses to be a victim. The two of them explode and the episode ends with what appears to be the death of two pivotal characters.

“Above and Below” spends very little time on the fallout of this explosive act. Levi appears to take the brunt of the Thunder Spear, but Zeke’s body is blown to pieces and he’s missing his bottom half. In an explicable act, a rogue Titan approaches Zeke’s dying body, rips open its own abdomen, and then proceeds to shove Zeke inside in an act of Cronenbergian madness. The thought process behind this action isn’t explored nor is there any kind of precedent for this in the series, but the likely assumption is that this is some manner of preservation to keep Zeke alive. If the aim were to absorb Zeke’s Beast Titan powers then he would have just been eaten.

If Zeke does return in a healed or transformed state then it makes the loss of Levi hit even more difficult to accept. This final season has worked hard to create empathy for Zeke, a former villain, but Levi is one of Attack on Titan’s most beloved characters and his mission to take out the Beast Titan also carries the weight of Erwin’s sacrifice, too.

Levi is too important of a character to receive an offscreen death and so he’ll definitely return, but it doesn’t seem that likely that he’ll survive this casualty without being turned into a Titan himself. Starting Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 with Levi’s death would make for a powerful way to drive these final episodes forward and reiterate the stakes.

Will There Be More New Titans?

Attack on Titan: The Final Season debuted several new and amazing Titan designs that made all of the earlier behemoths almost seem lazy in comparison. However, the cliffhanger with Zeke in the Titan belly makes it seem like Part 2 of this final season is interested in digging deeper than ever into Titan lore. The anime has laid the groundwork so that these new episodes can go for broke with the creativity behind these creatures while also redefining what’s considered to be a Titan. That ominous sequence from season two’s opening credits that shows Titans running in tandem with dinosaurs and sperm whales could finally get some proper context as more creatures establish new rules.

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The brief tease that the finale offers towards Part 2 seems to depict Eren standing before a powerful tree of life. This tree appears to represent the bonds that tie Titans and their memories together across generations and it might be full of the secrets that define the Titans. There’s been more of an emphasis on the need for Titans to strategically co-opt each other’s powers. These final episodes might introduce radical new Titans but this tree could offer the ability to access all Titan powers or something even greater.

Is Falco Now Tainted By Zeke’s Spinal Fluid?

Gabi and Falco experience a terrifying reckoning when they’re nearly killed as a result of Gabi’s hand in Sasha Blouse’s murder. Falco suffers an injury from a bottle of wine, which turns out to be infused with Zeke’s spinal fluid, which is just one of many steps in Zeke’s plan to assert control. Falco doesn’t drink the wine, which is a grim fate that befalls many soldiers, but enough of it gets in his mouth to cause concern.

Falco’s an offscreen presence during Part 1’s finale and there’s still worry that he’ll be controlled by Zeke. It feels as if this may be temporary misdirect and a way to make Gabi more vulnerable to Eren’s manipulation, but it’d be a genuinely tense encounter if Gabi is eventually forced to fight against a Zeke-influenced Falco.

What’s To Come Of Historia’s Pregnancy?

Season four of Attack on Titan casually reveals a very pregnant Historia Reiss, which could have drastic ramifications on the second half of the final season. Grisha attempted to kill the Reiss bloodline so that none of the royal family would strive to consume Eren and benefit from mixing their royal blood with his Founding Titan ability. Grisha wasn’t entirely successful in this effort and there are now more complications present since Historia is pregnant with a successor that can carry on this cycle and disrupt what Eren, Zeke, and their father before them, have attempted to put into motion. It’s one of many interconnected branches on these family trees that could ruin Eren’s mission or simply become more of his collateral damage.

One could even argue that the whole reason that Historia’s arbitrary pregnancy was put into motion was to apply pressure on Eren. Ideally this knowledge would leave Eren feeling vulnerable enough regarding his legacy to not go through with the Rumbling and push the world into ruin with his radical mission. Unfortunately, Historia’s actions don’t dissuade Eren and if anything they’ve left him and Zeke more determined than ever to pull off the proper plan that will “fix” the future and end this generational chess match to consume and inherit power.

Will Annie Leonhart Return As A Pivotal Player?

One of the other recurring threads from Attack on Titan’s busy fourth season is that Armin has periodically visited with Annie Leonhart, who’s encased in crystal. Armin has shared stories of the past few years with Annie to keep her up to date and it’s implied that his newfound connection with Annie is a result of Bertholdt’s memories and feelings being filtered through Armin after he inherited his Colossal Titan.

It definitely feels like Attack on Titan is building towards Annie’s awakening so that she can also do her part in this battle royale between Titans. Since her appearances don’t go anywhere in season four’s initial episodes it’ll be a serious shock if she doesn’t play an important role in Part 2, even if it’s just as food for someone else.

Will Gabi Or Falco Inherit Titan Abilities?

A major element of this final season is the competition between the Marleyan Warriors to determine who’s best qualified to inherit Reiner’s Armored Titan. Gabi and Falco are at the frontrunners for this responsibility, albeit for very different reasons. Both of these characters have encountered mass casualties and grown up in tremendous ways.

Gabi and Falco have put in so much work that it only feels natural for them to become Titans, commit even harder, and come at Eren with an unprecedented level of strength as well as the support of their ancestors pumping through their veins. Reiner is still a major player in this ongoing war and so it’d be just as likely at this point for Gabi or Falco to take on the Jaw Titan or Cart Titan from their comrades if it’s absolutely necessary.

Who Will Win The War For Paradis?

The biggest question that’s left for Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 is who will be the winners when this lengthy war comes to a close. “Above and Below” concludes with Eren ready to engage in combat with not only Porco, Pieck, and Reiner’s Titans, but also the collective Marleyan air force. Marley benefits from the bigger numbers and the element of surprise, except it’s unlikely that this war will be concluded in Part 2’s opening installments. Marley has never been more concentrated on Eren’s elimination and Eren, Zeke, and Yelena are prepared to go to questionable lengths in order to secure what they have and “protect” the Founding Titan.

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It’d be easy for the anime’s final episodes to truly embrace Eren’s warped role as a megalomaniacal villain, but even if Eren succeeds or fails it’s tough to view any possible outcome as a victory. A conclusion where both Marley and Eldia are reduced to rubble and a new Titan-less generation is left to pick up the pieces might be the only way that Attack on Titan’s world can find true peace. Answers–along with lots of heartbreak, bloodshed, and wonder–will arrive in Winter 2022.

The post Attack on Titan Season 4: Questions Part 2 Needs to Answer appeared first on Den of Geek.

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katzenkrieg · 4 years

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Headcanon: Cam’s Physical and Mental/Aetheric Changes from pre-ARR through post-5.3

“What should I do today?” I wonder to myself. “I think I’ll stay on task and be produc--no, wait, now I’m writing a six-page overview of all the changes Cam’s experienced over the entirety of his story so far. Hm.”

Spoilers for everything through 5.3; Cam’s full lore document is here. It is currently 103 pages long. No regerts.

Physical and Mental/Aetheric Changes (A Rough Timeline):

The Battle of Carteneau begins - has first Echo flash (doesn’t remember it later)

The Battle of Carteneau ends - while knocked unconscious, has his face permanently tattooed by an experimental Garlean prisoner-of-war-marking device. The device is faulty, and also inflicts electrical damage that leaves Cam permanently mute.

The Calamity takes place and resolves - along with everyone else on the Source, Cam is assumed to have Rejoined with the shard of his shared soul that lived in whichever world was destroyed during the Calamity. The Rejoining took place across the rift/Lifestream, so no memories accompany the Rejoining, though it does increase soul density.

Regularly following the Battle of Carteneau to the present day - has Echo flashes, painful pseudo-blackouts during which he experiences the memories of others. He can’t predict when these will happen or will them to happen; though they can be useful, they’re also a serious liability, since they can (and do) occur in the middle of battle. The Echo also allows him to understand all spoken languages and to be understood when speaking (or, in his case, signing).

5 years after Carteneau, when he arrives in Gridania - first hears Hydaelyn’s voice and sees her in visions. It’s possible he’s Tempered by Hydaelyn at this time, giving him resistance to Tempering by other primals. Sporadically hears and has visions of Hydaelyn from that time to the present day.

Before the final battle with Gaius and the Ultima Weapon - receives the full Blessing of Light. Provides him with some protection against Ascian influence and allows him to summon a weapon of Light at pivotal moments, particularly when necessary to destroy Ascians.

After fighting Midgardsormr - loses the Blessing of Light, apparently due to Midgardsormr’s interference or in response to a bargain struck between Midgardsormr and Hydaelyn. His ability to hear Hydaelyn and call on the Blessing weakens; in particular, he no longer has unique protection against and the ability to destroy Ascians. He’s still able to be understood and to understand others, though, and still has Echo flashes.

Over the course of his time in Ishgard - regains the Blessing of Light.

During his final confrontations with both Thordan VII and Nidhogg - channels the power of both an eye of Nidhogg and an eye of Hraesvelgr. Doesn’t seem to be permanently influenced by either of these experiences, but it’s always possible something will show up in the future.

During his time in the First, prior to the defeat of Emet-Selch/Hades - absorbs the Light of five Lightwardens. Each absorption further disrupts his aether; to people with the ability to see aether, his looks exactly like that of a Lightwarden, even prior to his absorbing the Light of all five. Begins to experience brief painful convulsions during which he emits Light aether and has his vision blurred by Light. Following the absorption of Innocence/Vauthry’s Light energy, he loses control over the Light energy within him and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a Lightwarden in everything but appearance.

He immediately begins to regain his voice, although it’s no longer one that’s recognizably human--it sounds almost metallic, extremely precise and clear, and seems to come from all directions at once.

Over the next few weeks, his new voice strengthens and sin eater growth forms around his throat; it replaces his damaged voice box.

Regularly coughs up white ichor.

His hair begins to bleach to white.

His facial tattoos also begin to bleach, turning a very light gold/yellow.

His eye color begins to deepen to a truer red.

White scar-like lines appear leading down from the sin eater growth at his throat straight down his sternum to the base of his ribcage, horizontally across the base of his ribcage, and across the top of his collarbones. These lines become more distinct over time and a recession starts to appear in the middle of each, as though the skin there is receding/pulling apart.

He begins to develop sharp downwards-pointing scale-like growth lining his throat, similar to pharyngeal teeth in some predators.

His vision is permanently washed-out by Light and increasingly colorless.

Any clothes he wears or objects he has on his person regularly also begin to bleach out to shades of white and gold.

About a week into being a Lightwarden- he collapses during the Scions’ undersea search for Emet-Selch and almost loses control to the point of transforming. Fortunately, he has enough time to call on Feo Ul out of desperation; they answer and inform the Scions that Cam’s starving--he now requires living aether to survive. If he goes without living aether too long, he’ll collapse and transform; with living aether, he may be able to hold out longer against transformation. Feo Ul channels enough aether to Cam that he’s able to recover.

Following his first collapse from aether starvation - at least one aether-rich being stays near Cam (preferably touching him) at all times. Feo Ul, Midgardsormr, Shanoa, and Mochi (his Fat/ter Cat) all help by playing this roll in turns--usually by riding on his shoulder or on top of his pack. Ardbert also offers aether. At night, all of them (including Ardbert) sleep either next to him or curled up on top of him, feeding him aether throughout the night.

By the time they reach Amaurot - even the combined efforts of the beings feeding him aether are becoming stretched, and Cam has begun to catch himself viewing living things (especially anything very small, like the tidepool invertebrates the Tempest is full of) as food/prey.

After entering Amaurot - the nature of Amaurot and Emet-Selch’s power there prevents any of the aether-rich beings who’ve been helping Cam from entering the city; only Ardbert is able to accompany Cam into Amaurot. His time in the city is marked by increasingly desperate hunger, to the point that he *does* eat some small creatures alive (but magically stunned) to see if that helps. It does, but only a tiny amount. He tries to conceal all of this from the other Scions. (Cam’s about as sneaky as a box of rocks falling on your head, so this doesn’t work very well.)

During the confrontation with Emet-Selch - loses control entirely and collapses, coughing up ichor, and beginning his final transformation into a sin eater. Ardbert offers to Rejoin with Cam, and Cam accepts, giving them both enough aether and a strong enough Rejoined soul to channel the Light aether within them into a weapon of Light and wipe out Hades.

Immediately following Hades’ defeat - having used the weapon of Light, he appears completely purged of excess Light energy and almost all of his Lightwarden transformations have disappeared, except the mutation around his throat and his sin eater voice. His hair color and tattoos remained bleached; his eyes have returned to their normal color.

After returning to the Source (but before the other Scions are able to return) -

His hair begins to grow back in darker, eventually darkening to his usual black with blue highlights.

His facial tattoos gradually return to black.

Over the course of several weeks, he weakens again, similarly to, though not as severely as, he weakened due to aether hunger in the First. He returns to the Source briefly to consult Y’shtola, the Exarch, and Urianger about this; they confirm that, contrary to their original impressions right after the fight with Hades, his aether is still over-aspected to Light and it seems as though he still retains some need for living aether. He’s no longer at risk of transforming into anything if he ‘goes hungry,’ but he will eventually weaken and possibly eventually fall into a coma.

Feo Ul, Midgardsormr, Shanoa, and Mochi all again take up the responsibility of making sure to feed him enough aether that the aether hunger doesn’t affect him; this is much, much easier than before, and he really only needs a small aether infusion each day. The cats, in particular, are around him enough anyway that he rarely notices any deprivation.

Krile also suggests he and Cid (or other researchers/scientists) find a way to cultivate an extremely aether-rich phytoplankton that’s native to oceans in the Source and make sure Cam keeps several vials of water infused with them on his person at all times, on the off-chance he’s isolated somewhere where Feo Ul, Midgardsormr, Shanao, and Mochi aren’t able to reach him. The idea is a successful one, and he carries this solution with him, in magical suspension so the phytoplankton stay alive, at all times.

His voice remains inhuman and disturbing, and the sin eater growth around his throat proves to be permanent.

Cid adapts an ancient Allagan caster’s torque so that it modifies Cam’s voice into something comfortably human. Cam starts wearing the torque at all times.

Cam has continuous (often several times a day) painful Echo-like flashes from Ardbert’s memories. He assumes (correctly) that this is a result of Rejoining with Ardbert, and just accepts that they’re a handicap he has to deal with and that they may never go away (though he’s concerned that they may mean Ardbert’s soul hasn’t completely Rejoined with his and is in pain).

He has night terrors and intense nightmares, most of them containing flashbacks of either Ardbert’s traumatic memories (particularly his own suicide and that of his friends’ and his time spent alone as a lost spirit) or the moments Cam came closest to transforming into a Lightwarden.

He discovers he can now fight using the great axe and a marauder/warrior style, despite never having trained with/in these.

He finds that he’s more apt to speak (though he still usually signs out of habit and preference, especially before Cid develops the torque that modifies his voice); Ardbert had no experience ever being unable to speak, and this affects Cam’s own tendencies.

He’s now amazingly good with animals. He was never bad with them before, but he’s incredibly good with riding animals and sometimes even wild animals now, and can calm them remarkably effectively and quickly. This is, again, based on Ardbert’s own talents and life experiences.

After defeating Elidibus and being exposed to Azem’s memory stone:

The painful Echo flashes of Ardbert’s memories disappear, and Cam and Ardbert finally integrate completely. Memories from part of his soul’s time as Ardbert are all there for Cam to access, but they’re comfortably distant and don’t conflict with or disrupt his memories of his life as just Cam or his life after Rejoining; they usually come up to the surface when he needs them or when he runs into something in particular that reminds him of something specific from that time (sense memories, in particular, will trigger for him now and then). He’s able to navigate the First as though he’s lived there for years, and knows a lot more than people who don’t know about his Rejoining think could be possible about the world before the flood of Light.

His night terrors and nightmares become less frequent and severe, though they don’t entirely go away.

He remembers anything that involved Cam and Ardbert being in the same place at the same time from both sides, which *can* be a bit disorienting. One reliable way to make Cam blush is to ask about what that’s like and how much he remembers in that way--since he and Ardbert had developed a sexual/romantic relationship as time went on in the First (which obviously required quite a bit of creativity), he has some two-perspective memories that he’s never going to describe to anyone, thanks.

People ask if it feels like he’s two people or if Ardbert’s still there within him as a separate entity. Cam has yet to successfully explain to anyone, but to him it feels like he’s just always been one person--just occasionally that one person was in two places at once. He also thinks this should feel weird, and like it somehow invalidates his being Cam or Ardbert’s being Ardbert, but it doesn’t. It just feels natural.

Cam’s aether’s settled even more into a proper stable integrated state, more so than it’s ever been post-Lightwarden and post-Rejoining. It’s also more intense and slightly denser, even considering his Rejoining. Y’shtola and Urianger have concluded this, and the complete integration of Ardbert’s soul and memories, must be a result of Cam’s experience with Azem’s memory stone.

He still retains some aether hunger, but it’s extremely slight and even the normal level of exposure to arcanic or aether-rich entities that comes from going about an average day means he rarely even notices it.

His voice, even without the torque, still sounds recognizably inhuman but also less alien. He’s comfortable using his voice unmodified now in certain situations (especially if he needs projection or needs to be heard through a lot of other noise/chaos). The sin eater growth hasn’t changed.

He’s grown several inches. Fortunately, this growth spurt stopped after a few months and doesn’t show any signs of returning. It does mean he went without any clothes or armor that fit properly for a while :| Again, everyone assumes this was a result of exposure to Azem’s memory stone. Cam’s just grateful he hasn’t ended up 15 feet tall…

His hair started to grow in a different color again--this time yellow and orange. At this point, Cam’s just like, “oh, fuck it, who cares anymore” about changing coloration occasionally. This is likely another result of exposure to Azem’s memory stone; Cam’s body seems to have shifted slightly to reflect some of what the Scions assume was Azem’s appearance.

His facial tattoos have also lightened back to light gold/yellow, though they’ll shift rather startlingly to an intense light blue from time to time--sometimes quickly and briefly and sometimes fading into the color and back over the course of days. Nero’s posited that it’s related to aether conditions, either externally or internally, or possibly due to the interplay of both external and internal conditions, but, as usual, no one’s letting him test this theory out by exposing Cam to aetherical extremes. No fun.

After having it pointed out to him that tattoos aren’t *actually* part of someone’s living body and they really shouldn’t be able to change with him like that, Cam’s grudgingly accepted that they’re probably part of him and not just ink scarring his skin any longer. Urianger has also untactfully pointed out that they look remarkably like Ascian projection markings or possibly Amaurotine mask markings, and Cam gave him enough of a look that Urianger shut up.

Cam can call up a glamour to make both his hair and facial tattoos appear their original colors if he wants to; he can’t do much about the height change, though.

Cam’s sure he’s not Azem, despite the physical changes; the memory stone gave him some general vague feelings about Azem’s existence and nature, but nothing specific. Overall, what he felt from it was rock-solid reassurance that no matter what changed in the future, his life was his own and not Azem’s and that he could be absolutely confident in that. It also seems to have, as mentioned above, strengthened his aetherical integration and smoothed over all of the cracks both becoming a Lightwarden and Rejoining left in his aether and identity.

Experientially, Cam is now the second oldest Scion, behind G’raha Tia. Ardbert was likely in his 20s and Cam is 35 at the end of Shadowbringers; Ardbert also spent a century as a wandering ghost. This brings Cam up to around 160 years old -- 60 if you don’t count Ardbert’s time after death. Thancred is very pleased not to have to deal with being the ‘old man’ of the Scions any longer, now that Cam and G’raha have taken that title and run off with it by centuries. Cid now occasionally emphasizes the ‘old’ when he calls Cam ‘old friend,’ if he really wants to give Cam shit.

#ffxiv headcanon #ffxiv lore #lore #headcanon #loredump #camille delane #wol #warrior of light #shadowbringers #5.3 #ffxiv #ff14 #lightwarden #lightwardens #azem #spoilers #shadowbringers spoilers

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ellynneversweet · 4 years

Note

⭐️?

In reference to this post, which it took me fucking ages to find again. Thank you! And I’m so sorry for taking so long to reply — I realised that what I wanted to talk about was what I was in the middle of writing, and then I couldn’t find the original post FML.

For my free choice, I’m going to carry on about everything that gets broken (so far) in A Pillar I am of Pride, and why including literal babies as characters in fic is real fucking hard (ie they have next to no character or plot agency), so without further ado, may I present:

Stains and Spills and Smashed Pots, Oh My!

Right, so, Pillar started out as something along the lines of ‘five times the Darcys and the Rushworths had dinner together, and one time they didn’t,’ but because I am bad at sticking to a plan, it evolved into something slightly looser, and then I decided what I really wanted to do was write a something with a very formal and elaborate grammatical structure that was, on the face of it, about a bunch of posh, mostly dignified adults having a series of dull and unpleasant parties, and smuggle in a series of smutty jokes and wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments about which of the characters are getting it on (or failing to) with whom. To that end, everything I can think of gets to be a metaphor, and, by the way, looking back I’m slightly pissed that in the opening scene I missed a trick and wrote the Darcys buttering toast instead of muffins.

So far the list of smashed, stained, and broken items goes:

Item: Mr Darcy’s ornamental orange tree in a chinoiserie pot, and (nearly) his gigantic hallway mirror. Damage: the former is tripped over by Mr Rushworth while blind drunk, and the latter he catches himself on. All of this is scene-setting ‘rich people showing off’ decor, and what this does on a literal level in-fic is aggravate Elizabeth and Darcy, who do not appreciate their stylish, comfortable home being smashed up by an oafish guest. On another level, it’s building on canon!Darcy’s associations with gardens and gardening, being someone who creates and produces within the community. On the jokey metaphor level, orange blossom is associated with marriage, and (smashed) mirrors with bad luck. The Rushworth marriage isn’t going to last, and they’re going to cause some stress to their married neighbours.

Item: Elizabeth’s evening outfit, and probably her dignity. Damage: stained by leaky breasts as a result of startled-awake-and-crying Darcy baby The cherry on top of the ruined evening. Elizabeth spends the evening watching half her guests delving into a previously unknown family feud and in the process accidentally insulting the other half, then finds out her husband is, unexpectedly, completely wasted (along with five other increasingly-less-decorous gentlemen, two of whom are her overnight guests while the others are theoretically responsible for getting their female family home safely after dark in an city and era not known for being particularly safe) and ends up trying to resolve everything in the middle of a wardrobe emergency while comforting a distressed baby. On the metaphorical level, the point is this: everyone’s body is betraying them. The resident drunks are telling, or at least alluding to, deep dark secrets, and generally making smutty jokes, and Elizabeth, who is trying very hard to be Mrs Darcy v1 (dignified society hostess with the mostess) instead ends the evening as Mrs Darcy v2 (frustrated, upset and hormonal young mother).

Item: Mr Bennet’s letter to Elizabeth, in which he probes her opinions on Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford. Damage: squirted by breastmilk when Darcy toddler picks a fight with Darcy baby during breakfast. This part is where I got stuck for ages. The Rushworths (Mr and Mrs) have seriously offended Elizabeth, who is a champion grudge holder, but she needs to continue to be around them on some level without overtly influencing the overarching Mansfield Park plot, in order for the fic to progress. Maria in particular has insulted Elizabeth’s parenting, so it makes sense to bring the children in. Only problem is: they’re babies. There’s a limit to what you can do with characters who are babies. In this case, they get to be useful metaphoric sounding boards for the actions and beliefs of the adults around them. Elizabeth is in this scene (and the fic more generally) meant to be set up as Maria’s foil. Elizabeth has a successful-by-regency-standards marriage, which means money, respected social status, and production of a (male) heir and spare. That she gets on with her husband is a cool bonus. So, on the metaphoric level, the kids are representative of the key regency gentlewoman KPI: legitimate fertility (and, by extension, legitimate sexual activity). Elizabeth has children, Maria doesn’t (yet), which puts Elizabeth up a peg on the social pole. Also, Mansfield Park is, among other things, heavily focused on siblings fighting with each other and older siblings in particular fucking things up for their younger siblings. The Darcy kids are having a playful wrestle, not trying to destroy each other’s lives and inheritances — the worst that happens is that Darcy baby gets his breakfast interrupted — but it’s a chibi reflection of the Bertram and Crawford siblings arguing with each other. On a jokey level — a bit of stray bodily fluid gets squirted onto a sheet (of paper), and literally stains Maria’s name. It’s crude, but hey.

Item: Broderie Anglaise table runner. Damage: ripped as a result of Darcy toddler playing racetracks on it with a toy horse. The table runner was originally Elizabeth’s sleeve, but that got changed because it didn’t quite flow, scene-structure wise. Darcy toddler is busy practising being a gentleman’s heir, which for a three year old in a century where hotwheels haven’t been invented yet, means playing with a toy horse. This carries on from the previous two incidents, but it basically boils down to Darcy toddler (and absent Darcy baby) being physical, living proof of Elizabeth having a sex life. Ripping a bit of white lace with a miniature Trojan horse is, again, probably a bit crude, but it is meant to reinforce the previous points made about married (prospective) mothers whose bodies conspire to produce proof of just what(/whom) they’re doing.

Item: baby rattle. Damage: Darcy baby throws it out of his pram, and eventually has his toy-chucking privileges taken away by Elizabeth after it gets dropped in something nasty. Small babies like to drop and throw stuff, which, I am assured, is a normal part of child development that works around concepts like figuring out how their hands/gravity work and engaging in trust exercises with their carers. Darcy toddler — Edward — and Darcy baby — Richard — are pretty deliberately named after Elizabeth’s decent, respectable Uncle Gardiner, and Darcy’s witty and sensible bestie/cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, who got the standard fandom first name this time round. Darcy baby takes after his (wilful) mother. In canon, pre-fic, Elizabeth Bennet, country girl next door, does a fair bit of damage by failing to consider the consequences of her actions. Obviously, at this point, Darcy baby is...a baby...and a toy accidentally thrown into a pile of horse manure is not, say, a ruined housemaid or pile of gambling debts, but grown up Richard Darcy, wealthy and charming second son of a very important family, exists in potentia as the sort of problem young man that turns up over and over again in Austen (George Wickham, Tom Bertram, Henry Crawford etc). His parents, who are all too aware of what it means to let a man in that social position regard himself as untouchable, are making a point of teaching both their sons that their tiny baby actions have tiny baby consequences. Which leads to 6 and 7:

Item: A red ball. Damage: the ball, offered by Mary Crawford after Richard has had his rattle taken away, meets the same muddy fate. This whole scene was structured around Mary getting to say ‘boys will be boys.’ Mary Crawford is a perennial fave of mine, but I do have one problem with her, and that is her blaming Fanny for Henry’s part in ruining Maria’s life. Mary, who has just been asked not to encourage Richard throwing his toys, goes ahead and does just that. She’s been raised with Henry, and it shows — she sees nothing wrong with indulging privileged kids and encouraging thoughtless behaviour. Darcy baby here also serves as a stand-in for his adult namesake, Colonel Fitz, another second son, whom Elizabeth is considering attempting to throw together with Mary. Mary is playful, charming, and fascinating, but possibly not very reliable. And, of course, because the original sin metaphor is inescapable in western culture, the toy she offers in this show of defiance is red, round, and chewable.

Item: Elizabeth’s redingote. Damage: drooled upon by Darcy baby In keeping with the Elizabeth-as-Maria’s foil theme, Elizabeth suffers a (very minor) public disgrace, and her various female companions attempt to address it. Georgiana Darcy suffers an acute case of fremdschamen, and immediately informs Elizabeth of the issue before attempting to fix it but becoming overwhelmed, Anne Wentworth actually does fix it quietly and without a lot of fuss, Julia Bertram is completely ineffectual, and Mary Crawford, after ignoring what was going on right in front of her eyes and letting things progress past where they should have been, tries to cover it up by using the gentleman culprit as a shield, and relying on him to do something he is absolutely not going to do, ie, sit still (Not suggesting that Darcy baby is at fault or malicious — he’s just the unfortunate teething stand-in for Mary’s complicity in adult!brat Henry’s bad behaviour).

#my fic #my writing blather #asks #a pillar i am of pride #for the record all the Darcy children will grow up to be nice and responsible people #they're my OCs I do what I want #maybeindigo

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genaleah · 4 years

Text

I can give the full context! It's going under a cut though because there's a lot to it 👍

So here we go....

TMA!AU

Aka AU², the Nightmare Boogaloo!

So right off the bat, this an AU-within-an-AU of the Wildcards becoming living embodiments of fear ala The Magnus Archives podcast. Here's a list of the Entities on the wiki, though obvious warning for spoilers. (Granted, I've only just started season 4!)

In this AU offshoot, each character becomes a monster tied to a different entity of fear. Nelson with The Eye, Guybrush with The Spiral, Eddie with The Desolation, Manny with The End, and Sam and Max with The Hunt.

Guybrush gets hit first + worst. It starts off very slowly, at first he just feels a little confused/dissociated, but then he starts to have increasing difficulty figuring out when he's asleep or awake, and whether he's in reality or the mindscape. Doorways that exist in reality will suddenly lead him into his dreams with no way out, and then suddenly he's back in reality with no warning. Eventually this crescendos to a point in which he can't find his way OUT of his mind at all, and it all starts warping more and more into something unrecognizable. What feels like months of sleepless, ceaseless wandering is only a single day that he's gone missing. This slip through reality is also what ends up transforming his own body, he changes himself into a reflection of his own state of mind.

When he comes back out, he unwittingly transforms the Motherlobe into another maze. Not everyone experiences this or even realizes that anything is wrong. The victims who get trapped in it become fellow reflections of The Spiral, albeit with their own fears/nightmares influencing how they turn out. The Psychonauts as a whole is being purposefully targeted as a breeding ground of fear & new avatars for the Spiral, and Guybrush was chosen as its architect against his will. He just had the right combination of powers and pain to create a smooth, seamless transition.

Simultaneously, other agents who don't encounter this are being changed by other Fears who don't want to lose their share of influence in the world. Psychics are PRIME fodder.

Manny and Eddie get infected by their respective Fears while they're away from the Motherlobe, just out and about doing their own things.

Manny doesn't even engage with his directly to begin with, other people start becoming increasingly fearful of him until the change in role suddenly overtakes him. People try to make bids for their own immortality, and whoop, suddenly he's got the dice or playing cards or what-have-you, and he always knows that he's going to win in the end. The losers die immediately in front of him. Sometimes he can be more of a direct reaper and make the offer first, but he's not totally comfortable doing that unless he REALLY thinks someone/something deserves it.

Eddie has probably the worst situation. If he touches anybody they will die a painful burning death. A single touch can cause 2nd or 3rd degree burns, prolonged contact will set the victim in flames. But worse than that is the fact that his alignment with the Desolation makes him want to destroy things and people of worth- so that he creates an acute fear of loss and pain to those who would miss them. He’s the most physically dangerous to be around, so he’s taken to wearing a full-body motorcycle get up so that no one can touch him accidentally. He's safe to the touch now, technically, but it doesn't stop him from being ultra careful. He’s trying to abide by some ghost-rider morals here and primarily target bad people or other monsters, but there’s always going to be some collateral damage.

As for Sam & Max... They take a while to really notice the shift happening, but their final stage can best be described as this: Imagine if Noir Sam enjoyed it. That's basically how both of them would behave. They've always loved hunting down perps, but now their chases are a little more... intense. Frantic. If they've had a good one they're satiated for a while, but going too long without it makes them more antsy and violent. The hunting is fun and fulfilling for them!

Sometimes it can ramp up into killing, but considering that the whole gang is out looking for answers, that means a lot of capture and kidnapping instead, with the intent of interrogation (thanks to Nelson). And some monster hunting on the side!

Nelson is one of the last to change, but he gets caught up in the shenanigans pretty early on after first finding Guybrush in his noodley eldritch state. He starts trying to figure out some way to undo all of their conditions and bring them back to normal. Well, "normal".

But slowly he shifts from "I need to know how to help my friends" to "I need to understand what's happening" to "I NEED to know as many deep dark secrets as possible in order to live". With the change in his behavior, he basically becomes a textbook supernatural Man in Black entity, and his clothing starts reflecting that. His eyes become bloodshot and light-sensitive, so he takes to wearing shades while trying to appear normal.

Which also brings me to the next character! @zeroodd came up with a great story for Elaine, so I will c/p it here :

What if her and Nelson had teamed up in the beginning for a solution.

Just one night they're both working hard on it and Nelson starts asking about what they've found so far

but then he

keeps asking questions

and Elaine looks over and he's just got a tape recorder right up to her face

"Do you know he's gone for good?"

Course he'd try to backtrack and apologize but Elaine has to face facts that Nelson is as much of a threat as any of them now.

She leaves the group for a while in order to study this fear stuff on her own, and comes to the conclusion that she needs to willingly get in on it if she wants any hope of surviving this increasingly dangerous world. She eventually joins The Web. She starts out feeling nervous about things being out of her control and scary, which suddenly shifts to her wanting to control more things and oh cool, these spiders help me do that! By the time she rejoins with the group everyone is full-blown monster mash so there’s very little to hide from anyone. (Manny still HATES bugs though, and would like the spiders far far away from him, por favor.)

So, how do they all go back to normal? Well... They don't. After hitting dead end after dead end, realizing they're definitely not human anymore, and learning the true nature of the fears as a whole, they're forced to accept it and try to maintain themselves as best they can.

The thing that would make the changes so insidious is that it would all gel with who they are as people. By the time they're at that final point, it would feel like fate that they wound up that way, like it's everything they're supposed to be.

The power of friendship possibly even added to this, because rather than struggling alone and possibly fighting back against it, they understood and cared for each other through the worst of it, which made accepting their new selves a lot easier.

BUT WAIT! There are a few more links left in this story:

How did all of this start, really? Well, consider the fact that in the normal Wildcard AU (???), LeChuck is responsible for a lot of trauma in Guybrush’s past that make his hold on reality a little rough. Add to that his ability to create very life-like illusions, and the poor pirate becomes the perfect conduit for the Spiral to take hold. In this AU, LeChuck was the one who got the ball rolling on his transformation out of hopes that he could control the Spiral itself by making his brother the primary avatar, and then bringing about a new world of madness in which he is the sole, sane ruler. Guybrush hasn’t lost his sense of self yet, but as more and more chaos and fear builds throughout the world as a whole, he’s losing track of himself more often.

After all of his work and research, Nelson decides to try and bargain with the Fears directly. Dealing with supernatural forces hands-on has worked so far! (I'm not sure if he would have to find other fear avatars to work this out with, or if he could try to ritualistically communicate with the fear entity as a whole, but he figures something out.) His bargain is this:

He offers to lessen the burden of the Spiral off of Guybrush a bit. In exchange for LeChuck being removed as a threat, Nelson will let go of the last vestiges of humanity, and become a full-on fear entity to work for both The Eye AND The Spiral. The Spiral gets all of the knowledge he collects as a watcher for the Eye, The Eye gets to know that someone reasonable is helping to keep the Spiral in check a bit. Diplomacy!

The deal works out, Lechuck gets trapped in the PUZZLE ZONE and Guybrush gets to reclaim a bit of his sanity/sense of self again. In the aftermath, Nelson's got a permanent tape-recorder effect to his voice, but on actual recordings he sounds as clear as if he were right there, with little or no effect where it should be. The pupil of his left eye has become a spiral, while Guybrush's solidified into a round one. Nelson's blending of roles works even better as a MIB: He creates the uncanny feeling of being monitored, and you get the sense that he's always lying about his motives.

This new situation works out even better than expected, and he tries it again in order to help Eddie. Not that he could possibly take on a third fear responsibility, but at least he's living proof that giving the avatars of fear what they want can work out for the best, and make them more effective at being monsters!

Essentially: Give👏us👏work👏benefits👏

The deal between the Desolation and The End gives these boons: Manny can sometimes take a human form (better for targeting victims), and Eddie gets a lot more control over the heat and can turn it down to a low simmer. They get to work in tandem to create a NEW kind of fear, the burning loss of everything you've ever cared about, and the knowledge that at the end of all that suffering is an infinite, inescapable end.

Now the gang lives on a haunted ship (Philadelphia Experiment??) that they use to travel around the world and hunt down worse monsters / evil humans. And maybe save the world if need be? But mostly they just terrorize people and feed off their fear.

In summary: everybody's awful monsters but it worked out fine in the end. For some reason the Magnus Archives made me go "But what if this was a found family story and they unionized and lived on a boat??" I can't do aus normally anymore, maybe I never could.

#wildcards au #tma!au #final pam voice: GOD FORGIVE ME

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rutilation · 5 years

Text

Does mulching a prisoner of war into shiny little woodchips before burying them alive indefinitely count as a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Asking for a friend.

(Hi guys, I’m back, and I brought 4,400 words with me.)

First of all, my apologies for the nearly five month wait. Ever since last spring, I haven’t had much time at all to devote to writing and I’ve only been able to work on this essay in small increments. And yet, despite the fact that I don’t have the time to do so, this essay somehow turned into a bloated treatise on the failings of gem society. Truly, I am a slave to my obsessions.

I’ve refrained from reading chapter 80 because I just know that if I do, it will insinuate itself into my brain like a tumor and I won’t be able to concentrate on finishing this essay. (That said, I did happen to see someone on twitter make a joking reference to third impact in regards to said chapter, so I am certainly Afraid.) Though my takes may be ice cold by this point, I hope that there are some nuggets of insight to be found in this. With that said, here are my thoughts on chapters 78 and 79.

While the past two chapters have certainly been…hard to read, I think that their contents have been a long time coming, primarily regarding the parallels between Phos and Kongou, and the uglier undercurrents of gem society reaching their logical conclusion. (And I gotta say, this display of—for lack of a better term—inhumanity on the part of the gems jives quite well with all the Shirley Jackson I’ve been reading lately. When I get tired of one display of flagrant mob violence, I can quickly flip to another.)

And then there’s the matter of the gems on the moon… I remember that when I first got into hnk, which was right around the time when Phos and the others left for the moon, everyone was afraid that Phos would go off the deep end and the gems stuck on the moon would end up as collateral damage in Phos’s quest for vengeance. But since Ichikawa is too powerful us, she said “what if it was the other way around, and Phos is the one getting thrown under the bus while the moon gems start a death cult?”

So there’s a lot to talk about, but let’s address the earth gems first, because these characters sure do live in a society. (In order to make my prose more tolerable, I encourage my readership to take a shot every time I write the words “gem society.”)

First of all, I’ve seen a number of people interpret Kongou’s line about the gems forgetting Phos very literally, and assume that the earth gems all have Phos-specific amnesia. I highly doubt this is the case, and he probably just means that Phos is now out of sight and out of mind.

As bleak as the situation is, I think it’s been a long time coming. From the beginning, one of the major philosophical elements of the story has been how the gems’ desire to give meaning to their long lives has compelled them to create a society in which only those with a concrete purpose have value. The characters see themselves and each other as instrumentally but not inherently valuable. With so much of the story focused on how this ethos hurts those individuals who aren’t seen as useful, how much it fosters shame and self-hatred, and how much it makes the gems unable and unwilling to help each other through hardship and depression, it makes sense to me that this inhumane mindset would eventually boil over into something truly cruel, and thus the other shoe has finally dropped. In a strange way, I have more respect for Rutile’s attitude towards the situation than I do the rest of the earth gems (sans Euclase, who I’ll get to in a moment.) Rutile is treating Phos like an enemy that must be vanquished, whereas the others are treating Phos as a kid treats their dirty clothes when they don’t want to do laundry—by shoving it in the back of a closet and trying to forget about it. The former strikes me as less dishonest and dehumanizing than the latter.

Even before chapter 79 made it official, I had a gut feeling that the timetable for figuring out what to do with Phos was nonexistent. I’ll be generous and assume Cinnabar was being sincere in the moment when they implied that they’d put Phos back together eventually. But just like how everyone ignored Cinnabar’s suffering because there was no compelling incentive to do anything about it, or how they all turned a blind eye to the Kongou/Lunarian situation for millennia, I figured that Phos would end up as another problem they wouldn’t bother solving. (Regarding Cinnabar, while I hope they’re still on good terms with everyone after the time skip, I would not be the least bit surprised if the earth gems started ostracizing them again once it became apparent that there would be no new attacks from the moon and thus no further reason to tolerate their mercury.)

(Bort, please stick up for them.)

And to be clear, this is a problem that the earth gems are refusing to solve in exchange for a short-term sense of security. If Phos and Kongou had been allowed to hash things out, and this stalemate hadn’t festered for 220 years, then maybe the moon gems wouldn’t be entertaining the idea of starting that aforementioned death cult. (Tbh, this mostly applies to 84, Yellow, and Dia, since Cairn has been their own personal death cult since chapter 33.) Even leaving aside how bad things have gotten already, if this state of affairs had continued to drag on, I think the situation would have gotten very ugly the second Aechmea got tired of waiting. While playing fruit ninja or whatever with Cairngorm, he says something to the effect of losing a battle here or there isn’t important as long as you win the war in the end, which I’m pretty sure is meant to communicate to the audience that Aechmea is playing the long game. And since he hasn’t done anything in the interim other than reluctantly and incrementally humor Cairngorm’s pet project, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he’s biding his time specifically for Phos, and that he’s counting on them eventually being reawakened. In that case, what would have happened if Kongou had been too meek to interfere, and the gems succeeded in getting rid of Phos for good? If Aechmea eventually gave up on his current scheme, scrapped working with Phos, and came up with a new plan, I’m betting things would quickly devolve into heinous war crimes since he’s only played nice so far in order to keep Phos on his side.

In chapter 78, we get to see two instances of the most common nugget of gem wisdom: only act when you’re guaranteed to succeed, and never take risks. It been a common refrain, with Antarc, and more subtly, Dia being the only gems aside from Phos to push back against that sentiment. And to be clear, I’m not saying any one of these iterations necessarily are bad advice, but it’s become increasingly obvious that it’s the only acceptable mode of dealing with problems in gem society. More on that in a minute.

So, uh, regarding Euclase, here’s an exclusive picture of me, after I’d spent months writing: “Gee, this Euclase character seems pretty shady, but I have faith in Cinnabar, Bort, and Jade to act humanely!’

That said, I think I got at least one aspect of their characterization right in my Euclase-focused essay—that they have a greater comprehension of their mortality than most. Unlike the other gems, they’re not childishly naïve enough to believe that ignoring their problems will save them; they understand that death is always around the corner, and that the (mostly) tranquil life the gems lead requires constant maintenance. Simply sliding down the path of least resistance will come back to bite them all in the ass later down the line, and Euclase knows it. That’s probably why they at least went through the motions of asking Kongou to pray every day for two hundred twenty years.

This is a bit of a tangent, but regarding my earlier point about the gems not commiserating at all, Peridot and Sphene come across as anomalies in that they helped each other through their grief over their lost partners, but that doesn’t seem to happen all that often. As we see in the aftermath of the winter arc, it seemingly did not occur to any of the gems who had lost friends of their own to try and help Phos through their grief. And I think it’s likely that they weren’t given much comfort in their hours of need either. Yellow bottled up their grief, Alex and (presumably) Red Beryl threw themselves into their work to the point of obsession, and Ghost seemed to have largely withdrawn from everyone else. But none of them really healed or helped anyone else heal. Despite their society placing a high value on interdependence, the gems are truly alone when they have to reckon with complicated or inconvenient emotions.

It may be hard to remember, but Phos was once influenced by all these toxic mindsets as well. Recall Phos’s conversation with Benito in chapter two: it implies that Cinnabar did live with the other gems during Phos’s lifetime, recently enough that Phos expects to find them in their room. From this we can infer that our kindhearted Phos never reached out to the clearly lonely Cinnabar while they were actually around, and didn’t even notice when they left the school for good. They may have had the potential for kindness from a very young age, but it was only when they were hit with with the stark truth of Cinnabar’s suffering that they snapped out of the fog of apathy that seems to surround the gems.

In fact, it almost seems like the struggle to drag the gems kicking and screaming out of their comfort zone is a macrocosm for what Phos had to grow out of at the beginning of the series. You’ll recall that once upon a time they were lazy, wanted easy solutions to their problems, and had no faith in their ability to effect change. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that in the eyes of gem society, the problem wasn’t really that Phos was lazy, it’s that their laziness manifested in the wrong ways. They were supposed to be fastidious and reliable about things like crafting, or fighting, or writing reports, but apathetic towards anything that requires more nuance or imagination than that, kindness or cruelty be damned.

All this is cast into even sharper relief if you think back on the arc with Ventricosus. She was in far more dire straits than the earth gems are now, and had a compelling incentive to throw Phos under the bus. But in the end, that wasn’t a line she was willing to cross. Her final line: “If we’re not willing to change our ways, we’ll end up just like the Lunarians,” seems quite portentous in retrospect. I don’t think Ichikawa is positing that being immortal makes you a sociopath, otherwise characters like Kongou, Yellow, and Padpa wouldn’t be such cinnamon buns. But I think she is insinuating that someone who refuses to change is dooming themselves to a state of perpetual immaturity, and that being truly kind requires growing up a bit. It’s a harder for someone who knows they’ll die one day to remain in a state of arrested development than it is for someone who could indefinitely procrastinate on growing up, and just focus all their mental energy into making paper or whatever for all of eternity.

And this seems as good a point as any to stop harping on gem society and start talking about the gems on the moon, starting with my muse, my most problematic of faves.

I brought up in my chapter 77 essay that Aechmea may not be willing to divulge what he was about to tell Cairn, and that was exactly what happened. Since he’s only willing to share this mysterious information if he literally would not be around for the fall out, I’m guessing that whatever this secret is, it’s not benign. And while Cairn has probably put it out of their mind by chapter 79, it’s clear that it’s bugging them before the time skip. I smell a shocking revelation brewing and I dread to imagine what could possibly top mind-control eyeballs. Make no mistake, I’ve devoted an embarrassing amount of brainspace the past nine months or so to contemplating what it will look like when the other shoe finally drops for Cairn’s character arc. (Is there a German word for the ambivalence that arises from wanting to call future plot twists for bragging rights, but not wanting to look like a dipshit if your predictions are wrong?)

Their line from chapter 78 that I alluded to earlier in this essay is rather interesting to me, because although they’re referring to Phos, they might as well be talking about Aechmea. They exhausted themselves to their breaking point trying to look after someone who didn’t take care of themselves, but they’ve nonetheless latched onto someone who is also seeking self-destruction. And as I pointed out earlier in this essay, this line also serves as yet another iteration of the defeatist sentiment that the gems often espouse. But, for a while, it had seemed like Cairn was moving away from that. The decision Cairn made in chapter 67 was certainly…fraught. But, one can’t deny that it wasn’t a brave one on their part, to leave behind everything they knew and cared about for a shot at living authentically; the only problem was that they undercut that step forward by returning to their chronic doormat tendencies. And again in chapter 70, they took a risk by sneaking off to earth knowing that Aechmea would pitch a fit later. But ever since chapter 75, they’ve been backsliding. As said chapter pointed out, their wish has shifted from wanting freedom to wanting what amounts to eternal codependency. I also find it interesting that Cairngorm apparently hasn’t bothered with getting a new name, and is just copying Aechmea’s shtick of going by his title. They’ve gone from sharing a name with Ghost, to having their own name, to not having a name at all. In conclusion, my child is a god damned mess.

I know I said I was done talking about gem society, but I guess I’m not. Going back to what I said in the last paragraph, about Phos not taking care of themselves, that’s been a reoccurring element throughout the series, and in my opinion, it was a significant contributor to the breakdown of Phos’s relationships. The reason Phos never just tried to make friends with Cinnabar—which is what the latter really wanted, and only focused their efforts on following through on their promise, was because Phos’s self-loathing runs so deep that it doesn’t occur to them that anyone would actually want their company for its own sake. Chapter 14 is the most direct allusion to this in my mind. Phos clearly wants to talk to Cinnabar, but instead they hide away and mutter that they’d have nothing to say to them. And as I touched on a moment ago, Phos’s self-destructive tendencies wore down Cairngorm over the course of their partnership.

But, here’s the thing: Phos’s self-loathing isn’t some immutable part of their nature, it was instilled in them by their society from the moment it became apparent that Phos couldn’t slot neatly into a role. This is very apparent in the early chapters, in which no one ever misses an opportunity to remind Phos of their uselessness (except Dia, bless their heart.) Back then, they pretended to not care about it by way of snark and bravado, but in truth, I think it warped their self-perception in an incredibly negative way.

There’s also something that illustrates this which has been on my mind for a while, but I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about it. When Phos was trapped by their arms during Antarc’s fateful capture, the insult they yelled at their arms to get them moving is the same one that Bort lobbed at them a few times in volume one. I usually see different translations of the word between the two scenes, but to my non-Japanese-fluent ears, it sounded like the same word to me when I watched the anime. It was a striking way of implying that this moment of personal growth had been seeded with something more insidious, that their self-loathing is a taint that has followed them across their many incarnations. I’m not the first one to point this out, but there’s always been a certain tension within the text regarding Phos’s changes. On one hand, their courage to change is framed as admirable and heroic, but on the other hand, they’re also hurting themselves because of social pressure to avoid being useless, which is kind of awful. I think the narrative resolves this tension by making Phos’s quest for validation something which would eventually lead them to try and tear down the status quo that they hurt themselves for in the first place.

Okay, back to the moon gems. I’ve reread the part of chapter 79 focused on the moon several times, and it just feels more ominous with each iteration. What exactly was their idea of administering therapy for Yellow? Why is Amethyst on board with Cairn’s death bullshit? Why is Dia okay with it? Why did they stop fixing the dusted gems? And most concerning, where are the other three gems—especially Alex who would probably be extremely opposed to halting the gem restoration? It feels as if there’s something terrible just out of our field of view and chapter 79 is dancing around it. (But hey, my intuition was wrong about Euclase so maybe when I read chapter 80 Ichikawa will tell me that Alex, Goshe, and Benito were at moon-disneyland the whole time, and that Aechmea is a real swell guy, actually.)

(No, I’m not bitter in the least.)

I also find it interesting that in chapter 79, Cairn is espousing a lot of the same sentiments as poor Yellow, but since they can mask the dysfunction better, they’re treated as an expert rather than a victim. In reality, both of them are in serious need of a therapist, which is apparently non-existent in the post-post-apocalypse.

And finally, Barbata continues to be the truest audience surrogate. I find it interesting that he clearly doesn’t approve of all the bullshit going on, while at the same time being too reticent to do anything about it, aside from some side-eyes and passive-aggressive comments. Perhaps there will be some payoff to this down the line?

At this point, let’s talk about Kongou, because both his actions and his role as a sort of parallel to Phos in the narrative are fascinating. I think this is the first time in the story that he’s really done something proactive. I touched on this in a cursory character analysis I did for him, but to reiterate, the impression I got from his at times obtuse and contradictory behavior was that he had completely given up on trying to solve the Lunarian problem long before the series had begun, and that the only thing cutting through his despair and compelling him to get up in the morning and not just “meditate” forever was the prospect of spending a little more time with the people he loves, even knowing that he couldn’t protect them in any way that mattered. But watching Phos’s struggle reignited a tiny bit of hope in him, enough that he wanted them to succeed in their efforts, but not enough for him to believe that he himself could make a difference. To me, that seems like the only explanation that accounts for both his obstinacy when Phos directly confronted him along with his casual acceptance of the path Phos has been walking.

So for him to go behind everyone’s back to fix Phos is quite the departure from his usual passivity, and it tells us that he’d rather subject himself and everyone else to Phos’s brand of chaos than endure stasis that comes with their absence. And it really does seem like the world enters a stasis along with Phos whenever they end up comatose. Nothing moves forward, and the only thing to mark the passage of time are small deteriorations: Morga and Goshe are captured, and Cairn quietly becomes suicidal, and this time around, Yellow gradually loses their mind, the Admirabilis that Phos tried to spare overcrowd the tiny waterways they were released into, and the gems on the moon stop caring about whether they live or die.

For a while now, various characters both gem and Lunarian have called Phos their hope, or their savior, or some variation thereupon, and with each new iteration, the sentiment feels more and more ironic. Time and time again, Phos rises to the occasion only to buckle under pressure, their noble intentions haven’t gotten them good results since, like, chapter 10, and everyone who at one point had faith in them is completely done with them. And at the end of it all, they don’t have it in them to ask Kongou to pray on anyone’s behalf but their own, as if they’ve become so exhausted that they don’t have the energy to be kind anymore. And just to rub salt in the wound, their ambiguous phrasing makes it unclear whether Phos is asking to Kongou get rid of the Lunarians or themselves.

All of this seems to mirror what Kongou is implied to have gone through. He was created to save the souls of humanity, but was ill-equipped for the task, and he’s spent god knows how many millennia dogged by his failure to deliver. Aechmea’s line in chapter 55 about how his human creators didn’t bother to think about what would happen to him after everyone was gone, in my mind, parallels how Phos has been abandoned by the people who once supported them once they became too much of an inconvenience.

So now that these two failed saviors are finally confronting each other with no lies to hide behind, and nothing to get between them, what’s going to happen? I get the feeling that chapter 80 is going to give us some long awaited catharsis, for better or worse. (Please Ichikawa, make things a little better for once.)

On a related note, I’m hoping this possible catharsis might clarify something else for me. For all that the series is steeped in Buddhist symbolism and philosophy, I’ve never been able to tell what Ichikawa actually thinks of Buddhism. On one hand, the assumptions that life boils down to suffering and that the self is ephemeral and illusory are certainly present, but on the other hand, the characters who lean most heavily on the Buddhist aesthetic are villains, the characters most invested in reaching nirvana are portrayed as…let’s say misguided at best, and as I’ve already noted above, our two would-be Buddhas are chronically ineffectual. If I had to take a stab at it, I’d guess that the aspect of the philosophy that she takes issue with is the idea of relying on a savior figure and the idea that there exists a nirvana that could save anyone from samsara. But if the Lunarians’ wish were a complete pipe dream, then Shiro et al wouldn’t have already disappeared? Unless that was a misdirection and their souls were actually reincarnated? Idk, I don’t have enough brain cells to parse The Most Viable Interpretation at this juncture in the story.

Lastly, assuming Phos doesn’t ascend to nirvana via pure rage next chapter, I think their next replacement is going to be imminent. All of Phos’s other changes have been accompanied by death and birth imagery: they lost their legs out at sea, which is where inclusions are said to emerge, they lost their arms and their head at the site of their birth, the time they spent comatose evoked the image of a shrouded corpse in a morgue, their first trip to the moon in which they got their new eye apparently lasted the length of a Buddhist funeral, and now, they’ve literally been buried. (On a side note, it’s interesting that there’s a lot more death imagery for their later transformations, while their earlier changes alluded to birth.) I’m not the first person to point this out, but it seems likely to me that Rutile made good on their threat to throw Phos into the ocean, and discarded whatever pieces they were assigned to bury. And indeed, there seems to be a gaping hole in Phos’s torso. I still think Padparadscha is the most likely candidate for a replacement—the red stone from the lotus sutra has been alternately described as ruby, carnelian, amber, or coral, and Padparadscha is the closest we have to any of those—but who knows. Ichikawa might even decide to stop short of all seven treasures in service of some greater thematic purpose.

And with that, this belated essay is finally done. Except it isn’t. This is a complete tangent, but I recently looked up the one and only region where gem-quality phosphophyllite was briefly mined, a mountain in the Bolivian Andes called Cerro Rico. Hundreds of thousands have died there since the 16th century while mining silver, and that figure may be lowballing it, as some scholars think the death toll is actually in the millions. It is colloquially known as “the Mountain that Eats Men,” and the miners pay tribute to this fellow in hopes of avoiding cave-ins and pockets of toxic gas, but are otherwise doomed to die young from silicosis. According to a forum post I found belonging to a mineral collector, the mineshaft where all the phosphophyllite came from had to be walled off with a concrete bulkhead because the poisonous gases that accumulated in the tunnel had killed a number of miners. The idea of gem mining already conjures up images of exploited workers in abject conditions, but I must say that Maneater Mountain exceeded my expectations.

Okay, now I’m actually done. I’m going to get some sleep on account of the fact that it’s 2 AM, but afterwards I shall read the new chapter and repeat this whole grueling cycle over again, but like, in a timely manner.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #I know I’ve spent the whole essay trashing ¾ of the cast but I really do hope they eventually get over themselves #i've spent hours rereading this but i just KNOW in my heart that there are a billion typos and those typos will haunt my soul #goodnight

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nobodyfamousposts · 5 years

Text

Missing Interlude - Roger

Ladies and gentlemen, a short story about Roger, perhaps the first of its kind:

Roger was a hard man to ignore but also a hard man to take seriously. Strangely enough, it was something he was able to use to his advantage. It made him someone who people were were willing to trust. It’s Roger—he’s a big guy but not scary.

Sometimes he wished he could be.

Most times, that wish was easy to ignore.

Except when there was an akuma.

Akuma battles had become a thing the police still didn’t fully know how to manage. They couldn’t do anything about the monsters themselves. The best they could do was try to evacuate the areas under attack and rescue civilians—which was difficult when they were desperately trying not to become victims themselves.

Roger…strangely enough was one of the few still willing to actively intervene during an akuma fight. When asked, he could never really explain it.

Maybe it was foolish of him. The cynical part of him always questioned it. Reminding him that this was magic, but it was still a terrorist at command. That their heroes were proficient with their abilities but that they were still just children. That each and every attack could be it for him—for all of them.

But still, he had faith.

That was why he was still willing to put himself out there despite his lack of ability to effectively handle any of the akumas.

He knew that in the midst of an akuma battle, there was only so much he could do and that anything he attempted would be ineffective at best.

But he had to try.

Because every moment he had the akuma’s attention was more time before the akuma would resume its attack. What he was necessarily buying time for, he never knew for sure. To let civilians escape to safety, to protect the target of the akuma, even just to allow Ladybug and Chat Noir to arrive. How many times had he been able to take the akuma’s focus off an intended victim? How many people had he helped to spare from whatever fate the akuma had in mind? Even if the Cure fixed everything, that was at least pain or a potential trauma that a civilian didn’t have to experience.

But there was also a thought. A horrifying fear he tried very, very hard not to think about.

That what if THIS time it didn’t work? What if THIS time, whatever the akuma did was permanent. There was no explanation as to the magic behind Ladybug’s restoration power. It was unknown if there was a limit. How much damage was too much? How much time was too long? How many lives were too many? What if one day he had to be the one to knock at a family’s door and explain why someone never came home?

He was stronger than most gave him credit for, but that was one thing he never wanted to consider. And something he actively tried to ignore whenever he was staring down a possessed person. He never let it stop him, though. Because he was an officer. It was his job to protect. Whether it was the city at large or the individuals who happen to be in the warpath.

And sure, it was scary—terrifying, actually. But it was a small way he could help in the face of magic he couldn’t hope to stand a chance against.

He couldn’t stop it, but he could at least slow it down. Even if only for a few seconds. And even as he was overwhelmed or overpowered each time, he could at least keep trying with full belief that Ladybug would return things to normal. It was part of the reason he preferred working the akuma attacks. Because for all his secret fears, she had never let any of them down. And seeing her strength and conviction, it only made him want to trust her all the more. That was why no matter if he was blasted, mind controlled, transformed, or reversed, he knew that everything would be all right.

Missing persons cases were a much different matter.

Because they weren’t nearly as likely to have a happy ending. Being with law enforcement meant that he was all too aware of the darker part of society and the sort of things that could happen to even the best of people. It also meant that he knew if someone disappeared, it was increasingly likely they wouldn’t be found.

Not alive and well, at any rate. For all that Paris was better off than many other places in the world, that hardly meant that crimes didn’t happen. Kidnappings, runaways, and even human trafficking were more common than Roger would have liked. And to think it could happen to someone he knew, even distantly, was difficult. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what those closer to her were feeling—and surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly enough, there were many people close to her.

Marinette was a good kid. He admittedly didn’t know her too well. He had only occasionally spoken with her. She was in his daughter’s class, but they weren’t close. Which was a shame, since the girl honestly seemed like she would have been a better influence on Sabrina than Chloe was.

Marinette was active in the community. Often helping people out or taking part in events. She competed in that fashion show. She had been involved with several projects that he was aware of.

Yeah. She seemed like a good kid.

It only made sense, though. Tom and Sabine were her parents, and they were good people. The kindest he’s met by far—which really explained a lot about Marinette and her positivity. He had never seen them be anything but pleasant, even to the worst of customers.

He knew them well. Many a day he would stop by their bakery in the mornings to pick up something for a quick breakfast. Sabine would chat with him at the counter. Tom would pop his head out from the back just to bid him hello, often going out of his way to share some new joke or story.

Roger knew these people. They were hard workers. Kind and considerate. And certainly not deserving of any of this.

By all counts, he shouldn’t be involved in this case. He was too attached. It might be considered favoritism.

But he couldn’t do nothing.

He wasn’t one of the detectives involved in the case. Different departments and jurisdiction, after all. Not to mention that the Mayor had insisted on the best members of the force being involved in this particular case. It had been much to Roger’s surprise when he learned that Andre’s daughter had been a large part of the reason for that, but it only made it all the more telling of what effect Marinette had made on people—even Chloe Bourgeois.

Roger shouldn’t be getting involved. He shouldn’t need to. It was outside his jurisdiction. It was a conflict of interest.

But…

Every person counts, right? The more involved, the more that could be discovered and less likely something could be overlooked. Sometimes it helped to have an extra set of eyes and ears.

Plus he knew the Dupain-Chengs. And they knew him. They were familiar with him. That meant they may be more open to sharing other information with him that they may not have in a professional setting.

Oh, don’t get him wrong. He knew they were honest. And of course they wouldn’t hide anything from the detectives, especially anything that could help to find their daughter. But investigations—and those involved—can be intimidating. Everything could feel rushed. Sometimes there were things people held back because of that. Little pieces of information that people don’t share—not because they’re not willing to, but because they simply don’t think to share it. Either out of anxiety or because they feel it’s simply excess that would waste time of those who already have enough information to delve through. Some civilians in that position wouldn’t know what may be important but they wouldn’t want to overburden with what they may have seen as inconsequential details either.

Tom and Sabine wouldn’t lie. But there may be something they didn’t consider to share in an official setting? There were already so many big issues for them to need to share all at once. How many little thoughts could slip through the cracks? How many minor details might be brushed off as simple coincidence?

Every bit mattered. So that was why Roger decided to pay a less formal visit. They knew him. So maybe they would be more willing to share with him something that they thought wasn’t otherwise important to bring up.

It had been a late day. And he certainly wanted to get home to his daughter, but he made one last stop by the bakery just as they were about to close. Tom had been cleaning up the front when Roger entered, causing him to turn.

“Roger?”

“Tom. Good to see you.”

Tom had forced a smile, but it appeared as brittle as caramelized sugar.

The poor man. They had been keeping the bakery running even during the investigation—they couldn’t afford not to. But everything was clearly taking its toll on them, and it showed in Tom’s features. His eyes had bags. His face was noticeably pale. He was still as big as ever, but he certainly seemed more gaunt than he had been weeks prior, and Roger was growing concerned over whether he had been eating.

But the biggest indicator was in the way Tom’s expression played out a myriad of emotions. Surprise to see Roger in his bakery after hours. Hope that Marinette had been found. Fear of what news he might be bringing.

This was what always made Roger nervous. Whatever he said in this moment could very well break this man. And it made him want nothing more than to have some good news to share.

Unfortunately, Roger was there to get information rather than give it.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Tom. I was hoping to have a bit of your time?”

“Of course!” Tom exclaimed, putting the cleaning towel aside and opening the door to the back for Roger to enter.

With Tom leading, the two made their way to the kitchen area where Sabine was warming a soup. It lacked her usual flair and preparation, but it was sustenance and honestly, Roger was just glad to know they were still taking care of themselves.

Sabine started in surprise when she saw Roger enter, and she frowned in concern and fear. “Is there any news?”

Straight to the point. He couldn’t blame her. Though he was sad to disappoint her. “I’m afraid not. We’re still looking to see what we can discover, but I was hoping to maybe talk with you both to see if there may be anything else you’ve noticed.”

It wasn’t an interrogation. It was in their own home. On their terms. Many would be annoyed at the intrusion and questions they had already answered, but Tom and Sabine both took it in stride. The three sat around the kitchen table, eating the soup and meat pastries that they had been kind enough to share with him even as he asked them to relive what would very well become the worse day of their lives.

It was more of what they had already endured. Questions and answers. Times and locations they could recall. What Marinette had said she would be doing, where she was going, who she was supposed to be meeting. When they said that Marinette had told them she would be heading from the school to the cafe, Roger mentally calculated the areas and possible routes between them.

Surely, the other investigators had done this themselves and it was uncertain which path she had taken. There was still quite a bit of debate over that, even as they were scouring multiple areas for clues along the main thoroughfares between the two locations. But what they didn’t consider was that there was another, longer but more scenic route past the Jardins du Trocadero. Marinette had been known to go there for inspiration for her designs. If she had gotten a last minute idea…or if she was trying to stall before going to meet her friends…?

He shook his head at the thought.

No, it was foolish. That would have led right to the area where the akuma attack was taking place. Surely Marinette would have avoided that place.

But…the timeline did seem to match up…

He took note of it and pressed on to the other topic of interest.

“And is there still no sign of her diary?”

It had been one of the first things the detectives had looked for. If she had run away, wouldn’t she leave a note behind? Or at least write down something about what led up to it? Her thoughts, feelings, plans…if she was going to disappear, surely she would be written it out.

It was known that Marinette had a diary. Her parents confirmed it—as well as the extent she went to in order to guard it. He’d known that teenage girls had secrets they were protective of, but that deceptively cute-looking trap box was terrifying. A poor rookie went and reached in without thinking only to get his hand caught. They’d had to literally take a box cutter to the trap free him, much to their amusement and his embarrassment.

Unfortunately, it was for naught, as the diary wasn’t even in there. The investigators had left it in place after that, not deeming it enough to take into evidence if it was just an empty box.

Still, Roger had found that strange. As cautious as Marinette was, why have the box set to go off if she had already removed what was inside?

But it was all the more reason he was sure she hadn’t run away. If Marinette planned THAT much, she would surely have planned out an intentional escape. Packed clothes and supplies, especially this far into winter. Taken her money at the very least. The fact that nothing was missing spoke volumes, none of them good.

Still, something about that trap bugged him. He hadn’t gotten to see it for himself and last he heard, it had been left in her room once it was deemed empty.

But…what if it wasn’t? If she went so far as to make such an intricate trap, what if the diary was hidden beneath another layer?

With their permission, he was led to her room to look at the trap and see if he could notice any other clues. When they got there, however, all Roger saw was an unusually clean room for a teenager. Along with a cleared off desk.

No trap in sight.

“That’s strange. It was on the desk last I checked.” Tom mused in confusion. He went back through the trap door, calling for his wife.

Roger took the time to look around. Both out of curiosity and with his trained eye for detail.

There was something…unsettling. Roger just didn’t know what.

It was a girl’s room. Like any other, sure. But for all that he had heard and seen regarding Marinette, he would have thought there were be a bit more than what he was seeing. Sure, there was the mannequin. Some balls of yarn neatly in a bin next to her desk. A CD cover laying on the floor from where it must have been moved during the “trap incident”, which he placed on the nearby chair. There were even some scattered posters on the wall of the Agreste boy—hadn’t there been more in that show? Maybe she had gotten rid of them?

Wait, Marinette was a designer, right? Always coming up with something new. So shouldn’t there have been at least a project or two in progress. There were no signs of anything out of place—and he’d spent too much time working fashion shows and dealing with particularly unruly employees of Gabriel Agreste to actually expect a workplace this…clean.

But…it wasn’t clean. Well, actually no. Now that he got a closer look, he saw the layer of dust on her desk where the trap was supposed to be.

That meant something HAD been there. It just wasn’t now.

“Are you sure you didn’t move it?”

“No. Did it fall off the desk? Behind it maybe?”

Both worried parents entered the room, only confused by the disappearance. While the trap had been damaged, it had been their daughter’s work, and they hadn’t wanted to get rid of it in case she was able to fix it when she returned.

If neither of them moved it…

“Has anyone else been up here?” Roger asked, concerned.

They denied it. While they may have stayed busy, they kept the upper part of their home locked up, especially with their daughter missing. Investigation found the windows similarly locked shut from the inside. There had been no signs of forced entry anywhere in the room or bakery. And the layer of dust didn’t indicate movement of the box—just that it had been there previously.

How strange.

“Is anything else missing?” He asked.

Both parents had taken to glancing around the room with a much more critical eye. Roger wasn’t much help since he didn’t know how her room normally was. As he shuffled and looked around for any other clues or indicators, he heard the two whispering to one another.

“Weren’t there more posters?”

“What happened to that beanie she was working on for Nino?”

“Wasn’t she modeling a dress on the mannequin?”

Roger decided to let them take their time, and took a seat on the chair—realizing only after he had sat down that it had been where he had placed that Jagged Stone CD. Oh geez, and hadn’t that been the one she had made as well? He jumped up immediately. He hadn’t felt anything, but he wanted to at least make sure he hadn’t broken it or—

There was nothing. Not in the chair. Not on the floor. And not anywhere else where someone could have moved it in the few minutes Roger had been in the room.

The CD wasn’t there.

The whispers started to increase. Both in frequency and intensity as Tom and Sabine seemed to catch on to something Roger had only begun to realize.

He looked around. He couldn’t explain it, but the room somehow seemed emptier than it had been only a few minutes ago.

Roger swallowed, anxiously. A theory was starting to form.

It was all the more likely that something had happened to her that day. But…it may not have been as human as they had thought.

That...wasn’t better. Or in any way good. But it was information, and certainly more than they had previously.

#ml fic #ml sad #ml angst #miraculous ladybug #tales of ladybug and cat noir #missing #marinette dupain cheng #tom dupain #sabine dupain cheng #roger raincomprix #something strange is afoot #missing au

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