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chaedomi · 6 months

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AGRICHE TO PEDELIAN

SUMMARY . flowers don't attract butterflies alone. suddenly, others are gravitating to you, expanding your long list of obsessive admirers. pt. 1

CHARACTERS . THE BLUE PEDELIAN

WARNINGS . YANDERE, female child reader, platonic, ooc, kidnapping, mild injury, implied violence, unhealthy relationships (if i missed any, kindly alert me)

WORDCOUNT . 2.4k+ / MASTERLIST.

HOW DID it end up like this? It all happened in the span of one night while you were asleep. And when you reopened your eyes, you quickly discovered that you were no longer inside your bedroom. You had time to explore every place in your manor, so when you couldn’t identify which part of the manor you were in, you began to panic and overthink.

Your distress got worse when a silver-haired female burst into the room and grabbed you into a hug as if there wasn’t some problem with this. At this point, you began to cry, fully convinced that you were kidnapped, pushing the woman away from you, and startling her. It was in chaos for a while, your screams mixing with your words as you wailed for your freedom. The woman tried to reassure you with sweet words, inclusive of the maids present who stepped in to assist by dangling pretty jewelry in front of your face to distract you.

Unfortunately, their efforts to appease you only increased your wails. When a masculine figure barged into the room this time, it was only then you stopped crying, in favor of blinking at him while the stray tears fell from the corner of your eyes. Staring at the male, you knew he looked familiar, your panicked mind just couldn’t identify who.

When he approached you with a gentle smile, patted your head, and began this monologue of ‘protecting’ you, you finally put the pieces together; this male was no other than the heir of The Blue Pedelian, CASSIS. Oh, boy…

In truth, your kidnapping was all ROXANA's fault, and she had no choice but to admit that. God forbid if her family found out that she was the whole reason for your disappearance, it would even make her kind-hearted mother hold some form of grudge against her and result in her execution. Luckily, no one was able to trace the doings back to her… except her red-eyed freak of an older brother.

Satisfying her curiosity was not worth it. As they say, it killed the cat. Now, she was stuck reaping the consequences of her stupidity; distraught over your disappearance, and additional work that could have been avoided, in her plan.

…If her life didn't depend on his, you bet she would have already retaliated without mercy. How foolish, she gave him an inch and he took a mile.

But, who is to blame other than herself? To explain, it was a fleeting thought that crossed her mind one morning to which she initially paid no mind… till it stubbornly stuck inside her brain. From what she remembered, in The Abysmal Flower, Sylvia displayed extreme and obsessive feelings toward you, despite being the enemy, willing to risk her safety to keep you by her side. Due to her intervention, however, Sylvia remained out of the picture. Still, she began to wonder.

If Sylvia wasn’t immune to your adorable charms, could it possibly be the same for Cassis? And thus, it marked the beginning of her little experiment. It came as no surprise to her that Cassis was on guard when she first introduced you to him. After all, almost every Agriche child was a demon spawn.

Regardless of the precautions Cassis took, his guard quickly crumbled once he was exposed to your innocence and purity, much to Roxana’s amusement. His hostile attitude quickly evaporated, he even held you on his lap (with Roxana’s permission), reciting stories that would intrigue a child your age. …She wished he was that cooperative with her as well.

She continued this pattern for a few weeks… every day, she would spare some time to take you to Cassis and observe how it played out in the distance. And each time, it never failed to entertain her. A righteous and kept man like him becomes nothing more than a slave for a child, an enemy’s child. She was long satisfied with her discovery, it’s just that Cassis was always in a better mood and more willing to listen after he spent his time with you.

But the day Cassis got too comfortable and had the guts to refer to you as one of his SIBLINGS, she realized, she may have spoiled him too much. She never had a problem when Sylvia referred to you as her ‘little sister.’ However, that was BEFORE she was thrown into the novel world. Now that she had the opportunity to experience your kindness herself, anyone who tried to make their claim on you outside the family is nothing LESS aggravating. And that was the end of your little visits.

That’s when it went downhill. Of course, Cassis was quick to pick up on your sudden absence throughout the days. He tried to ask, but once Roxana's tone progressively got more aggressive the longer he persisted, he finally got the hint. He wasn't seeing you again.

Roxana was grateful that Cassis had shut his mouth after a while. But, she found it odd how compliant he remained without your presence. More so, she hated the way he stared at her, a hidden intent she couldn't figure out in his eyes. It intensified when she gave him a map of the manor, a faint sighting of a smirk ghosting his lips. …Out of all people, Roxana would have never expected Cassis to kidnap someone. Trust no one, as they say. What an arse… Repaying her good deeds with this.

And so, the manor of The Black Agriche was thrown into a frenzy, having lost something very precious. Unless Roxana wanted to stir more trouble with hasty actions, she must sit quietly for now. …At the very least she didn’t need to worry about your safety. Unlike The Black Agriche, The Blue Pedelian will never torture their captives, let alone a young child like you…

Meanwhile, you were having your own crisis. This was a very drastic change. Although the violent nature of your family often terrifies you, you have grown used to it… kind of. Now, with the serene environment of The Blue Pedelians, you've grown antsy, anticipating some form of chaos to arise.

Ignoring how he took you without your agreement (no matter how hard he tried to justify his actions in a good light), you felt more comfortable being around CASSIS than the rest of the family. You weren’t sure if the times spent together back in your manor contributed to your lack of fear around him or relieved over the fact that your situation could have been very worse, and you didn’t care all that much. Cassis's attitude toward you didn’t change from when he was held prisoner, instead, his doting habits only increased now that his actions were not limited and monitored. He spoils you a lot, more than he spoils his younger sister. He will try his hardest to provide whatever you want, as long as it stays within the 'reasonable' range.

And by 'reasonable' he means, stop asking him to return you home. Suddenly, he understood Roxana's frustration. Is this what she felt when he continuously persisted? He doesn't get why you would want to return home out of all places; your family is vile.

It's not like you wanted to return, you had to. Although you wished to run away and never return, the odds were still not in your favor for you to make your escape plan. Something also told you that residing in The Blue Pedelian Manor was its own kind of hell…

The possible feud that can brew if your whereabouts were revealed made your skin crawl with fear. Knowing your value between the two families as well, you would be caught in the crossfire, and who knows what would happen to you then… You were trying to make things better for you, not destroy all your chances.

Cassis still didn't listen to your concerns (he never does), shutting down your complaints with a stern glare. …You just hope whatever war was to break out, it would happen later rather than sooner…

Just what was wrong with you? He’s trying his hardest to get you accustomed to your new surroundings, spoiling you with gifts, spending time with you along with his sister, anything to put you at ease. Yet, you just didn’t care! All you did was flush his efforts down the drain. He thought he was making progress with you, so he would never expected it, hell, even imagined it. But, when he caught you creeping around the exit gates, your freaked-out expression said it all. Now, here you were, leg chained to the bedpost back inside your prison-like bedroom. Seeing you chained up reminded him of himself, and it was interesting to see the roles switch to some extent. Truthfully, your tears pained him, but, he didn’t see the point in you crying. He wasn’t doing anything bad and he wished that you’d stop acting as if he was.

"Why can’t you understand that this is for your benefit?"

Oh? SYLVIA adores you? Why, that's no secret and is obvious to anyone who witnesses the interaction between you and her. Why wouldn't she love you!? You're everything she ever wanted in a younger sister… well, minus the looks, but, she can get past that!

MORE doting than Cassis, it's overbearing, honestly. Ever since your first encounter, you don't remember a time when you were left alone; it's always some lousy excuse to be around you. She hugs, kisses, cuddles, squishes, and any affectionate gesture she can think of, she does it to you. It was like she was trying to merge herself with you.

Honestly, her compassion spooked you. Her behavior reminded you a lot of your second stepmother, Maria. So, you weren't surprised when she had some hostile reaction whenever a maid would unintentionally interrupt your 'bonding' time. The sweeter they are, the more aggressive. Well, at least there weren't any dead bodies scattered on the ground…

Have you ever been so upset that you began to cry? Sylvia is a perfect demonstration of that. Perhaps you were right to compare her to Maria, the rage evident on her face was akin to the deadly glare your stepmother wore when she was furious. Flashbacks clouded your mind of how Maria snapped when a servant accidentally spilled milk on your gown. This situation was much different; a maid somehow cut your hand with the teacup. The one time Sylvia thought it was a good idea to let you get some fresh air outside your room, the fun atmosphere was ruined by something silly as this. It’s no surprise if your family lashed out, but to see a sophisticated woman such as Sylvia spew out words of profanity and behave so hostile was unexpected. At the very least, you appreciated she held back for your sake. With the way her hands shook with rage the longer she chewed out the maid, you had the impression Sylvia wanted to do much more than a stern talking to.

“There you are! I looked for you everywhere. I was beginning to worry that you’ve run away, but, you won’t do that to me, right?”

Your fear of RISCHEL was reasonable. Given his position inside his household, you two never met that often. However, the rare times you do meet, his piercing gaze never fails to make you shrink back on yourself. If you think about it, his hateful attitude made sense. You were one of the many offsprings of his biggest enemy, Lante, and said enemy kidnapped his son and tormented him mercilessly. Some of his son’s many torturers included Lante’s children, so you could just imagine the many scenarios that went through his mind. You don’t blame him if he was tempted to torment you, solely for Lante having a taste of his own medicine.

While Rischel’s expression came across as wanting to bury you six feet under, in truth, he was very much intrigued by your existence. It was confusing to see his son return with an unconscious child after escaping. And for a moment he feared that his son went mad when the child held in his arms was an Agriche and pleaded for your protection.

He was hesitant (for good reason) but ultimately agreed in the end. If his son saw something valuable in you, then there must be some worth in keeping you around. However, it didn’t mean he automatically trusted you. Without your knowledge, he monitored you, planting eyes everywhere. Any suspicious activity he was informed of would be enough validation for him to throw you out with no hesitation.

…So how exactly did his wariness morph into overwhelming softness toward you? (like father like son) The feeling just dawned upon him and he noticed it all: your mannerisms, your innocence, it slowly rubbed on him in a positive light. This was strange. He wonders if you had used a spell on him, no one should fall under anyone’s whims so suddenly as if you possessed this charm that melts even the hearts of the cold-blooded. But, oh, did the feeling around you feel so nice. And soon, he simply gave in to the desire to love you and protect you.

You realized how much more tolerable he became of your presence, to your relief. Even so, the feelings you saw on the outside couldn’t begin to compare to the rapidly developing obsessive feelings he harbored for you. And by the time you began to pick up on the dangerous signals, the damage was already done.

You were beyond speechless when you looked into the reflection of the mirror, staring at someone else entirely. Her hair was a shade of pure silver, and her eyes resembled the golden rays of the sun. As you reached your hand out to touch the glass, your body froze as reality sunk in. This was not another person, but rather you, with a new appearance and identity you were forced to carry. Looking over your shoulder, you glanced at the faces of Rischel, Cassis, and Sylvia, hoping for all of this to be one big joke. But, the pleased glances they returned alerted you that this situation was far from a joke, and you had to accept your new fate.

“Sylvia was correct. This look suits you perfectly.”

You were stressed and rightfully so. How could all of this happen? And why did it have to be you? You were still young and didn’t deserve to deal with these problems. In such a short amount of time, along with new obsessors formed, you temporarily resigned to a new lifestyle, switching from agriche to pedelian.

©chaedomi. please do not modify, edit, copy or reproduce any of the works published.

#🥛━ 𝓒𝐇𝐀𝐄 #the way to protect the female lead's older brother #twtptflob #twtptflob x reader #manhwa x reader #manhwa x you #yandere manhwa x reader #yandere x reader #platonic yandere #yandere platonic #yandere x you #yandere x y/n #child reader #female reader

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takerfoxx · 6 months

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I'm not traditionally a poly shipper (though I've been delving more into it as time goes by), but if there's one that I'm absolutely gaga about, as if in makes my personal top five ships and might even slot in right beneath KyoSaya and SuleMio, it's the one that almost certainly could not and should not happen in canon, but the thought of it still kinda makes me rabid with what could have been.

I am of course talking about AsuReiShin, AKA the Israfel Special.

Evangelion shipping is often a bizarre experience, especially amongst the core trio of pilots. There is just so much material among these incredibly fucked up characters, so many things that ought to be drawing them together, and yet they are all damaged in such specific ways that drive them to behave increasingly toxic, avoidant, or even abusive toward one another. They're all such hot messes of trauma and hangups that, hate to say it, the Rebuild ending of everyone essentially just making peace with one another and fucking off with Shinji hooking up with the controversial new girl that he at least doesn't have any baggage with was probably the healthiest choice, if not the most satisfying.

But even so, the reason I dig this triad specifically is because if you change even just a little bit about each character, you find the same traits that drove them apart suddenly drawing them together, and each individual pairing makes so much sense. Asuka and Shinji is the most obvious, with Asuka's aggressive bullying suddenly becoming proactive encouragement, and Shinji's meek avoidance now becoming the calm, stabilizing force that she needs. With Asuka and Rei it's similar, with Asuka's hatred of Rei's passivity now being being a drive to push Rei to experience and enjoy life and establish an identity, while Rei's gentle observation and lack of a filter would be give Asuka a much-needed source of self-reflection. And with Shinji and Rei, we've already seen how Shinji's kindness has encouraged Rei to step outside of her sheltered world and seek human connection, while also providing Shinji someone he felt was worth stepping up and fighting for.

Now, take all three of those dynamics and combine them together. You've basically got the perfect Id, Ego, and Superego situation. It's practically the adolescent Kirk, Spock, and McCoy dynamic!

Plus, there's also the other factors that would bring them together, even beyond the whole being hormonal teenagers in a stressful situation. Despite having wildly different personalities, they all had their lives destroyed by NERV, from Shinji losing his mother and being neglected by his father, to Asuka's mother losing her mind and taking her life thanks to the Evangelions, to Rei literally being created by Gendo to serve a terrible purpose and thus being robbed of ever having a life. That sort of "in the trenches" experience is exactly the sort of thing that would cause them to form bonds and seek comfort with one another, especially if they were all to learn of each other's past histories, and motivate them to stand up for one another against NERV's machinations, but ah, I'm delving into AU fanfic territory.

Point is, no, I don't think it would be wise for these three to seek out romance with one another, either as couples or all three of them together. But man, if they each just had just a little bit changed about them, can you imagine the pure emotional catharsis?

Note: I didn't really say anything about Kaworu because while I feel that he's probably the healthiest singular choice for Shinji, it's basically only with Shinji, making him his own separate deal entirely.

#neon genesis evangelion #nge #shinji ikari #rei ayanami #asuka langley soryu #asushin #asurei #reishin #asureishin #israfel special #poly shipping

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2n2n · 5 days

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So things are very changed now, so I was wondering, do you think it's possible for things to magically go back to the way they were before like Hanako-kun going back to being the 7 mystery and Tsukasa being his yorishiro? Or will this reality simply never exist again? So this means this could be tbhk's last arc, but it feels like there are still so many questions left unanswered 😢

I think you, and, other people panicking, really need to stop and take a breather, and remember how... stories work. How narratives operate.

even a mediocre and poorly planned shounen manga would typically not suddenly pivot in the middle and retcon everything! Do you think JSHK appears poorly-planned or made-up-on-the-spot? PERSONALLY, in my experience with AidaIro's works, they have a TON of integrity with regard to story themes and character motivations. Iro-sensei really, REALLY desires for readers to come to UNDERSTAND characters. Iro-sensei was a sobbing mess on the publication of JSHK, because they were scared people would not LIKE it, and thus, they would not get to continue to unfold the story. They LIKE their characters a LOT! They want you to UNDERSTAND Yugi Amane, Yugi Tsukasa, Yashiro Nene, etc etc!! Deeply, and truly!

While a lot of shounen are filled with nonsense-of-the-week and neverending organizations of dozens of villains showing up without connection or significance, I would argue that JSHK has none of that. We've been on the same exact journey from the very beginning: we want to understand Yugi Amane, and we want to save him.. .whatever that means.

You need to lean back in your chair and let AidaIro-sensei whisk you away! You need to trust that it will take time, but, that there are answers in AidaIro-sensei's notebooks to everything.

No, the story isn't ending right now! No, that reality is not gone!

To me, this kind of panic is like....

if Picture Perfect began, and you worried, "oh no, Hanako-kun is our villain now, we're fighting him, will he ever be our hero again?" or "oh no, we're stuck in a fake reality... will we ever go back to the real world?"

Or, if during the Severance, you worried, "oh no, the near and far shore have been severed, will we never get in-school shenanigans ever again?" "oh no, Aoi is dead for good..."

In reality, this arc-- like every arc-- is going to be a way for you and I to see new angles on the characters we love.

We already knew Yugi Amane created an aberrant future, and we were intrigued by the notion of school teacher Amane from the 'original' timeline. Finally, we are going to SEE that timeline. If we DIDN'T do this, we'd feel something was missing! Everyone has long been curious about THIS reality! We've been desperate, haven't we?? We've been wishing to understand this thing described in VOLUME 3. This isn't scary at all, it's satisfying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're finally here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To have a fully rounded perspective on the Yugi twins, we need to see this world. For Nene-chan to truly understand HER Amane, she needs to grasp WHAT EXACTLY AMANE DID to CREATE the reality she has been in up until now. We're literally going to investigate the EXACT MOMENT that leads to "Hanako-kun", our lover lol. Until we know that, do we really know "Hanako-kun" at all?

Personally, I want Nene-chan to be INVOLVED in the CREATION of that reality we love. I want to know what role Tsukasa plays in all of it, too.

The reality we have been in was someone's choice! We won't understand the gravity and precision of that choice without seeing it FIRSTHAND. This is not a SCARY event, this is a RELIEVING event-- we will gain perspective!! Nobody should be afraid of that, seriously!

This is what we, the readers, want! And this is how AidaIro-sensei want to show it to us. Very directly!!

We're all very curious about the shinjuu, the Yugi twin's past. What if we could go to that moment, and SEE it? What if Nene-chan could witness it? What if she could set it into motion? These are the kinds of things to be potentially looking forward to.

The manga is called "Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun". We would never do away with "Hanako-kun". That's self-evident!

#avvy's JSHK

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lakesbian · 2 months

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I’ve gotten a couple people reading worm lately, and they keep running into the Weaver section and getting mad. They understand it from a Watsonian perspective; Taylor’s goals, the endbringers, and Dinah’s plan all make it make sense in universe why a girl continually failed and betrayed by The Man would try to resuscitate The Man. But i’m having trouble justifying it from a Doylist perspective. The story thus far has been about people who fall through the cracks (Pact reference!). People who society fails and who have their own myriad of reasons to distrust authority. Why would Wildbow make such an abrupt swing towards bootlicking? Or am i misunderstanding something about Worm?

worm isn't The Most Revolutionary Cop-Hating Media Ever but i don't think you can justify calling the weaver arc "an abrupt swing towards bootlicking" unless you're under the impression that whatever taylor does is de facto supposed to be seen as The Unimpeachably Correct Choice™️. immediately prior to deciding to be weaver, she has multiple experiences that really drill into her this idea that i discussed in a much older post:

the amount of grace or aid socially extended to you depends on how much power you have or how useful you are. when the principal actually helps taylor with emma right before she’s outed, it’s not because the system is suddenly working properly, it’s just because the system now favors taylor. when the kids who stand up for taylor in the cafeteria tell her why, the reasoning they give isn’t that it seemed like the right thing to do, but that she had done something for them or their families in the past. she’s not being helped in the cafeteria because bystanders are suddenly invested in doing the right thing, she’s being helped because she was useful. sure, she’s on top now, and that can feel pretty satisfying, but that doesn’t change that she’s only being helped because she’s on top. none of the structures which frustrated her at the start of the story have changed, only her position with them has.

which i assume you get, because you started the ask by talking about how it is plausible and in-character for her to attempt to resuscitate The Man despite being betrayed repeatedly by The Man! so i'm not sure where you're feeling it's unsatisfying on a thematic or narrative level; worm isn't presenting that taylor has suddenly regained idealistic hopes of Being A Hero and stopping The Bad Guys, nor is it asserting that the PRT is actually good and awesome because she's deciding to join it. taylor became "the authority," realized that staying where she was would only be continuing to benefit her (now in a position to receive the biased benefits she loathes that society doles out) without making any further improvements/societal changes she desired, and decided to join a different system of authority she thought would better allow her to prepare people for the end of the world. none of this is thematically at odds with how the PRT has been portrayed as a deeply harmful system, with how taylor has slipped through the cracks and been failed by society, etc., so i just don't see how you can draw the conclusion that it's bootlicking unless taylor being a warlord also means that wildbow is endorsing organized crime or taylor body-jacking thousands of people means wildbow is endorsing mass removal of bodily autonomy

#ask #worm spoilers #jay don't look #scarf don't look

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corioheinous · 2 months

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Can I just say how much I love love love it when a character or a group of characters are haunted by the absence of a person who was once integral to their lives. Especially when the entire narrative is structured around that particular loss like hands down my favorite television shows right now are Fleabag and The Bear which are both Masterful fucking examples of this (Fleabag’s dead best friend, though you could probably make a case for her mother too, and Carmy’s dead brother respectively).

And it’s like. The loss of these loved ones is so inextricable from the characters that survived them to the point where everything they do and say every choice they make whether good or bad is ultimately influenced by their grief. I’m catching up with the current Blue Period arc right now and really enjoying it, mostly bc of the complicated friendship dynamic between Momoyo, Murai, and Hachiro—and the lone piece missing from their friend group—Sanada. Murai’s experience with grief in particular is so fascinating to me because unlike Momoyo and Hachiro, he hasn’t been able to “move on” or cope with his grief in a healthy way. It’s sort of become this unsurmountable weight on his shoulder, this ghost-like presence that looms over his character constantly. When Yatora reflects on his loss in ch. 62, there’s an interesting emphasis placed on Murai’s expression—

—which made me realize just how emotional of a character Murai is through his facial expressions alone. Not necessarily in this chapter, because he’s very much putting on a brave face, but in chapter 64, you practically witness him going through every stage of grief at once. It’s honestly a massive transformation given that he’d been stuck in the “denial” stage for so long.

I think it’s interesting to think of Murai as both a character who is avoidant, repressive, in denial about his own feelings and the reality of the world around him (it’s mentioned also in ch. 64 that Murai didn’t even attend Sanada’s funeral, which is exactly the kind of immature behavior/inability to cope that you would expect from a character like him) WHILE simultaneously being someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. I reckon he forces himself to feel nothing at all out of fear that he’ll feel too much at once, and thus end up causing a scene like he did at Sanada’s posthumous exhibition.

Besides the cool back tat and funky earring, I wasn’t all that compelled by Murai’s character until I read through this chapter and experienced this entire emotional upheaval alongside him. I kind of just had to sit down for a bit after reading the last scene, after Yotasuke’s Murai-san, it’s okay to live your life holding onto that grief forever, isn’t it? comment which is such a bonkers thing to say (/pos) and God. Not to quote The Bear FX here but it really is satisfying to watch a character that you know needs to let it rip just let it rip. That laidback attitude and nonchalant expression of his were never truly the whole of it. I’m really satisfied with the way grief & loss has been framed through Murai, and I’m excited to see what his character becomes as he continues to both carry these feelings inside him and live to grow around them.

#blue period #blue period 64 #yakumo murai #murai yakumo #character analysis #media analysis #grief/mourning #Ok time to catch up on the rest of the chapters lol let me make sure I’m actually cooking here

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atamascolily · 6 months

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One thing that I love about Rebellion as a movie is that its plot is a direct result of two decisions made by the characters in the original series:

1) Homura's decision to tell Kyubey about the possibility of witches -- something which made me beat my fists and shout "NO, YOU FOOL, DON'T DO IT!" on my first viewing -- results in him kidnapping and experimenting on her in order to turn her into a witch. Oops? 2) Madoka's decision to give her hair ribbons to Homura, thus ensuring Homura retained her memories of her (the soundtrack for this scene is titled "ribbons of memory" to further emphasize the point), which results in Homura ripping Madoka from the Law of Cycles and becoming the Devil. Also oops but it's complicated.

Thus, I think the seeds for Walpurgis no Kaiten were already sown in Rebellion: Homura's decision to become the Devil will have unintended consequences that will drive the plot going forward. Based on what we know so far, those consequences likely include

1) the appearance of a second, duplicate/doppelganger Homura (the one with the insouciant smirk and the black and white striped headband). 2) the return(?)/creation of Walpurgisnacht - her name is in the title, after all.

If I had to pick a scene from Rebellion that I think will Hit Differently in Hindsight, it would be this conversation between Homura and Sayaka:

Sayaka: Do you intend to destroy the universe? Homura: *hairflip* After all the wraiths have been destroyed, perhaps I will. When that time comes, I suppose I can be your enemy. But do you think you'll be able to stand against me?

Can we unpack this for a moment? Homura's remark about destroying the wraiths (and the universe) is so jarring to me--is she serious about this? Why would she do this? The wraiths are what happens when you don't have witches--once they're gone, what will arise to take their place? Does Homura have a substitute in mind (the Incubators?) or a vision of what this world might look like? Is she really going to remake the world again to match those visions?

(ngl, having magical girls target an endless stream of Incubators would be very satisfying on an emotional level, but somehow I don't think this is where this is going)

Or is Homura just messing with Sayaka here? Is she reminding her here that wraiths, not the Devil, are the true enemies of magical girls, and that's what Sayaka should be focusing on instead? Is she saying, "Yeah, ring me up and fight me when the wraiths are gone" because she knows it's fundamentally impossible, that there will never, ever be an end to the wraiths as long as the status quo continues?

But look at what she says again:

When that time comes, I suppose I can be your enemy. But do you think you'll be able to stand against me?

Be careful what you wish for, Homura. You might will get it. Especially if you've become a being whose words and emotions shape reality... and might have other effects you're not aware of.

It's funny because up until now the obvious interpretation was that the next film was going to be Homura vs. everybody else... and while that still might technically be true, it's probably not going to be the "Homura" we were originally envisioning.

I think Homura's question has more teeth than she realizes, and will come back to bite her before the end. Can she stand against an enemy with her name and her face and her powers? Can she stand against herself?

On a thematic level, I think it's inevitable that Homura will (directly or indirectly) create her own enemies in an ironically self-fulfilling prophecy. And the wording in her speech suggests that this will happen in conjunction with something going haywire with the wraiths, i.e., the current system starting to break down, which in turn implies the likely return of witches (or something to replace them). What she promises Sayaka here will likely come to pass--just not in a way Homura ever wanted or expected (or can control).

This scene ends with another choice that I think will be important in Walpurgis no Kaiten: Homura erasing Sayaka's memories while Nagisa laughes and dances joyfully (spinning in circles!!) in the background. The context implies that Nagisa retains her memories of all that has happened, but unlike Sayaka, she has no interest in antagonizing Homura, and is perfectly happy with her new situation. For all that Homura wages an all-out brawl with Mami over custody of Bebe, Homura barely interacts with Bebe, let along Nagisa--she certainly doesn't have the same antagonism/history with her as she does with Sayaka, and thus no reason to go after her.

I think it would be fitting if Nagisa's knowledge proved pivotal in the end, and if she's forced to choose between living the kind of life that her existence in the Law of Cycles denied her and her loyalty to Mami. It would also be an ironic echo of Nagisa's role in Rebellion, where she is the one to tell Mami the truth of what's going on in Homura's labyrinth, which causes their previously idyllic life together to come to an end.

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm analysis #walpurgis no kaiten #walpurgisnacht rising #madoka rebellion

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etaleah · 1 year

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The thing that pains me the most about recent Shadow portrayals being all “Friendship is for the weak! It’s pathetic! I don’t NEED friends!” is that this is an idea that could actually be done amazingly, beautifully well if a good writer with a decent amount of creative freedom was behind it.

Picture it: Shadow is still grieving the only friend he ever had. She was stolen from him, killed before his very eyes, and he can’t bear it. He can never, ever, let that happen again because it will break him even more than he already is. And then, subconsciously, he realizes that he’ll never have to suffer the pain of losing a friend if he never has any friends to lose.

Thus begins his (again, mostly subconscious) decision to push people away and make sure nobody can be his friend. Because that way lies misery, and he knows better this time. He’ll protect himself by keeping everyone at arm’s length. Anybody who tries to get too close will be pushed away.

The other characters don’t realize this, of course. They don’t know about the details of Shadow’s experience with Maria, so they have no choice but to assume he’s just like this, but the audience knows where he’s really coming from. We know that Shadow is acting from a place of grief, fear, and trauma, using the only defense mechanism he knows, but the characters mistake those traits for anger and hatefulness.

Think of the conflict and tension possibilities! You could have Rouge or Sonic or Cream or someone else trying so hard to reach out to Shadow, thinking there must be some good under all that harshness, and he gets scared and starts putting up emotional walls. Maybe they fight over this, yell at him, demand to know what they ever did to make him be so mean to them, and he doesn’t want to tell them because no one understands and maybe he doesn’t even fully understand why he’s like this because Shadow has a hard time with feelings. You could even have moments where he’s tempted to lower his walls, when he sees everybody having fun and just for a moment wishes he could do that too, but he doesn’t dare because he knows what will happen if he does.

At some point it all comes to a head, the truth comes out, there’s more fights, and eventually Shadow finally breaks down and cries because deep down he doesn’t really want to be alone, but alone is what he knows and the only option that makes him feel safe. And then you get this lovely scene of him finally being comforted, cared for, told that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, etc., with him finally being welcomed into their group at the end.

Why can’t we have that story? I would pay good money to read, watch, or play that story. I want it so badly I might just write it myself. Because it’s a much better, more sincere, and more narratively satisfying story than “Shadow looks down on friendship because he’s an asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else for no reason.”

#shadow the hedgehog #shadow the ultimate lifeform #my thoughts #sonic the hedgehog #maria robotnik #rouge the bat #cream the bunny #cream the rabbit

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leighlew3 · 1 year

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For some reason I couldn’t send the link of this post but I could download the picture and send it (hopefully)

This is what I was references in that ask to you lol

Ah. And... yeah. A painful and unnecessary creative choice.

Look, overall I'm loving Picard, despite quite a few issues with some creative choices and contradictions, because this nostalgia is incredible and so appreciated and being able to witness these characters in action again has been WONDERFUL.

That being said... well, I'm about to launch into a ramble.

Buckle up, and keep reading if you'd like...

Picard had an ICONIC legacy female character in an interracial wlw relationship with a dynamic new Black female character -- both women over the age of 50 no less, an amazing thing to explore on screen -- and it worked. And so many fans loved it and felt represented and thrilled to kingdom come. And it fit with the Star Trek brand of inclusion and acceptance in a modern society. It also made Voyager fans of 25 years feel vindicated and seen, having Seven not only confirmed as sapphic, but actually exploring it on screen and finding love, even if a "happy ending" for Seven was never in the cards for many reasons, they could have explored why instead of just sweeping it under the rug off screen and reducing it to one awkward glance between them, a joke from Worf, and that was it. Seven and Raffi deserved better. Queer fans deserved better.

Alas, they tossed it in the trash for no valid reason at all, and at the worst possible time in our current social and political landscape of an outdated and frighteningly dangerous resurgence of homophobia, transphobia, etc. Life imitates art, and art imitates life. And thus, now we see conservative-run media companies catering again to the vocal, hateful little groups and extremist far right fear mongers. There is a very obvious bias of late again against LGBTQ content (especially wlw due to the frightening rise in misogyny yet again lately) across nearly every channel and streamer and studio.

For that matter, even beyond LGBTQ stories, there's also a significant reduction in the exploration of ANY sexuality on screen across the board lately, even for cishet couples. We somehow went from Hollywood being absurdly and unfairly exploitive towards women and putting actors in uncomfortable and unnecessary situations, to some sort of bizarre, puritanical, utterly sexless exploration of romance on screen. And even a reduction of romance entirely in many cases, for that matter. We went from one extreme to the other, and it's absolutely nuts.

Anyway, back on the topic of Picard, the two actresses who previously were captains of the ship and ALL about the pairing have since seemingly now had to backtrack, make excuses for this bizarre decision, or just not speak on it at all. And that's beyond sad.

And again, it makes me concerned that if Seven does get her own spin-off or is a part of a new spin-off again, they'd likely not include Raffi nor explore Seven being with women further. Which would just be LITERALLY going backwards in time to the days of Voyager where many (not all) straight male fans tried to claim her as theirs and theirs alone while reducing her to just "the hot Borg in a cat suit" even though everyone else knew she was three dimensional as hell, one of the best written and acted characters in franchise history, and inherently representative of the LGBTQ community.

Anyway, I really really hope they prove me wrong and Saffi get a satisfying ending in this show, and if nothing else, even if they don't have a future together in other series, any other shows at least continue to embrace Seven's pansexuality. It's important.

Alas right now my trust in creatives in the TV space who are under the pressures of conservative-run media conglomerates... is limited. Even once seeming allies are showing sides to themselves lately that are... concerning, to say the least. People who previously would tell incels to F' off, and weren't afraid to stand up to and block phobes on Twitter are now blocking queer fans for just asking "WTF?" about queer favorites being sidelined or ships being tossed in the trash. People who previously seemed to truly see and value queer fans are now bordering on just using them for clicks and stringing them along on likely hopeless efforts regarding show survival. And people who actually do mean well and usually stand up loud and strong for LGBTQ audiences are suddenly growing very, very quiet if not even in some cases TURNING on their queer fans entirely as TPTB remove more and more wlw content from airwaves and streamer services.

It's all very disheartening. As a writer who has had this conversation so often with producers and executives, I GET IT. The fight is NOT an easy one. And most the time inclusion efforts are flat out shot down. But it feels like so few people are walking the talk anymore. People who capitalized heavily on LGBTQ characters and ships and fans for a few years when it was hot are now turning their backs when the going has gotten rough. And that's frustrating for us all.

But, the good news: these things are often cyclical. So if everybody can hang in there, stay strong, and fight the good fight online and IRL, rock the VOTE, etc and drown out the hateful voices that want the LGBTQ community silenced or worse, then I believe we can set (or force, in many cases) the misguided, fearful, extremist-rightwing-catering media companies back to the proper side of history.

#picard #star trek picard #seven x raffi #saffi #seven of nine #star trek #lgbtq #representation matters

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motherstone · 2 months

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WAVERIDER THOUGHTS

This will be long, and nasty. I may be yapping nonsense myself, and ngl this was all written in a fit of emotion, so it may be biased as all fuck. SPOILERS EVERYWHERE. Read further at your own choice.

Kazu, the neglectful, crappy father of his characters

Yeah, no, it’s been a long-time issue of his. Every new book has a new character. Not much of a problem if you're establishing the world - it’s a big one if you’re ending a story. See, the point of a finale isn’t to get us invested in new characters, it’s about giving a satisfying conclusion to your old. And not necessarily purely conclusive either! Some characters still have some journey to walk, but what matters is that you could read what happened to them, be at peace with how they went.

Kazu wrote the finale as if he’s writing 16 more books.

Let’s see the line-up shall we?

Trellis - has been hyped up being the true king, has been trying to get people stop believing in the false king, would not shut the fuck up about the well-being of the elves for several books.

Ending: Changed his mind last minute and gave up the throne.

Vigo - a flawed mentor. Kinda useless. Tries to be a guiding force and emotional support.

Ending: Dies in the most pointless and jarring way possible.

Aly - has exhibited great leadership qualities, is a good friend to Navin.

Ending: she wasn’t even there.

Etc etc. and that’s THREE of them so far, and it’s disastrous. Their conclusions were poor and nonsensical, the narrative portrays them as foolish and ignorant, and basically just treated their entire journey of 8 books as worthless and with little to no growth. Which is just yonkers. The main players don’t play in the final part, and the supporting casts are pretty much not supporting.

Then there’s the NEW cast.

No, sorry, I can’t stand them. They’re not appealing to me, we barely know anything about them except they’re apparently competent and we’re supposed to accept that they’re gonna be the better, newer generation of the Guardian Council? Because the story says so?

Why put new characters to play a part where your established characters can fill in perfectly? At least those established characters already have something ESTABLISHED, thus the payoff is more impactful ,especially if you fit them properly into the role. I never even gave a crap about Cielis and there needing to be a new Guardian Council, I always got the impression in book 4 that it was supposed to be the waning era of stonekeepers, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE MOTHERSTONE WAS STOLEN, THERE’S LITTLE OF IT LEFT, THERE ISN’T A NEW MOTHERSTONE IN CANON, APPARENTLY ENDED UP FORGOTTEN BY EVERYONE ELSE DESPITE BEING A POWERFUL ARTIFACT, AND STONEKEEPERS ARE TOO DANGEROUS FOR THE WORLD OF ALLEDIA. IN GENERAL.

All in all, the book feels like it’s trying to shove and rub these new guys all over my face, trying to get me to love them.

Gabilan, or just make Gulfen a democracy at this point

I'm gonna be for real though, I don't think Gabilan is the best guy for the job. Just because he was "kinda" right about stonekeepers doesn't mean he's a leader, and I don't think someone who kills people for a living, profits off of war, violates people's minds and steals their memories and ruin their lives, and arrogantly believes he has the judgment and say on who gets to keep which memories would be anyone's first choice to rule the country at its most desperate either. He’s sharp, yes, but moral? He has the moral backbone of a fucking chocolate eclair. A guy like that would not treat the people under him with the right to choose, when so many of his actions involve violating other people. If that’s THEIR next best choice after Trellis, Gulfen is fucked.

It's also kinda frustrating. Gabilan gets ONE reference to how he intends to be King, while Trellis gets references that he's the true king for several books, people desiring he make a better people out of the elves, had enemies trying to kill him to prevent him from taking the throne like the VOICE himself, only for the narrative to never even follow through it?

The story can't seem to make up its mind either. "Stonekeepers in power are bad because they keep seeking to control others and are bad at maintaining control, so you shouldn't be King. That's why you should get an even higher, greater authority so now you're the leader of the Guardian Council!" 😩 make it make sense?

Ronin, or how to make supervillains

Kazu has a bad understanding of how people work by how he wrote Ronin. Iffy enough that Ronin is retconned to be alive, her method on raising these stonekeepers is to be heavily scrutinized. I’ll be controversial here, but Ronin sucks as a person.

That’s NOT how you treat people, especially when they’re asking for help, even if they wronged you. That’s prioritizing your pride over what’s needed to be done.

Keeping kids in an isolated area, even with their consent, scaring off locals from their livelihood so you could have THEIR resources instead, and then scaring them into not bothering are all shitty things to do. If I didn’t have context, I’d genuinely think she’s trying to make a cult.

She didn’t create a better generation of youth, she created an ECHO CHAMBER. Their interaction with other people who isn’t them are limited and only under her monitoring, they don’t get to have the support and interaction of a wider community, they have fights, she induces them to lose control on purpose (even for training, that’s basically like having someone HAVE breakdowns so they’d “handle breakdowns better”), the young stonekeepers only interact with HER beliefs and HER teachings.

She’s arrogant as all fuck.

The worst part is that the narrative doesn’t treat this as bad, just flawed, which is anything but 💀

To use @/gofancyninjaworld analysis, which is semi-realistic ngl, what Ronin did was plant seeds for these kids to be supervillains.

A sense of isolation

It’s bad enough that having overwhelming power alienates stonekeepers from most people, Ronin’s method of training has them explicitly stay in an area where the range of people they could interact with are greatly limited to Ronin and their fellow students. Sure, they interact with some civilians, but in an unbalanced way, purely in a savior and rescuee way, nothing else. This gives them sparse experience in the give-and-take interactions in a society, because for all they know, water only flows downwards.

A sense of superiority. It's not good to be considered 'gifted' and to be set aside from others.

A sense of entitlement to rule.

Which Ronin further reinforced by planting into their heads that they’re the new Guardian Council eventually, despite having little experience in leading. What happened to “rejecting a seat on the Council because she felt the responsibility at her age was too great”? And that was when she was an older teen. These guys are younger than she was offered.

Access to the means to do so.

The quarry, their stones, and their inevitable ascension to be the new Council.

So basically all she did was groom overly powerful kids with induced breakdowns, with heads too big for their bodies, with very little connection to the wider world to ground them in their thinking and humanity, basically four bombs that could and would inevitably go off. Cool. Any one of 'em could wind up becoming a totalitarian menace. Y'know how spoiled entitled billionaire bastards exists? It's almost virtually the same process.

Interacting with regular people AS regular people, not just as savior or leader is important. It grounds you. It teaches you there’s a variety of people, who won’t always be the perfect victim, who are not necessarily evil but are bad, who are not intentionally malicious but just incompetent, among other things. Application is the real teacher here - the more exposed you are to other people, the better you’d be able to handle them.

Emily, the monster, the savior, the next Buddha

Can’t make up its mind whether to condemn Emily or if she’s the next best thing since sliced fucking bread. Apparently, self-confidence is her issue, not her arrogance or survivor's guilt.

Not to mention her powers came outta nowhere. It’s like she discovers enlightenment, and that was what allowed her to properly control her powers.

Defeats the entire theme of needing other people and that not every outcome is reliant on ONE person’s actions, BY DOING EVERYTHING BY HERSELF, AGAIN!

God, I wish I could say more, but I skipped some of Emily’s parts because reading it was as tedious and agonizing as threading on cold mud. I can’t help but cringe at every dialogue.

The Voice, or how to NOT make a supervillain

…. I don’t even know what to say. Poor Ikol, a victim of the most indecisive and sloppy writing of a villain I’ve seen, I actually feel genuinely fucking bad. I don’t even know where to begin with this dude, he’s just one whole confusing set of contradicting depictions and motivations.

Riva, or how to get a restraining order in 2 fucking seconds

If I were Trellis and told me the same words Riva said, I’d bolt as far as quickly as I possibly can away from her. That’s creepy, full stop.

I think this was kazu's way to prevent fans from shipping Emily and Trellis by a.) aging up Trellis because that’s the only explanation I could think of (even though he said a few times on twitter that he's the elf equivalent of 16) and b.) to get him together with Riva.

The way Kazu went about it is too insane for me. "Hey, I had a vision of you and me having babies and you became a great leader, let's get together" 💀 that's no basis for any healthy relationship, or any relationship at all that isn't transactional 😵. What is this?

On the other hand, he doesn't respect Riva as a character at all. A character becoming a love interest and a parent isn't a bad thing in of itself, but he wrote Riva so impactfully and charismatically in book 6 - she's one of the few rare elf characters, and a girl elf character to boot, is an established leader, was the daughter of an immigrant and knows all the hardship that comes with it, not to mention hails from a city that Cielis outcasted and abandoned because of their fear and prejudice but she compassionately takes care of the people there anyway.

There's so many interesting and compelling storylines with the foundations he made Riva with, and he focuses on getting Riva to get Trellis to get together with her 😵 she gets reduced from a character with plenty of potential to a character that exists purely to uplift another. That's just depressing. Riva and Trellis deserve better.

Who? Navin. We all forgot about fucking Navin

Actually, I’m pretty sure Kazu forgot about Navin up until the last second. The fact I forgot until he came up on the page speaks for itself on how bad the writing problem was. He plays almost no parts at all. He doesn’t even GET to be a leader properly. He was there to get punched, didn’t even GET to help Emily or anybody else.

The Ending

……………………………………………………………………………………

If Older Emily could time travel with the Void, why didn’t she just eliminate Ikol herself instead of leaving it to our current Emily? Oh, and Vigo jarringly dies and sacrifices himself in the most pointless way possible.

All in all, Kazu - world’s most terrible chef

BAN HIM FROM THE KITCHEN 🔥🔥💯💯🔊🔊🗣️😩😩 HE CAN'T COOK.

Bad? I knew it was gonna be bad at the cover alone, ut no way I could've predicted it was THIS atrocious. It’s not the medium’s fault either, you can’t claim that the medium limited what Kazu had to say - Kazu created comics for a living. He has more than a decade of experience, made dozens of pages, by now, he knows YOU CAN’T WASTE A PAGE. Every panel is important. It’s not the medium's fault for being short, it’s Kazu’s for being sloppy.

He has an editor. He has a studio, he has a team, he has several copies of his series, he has claimed he has reread them over and over. He has no excuse to be this inconsistent and directionless. So what the fuck are they doing? Do they just sit there and draw? No quality or consistency check?

Honestly, if he says it was executive meddling, if he was just tired of Amulet and just wanted it over, if it was because of medical reasons - I could accept all those reasons. I could forgive why the series wound up as it is, they’re all reasons I could understand. A decline in quality on purpose I’d understand because that can be fixed. A better employer, a better work schedule, better accommodations.

What I will not accept, if he genuinely believes this. Is. GOOD. WRITING. BECAUSE IT’S NOT. That’s either a lie, an in-denial belief, or just plain ol’ ignorance. That’s just pure arrogance to me. You drop this slop on my feet, 300 pages of yapped nonsense and try to convince me it’s gold? Fuck no. I deserve better, we deserve better, the kids who read your books deserve better. There’s no fixing that kind of thinking.

Am I too harsh? Yes. But I need to let all of these out. Am I kinda biased and a lil incomprehensible? Yes, but I don't care. If you enjoyed it, good for you! But it’s not for me. For closure, I’m nursing whatever shit I try to fix with a rewrite. Kazu already nuked the playground - might as well take a page from his book and do whatever I want like he did.

#amulet series #kazu kibuishi #waverider spoilers #amulet spoilers

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chirpsythismorning · 1 year

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Hi!

I want to ask a question which is eating me since july:

What is the narratively propose of the line "I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods" ?

Because I am losing my mind on this one. The worst is I don't think it won't came back in s5, not like the painting.

But this sentence makes the all "asking to be my friend is the best thing i did" business a lie! From Will's prospective.

How much Will's lie will affect Mike in s5 is widely discussed, but what will be the consequences of Mike's monologue for Will ?

(Ironically, I don't think Will knew he was lying, he genuinely thought that El loved Mike that much. he genuinely thought that El loved Mike as much as he do)

So what do you think?

Bye <3

I never really thought about it that way, but now that you say it, ouch.

I would definitely say from Will's perspective, Mike's monologue to El contradicted his monologue to him in the shed in s2, and so therefore Mike asking him to be his best friend wasn't the best thing he did...?

Yeah that's definitely going to be circled back to in some capacity.

Honestly, I think s5 is going to be very tragic. So many casual fans expect Will to have this horrible ending based on this trend they've had for Will's character thus far. I think to subvert this expectation a majority of the audience has, the Duffer's are going to go all out... They're going to humor those fans expectations a little bit, meaning they are going to make Will (and all of the characters quite frankly) experience so much pain, that it'll have even the most confident bylers questioning everyones happy ending. And that's what's going to make the ending so gratifying. You can't know joy unless you've known sorrow. Those of us who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths. Don't mind this very relevant Anne with an E quote because the Duffers are anners.

This season upon season trend of the story sidelining Will, something even most casual viewers picked up on and critique as a bad thing... is literally setting Will up for a perfect ending. Because how would season upon season of a character losing again and again, be satisfying if it ended with him losing, again? Answer: it wouldn't be.

Will's dealt with the shit end of things for years, with s4 reaching new heights of making him feel like he deserves it.

All of this is going to come to a head in s5 with Vecna trying to get Will to join him. We already know that he wants to kill everyone else, except Will... and so, Will clearly isn't a target for him to literally kill or hurt technically, and yet Vecna will do what he has to in order to get Will to feel like he has no choice but to join him.

And I think this quote is going to play a part in Will's experiences over the last 3+ seasons finally being confronted head on in the story.

I also don't think Mike said that, knowing what it implied, otherwise he wouldn't have said it at all. Though I think both Will and El and maybe even Jonathan knew what it implied, and I'm sure it pissed them off a little bit. Like I know El was thinking Mike not only are you a bad boyfriend but your bad friend too because jesus!

This quote could honestly come to bite Mike's ass as well, because seeing Will at his lowest thinking no one cares, is going to make Mike feel responsible, because he's going to realize he played a role in part of Will having those negative feelings about himself in the first place. Actually thinking about what he said and how it made Will feel, and also rethinking other interactions between them, all while potentially finding out about Will's feelings/sexuality, that is going to destroy Mike honestly. Because this whole time they could have been together if he'd just not done those things.

Yes, Mike has made the effort to reconcile with Will in both s3-4 after their fights, but they've never truly confronted the problem. And that's all for a reason.

Because once they do confront the truth, it's going to be hard for them to not want to be together knowing they both feel the same.

But the reality is most stories don't operate like that because it's not satisfying, especially slow-burn romances.

When it comes to slow-burns, it's all about the miscommunication and the will they wont they and the balance of both parties feeling something while thinking the other couldn't feel the same.

But I think right now the story is sort of imbalanced in terms of clueing the audience in on Mike's feelings for Will, in comparison to clueing the audience in on Will's feelings for Mike.

And with s5 going back to s1-2 vibes, it's entirely likely s1-2 vibes Mike is making a return, so there is a good chance they're following through with how a slow-burn ship has to operate, meaning they are evening up the balance of those feelings to make their endgame feel worthy and satisfying.

I do think that quote from Mike's monologue will impact both of them in some capacity, because it also, like you said, questions the validity of Mike's monologue to Will in the shed. And so it needs to be confronted in a way that gives both Will and Mike closure.

And let's not forget about El. She was there the day she met Mike and Lucas and Dustin and she knows it wasn't love at first sight. I think she herself has had a similar understanding of their meeting as Mike does, where it wasn't fate, that they just got lucky basically and it worked out for them. And yet she had strong feelings for him that grew over time. And so him saying that even probably upset her a little bit, because she knew it wasn't true even from her take on things. And so why would it be true for Mike who has been incapable of saying i love you to her face, ever?

This rose-tinted lens on their relationship from the beginning by the people around them, society and most of all the audience, is what put them in this position in the first place. They need to acknowledge the truth with one another (without Will mediating) so that they can actually move on and grow and be friends in the way they truly want to be.

Season 5 is definitely going to be a wild ride from start to finish, and even if it feels hopeless in the beginning, it'll all be worth it. Trust!

#stranger things #byler #st5 predictions #stranger things theory #stranger things meta #will byers #mike's monologue #shed scene #piggyback

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ariadnesweb · 2 years

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The Logic of the Stanley Parable's Endings (Base Version)

Endings are created due to a combination of the 5 elements detailed in the first slide: the Player's hand, The Narrator's lovely character, the vague concept of a Narrative pushing everything in a logical direction, Stanley's 1st Person POV, and the Setting surrounding everything.

The game's internal logic changes on a whim, and does not have a lot of power by itself. In one ending the Narrator is surprised to see the Player (Credits), in another he always knew about us (Tape Recorder), and in others he can't even acknowledge us (Zen Ending). There's a similar lack of cohesion with Stanley and the Setting, as they change based on the ending.

The Story is an interesting element, as it's often referred to by the Narrator as the thing keeping the whole world together. It's hard to tell if this is always the case though.

Endings after taking the Left Door seem to maintain this reverence towards the Story - either by being extravagant narratives (Stanley's Mind, Conference, Countdown, Freedom) or by showing characters maintain to the Narrative while the Player looks from the outside (Escape Pod, Museum).

Endings in the Right Door seem to maintain more 4th wall breaking elements by acknowledging player behaviors (Tape Recorder, Artist, Button Pusher, Credits).

The Confusion Ending seems to result from Player Awareness that the Narrator's story doesn't exist, but making the sudden decision to search for it. Thus, the Narrator reflects this dilemma.

The Zen Ending seems to result from a rejection of the Story and the 4th Wall elements of the Player. The Narrator gives up the Story to be at peace with Stanley, and he doesn't seem able acknowledge that the only way for Players to proceed is to throw Stanley off the stairs. Stanley seems to be a part of him he wishes would stay safe.

Stanley's mind ending is just justifying the rest of the world through Stanley's POV.

Museum Ending is arguably the Setting enforcing a choice: It gives the Player the ability to explore it. If we Players show interest in seeing what it has to offer, we later get a full breakdown on how the world of the Stanley Parable was created.

Freedom Ending is supposed to be satisfying all elements of the story except the Player, as the Narrative it enforces is filled with plot holes and bad logic.

The Artist Ending can only be accessed by paying attention to the Setting, and it follows a deconstruction of what the videogame Setting is even supposed to be.

Both the Button Pusher ending and the Credits ending can only be accessed by following along the cargo elevator, without finding an alternate choice out, while going along with the Narrator, who spins an overly flattering tale about what a nice wife YOU have, a wife STANLEY has. If you pick up the phone to talk to said wife, the Narrator calls you out for being a short-sighted fool, and you metaphorically become Stanley, a short-sighted button pusher.

If you manage to unplug the phone the game acknowledges you as a human who can make decisions, but then the game tries to railroad you anyways, as it can't have that sort of dangerous decision making.

The Window Endings are a dialogue on the nature of choice between the Player and Narrator, with everything else taking a backseat. The Broom Closet is a lighter version of the Window Endings.

Anyways the endings of the Stanley Parable are a reflection of what choices you make, and what you choose to prioritize in the narrative.

#the stanley parable #tsp #the stanley parable meta #the stanley parable analysis #meta #soilai's labyrinth #bright colors #colorful #bright contrasting colors

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raayllum · 11 months

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In regards to your last post, they did do that with Soren (ik ik you weren't talking about him) but his character has depth and a more satisfying arc (relating back to the vulnerability is strength theme) so I'm cool with him

Here's the thing about Soren though, honestly. He's just jerky and loyal enough to his father (and the fact that Viren asks him to kill the princes rather than Claudia in the first place) that in S1 it's more of a tossup, even if I do remember being more worried about Claudia / her skewed worldview in S1 than I was about Soren.

TDP also has more complex explorations of morality (if not in some ways just exploring actual morality) than most shows aimed at kids/young teens do.

In She-Ra, the war is mostly a backdrop conflict used to explore relationship conflict, so when characters do defect from like, a conquering empire, it's because they've realized they aren't 1) treated well there by their 'friends' or 2) would rather be someone's friend than enemy. That's fine as a show focus, but it is more shallow in the morality department; thus, even though I have issues with how Catra's redemption arc was executed, I still always absolutely knew it was coming. To be clear, there's nothing with a predictable character arc (I love good setup and subsequent payoff and would take that over a 'subversives surprise' any day) but it did make her less interesting / harder to watch her be continually terrible to the people around her, even when they just risked everything to save her from death.

In The Owl House, every antagonist besides the main villain is either just misunderstood, misguided, redeemed, or all three (hi Hunter, Amity, The Collector, Lilith). There are a few others - Boscha, Kikimora, Odalia - but they're all regulated to small episode conflicts (each get like maybe 2 eps as an antagonist at most) and it's just... they all want power. Okay, cool.

What I'm trying to say through these examples is that's not a lot of moral depth in their character arcs, and to me, that makes a redemption arc less interesting to watch. However, Soren is a very morally driven character and he struggles with the morality of his choices and of his father's. His redemption arc ties in many other important relationships in his life and develops them (Claudia, Viren, Callum, Ezran) all in different ways. Ezran is his king and becomes his new purpose; Callum is a second chance and also kind of a little brother and also kind of an emotionally unavailable best friend who doesn't entirely trust you; Claudia is his sister turned enemy; Viren is, well... We're gonna get into how complicated that is even more, I'm sure.

I guess that's also what it comes down to me, the sacrifice / inconvenience element of the character doing the redeeming. Soren had, and has, something to lose by staying on the side of the good guys. He defects for his safety, yes, but he leaves behind his little sister and his previous idealization of his father on his own terms through a series of events and his own realizations. He shows up on the good guys' doorstep with "We're doomed." Even in S4, he's still losing things and at least somewhat on the losing side, with his entire family on the other side of the line. (Compare and contrast to Amity, whose entire family - all four of them - unanimously ditch her crappy mother or Catra, who defects after realizing she's effectively worthless to the new #1 villain replacing her, etc. They lose nothing, really, in the end.)

And again, I think Soren's arc works because well... it's the only one that TDP has had in this way. Rayla defects immediately, so her redemption arc works a bit differently. Claudia is still in the middle of her "what if I got worse haha jk... unless?" arc. So they all work as his primary arc foils in a very nice way. Now Viren is going through a bit of Soren's S2 arc, which we'll have to see how that goes, but full fledged died and resurrected and dragged through the mud by his daughter's determination to keep him alive sad old sack of an evil man isn't an arc you see often, now is it?

Soren realizes he's wrong without 1) a mentor figure or 2) heroes pointing it out to him and offering him second chances (save Ez sparing both him and Claudia in 3x02, which had an impact for sure but like - think of how much more reaching out, comparatively, even someone like Zuko got from protag team). Part of this is also because Soren starts off in an interesting place for a 'redeemed character' which is that he starts off on the 'right side' (protecting the king) so he has more of a restoration/maturation arc than an outright redemption arc, in some ways.

So Soren's arc is unique within his story, it's very well paced, there's a depth of morality, and it's tethered to theme so so well. It's *chef's kiss* and refreshing for someone who honestly doesn't truthfully love redemption arcs most of the time (at least not the classical kind) so it's just. Nice, y'know? It's really nice

#spop critical #toh critical #JUST IN CASE #nobody be weird about it please #thanks for asking #anonymous #tdp soren

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faelapis · 1 year

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while i'm talking about breaking bad, the ending is surprisingly hopeful. after hearing of its universal acclaim, i kinda came in asuming that people were just happy walter "got what he deserved." that being "satisfying," because people like when villains get their comeuppance. but that's not what it felt like to me.

sure, walt dies. but to me, what the ending really gave walt was agency, and a small, subdued sense of redemption.

on the agency side, he got to take revenge on the people who stole his money, decide and arrange the circumstances of his death (a big deal, as he stated long ago he never felt in control of his life), terrorize the rich assholes whose company he helped found, and found a way to give his kids money without raising suspicion.

whenever walt said things like "it can't have been for nothing!" (referring to everything he did), i kinda thought the thematic point would be the grimdark, unstated answer of "yes it can." that he went down a dark path, so nothing comes from it. but in the end, he got a lot out of it, and even if he dies, his wife and children will be ok.

on the small, subdued redemption - the final scene with walt and skyler speaks for itself here. its him admitting that in all his grand speeches of being a rich provider to his family, thats ultimately a self-serving fantasy of being the "hero" and thus self-centric. he did it for himself. and while i wouldn't call it remorse, he sounds like he's accepted that, and is sorry of the hurt it caused his family.

and despite all his anger, walt doesn't kill the rich assholes. he uses them, sure (like they used him), but its him actually prioritizing whats best for his family over revenge or machismo.

and of course, walt saves jesse. and when he lets him go, jesse is very deliberately given the choice of whether or not to kill walt. he chooses not to. next to it being jesse asserting his own agency, i also think that, as the closest this show has to an audience avatar, that speaks volumes - jesse still values walts humanity.

heck, even the final shot of walt dying, it almost looks framed like an out-of-body experience where his soul is floating up, watching the scene below while ascending to the heavens.

what it reminds me most of is the ending of "the good place" - sure, the main character dies, but they got to do pretty much everything they wanted before they did, and they had a real sense of agency in how it happened.

#not su /#breaking bad #breaking bad spoilers

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venticuliao · 1 year

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Mondstadt's freedom of choice

I've always been curious about the quotes in the Teyvat Chapter Trailer and whether there is any purpose in the featured characters of each nation.

There are a lot of aspects about freedom present in Mondstadt's lore and chapter, but this specific quote always sounded to me like it alluded to choice.

Is something that has been imposed on you still your choice? How do you know it's your choice when you don't have a say in the matter?

Venti's relationship with ruling

Decabarian, the ruling god of old mondsdadt, never meant to oppress his people when he imposed confinement from the outside world. He thought he was doing right by them because he believed he was protecting them from the cold, and interpreted their submission as a satisfied response. The rebellion caught him by surprise.

From Venti's character story 4:

"The ruler had believed that he had given his subjects a city free from the bitter cold, and to the end, he believed that they had loved him as he loved them."

With this thought in mind, Venti chose not to act as a ruling god in Mondstadt so that he (or anybody else) would never deceive himself into tyranny.

This was, of course, for the sake of his people's future, but wasn't the seat of archon also imposed on Barbatos?

Venti didn't mean to become a god, let alone an archon, he supported the people of Mondstadt because he believed in the dreams of his bard friend, who wanted to see the outside world. When Decabarian was defeated, Boreas also removed himself as a candidate, and they were the only ones fighting for the seat in this side of teyvat (aside from their already existing territorial dispute), so Barbatos became the victor by default.

Thus, shouldn't deciding when and how he helps Mondstadt be his choice, too? And not just because he owes it to his title?

Out of the archons we've met so far, Venti is the only one who exists to his people solely in his actions rather than in presence. They know their god through the way he transformed the land and through the ballads and poems about him, they do not know him in person, but they pray for his blessing and comically attribute every good thing that

happens to his doing. And yet, they act self sufficiently (and almost in a workaholic way) due to the gratitude and admiration they hold for him.

Venti isn't the god of Mondstadt just because he holds a tilte, he is their god because he willingly chooses to be; and his people recognise him as their god not because they're told he is, but because they genuinely see him as such. That is to say, this relationship between them would exist whether Venti was been given a gnosis or not.

The concept of chosen family

Rather than subjects or believers, the people of Mondstadt are the children of the anemo archon. And as it turns out, this concept of family (blood or otherwise) seems like a very big aspect of their identity as a nation, especially considering the last event in 3.1, titled "Of Ballads And Brews".

Mondstadt welcomes outsiders as children of Barbatos, such as Amber's grandfather and Rosaria, and so its people too can also define their own concept of family.

Like Rosaria chooses to see Varka as her new paternal figure (and Razor as a brother, by extension); or the old adventurers who chose to raise Bennett as their son; or Alice allowing Klee to grow close to the knights as her older siblings, especially Albedo, who had no ties to anyone but his teacher prior to arriving in Mondstadt.

The land of freedom is full of artificial relationships that make a point of being no less important than blood relations, but that also means blood relations are just as important, and they can be chosen too, even if they are imposed by nature. There's Razor who found family among the wolves, and at the same time still longs to meet his biological parents; there's Jean still wanting to have a relationship with her younger sister Barbara, even though they have grown apart after their parents' divorce. Furthermore, these imposed ties can also be broken, like Eula leaving her clan and their legacy behind in order to honor her own principles.

It's not that found family has the same value as blood bonds, but that the definition of "family" is independent from such ties.

Beyond family relations, there is a sense of belonging that redefines these characters' identity. Foreigners like Amber's grandfather who chose to become a part of the nation's knights and started a family with a local; and Kaeya, whose loyalty is split between Khaenri'ah, his country of origin that abandoned him, and Mondstadt, the nation that raised him.

That which is imposed and that which is chosen

I find Diluc to be a fitting character to represent this conflict.

His father imposed his own ambitions on him since he was a child, and Diluc never questioned them. Being a knight, and thus upholding what being a Knight of Favonius stands for, is his conviction because it is his father’s wish. When he gets his vision at early age, he takes it as "a sign of recognition of both his and his father shared ambition”, thinking that finally "he could make his father proud”.

After the fatal accident, he’s faced with the reality that, first, his father was not who he thought he was and, second, the knights themselves cannot guarantee their own principles to be enforced. Both were so embedded into Diluc’s identity at that point, that it is inconceivable for him to remain the same, so he leaves the knights to investigate the origins of his father’s delusion.

It is worth noting that when he leaves the knights, he leaves his vision behind too, believing it to be nothing but a burden. He parts ways with this imposed ambition and distances himself from Mondstadt (and his home). But then, years later, holding the same grudge, he still comes back to protect Mondstadt, this time from the shadows, to still follow the teachings his father instilled in him (regardless of if Crepus believed them or not) and the principles of the Knights of Favonius that the institution once betrayed. He’s matured at this point, and only sees his vision as an extension of his own conviction and strength.

We could say then, that Diluc’s journey is one of autonomy, of proving that his original conviction is real and it rightfully belongs to him, and always did. He's still doing what his father imposed on him, still protecting the land of freedom as a child of Barbatos, but in a way that's legitimate for himself, because it is his genuine choice after all.

The same way barbatos chooses to be the god of Mondstadt, and the people of Mondstadt choose him as their god without relying on his title of archon.

And so, true freedom means genuine choice.

#genshin lore #mondstadt lore #genshin thoughts

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tobiasdrake · 6 months

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Oh, and then we have to deal with the fallout of the bad motive.

So, that First Blood Perk. Obviously the game wasn't going to let that actually be a thing, because it would deprive us of a core feature of the games: the Class Trial.

Honestly, I might have more respect for the game's whole "Rise up against Danganronpa itself!" thing if they had. If they actually let the killer claim the First Blood Perk and walk. Fuck you, no fun Class Trial will be had here!

That would be aggravating. But it would be aggravating in a way that feels truly resonant with the game's ultimate goal of tearing down Danganronpa brick by brick. The game is later going to say that the fandom is part of the problem and appeal to them to become part of the solution. So. Yeah. It does piss you off that we never got to play the fun trial game, doesn't it? Maybe you should think about that.

(Though I still wouldn't want the killer to actually be Kaede, especially with the crime scene clearly showing that she couldn't have done it. I'm not actually that impressed by "Your PC is the Blackened" after we already did "Your PC is the Mastermind" one game ago.)

But no. You knew they were going to cop out. I knew they were going to cop out. Despite insisting repeatedly at the end that they are making an unsatisfying Danganronpa experience on purpose, they are still trying to do that as a satisfying Danganronpa experience so they wouldn't dare deprive us of such an important feature.

So how do they cop out? Is it because the killer themselves don't know they're the killer and thus can't claim the perk? Could it be that the killer wants to weaponize the Killing Game to kill us all, like Hina and Nagito have tried in the past?

Nope. The killer decides she wants to get caught and die so that Shuichi can develop and grow as a character. That's it. That's the reason.

This is how Kodaka, recognizing that what he's about to do is a pretty shitty thing to do to an audience that he's spent time getting hyped for this character, tries to grease the wheels. It's not technically a Fridging because she wanted to die! She chose to sacrifice herself on the altar of Shuichi's growth! She climbed into the refrigerator and slit her own throat! That was her choice! So you can't be mad about it! She had complete agency over the reduction of her character to a footnote in the real protagonist Shuichi's personal journey! I didn't do it! SHE did it!

Whether these are valid reasons that make it Okay, Actually or if they're just overcompensating paper-thin excuses to justify an incredibly mean-spirited prank, that's up to you. I think you know where I fall on that dichotomy.

What's especially weird about the First Blood Perk is that it makes sense in retrospect. Trying to cancel the Class Trial makes perfect sense as something Tsumugi might do to conceal her own involvement in Rantaro's death and role as the true culprit. But it was offered well before any plans for killing were ever even a teensy-tiny thought in the back of anyone's minds.

So either Tsumugi is secretly an omniscient 4-D chess predictive grandmaster who knows every single thought that will ever pass through the minds of every single person in every single second of every single day only pretending to be an incompetent hack, or this was pure serendipitous coincidence. Something that seems complex and compelling but is actually a hollow, vacuous shell devoid of any real meaning.

Which is true? Eh, whichever you want to be true. The game's actually proud of itself for never committing to its own story, so there is no actual truth behind anything that happens. Even the reality show stuff ends on "But what if THAT was another lie and the REAL REAL real plot has never been revealed!? I'M SO CLEVER."

"This seems meaningful but actually it doesn't really fit quite right and in fact it might just be clever-sounding nonsense the more I think about it" is basically V3 in a nutshell.

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #revisiting drv3

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