#theyre obviously different characters with different stories and VERY different endgames | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

minquiec · 7 months

Text

Some lore stuffs + how her story ends

This is kinda all over the place bc I don't have a coherent idea but I just need to write it all down before I forget

How Jia was bit was on a hot ass day and she basically fell asleep on a spider and gained powers unknowingly

Doesn't find out for maybe a week

Has a weird dream one night where she basically meets a deity in her dream and the exchange was literally like

"You, Jialin Chen, now bear the powers to protect this la-"

"Uhm yea no thanks, pass 😬"

"WHAT?"

And then a comedic exchange occurs between mortal and god haha! Until the deity was like ENOUGH this is your DESTINY you will bear it whether you like it or NOT 👹 so Jia's kinda like alright fine damn 🙄 but obviously we all know how she really feels abt the whole situation (she hates it bc of issues) but anyways

The reason why it took a whole week is cause uhmmm plot hole lelel or smth the deity can't actually interfere directly with the world

EITHER WAY this is basically spoilers for endgame but it's not like I'll ever make a coherent plot bc I'm too lazy and dum but basically

The deity of Jia's universe is border on obsessive with creating a story line and destiny and heroes and stuff like that and ofc it has to be perfect (bc ofc it has to be, totally not cliche or anything)

Anyways this obsession makes them interfere TOO much with Jia's universe because if the deity was never this obsessed

Jia probably would've gotten over her issues (bc she's meets someone to help her copeeee 😋😋 cougjocughcgpuccough)

But bc the deity is an unreasonable shithead, they're literally the root of every problem:

They're responsible for Jia's split soul because of how abrupt her duties were suddenly forced on her

Bc of the split soul problem, it nearly upsets the world balance that could've been very bad for the universe! (the day she had lost the plot and had a existential crisis breakdown I think I posted it here but basically on that day she was flickering between both before Lin took control)

-> the logic is rlly,,, idk nonsensical for this bc what I thought as world making is that you can't have two souls in control at once and it goes again natural laws so it nearly ficked up her world cause it AINT SUPOSE TO HAPPEN ITS NEVA SUPOSE TO HAPPENNN but moving on

So then Lin switches in place of Jia and the world balance is briefly restored YAYY 🎉 everything is fine‼️

❌ WRONG ❌

Cause now Lin went and 'broke up' (idk it wasn't rlly a break up bc she never said 'lets break up' but she kinda did go 'we aren't meant for each other 🖕' and dipped) with hb so NOW HES GOING THRU IT and the rest of her friends back at spider society are like ???? What the??? Fuck???

Lin does manage to spend a few days or more at the hq cause technically she is still Jia but just

Different

But everyone's kinda weirded out cause she's Serious™ now and even Miguel's kinda like wattafack 🧍 plus the fact she has long white hair that spawned out of nowhere so they kinda piece some form of logic together that she's a different Jia

Anyways some time passes and one day an especially big anomaly is warned abt in Jia's (still Lin) universe which is bizarre cause they're not usually this big but it's all because of that STOOPID FUKASS deity GOING AROUND FUKIN THINGS UP and somehow created this ridiculously bad threat as a 'enemy' for the 'hero of their story' to defeat

The biggest problem with the anomaly is that while it doesn't really like, belong in Jia's universe, it doesn't belong in any OTHER universe either BECAUSE THAT DEITY BOUGHT IT UP OUTTA NOWHERE BC THEYRE PSYCHO I need to stop hating on characters that I literally made anyways

So HQ can't exactly deal with it like they usually do but they can try to offer assistance at least

Obviously for obvious (cliche) reasons CERTAIN PEOPLE are gonna be there cause yknow they still care abt Jia even tho she's changed (to Lin momentarily)

Battle occurs blah blah I'm not good with action scenes and things are looking a littttlee bleak for Lin and Co and all the sudden Lin receives a bad injury that nearly knocks her unconscious but thru her ringing ears and muted background noise she hears SOMEBODDYYY CALLING HER NAAMMEEE (god I really wonder who)

Because her state of unclarity from the Blunt Force Head Trauma makes things a little weird, the fine line between Jia and Lin also becomes a little muddled and the Jia that's been hiding behind Lin can hear his voice and it quite literally brings her out of that dark room in her mind to control again so TLDR Jia is back again instead of Lin

Reunion happens for maybe 3 minutes tops before shit hits the fan again and suddenly the deity has teared through time space fabric out of anger to speak directly to them mortal little earthlings on the ground because they're a little bitch

All because they thought Lin was the true protagonist they've been searching for all along and now 'that insolent fool' (hobie) has ruined everything (he does no wrong)'

But suddenly because the deity is in direct contact with the mortal world, they're like wait 🤨 you're not from this universe and sees other things also not from this universe and goes on a tangent about how they don't need to rebuild a 'story' anymore and can just find another 'story' to pilot (TLDR AGAIN: local deity discovers universe theft and wants to ditch this universe cause Jia's spiderman story wasn't perfect and now wants to find another universe to force to become their 'perfect story')

Obviously spider people are like 😨😨😨 UHMMM NO TF UR NOTTT so they start retreating (as they should tbh) and Jia's like helping to round up people to gtfo of her universe before some batshit deity absorbs them or smth

Atp bits of her universe is already crumbling and disintegrating because the deity is already trashing it because it's worthless and imperfect now (ngl me when art 😭😭)

So now it's the last of the people to go back thru the portals and its Jia and Hb :)) (y'all should know what's coming next)

Truthfully, Jia wants to so so badly go thru the portal to stay with the rest of them but she knows that there was the possibility of her connection with the deity of her world and her as a creation from the said deity

So she says goodbyes

Pushes him thru

And throws in her watch before it closes properly so the FUCK ASS DEITY CANT GET ANY KIND OF CONNECTION TO THE MULTIVERSE

And thus it concludes her coming of age plot because she found the proper courage to do what was right in all senses and came to terms with her spider girl identity

Even though she had so much she wanted to do with the rest of them was what she had thought while the thread of her universe on the multiverse crumbled into nothingness

ANYWAYS THE REAL CONCLUSION IS THE DEITY IS THE REAL ANOMALY THEIR OBSESSION DROVE THEM INTO AN ANOMALY AND INTERFERING WITH THE LIVING WORLD but thats kinda what happens when you've been living for centuries, you kinda go a little nuts

Anyways thanks for this long and incredibly messy read, don't kill me ✌️ peaces

#jipunk #lorerambles

20 notes · View notes

bookofmirth · 3 years

Note

everyones entitled to their opinion but the amount of people who have been saying how “confusing” az’s chapter is and how sjm’s a bad writer for writing it that way honestly annoys me? you said you felt vindication when you read it and tbh, same, it confirmed everything i thought since acowar and made perfect sense with what we know of az as a character - that he’s deeply traumatized and incapable of creating and maintaining healthy relationships (as of rn). but beyond that, i dont see how it was unclear in the terms of which ships will be endgame?? before that chapter i was still uncertain and thought it could go either way (tho i was leaning to elucien bc of the already existing bond), and now im pretty certain its not gonna be elr*el in the long term. idk, i just feel like a part of fandom has built their own vision of the characters and future events that isn’t supported by text and now that theyre disappointed it isnt canon, they blame sjm for it? i really dont think it was a confusing chapter at all, i thought her intentions were perfectly clear with the types of tropes she used, i dont think its fair to say it was badly written just bc it didnt support their fanon ideas that was built more on headcanons than actual textual evidence... idk if i sound mean lol but just my 2 cents, obviously it doesnt go for everyone i feel like a certain part of fandom has a certain version of characters in their heads that they consider as canon bc they want to see them that way, but they aren’t really the same as the actual characters we’re presented in their story

Anon, I am going CRAZY over here.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I take on some arguments and others I don’t, and it basically comes down to 1) what is supported in the text, 2) people’s very wild interpretations of the text, and 3) people confusing their interpretation, fanon, what have you, with canon.

I actually make my students read this article before they respond to a text because it’s super important to understand what, exactly, they (and we) are responding to. It’s nothing to do with literary criticism, but it still has bearings here because people are taking lines of text and imposing these wildly different meanings that have zero support. Like I mentioned in this post, we cannot say why Elain’s face gets tight or she shrinks from Lucien. There is literally no evidence one way or another, so I could that she like....... has a bad problem with farting when he’s around and is embarrassed. And who’s to stop me????

And you’re right, the problem here is that they think they are responding to canon, when actually it’s this wild interpretation of canon that began before acowar even came out, for the sole purpose of furthering hate on Mor. It had nothing to do with actually, genuinely liking it. But it’s grown into this monstrosity we see today and yeah... people are literally making posts where their “evidence” is two people being a room together and noticing that fact = endgame super romantic ship.

And that’s totally different from actually acknowledging the bare minimum of evidence, and saying “fingers crossed I hope it happens because I love it!!” That would be fine. I literally do not care if people do that. I do care when they willfully misinterpret what’s on the page and try to act like 1) they have found facts, and 2) they pretend like that “fact” should have any bearing on what other people ship.

So, re: Az.

I literally made this argument four years ago lol and if you read it real quick you can see that that ship came about (in January 2017) not because of all this “evidence” people found in acowar, which didn’t exist yet for us, but before that for other fandom, fanon reasons.

And since acowar came out, I’ve pretty much avoided talking about Az because I know that somehow, the fact that he’s dark and twisty is.... controversial??? Yeah, I compared him to Tamlin and I still hold to that (I saw a vagueblog about my idea and I still think that comparison is accurate, but anyway). But people just? Don’t want to hear anything like that about Az. Even though that’s literally what we are given.

There is nothing wrong with saying that he’s dark af. In fact, all of the evidence we have from the book is that he is not only dark, but that he is increasingly losing control. There was the blowup in acowar, and the increased disrespect of Rhys (and Feyre) in acosf, refusal to take orders from someone he is supposedly so loyal to. Even back in acomaf there were multiple signs that Mor was concerned about bruising his ego (literally the first thing that Mor says about Az is that he would want to know something, I’m not going to look it up but the implication was that he would be upset if he didn’t know).

From acosf:

Az had a vicious competitive streak. It wasn’t boastful and arrogant, the way Cassian himself knew he himself was prone to be, or possessive and terrifying like Amren’s. No, it was quiet and cruel and utterly lethal. (pg. 254)

“He’d tortured it out of someone. Of many people.” (pg. 224)

“Some silent conversation passed between him and his mate, and Cassian knew Rhys was asking about the torture - apologizing for making Feyre witness even the ten minutes Azriel had worked. (pg. i lost my place idk)

“Opening movements in a symphony of pain that Azriel could conduct with brutal efficiency. (pg. 375)

So asdkhasldkjasda if only we could STOP saying that Az is actually a dark soft boi and just acknowledge that he’s fucked up and that him being with ANYONE at this point would potentially be harmful to that person, be it Elain or Gwyn or whoever? That chapter did NOTHING but continue a line of character development that had already been in place, and I get the need to romanticize dark boys, but idk, don’t pretend he’s something he’s not.

#acosf #acosf spoilers #spoilers #azriel #ask #okay now I have a meeting lol #anon

25 notes · View notes

caden · 5 years

Text

i feel we should examine the whole idea of “do spoilers matter” or not at a deeper level then ‘people who complain about spoilers are annoying so spoiler warnings are stupid’. like the idea that a lot of you guys seem to have of “if having the plot spoiled ruins the movie for you then the plot wasnt any good anyways” seems sort of... not fully wrong but also underdeveloped to me. like, there are tons and tons and tons of stories that are widely considered to be amazing and have clear artistic merit that you absolutely wouldn’t want spoiled. Like, you wouldnt want to know darth vader was lukes father. you wouldnt want to know bruce willis was a ghost the whole time. For drama to be effective you need tension, and a very very efficient way of keeping the audience engaged is by putting them in a mindset where they’re unsure of what will happen next, or by revealing a game-changing plot twist, or by suddenly putting a character into an unexpected position. It seems totally disingenuous to me to be like ‘well it shouldnt matter to the audience whether or not they get to be surprised by what happens in the film they’re watching’. You can’t honestly believe that to be true. Being able to be surprised by a story is like one of the fundamental draws of good storytelling and probably has been for all of human history. Imagine how much worse US or Get Out or any Shakespeare play would be if you knew exactly where the plot would go before you saw it. I know there’s some research that suggests people actually enjoy stuff more if they already know what will happen but you can cast a lot of doubt on that data-- i think that it indicates more that people are more likely to appreciate a good plot once they understand it more thoroughly, hence why you might like a great movie more the second time you watch it. That doesnt mean there isnt value in the first time, it’s just a different way of viewing it.

All that said, the stuff with people not wanting spoilers for endgame has different wrinkles to it. (dont worry im not about to spoil anything). It can’t all be chalked up to ‘people care super deeply about the characters and plot and the writing is always so unpredictable and engaging that they dont want to know a single thing before going in’. Ive spent a lot of time recently thinking about the way infinity war and endgame are constructed, and they’re made in such a way that REALLY facilitates them being ‘spoiled’. because they’re written around moments. The plot isn’t so much a naturally moving thing with motivations and momentum of its own as much as a connective tissue between various cool things happening. Like, whoa, spider-man just met the guardians of the galaxy. oh sick, theyre in wakanda. holy shit, half of them died. Endgame goes REAAAAAALLY hard on this style of writing. And as a method of milking emotion from the audience, it really really works. Assuming the moments themselves are all effective, you’re guaranteeing constant engagement because every three minutes another epic thing is gonna happen. And I think when people fault marvel fans for being obsessed with spoiler warnings, this style of filmmaking is really what they’re trying to critique. because there’s a suggestion that if your movie is just jumping from crazy twist to shocking death to funny reference to epic fight, you’re losing the thing that should actually be the connective tissue of a film-- its themes, character arcs, ideas, setting... etc. And while I personally don’t think those things are mutually exclusive, (bc i do believe that infinity war and endgame genuinely have themes they try to discuss), i would also agree with the argument that reliance on shocking moments over actual ideas is bad writing. But as I mentioned earlier, a filmmaker like Jordan Peele whose works are generally agreed to be very good also uses this writing style-- his plots escalate via twists and turns and are expertly constructed to keep the audience wondering what’ll happen next, and he does a really great job with it.

Now, i DEFINITELY think there’s an argument for ‘disney intentionally plays up the spoiler warning angle in a way that’s ultimately toxic to the filmmaking process’. Like I don’t believe that the “tom holland doesnt get to read the script” stuff is true, I 100% think it’s all a publicity stunt-- but they shouldnt be setting a precedent that makes people think doing something like that to a lead actor is acceptable. It’s not how films should be made, and the only reason I’m sure its all fake is because I have enough filmmaking experience to know itd literally be impossible to efficiently shoot a big-budget film under those conditions. Of course all the buzz about endgame spoilers is HUGELY beneficial to their marketing teams, so obviously they’re gonna go hard as hell on enforcing that narrative. Like they 100% WANT everyone to both be spoiling the movie and getting anxious about having the movie spoiled, because its all free advertising for them. But in terms of ‘big movie studios having greedy practices that harmfully affect the artistic process and make their films worse’, its incredibly low on the list of bad stuff that studios do imo.

So, like, if you’re gonna critique all the various aspects of that, I think you should A) put your efforts towards exposing all the spoiler panic through the lens of how it affects the way that films are produced and consumed, or B) put your efforts towards analyzing the media itself, watch the film and ask ‘is this film more engaging and well-made because of its reliance on moments that can be spoiled? If no, why is that not working? If yes, is that engagement coming at a cost or is it justified? Essentially, I’d like to feel that the criticism was either coming from a social angle or an artistic one. And if that were the case I think i’d have less of an issue with it. Just saying “people are dumb for caring about spoilers” is silly. Maybe it’s dumb, but that’s not the point. People will consume media however they want to and if they want to care about spoilers then they have a right to care. You guys aren’t wrong if you think marvel shit is stupid and badly made, because art is subjective and no opinion on it is wrong. But other people also aren’t wrong for liking and caring about it, and being like ‘we should spoil it for them to teach them a lesson” is gross and totally unproductive. I know 99% of it is jokes but you gotta remember that some people have spent a very long time being very excited to see this movie and doing something that wrecks that for them is just mean and inconsiderate. It’s not about whether them feeling that way is stupid or not, because yeah, it’s stupid to be that invested in superhero movies. It’s about it not being cool to intentionally hurt someone just because you can. And the reason i don’t have a lot of tolerance for it is because I feel like saying “caring about spoilers is stupid” is a kneejerk, surface level attempt at media criticism and we can do better. I obviously care pretty deeply about the way we consume and criticize pop culture and i think it’s in everyone’s benefit to have more productive discourse about this stuff. No ill will towards my friends who are saying the things that i’m ragging on, i obviously don’t think it’s coming from a malicious place or anything-- this is just my read on the situation. Was gonna post this like two days ago but then decided someone would prob message me a spoiler because of it lol

19 notes · View notes

tumblunni · 7 years

Photo

Ah, here’s the pillowsnake! It’s called Rashab, I totally forgot!

beware, like 40 paragraphs of long rambling about the game below:

I never realized how the naming schemes actually work. All the different variants of a particular genus share a name ending- Nushab is the weird 8 shaped long neck snake, Rashab is the super rectangular chubby one, and Mukshab is the sticklike one that just looks like a real snake but with the trademark weird head that this monster has. And then the sub-breeds of each sub-breed have a totally different naming scheme! Only the main Rashab is Rashab, the other three elementals are all something-moaj instead. And Nushabs are something-oots, and Mukshabs are something-mines. Its an interesting way to do it, though it’s pretty hard to actually figure any of it out ingame when all the pure sub-breed forms only appear as enemies and you’re gonna be fusing your own variations for your party. I think pretty much anything fuses well with the snakes, they look awesome with any texture! And when they fuse with bugs they can actually gain lil wings and look like Dunsparce!

OH OH OH and ALSO I love how monsters in this game actually grow up! Like, they dont evolve, they just grow up like actual animals! They have very very subtle model changes in size for the first 20 or 30 levels, to symbolise reaching maturity. Its hard to even notice it happening unless you compare save files! And often you’ll be fusing monsters rather than keeping them in your party for a long time anyway. So I’m glad that the Shabs have some of the more noticeable changes! Their baby selves start off looking a lot more similar, and they only gain their giant variation in body shapes when they’ve matured. (Though you can still tell what one its gonna become)

OH AND ALSO ALSO The shabs look even cuter in the concept art, yo!!! Ingame it maybe loses a bit of the appeal cos of the low resolution and how everything is textures rather than model detail. (A necessity considering how the fusion system works, yknow?) On the concept art their faces look less like an eyeless snake with dot patterns, and more like a snake with eight buglike eyes. ITS REALLY CUTE!! Thats why I said they look like leeches! Cos they have the super light coloured undersides and the three-pronged jaw and the bug eyes! They’re scaly big leeches! they’re leechly small snakes! THEYRE THE BEST OF MY TWO FAVOURITE LONG ANIMALS!!!!

OH AND its good worldbuilding but I’M SAD The shabs The shabs get the honor of being in the worldbuilding in A SAD WAY The basic MP restoration item is called a Shab Liquer :( Yeah, its nice to know that they thought about how these magical monsters might be a part of everyday life even outside of a battle setting. But its sad to think about how they’re killed and used in medicine! And you have to use hundreds of this medicine, there’s no way to survive without MP restores! I DONT WANNA MAKE MY SNAKE FRIEND A CANNIBAL Tho I do appreciate how the name Shab Liquer just implies a lot of worldbuilding on its own. Like, you don’t just know that they make a medicine from the snakes, its implied its quite literally a snake oil. Like, does that mean snake oil is an idiom for a totally reliable and true thing in this universe? And Liquer is just a rather archaic and fancy way to phrase it, it fits very well with the setting! But seriously WHY DO I HAVE TO FEED MY SNAKE BABY DEAD SNAKE BABIES TO KEEP THEM ALIVE

OH OH OH AND that reminds me of another Fucked Up aspect of the worldbuilding! Your most reliable way of gaining money in this game is selling the monsters you catch. Which is dumb and impractical anyway cos I mean YOU WANNA FUSE THEM ALL!! And you get more money from selling your ones that you actually already fused and levelled up, like NO WAY am I doing that! I love them!! Even if I’m not using them, I’m just gonna keep them at home with Mahbu! NO MAKE ME SELL MY SNEKS But the REALLY FUCKED UP PART is that its explicitely said that by selling them you are killing the monsters.

...Okay so.. this kinda needs some explanation of more of the worldbuilding first...

The way you catch monsters in this game is by using magical cocoons, hence the name of the story. Monsters are meant to be like spiritual creatures, they’re called Minions cos they’re literally the minions of this setting’s deity, Elrihm. The religion of this culture states that humanity (or ‘The Beasts Of Knowledge’) committed a great sin in the past. We were god’s attempt to grant free will and intelligence to animals, but we used it to do evil and he decided the whole species was beyond saving because of the actions of a few. So he created these monsters/demons/avenging angels in snake form, and their mission in life is to destroy all of humanity so that the world can be reset. Which is why minions attack humans on sight, yet coexist perfectly peacefully with animals and plants in the forest. So like... humanity obviously Did Not Want to all die for the sins of one or two dumb kings, yknow? We stubbornly persist! We hold out our vanguard and keep our little towns amidst the Doom Forests, living life as normal with just the Doom Forests being a thing in the background, yeah. Defending against occasional attacks of minions banding together into swarms and chewing on the walls a little, but yeah, no biggie. And sometimes one of them manages to get in and eat some of our garbage or something. People live normally in these fortified wall villages, and the religion still worships Elrihm, and revolves around begging his forgiveness and trying to prove that humanity deserves to live. And never advancing too far with industrialism. lest we be punished again! And I mean, maybe that actually IS how everything happened, or maybe its just a story and Minions have always existed as a natural part of the ecosystem and they’re not evil things destined to destroy us or whatever. Its ambiguous! Even when you get to see Elrihm’s avatar at the end of the game, it’s just a big magical tree that the monsters come from, you never get any idea if it’s sentient and you’re not able to ask it if our legends have the right idea about it’s role as god. (Or if its gender is actually male, or if it even has one XD)

Anyway, that’s the legend of where the monsters come from, and it kinda explains why people might be a bit callous towards them, if they can be tamed as cute friends but also the wild ones are such a big threat to civilization. And if mythology says their threat to civilization is the natural order of existance, that they exist to kill us under orders of a god who abandoned us centuries ago... But yeah! Anyway! There’s a bloodline of magical people called the Nagi who have the power to purify the anger out of minions and make them friends. And the game has a cool way of keeping the usual mons show aspect of ‘catch a monster inside a certain item that has a limited amount of uses’, while making it fit with this ancient times mythological setting! Instead of the pokeball equivelant being some sort of manmade machine, it’s... cocoons! Since Minions are spiritual creatures, they can be like.. de-manifested and have their souls stored, to be re-summoned later. And for whatever reason, the way the magic works is that their souls have to be contained in cocoons. It’s... actually never fully explained? Where do the cocoons come from? Is it like you take any cocoon from a regular bug, and you seal the monster soul inside? But how would you even get an EMPTY cocoon? Is there a special bug in this universe that makes cocoons not for metamorphosis? or do you like.. fuse the soul with the bug inside the cocoon, and thats why all the monsters in this game are inspired by bugs? But they have the same bug-inspired designs even when you find them in the wild before catching them. So is it like the Nagi magic can create magical cocoons and you use those? or is it like you dont actually carry the empty cocoons, you carry something or other that turns into cocoons when a monster is sealed inside it? the catching animation is very vague, the protagonist is only holding his magic flute and a nebulous white glow in his hand. Then the cocoon forms around the monster and its sucked into his hand... ANYWAY I’M GOING OFFTOPIC SORRY! The point is that Nagi people can purify minions into friends, fuse minions into new powerful forms and (probably?) create the magic cocoons that can catch them in the first place. But it doesn’t mean that Nagi people are actually equipped to fight and catch the monsters themselves! the usual setup is a married couple where the Nagi can stay at home and focus entirely on their magic, and the regular human partner learns warrior arts and catches the monsters for them. Also catching monsters requires magic music, so you need to be a damn good bard too! I liked that they even showed that different Cocoon Masters (official name for peeps like the protag) can use whatever instruments fit best with their soul. The protagonist has an ocarina and [important endgame character] has a fancy lute guitar thing? I wish the game had told me what those are called... I think a name for an ancient japanese string instrument is a shamisen but i have NO IDEA if the one shown ingame is actually that or there are more different ones..? I mean its only shown in cutscnes so there’s no good ref image for it- I’M GOING OFFTOPIC AGAIN Anywaaaaaayyyy, its also in the worldbuilding that (for some reason) Nagi men are unable to use magic, and thats why the mages are always the wives and the warriors are always the husbands. Its interesting how this mythology is kinda presented as an opposite of adam and eve, too! Men who try and use magic are sinful and will be punished for stepping out of their assigned roles by becoming demons. Its the sad story of the protagonist’s parents, alas! His mother was the previous Nagi priestess of the village, but her husband committed the ultimate sin and then all we know is that his corrupted self fled into the forest and was never seen again. And everyone marks you as a failure for what your father did, so becoming the new cocoon master is quite hard at first. And its SUPER DUPER SAD cos your dad did it because performing minion purification is painful for the Nagi, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife hurting herself for his sake. So even though he knew the risks, one day he just tried to purify his minions himself so she could get some rest. And.. like.. ultitmately it did work. Cos she could never bear to remarry, and thus the village didnt have another cocoon master until their son grew old enough to marry. At least he succeeded in letting his wife never have to do magic again, even if it was because she stopped doing it out of grief for him.. :(

ANYWAY Now i’ve explained that worldbuilding and why it is cool and awesome and sad, I can explain the worldbuilding of a random gameplay element and why it is also cool and sad! So yeah, like I said before LONG TANGEANTS... The only really reliable way to make money in the game is to sell your monsters. And it makes me feel SO BAD! Cos the game very much outright tells you that selling them is killing them. And I guess it makes sense cos I mean, only Nagi wife-husband pairs can actually summon the monsters, there’d be no point trying to sell living ones to anyone else. So, since minions are sealed inside cocoons, in order to sell them you spin their cocoons into silk thread. This village’s primary export is weaving, so you can sell these silk spools to the big ol building of spinning wheel people and make money to keep going on your journey. Apparantly silk infused with monster souls is higher quality and can grant various effects and stuff, hence its value. Its a shame they didnt make a crafting system with this! Instead its just a standard ‘more powerful weapons and armours appear at the shop as the plot advances, for no real reason’. I mean, wouldnt it have been cool if you could add your monsters’s particular resistances to your main character’s armour? i would feel less sad about betraying them so utterly if they could protect me from beyond the grave. BECAUSE SERIOUSLY THIS IS SO FUCKED UP Seriously! These monsters faithfully served you! You purified them of their anger against humans, and instead of taking that opportunity to love them and show them the good sides of humanity, you just kill them! You kill them after they gained free will! You specifically HAVE to give them free will in order to kill them! Poor babies... I mean seriously I know that animals have to die to provide humans with food and materials and stuff, this is just how society works. But there’s something so much more viscerally terrifying about imagining taking an animal and literally weaving its SOUL into thread, then wearing it! There’s so many metaphysical questions that need to be answered before you can even figure out how much pain they would experience! And like.. god.. even the way they do the gameplay is so.. even more sad. Like, you can’t just hand the monster to someone else and its implied that they kill them. You have to hit an actual button to turn it into a sellable item. You have to cull it yourself. The death blow is on your hands, even if someone else weaves its dead soul into a nice scarf... So yeah, I pretty much always deliberately play ‘hard mode’ on this game, and refuse to make any damn money. Well, I mean, you can still find items in forests and sell them, but its infinately harder that way. You really are supposed to be selling your monsters to progress. I SAY NO! Big ol giant interface option sitting there on the menu unused forever. I love my sneks. You will not take them!!!

Oh but MAN I do really like the moral ambiguity of this worldbuilding, aaaaa!! The whole setting is so.. like.. realistic. There’s the dark realities of life in an ancient times setting. They take care to establish how the society functions and what their main trading export is, and what role monsters play in a non-battley setting! And seriously even the lil Shab Liquer thing! The casual implication that other villages might have different industries with their captured monsters, and someone somewhere out there found a way to make this medicine out of snakes. it manages to imply a wider world even as you’re confined to this one single village and the long forest that divides it away from every other human settlement. Plus.. like.. I really like the ambiguity it gives to HUMANITY. That seems like the MOST realistic of anything! Seriously, the game starts off establishing that in mythology humans are said to be evil, that the creation myth says we’re living in a post-fall society as the corrupted form of what true humanity should actually be, that god has abandoned us and we follow religion because we have to prove ourselves good enough to regain our former status. Like.. seriously, its refreshing compared to how boring and samey a lot of fictional religions are! They’re often just copies of existing religions, or of the general most popular religion template of There Was One Or Two Creator Gods And They Made Humans And Humans Are Destined Important And Animals Were Made To Serve Us. Instead in this game humanity’s mistreatment of animals and the environment is our absolute sin, and the definition of holiness is to be more similar to animals. And big scary demon monsters are GOD’S HOLY CREATIONS, SENT TO PUNISH US! No stereotypes here! No corner-cutting bullshit stolen from real life religions! And then like.. its nice how ambiguous it makes humanity nowadays, even beyond the ambiguity of the mythology and history. Humanity is trying to redeem itself, humanity is following this religion worshipping the god that cast them down for being corrupted. But still, it shows that some people believe in this doctrine, and some people believe that the things that are ‘corrupt’ about us are actually good. Cos it shows how some people believe that like.. ALL progress is sinful, any sort of machine is sinful, any attempt to improve society or change on what’s traditional. And it shows how some people who believe this are the bad guys, and some people believe this in a way that actually makes sense. And similarly, some people who follow the traditional ways are good- like Mahbu and her grandma. But then there’s the village chief who just follows religion blindly and doesnt seem to actually understand what’s morally correct at all, he’s just like ‘if I do what I’m told, I’ll be freed!’ instead of getting the goddamn lesson. And he tries to pretend to be a reasonable authority figure at first but then he gets more and more corrupt as the game goes on. He’s the representation of how forcing our two heroes into an arranged marriage is a morally ambiguous thing, even though they actually were in love and would have got hitched anyway. They’re still way too young to get this destiny of being the only ones who can save the village, AND keep the economy alive by spinning poor lil monsters into silk! And then he keeps giving you more and more orders, and they go from the actual duties of a cocoon master into just fullfilling the chief’s own greed and paranoia. And its interesting that him and the vizier lady who represents ‘lets abandon the rules and do everything for the benefit of humanity’ actually end up teaming up in the end and becoming even more goddamn corrupt together. Excessive progress and excessive stagnancy are both evil, and honestly they both have very similar selfish motives! Tho I do think the only problem is that they put a bit too much emphasis on this whole ‘these two looked like reasonable authority figures but were really evil’ thing, and don’t have enough good people in the town representing the other side. So its harder to care about saving this place when its literally just your wife and your mom who represent the goodness of the human race. And like.. technically I dont want the asshole lil kid to die, cos even though he’s a jerk he’s too young to be 100% responsible for his own actions. Even if I dont like him as a person, I’d still rather wanna take him away from this trash town and hope he can get raised by better people...

But seriously goddamn THOSE FUCKIN ASSHOLE CHIEFTAIN AND VIZIER PEOPLE!! Even after me and mahbu just saved the city from a deadly disease, after like 12 hours of gameplay and three forests worth of fighting for my life against monsters, where I’m expected to have sacrificed like 30 monsters to feed their stupid fuckin silk industry, even after ALL THAT they show no gratitude! The opposite of gratitude! The chief is still paranoid of the Nagi people for being foreigners, even though they dedicate their whole damn life to leaving their families and going on journeys to settle down in different cities and give their power to protect un-magic humans. And they’ve been doing this for all of history despite persecution, and like.. they lost their home and now the only ones who exist are the nomads and various half-nagi children who’ve never seen anyone of their own race before and are losing all the culture. Mahbu is an orphan who was just found by her ‘grandma’ and raised here, the only other Nagi in the village are the protagonist’s mum and technically the protagonist is half Nagi. (Tho like I said, the worldbuilding is that men cant use the magic, so protagonist is classified as a regular human and would just pass it on if he had a daughter.) So seriously Mahbu is a GODDAMN ORPHAN who was raised here all alone and hated by the village even as a kid! And the protagonist was her only childhood friend cos he could understand the feeling of being hated for having this blood, so no wonder they ended up falling in love. And then their love is at risk cos they were forced into this political marriage when they’re really young, and now have to risk dying everyday to protect this town that still hates them. And they work so hard to prove they don’t deserve to be hated, they don’t even think ‘the town is assholes’, they think ‘this is my home and i love it and it must be my fault everyone hates me so i have to work harder’. And the game doesn’t give you any option to do otherwise!

And it progresses even worse than just not getting gratitude! After you save the village from the disease, the evil chief and vizier wreck the day that you just saved, by pulling their goddamn bullshit evil plan! The chief decides to cut down the god-tree because of his paranoia, the vizier decides to cut down the god-tree because of her greed. And like... GAHHHH but its SO GOOD cos its all moral ambiguity still! The evil duo are definately evil, but they get to be evil for different reasons. They represent the two darkest sides of humanity, and no matter how much you represent the light of the world you cannot change them just by passively obeying them and hoping they’ll react like goddamn rational people! But you can understand why the masses might be tricked into following them, yknow? Humanity has been living in this tough life for as long as human memory, and mythology says that we’re being punished for the sins of our ancestors and we’re just BORN EVIL even though we weren’t the ones who did that shit. So you have good reasons to be angry against god, even if the evil duo DONT have good reasons, and they’re not doing something that will actually help.

Anyway so yeah thusly they trick mahbu and the protagonist into helping them trap the god-tree so they can cut it down. Again its a lil annoying that the game doesn’t give you a choice, though! And they dont even bother writing it a bit more ambiguous so the player could be fooled too, its pretty damn obvious you’re being tricked yet the only way to progress the game is to keep going. So you accidentally end up casting the evil magic on the god-tree and its like HOLY SHIT NO! And as you run back to the town you cant get back in time to stop anything, and you just get to see cutscenes of what’s happening while you’re gone. The evil duo cross the line EVEN FURTHER by MURDERING MAHBU’S GRANDMA! Mahbu’s grandma is the BEST CHARACTER, you fucking fuckface! She was such a nice helpful mentor and one of the only people who genuinely treated you two like human beings even though she wasn’t related to you. And she tries to stop the evil duo from doing their evil plan, she tries to reason with them, and she even gets desperate enough to try and reason with them within their own logic. Even if they’re sacriligious and selfish enough to not care that they’re trying to kill god for personal gain, they should at least understand that their plan WON’T FUCKIN WORK, and they’re just gonna bring god’s wrath and ruin humanity’s only chance at redemption! You’re gonna lose all your goddamn money and power if you get bitchslapped by the heavens, dumbass! AND you;ll kill the rest of us too, who never did anything to deserve it! And they ignore all her attempts to be reasonable, and ritually sacrifice her to try and save their own asses once their stupid attempt to kill god backfires. FUCK YOU TWO, SERIOUSLY!

And then something I really like is the revelation of grandma’s backstory! Cos seriously, who exactly was this mysterious woman who found this orphan and rescued her from the forest? She wasn’t a citizen of this town, she just stayed here to raise Mahbu once the town residents acted like assholes and tried to kick the poor kid back out. It turns out that grandma is actually the mortal incarnation of one of the minor deities! She’s basically this world’s psychopomp. The evil duo were actually RIGHT when they said she was a demon in disguise, but NOT when they thought that she was the evil one and they were good. The psychopomp figure of this mythology is hated, but it seems to be that she gained that reputation because she disobeys Elrihm and tries to help humans. She saved this Nagi girl from dying like the rest of her people, and even bound herself in human form in order to try and redeem this town of jackasses. And even though she was part of their village for so long and did nothing but try and protect them, they still ultimately betrayed her... And it was a very vague plot element that was only casually mentioned here cos its Endgame Time and we have to move very fast now. But it was implied that the chief and vizier are the reincarnations of the original evil king and evil sorcerer who did the same sinful nonsense all those centuries ago to get humanity kicked out of god’s domain in the first place. I dunno if its just meant to be that they’re naturally stuck in a cycle of reincarnation as punishment for their sins? But I always liked to interpret it that psychopomp grandma chose to never take their souls, because no matter what they do to her she still believes that one day they might be able to be redeemed in their next life. I feel like maybe she’s gambling with god, she’s keeping humanity alive by holding this one last wager to prove that they’re worth saving...

And then spoily endgame stuff happens and ultimately the protagonist fullfills some ancient prophecy and calms god and etc and MAKES UP FOR THE BULLSHIT ADULTS RUINING ALL THE SHIT, SERIOUSLY And seriously i haaaate how abrupt and rushed the ending is, and how that in this abrupt rushed ending they had time to show that the trash town comes back to life but not show that Mahbu does! You’re told beforehand that she will, but like.. with how many times you get lied to in this game, it would have been nice to get some damn confirmation in the end. Plus seriously, I cant even be happy seeing the town come back! Thats not a very climactic ending! Seeing protagonist smooch his poor long-suffering girlfriend would be way better! Seriously SERIOUSLY everyone else fuckin died cos of their own fuckin fault cos they MURDERED A GRANDMA my nice sweet ETERNAL GRANDMA, the ANCIENT DEITY OF ALL GRANDMAS, the fuckin DEATH GOD SATAN FIGURE WHO SACRIFICED HERSELF TO BECOME A GRANDMA AND PROTECT US AND THEN THEY KILLED HER, AAAAA they fuckin deserved to all die and be frozen in stone unable to even find peace But Mahbu’s life was instead in danger because she used too much magic purifying monsters IN ORDER TO SAVE THE DAMN TRASH TOWN And after all that they had the goddamn gall to be ungrateful and just cause a second disaster and ask us to fix it again! THAT is why mahbu was gonna die! Because she was a good person who listened to your bullshit and tried to save you, and loved me, and just SERIOUSLY SO MANY EMOTIONS you repayed her by KILLING HER GRANDMA

And i mean seriously her form of death was quite literally death from being TOO HOLY AND MORAL. She wasn’t strictly ‘dying’, it was more like a death of personality, I guess? Becoming something holy and leaving this world, when she didnt want to leave you. Everyone called the painful Nagi markings ‘cursed’ and shamed her for it and made her cover them up so their poor goddamn eyes wouldnt be offended by having to look at them. And poor mahbu was worried her goddamn love of her life would be disgusted with her if he saw! So it was like.. simultaneously cathartic and sad to learn that tradition was wrong in this respect. That it was still a BAD THING, but it was holy markings instead of a curse. Nagi priests who succum to the ‘curse’ are just shedding their humanity as a reward for their service, because from Elrihm’s perspective this is a good thing. So Mahbu becomes a tiny fairy angel type Minion, and then its just sad and intense because soon she’ll lose the ability to speak and forget about you and grandma :( So you have to seal her inside a cocoon in order to halt the spread of the holy markings, and can only let her out to talk to her for very short amounts of time in case it starts up again. And then you have to face the gauntlet of the penultimate dungeon alone without the ability to fuse monsters, until you get through it and find the original Nagi hometown whose demise was greatly exaggerated. And then nobody there has any time for character development cos its endgame time, but seriously it was thematically really damn cathartic to walk through that door and see the place! And meet this actual good guy chieftain who actually finally answers some goddamn questions and helps you! Even if its super sad to have to do fusion with these new stranger shopkeeper twins, instead of the wife you’ve grown to love. And also SERIOUSLY just imagine how fuckin atmospheric that whole penultimate dungeon would have been if the player character got to have a voice! It was all atmospheric to me cos I got really into it and imagined it, but I wish it coulda been canon, yknow? I’m just imagining the poor protagonist dude fighting through this horrifying gauntlet all alone with his final team of monsters, struggling to keep up without any of the magical reinforcement they usually get, unable to restock the last few items he has left in his bag. Fuckin DESPERATE HORROR, fuckin having to sleep overnight in the forest for the first time, fuckin terrified. Fuckin.. clinging to the soul of his wife sealed in a cocoon, keeping it safe against all costs, fuckin wakes up in the middle of the night and just how terrified he’d be that he can’t find her, until he remembers what happens T_T And then like.. imagine him summoning her and only getting a few minutes to hold her tiny fragile fairy self in the palm of his hands, and strain to hear her quiet voice as it gets fainter and fainter, and she struggles to remember herself. Thats somehow EVEN SADDER than if you could actually use monster-Mahbu in your party to fight alongside you! (tho that would have been AWESOME) I felt so bad that after all the horror these two had to go through, we never get to see the happy ending they earned, and instead the game wastes time showing the trash town coming back and just... GAHHH

oh and also that is THE ONLY THING about the sequel that i agree is bad! I liked the sequel a lot! And.. I mean.. in theory its a very interesting concept to have the protagonist of the last game be this sadman morally ambiguous broken mentor man. But seriously fuckin hell give the man a break! They literally say that he got blessed/cursed with immortality cos he fullfilled the prophecy in the first game, so Mahbu died long ago and he desperately wants to die too. Thats such a fuckin sick thing to do to your protagonist! And I mean, he doesnt even look like the same person anymore, and so much about the gameplay and the setting and etc are wildly different so it doesnt seem like the same world in th future, why even bother trying to claim its the same world in the future... I mean even.. monsters come from eggs instead of cocoons now, and you cant catch them or merge them, only buy them in stores! Shoulda just made it a separate game and let it stand on its own merits, it would have actually succeeded. I love all the characters in JC2, there’s no problem of ‘man i dont wanna save these guys’, the only character I dont like is fuckin... SADMAN FORMER PROTAGONIST WHO WANTS TO DIE At least in the ending after spoily stuff he gets to pass away. But lets just say the spoily stuff spits on the poor man’s legacy even more, sheesh...

ANYWAY I FEEL A LOT OF EMOTIONS FOR PROTAGONIST AND MAHBU And this game has great worldbuilding and i love it even if the ending is rushed and you’re forced to fall for stupid villain assholes’s stupid tricks ok end of bunni’s rambling

#bunni original vintage post

2 notes · View notes