neplusultros

[neplusultros]

hang on. lucy's three boar thiren minions are named after the three little pigs.

obviously the antagonist in the fable of the three little pigs is the wolf. so far the only wolf in the game is von lycaon and all signs suggest he is a werewolf in particular, to be contrasted against hugo vlad's vampire.

but there's another ambiguously canine thiren in the game.

and he's positioned as a right-hand man to lucius, who took out pompey and who the sons of calydon are decently likely to come into conflict with in the long run.

lucius also already has other henchmen who are explicitly positioned as counterparts to other sons of calydon characters (pulchra and burnice, bellum and lighter).

lucy agent story featuring her and the three little pigs against the big bad wolf when, hoyo. he already exists as an enemy mob, even!

[neplusultros]

applying some classic critical frameworks to zzz

[neplusultros]

dealing with stress via self-harm (relic farming and tracing out a unit in hsr)

[neplusultros]

lmao they really said "sunday is the best little boy in the world but he isn't best little boy in the world ENOUGH...piano lessons upon ye"

[neplusultros]

feels extremely insightful, as a non-watcher, that arc*ne is ending and all the reactions are from fujos and not himes. sorry about your season 2, ladies.

[neplusultros]

[neplusultros]

new mtefil feels very bad in a very pleasant way. "I want you to decide my fate for my sins" uhhhh queen have you considered Not Sinning. I don't think it counts as running away together when making him run away from his responsibilities is actually still doing your job for literal Satan. slay girlboss

[neplusultros]

genuinely very funny and satisfying to see people almost but not quite get what I'm getting from chainsaw man. like if you go on reddit the prevailing mood is "haha they're gonna fuck" and then like 10% of people are like "hmmm....maybe the fucking....is bad? is this assault?" and like, of course that's how it is, that's how it is in all times and all places. our cultural scripts around love and intimacy are muddled in these exact ways.

of course people can't see yoru as anything other than horny/interested in denji in this sequence (as opposed to expressing a desire for dominance and control, or being related to the ways in which sexual violence is deeply tied to and in many ways characteristic of war), they live in a culture that has taught them that sexual assault is what happens when one person doesn't want to have sex and the other does, and either doesn't understand or willingly violates consent. of course people can only manage a furrowed brow and a "this doesn't seem right but I can't articulate why" when that's the background they're coming from.

[neplusultros]

this page is so fucking insane lmao. sticking my hand which is also a gun and which is visually now symbolically a phallus directly into your mouth. war as not only violence but as dominance, humiliation, desecration of the enemy. the personal violence of conquest and war versus the impersonal suffering of famine and death...anyways.

[neplusultros]

it's interesting to me that every time there's physical contact between denji and yoru, asa as an observer of her own body is removed from the scene. contrast asa and yoru talking at the start here in 181 versus with she disappears in the ending, or the way the duality is denied so strongly in 168 post-handjob that she's depicted as standing and arguing out loud to herself (rather than both asa and yoru being depicted).

i think there's a lot of reasons for this, not least of which is the repeated idea raised that asa's desire is somehow collapsing or flowing into yoru, but i think it also works as a pretty important narrative/thematic sleight of hand by concealing or complicating yoru's rape by proxy of denji using asa's body.

like, if we could all see asa standing there watching this happen, these already grey-area interactions would feel soooooo much worse.