shikishake

[shikishake]

yorukura ended. it was a good show, I think; it had some really emotionally resonant beats from some really likable characters and a good message and theme that felt like it came from a genuine place.

and yet, I am incapable of not feeling bitter.

it was queerbait. and somehow, that's just supposed to be fine. I'm left feeling like an idiot for expecting anything more. I'm left feeling like I'm supposed to say something like "oh well, we got baited again. better luck next time!" I'm left feeling like this is just supposed to be business as usual.

but it's just fucking annoying, right? like it happens over and over and over again, rug pull after rug pull, and it's genuinely getting irritating. because every time this shit happens, the same thought pops into my head.

"if they were straight, this would be called bad writing."

they spent multiple episodes deliberately creating romantic tension, and then just refused to acknowledge it in the ending. they just go "fwiends! :)" without even talking about the moment on the beach, or the aquarium date, or the fucking kiss on new years.

they started a romantic subplot -- hell, it wasn't even a SUBplot, mahiru and kano's relationship has been centerstage since the start of the show -- but they started moving them in a romantic direction, and then just fucking dropped it. No resolution, no closure, nothing.

there's value in giving your two main leads romantic tension, and not having them end up together; you can say things about that. like, "there could have been something there, but a conflict changed their relationship" or "there could have been something there, but it doesn't work out" or something. but that's not what happened. this is just completely dropping a part of your MAIN DUO's relationship with no explanation.

if they were straight, this would be bad writing. but because they're two girls, it's "just" bait. because they're gay, it's egg on OUR face; how stupid of us to expect more. they tell us there's romantic tension, spend multiple episodes building it, and then they laugh at us for being idiotic enough to actually believe them.

it hurts doubly because we JUST had the kiui thing last episode. I watched that episode and cried, you know that? it hit close to home. and it was basically explicit confirmation that kiui is, in some way, not cis.

...right? because now I'm forced to start doubting that, too. they never SAY kiui's trans or nb, so maybe some exec on twitter or whatever the fuck is gonna go "kiui is a girl and just uses nox as an online persona, what do you mean non-binary?"

I had so much respect for this show last episode, I genuinely thought there was no possible way they'd pussy out with mahiru and kano. I thought "CLEARLY, they're not shying away from having queer characters. CLEARLY, this means they're gonna resolve this continuously building queer romance. I mean, they just confirmed one of their main characters is queer, in-show, using some of the least ambiguous language I've ever seen anime use. I can trust them; it'd be silly not to, after this."

it's just fucking annoying. it makes the show's entire theme of "be your authentic self, even in the face of society's rejection! cringe is dead, irony is cowardly; say something beautiful and true!" ring hollow.

[shikishake]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[shikishake]

breaking my months long silence to say:

thanks for your time

[shikishake]

How to emotionally abuse your child: comparing and contrasting Mafuyu Asahina and Toya Aoyagi.

There are two actively abusive parents in Project Sekai, and both of them are emotionally abusive in similar ways and for similar reasons. But the treatment and development of Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother has been very distinctly different over the course of the story so far. Why has Toya’s relationship with his father stabilised and even marginally improved over the course of his events, while Mafuyu’s relationship with her mother hasn’t just deteriorated but actively crashed and burned?

I believe the difference lies in intent and perspective. (Before we begin in earnest, I want to note that, at the end, I’ll briefly touch upon some other parents, specifically the ones who might also be worthy of criticism. Most notably, I’ll discuss Ena and Akito’s father and the (many) flaws in how he has treated both of his children. Refer to that if you’re interested.)

Toya and Mafuyu have a lot of similarities. They’re both emotionally repressed, they’re both exceptionally skilled (Toya more specifically being a musical prodigy, while Mafuyu has a more general kind of exceptional competence), and they both have very difficult relationships with their parents (their father and mother, respectively). They’ve both slowly but surely come out of their shells and recovered thanks to the help of their groups (VBS and Niigo, with an emphasis on Akito and Kanade, respectively). Because of the connections they’ve made, both of them have received the support needed to directly confront their parents and choose a new path for themselves, regardless of what their parents think.

Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother also have a lot of similarities. They’re both overbearing, controlling parents who pile pressure and expectations on the shoulders of their children, both have isolated their children in an attempt to focus their attention on the things they deemed important, and they’ve both rejected the paths their children have decided to walk in the end. 

Both of them have claimed that their behaviour was motivated by good intentions, that they truly want the best for their children and want them to be happy, and that everything they’ve done has been in service of making life easier for their children.

Both of them have failed, but only Mafuyu’s mother is lying (including to herself).

Toya’s father.

Toya’s father has been a successful classically trained musician his entire life, and has raised two other boys to be successful classically trained musicians. Neither of Toya’s brothers live in Shibuya, but small mentions of them reveal that, though they might have shared Toya’s current attitude in the past, both of them have told Toya they now agree with their father, despite going through the same kind of upbringing by the same man, with all the horrible things that implies.

Why?

Because Toya’s father, more than anything, loves classical music. It makes him happier than virtually anything else in the world. Toya’s father loves classical music, and has loved classical music for his entire life, as much as the most passionate characters in this story love music. Toya’s father loves classical music as much as (or maybe more than) Toya loves street music. Toya’s father loves classical music as much as Akito loves street music.

Both of Toya’s brothers have claimed to share this love. The reason Toya’s brothers can now look back and say that their father was right is because classical music has made both of Toya’s brothers happier than virtually anything else in the world, too (or, at least, that’s what they told Toya).

The reason Toya’s father raised Toya the way that he did is because, from his point of view, there is nothing that will make an Aoyagi happier than classical music. He has made the mistake a lot of parents make. He has assumed his sons are the same as him. He has assumed what would make him happy, would make his sons happy. And nothing has given him any indication that this is false. Not Toya’s brothers, and not even Toya.

Toya has also loved classical music his entire life. The reason Toya rebelled and quit classical music isn’t because he doesn’t like it, or doesn’t like playing it. Toya rebelled because his father was suffocating him, isolating him and controlling him, and the association with that suffocation made Toya’s relationship with classical music strained, but it has been stated again and again that the reason Toya has avoided classical music for a while now is because it brings up unpleasant memories, not because he doesn’t actually like the music.

The crucial difference between Toya and his father is that classical music does not make Toya happier than anything in the world. He might enjoy it, and he might even love it, but Toya will, and would, never be able to look back on the trauma and isolation he endured and believe it was worth it. Toya would never have willingly sacrificed his childhood, his social life, his freedom for classical music. Not when he was a child, not now, and according to everything we know about him, not in the future either.

But Toya’s father would have. Toya’s father believes the suffering he endured was worth the happiness he now feels. Toya’s brothers have both told him that they believe the suffering they endured was worth the happiness they now feel. And Toya’s father thinks the suffering Toya has endured and would have needed to continue to endure would be worth the happiness he’s convinced he would feel in the future.

He does not understand Toya’s switch to street music. Or, well, he does; Toya switched to street music specifically because he knew his father would hate it more than any other type of music, and Toya’s father is aware of this. Toya didn’t have it in him to quit music entirely, but the reason he chose this type of music specifically is for no reason other than “my dad would hate it”.

The thing that Toya’s father doesn’t understand is that Toya may have started street music to spite his father, but that’s not why he does it now. Toya fell in love with street music, to the same extent that his father fell in love with classical music, and it shows when he performs. That’s why, when Toya’s father went to see Toya perform for the first time at the end of his first event, their relationship changed for the better. Because Toya’s father wants his son to be happy, and the reason he’s been such a bad father is because he’s stubbornly convinced that classical music would make Toya happy, despite all evidence to the contrary. And when he saw his son on that stage, Toya was happier than classical music had ever made him.

His father may despise the music Toya makes, and there may be a pretty big part of him that thinks Toya would, someday, be able to fall in love with classical music in the same way he has, and maybe he even believes that Toya would be happier in the long run if he stuck to classical music. But first and foremost, Toya’s father wants Toya to be happy, and that performance showed him that street music made Toya happy. Their relationship softened because Toya’s father was able to understand, in some tiny way, that Toya wasn’t ruining his own life out of spite. Even if he thinks Toya would be happier in the long run, that performance showed Toya’s father that, if nothing else, Toya wasn’t going to be unhappy.

He still wants Toya to quit street music and return to classical. But the dynamic has changed because the stakes have changed. Previously, from Toya’s father’s perspective, it was either “continue performing this drivel and be miserable for the rest of your life” or “return to classical, push through the hardship and be happy”. Now, it’s “continue performing this drivel and be happy” or “return to classical, push through the hardship and be happier”. Those are entirely different stakes.

Mafuyu’s mother.

Now let’s talk about Mafuyu’s mother. What makes her different? Why does nothing get through to her? Why is Mafuyu’s mother portrayed so much harsher and so much more negatively?

It’s difficult to really pinpoint Mafuyu’s mother’s perspective and intentions, because Mafuyu’s mother is a manipulator first and foremost. Almost nothing she says can be taken at face value. But there’s a couple of possible interpretations, some more charitable than others.

Right off the bat, I don’t believe the most charitable explanation: that she genuinely wants what is best for her daughter and is simply misguided. If this was true, she wouldn’t have constantly invaded her privacy to snoop on whether or not she was still making music or talking to her friends. If this was true, she wouldn’t have thrown her synthesiser away behind her back. If this was true, seeing Mafuyu break down into tears and beg her mother to allow her even the tiniest amount of agency would have made her do more than blink. If this was true, she would have been rightly horrified that Mafuyu said she’s been unbelievably miserable for years instead of being mildly nonplussed, then immediately trying to guilt trip her by crying and repeating her spiel that this is all for the best. More than that, she wouldn’t have stopped crying immediately when she noticed her guilt tripping wasn’t working.

On the other hand, there’s the least charitable interpretation of Mafuyu’s mother: that she’s a narcissist who wants to live vicariously through her daughter’s success. She wants Mafuyu to be a successful doctor, not because she wants her to be happy, but because being able to say that she raised a successful doctor would make her feel successful by proxy. This isn’t impossible, or even improbable. There’s a not insignificant amount of parents who do, genuinely, feel this way, and the consequences of that are often severely traumatic for the children. 

However, I don’t think this is accurate either. She’s too often portrayed as insisting everything is for Mafuyu’s sake for it to be entirely a lie, or at least a lie that she’s aware of. Instead, I think what’s happening is a little more insidious.

I believe Mafuyu’s mother has, at some point, decided who Mafuyu is, and that is the Mafuyu that she loves. And she does love that Mafuyu. But she loves only that Mafuyu, and a version of Mafuyu that deviates from the Mafuyu that she has decided to love isn’t the true Mafuyu.

Mafuyu’s mother has created a cardboard cutout of her daughter in her own mind, and when Mafuyu doesn’t fit it, it’s not the cutout that’s wrong, it’s Mafuyu that has somehow been altered.

This is why, when Mafuyu’s mother says her actions are for the sake of Mafuyu’s happiness, it’s simultaneously completely honest and entirely wrong. Because Mafuyu’s mother does genuinely believe that studying hard, getting into a good school, and becoming a successful doctor and a respectable adult who makes a lot of money would make her Mafuyu happy. She’s completely honest when she says it, which is also part of why she’s so good at manipulating Mafuyu.

The problem is that her Mafuyu doesn’t exist. And she has never existed. Her Mafuyu was, from the very beginning, an act that Mafuyu performed to make herself fit the shape of the cardboard cutout in her mother’s mind. The cardboard cutout was never real. It was a fake, a fake that Mafuyu tried desperately to pretend was real because she loves her mother and wanted to make her smile.

Why does her mother constantly deny Mafuyu’s real feelings? Why does she fail to understand anything, even when Mafuyu herself breaks down crying and shouts it out loud? Because the person Mafuyu’s mother loves is the cardboard cutout in her mind. Because the person telling her that she’s miserable isn’t her Mafuyu. That's a deviation that needs to be corrected, a corruption that needs to be removed, an infection that needs to be excised. The real Mafuyu would never say these things. The real Mafuyu is a good, kind girl who works hard, studies diligently, is always polite and does whatever her mom tells her to do.

The version of Mafuyu in her mind isn’t miserable, so Mafuyu can’t be miserable. If Mafuyu is miserable, then something must have changed her. Because her Mafuyu can’t be miserable.

This is why she so consistently blames Kanade and the rest of Niigo. It’s why she’s so insistent on Mafuyu quitting Niigo. It’s why she says things like “if Mafuyu wants to make music, she can, but she should prioritise studying first, and come back to it once she’s secure and stable”. It’s why she’s all for her being a member of the archery club, but constantly tells Mafuyu to stop making music.

It’s not about the activity. It’s about the people, putting ideas in her head, corrupting her, making her deviate from her real self. It’s about the discrepancy between the Mafuyu she sees and her Mafuyu.

If Mafuyu isn’t behaving like what she expects, it’s not her expectations that are wrong, it’s Mafuyu that’s wrong.

If the cardboard cutout doesn’t match reality, then reality is wrong.

Mafuyu’s mother loves a fantasy. More than that, she chooses to love a fantasy. The reason Mafuyu’s mother is portrayed so negatively, and never receives any of the positive development that any of the other parents do, is because she’s denying reality.

Project Sekai is about embracing your true feelings. Toya’s father didn’t understand Toya’s true feelings for a long time. When he eventually did understand them, though, he acknowledged them. He didn’t agree with them, but he acknowledged them. He understood, at the very least, that street music made Toya happy.

Mafuyu’s mother doesn’t just not understand Mafuyu’s true feelings, she denies them outright. She wants to kill them, in Kaito’s words. There is no reality where these are Mafuyu’s true feelings. There is no version of Mafuyu that isn’t her Mafuyu. She has one daughter, and she loves that daughter, and only that daughter.

Nevermind that that daughter isn’t real. Nevermind that her real daughter is absolutely miserable, begging for love and affection that isn’t predicated on her putting on a mask and playing a character that she can barely recognize herself in.

That is the difference between Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother. Toya’s father, for all his flaws and abuse and self-centred outlook, actually loves Toya. Mafuyu’s mother only loves the version of Mafuyu she created in her own head.

Other parents.

Alright, to cap this off, let’s look at a couple of other characters who are, in some way, questionably effective at being parents.

Ena and Akito’s father.

There’s probably a not-insignificant amount of people that were surprised when I said that only Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother were actively abusive. Ena and Akito’s father is also an almost exclusively negative influence in his childrens’ lives, so what makes him different?

What makes Ena and Akito’s father different is that I don’t think he’s actively abusive. I think he’s incredibly neglectful.

There is a massive difference in how often Ena and Akito’s father shows up and how often Toya’s father or Mafuyu’s mother show up. He appears very rarely in Ena’s events and barely has any lines even though the few lines he does have are incredibly important for Ena’s character. He doesn’t show up in Akito’s events at all. The only thing he consistently does is be a constant shadow hanging over Ena’s head, and he doesn’t need to be present to do that.

Ena and Akito’s father is barely a part of their family. He doesn’t try to control his children, or isolate them, or even criticise them outside of the rare instances he bothers talking to them. He’s a presence that sets Ena on edge constantly when she has to leave her room, but the amount of times Ena actually talks to her father can be counted on one hand. He’s profoundly and exclusively unsupportive, entirely emotionally (and often physically) distant and basically fully absent from Ena’s life outside of the two or three times he tells her to give up on her dreams because she has no talent and will never be successful.

And yet, in a weird way, Ena somehow has the better relationship with their father out of the two of them, because Ena has any relationship with their father at all. It’s very much negative, but they do very rarely interact. Akito’s only, only, conversation with the man is in Ena’s first event, where he tries to make their father understand that he’s, well, being a fucking terrible father to Ena. I scoured through every event story, every card story available in English. Nothing. There’s not even a mention of him talking to his father offscreen. Please correct me if I’m wrong, maybe the JP events/stories have something.

The only time he talks about his father is in the first side story of his card for Toya’s second event. He talks about a camping trip his family went on, and -- surprise surprise -- he paid barely any attention to his family, mostly just sitting there and painting the landscape. The closest he came was when he painted his family, until Ena pushed him in the river for not paying attention to her.

So yeah. No less of a bad dad than the other parents. Pretty terrible person. Just not in the same category as Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother, even if the influence he had on his daughter in particular ended up being just as negative and scarring. Also, thank god Akito met Ken because by all accounts that boy has spent most of his pre-RAD WEEKEND life without a father.

Tsukasa and Saki’s parents.

Saki was in the hospital for most of her early teens. In hindsight, their parents could have spent more time with Tsukasa, but it’s entirely understandable that they prioritised their sick, hospitalised daughter, even if it was the wrong choice. There are no bad guys here. 

Tsukasa spent a fair chunk of his childhood lonelier than other kids, and in an ideal world, with perfect parents, that wouldn’t have happened. We don’t live in an ideal world. There are no perfect parents. I genuinely believe they did the best you could reasonably expect. That’s it.

Kanade’s father.

The man had what was probably a stroke from overwork and stress. Normally, telling your incredibly musically gifted daughter that she should keep creating her own music and that a lot of people will enjoy her music is nothing but good parenting.

What happened was tragic in practically every way, but it would have been tragic regardless of what he said. Whether or not he emphasised that Kanade should continue composing her own music, Kanade was severely traumatised and would have spiralled into something unhealthy anyway. That it became this particular brand of unhealthy isn’t something I can blame him for.

(I can, however, blame child protective services and mental health care in Japan, who dropped the ball so fucking hard by letting a girl barely into her teens not only live by herself with no actual support because her grandmother continued to pay for the house but have consistently neglected to, y’know, actually check up on her. Ever. Even when she’s literally in the hospital. The closest they ever came is some of the random nurses being mildly concerned about the grieving 14-15 year old crying next to her comatose father’s hospital bed.)

Kanade’s saviour complex is a result of what her father said to her, yes. I don’t think that’s on him.

Mizuki.

Mizuki’s parents and sister are fantastic, I just wanna shout them out for being the only healthy family in Niigo.

I suck at ending things.

Anyway that’s it. Stand by for other stuff at some point in the future. There’s the beginnings of an idea about contrasting Mafuyu and Haruka, but take that with a grain of salt. It’s just a thing I noticed after finally getting around to reading some of Haruka’s event stories.

I think about characters other than Mafuyu, I promise. This is just a coincidence. Really.

So yeah. Bye.

[shikishake]

today in "shiki finds something neat and proceeds to obsess over it for weeks or months", I started playing Project Sekai. y'know, the hatsune miku gacha game about lesbians and gays. that's what it's about, I promise.

that is, until I started fucking thinking about it more, and now I... well it's still about lesbians and gays, but also I think it's saying something about music. maybe. or maybe I'm projecting my own ideas about music onto a story, that could be it too. I did that with bandori but it was less comprehensive so I didn't post it.

so like. there's 5 units, each of 4 people, right? and they're like, entirely different groups, both in how they formed, what the dynamic is between them and what kind of music they make. leo/need is a group of childhood friends making a band, more more jump is an up and coming idol group headed by a newbie who re-ignited the passions of three retired/disillusioned veterans, vivid bad squad is a community-focused street group, wonderlandsxshowtime is a theme park musical theatre group, and nightcord at 25:00 is a group of depressed teenagers who met online coming together to make music about how depressed they are. that last one sounds negative but I don't know how else to describe it. they're my favorite though, so y'know. no hate.

but like. that's surface level stuff, obviously. and when you dig a little deeper, I think each of these units has a theme, more specifically a way to "use" music to express certain ideas.

leo/need is music as a way of connecting, and of staying connected, with the people you care about. it's a group of friends who had drifted apart, finding each other again through music. it's using music to take hold of the things that matter to you, the people you love, and keeping them tight against you. it's music as a way to stay grounded and aware of the people around you.

more more jump is music as a way of reaching for your dreams, of shooting for the stars. it's music as a way of igniting passions and inspiring hope. it's music as a goal, it's music as a goalpost to run toward, and it's music as a way to give others a reason to run with you. it's music as something that you give yourself to more and more and more.

vivid bad squad is music as community, as a way of reaching out and meeting new people, making new connections, finding new experiences, chasing new dreams. it's music as something that matters only in the moment it's made, it's music as something that doesn't need to be bought or sold, it's music as a group of people coming together to MAKE something. it's music that defines itself by the people who listen to it, not just the people who make it.

those three are kind of a trifecta of... not quite foils, but something close. they play off each other. leo/need's music as a way of staying connected with what you have vs vivid bad squads' music as a way of reaching out for something new. vivid bad squads' music as something home-grown and home-bound, something that reaches out NEAR to you, something for a community and by a community, for the people you know vs more more jump's music as something for the world, something kind of corporate but more than that something that reaches out FAR, made for the people that DON'T know you for anything except the image you put out. leo/need's passion for music as an end goal and more more jump's passion for music as a means TO an end, where leo/need strives to perform better because they want to have their music hit harder (aka for the sake of making better music) where more more jump strives to perform better because they want to reach more people.

and like. I KNOW what niigo, nightcord at 25:00, is. it's music as a way to heal, it's music as a way to preserve, it's music as a way to face the hardships of the past and keep going. it's music as life, as something that GRANTS life. it's music as a way to say "hey. life sucks. but it won't always." it's music as a way to save, as a way to find the light in a place that feels so so so dark, it's music as something that expresses the darkness, indulges in it, but at the end of the day it gives you a warm hug and says "it's dark and scary and painful, but we'll get out of here together." it's music that provides comfort specifically BY facing the dark head on.

but I struggled to figure out exactly what wonderlandsxshowtime was. there's the surface level answer, of music as a way to make people smile, but that's... like, have you read the lyrics to their commissioned songs? it's dark. the peppy tone and upbeat voices mask it well, but the things they're talking about aren't JUST about making you smile. but it's also not about masking pain WITH a smile, because they're too genuine. tsukasa, emu, rui and nene aren't hiding pain. they're not faking it. even when the stories show that they had troubles in the past or even still have troubles now, they're not a secret that has been uncovered, they're explanations and explorations of WHY they are who they are. tsukasa isn't faking his enthusiasm, his passion for acting and performing. his wish to become a star isn't FAKE, even through the loneliness of the past. emu isn't hiding some dark past, she's genuinely just like this, even during the more serious moments with her family. nene is shy, sure, but it's not like it took digging or even a lot of time for her to start being her true sassy self towards the rest. rui's lonely because him being himself scared people away, but it's not like he's NOT himself because of that. he's completely and fully his genuine self, and if people don't like that then so be it. he's the lonely alchemist, sure, but he never pretended to NOT be the alchemist.

so I struggled a little. until I realized that wxs and niigo are foils, too, in a very unexpected way.

wxs is death. it's endings. it's music as a way to acknowledge the inevitable end, and face that with a smile. it's music as the realization that everything you know, everything you love, will someday stop, and how to keep going despite that. it's music that looks at the hardships of the future and says "but even so, we'll smile". it's seeing the end of the ride coming into view but screaming and cheering even as it starts to reach the final descent. it's the merry-go-round that keeps spinning and spinning and spinning until it can't anymore, until it ALL stops.

niigo is life, the darkness surrounding you and the fire in the distance. wxs is death, fanning the flames with a smile as the dark encroaches.

niigo finds the light in the dark, wxs does its damnedest to keep hold of it.

niigo faces the massive road ahead and whispers "we haven't even started yet."

wxs approaches the end of the road and screams "we haven't even started yet".

[shikishake]

so I’m largely writing this because I feel like I have to, for closure, y’know? I’ve been posting bits about most of the really impactful episodes of the second season of this show so it wouldn’t feel right not talking about the ending at all.

I’ve seen criticism floating around that the ending was rushed. I agree with that criticism, but I also don’t find myself really caring. could the ending have been better paced? sure. is the narrative conclusion to EVERYTHING perfect? nope. but I’m not left feeling that weird hollow feeling you get when you really enjoy a show and then it ends in a shitshow, largely because the parts that I wanted to happen mostly happened. the series as a whole doesn’t feel lesser for the flaws of the ending, and the things the ending DOES do right make up for it, in my opinion.

getting the obvious out of the way: they didn’t pussy out. the ending isn’t vaguely tragic and open-ended, and they didn’t pull a ��and they were best friends forever :)” with sulemio. they’re married. they didn’t KISS or anything, but that’s not really necessary, even if a small part of me kinda wanted to see it anyway. they’re happy and safe and together. mission accomplished.

moving on, nika faced consequences. I was REALLY happy to see that. she was a small part of it, in the grand scheme of things, but she DID play a role in getting a lot of innocent people killed. it’s good that there were consequences for that. shaddiq faced consequences. again, awesome. shaddiq was a lot more directly responsible for a lot more death and misery, and I’m pretty sure the implication is that shaddiq will be spending the rest of his life in jail. I’m not actually a super big fan of life sentences, as I feel like prison should be about rehabilitation rather than punishment, but it would’ve felt a lot more hollow if shaddiq got away with a slap on the wrist. he did bad things. he should take responsibility for that. it’s good that he, and the show as a whole, recognizes that, even if “spend the rest of your life in prison” isn’t actually the conclusion I would have reached. I’m not sure what conclusion I WOULD have liked, but the crux of the issue is that there ARE consequences.

all of that makes the fact that prospera faces NO consequences... weird. I get it, crippled old lady with no direct evidence linking her to her crimes, but it feels EXCEEDINGLY frustrating to know that, after what she did at quinharbor especially, prospera’s ending is... getting to sit with her family in a nice field. it feels like she should have taken responsibility to SOME extent, if not legally than in some other way. that being said, I can forgive the show for this. not really because I agree with it, but because I think that suletta deserves a happy ending without strings attached, and even though I don’t think prospera is a very good mother or a very good person, suletta clearly loves her. if prospera being in her life is part of her happy ending, I think I can forgive it.

I have no idea if delling faced consequences. I like to think he did? but also I like to think miorine had a chance to... not reconnect, because I think that bridge has been burned even if their relationship has improved slightly over the course of the show, but find closure with her father. I also like to think he actually apologized and owned up to the FUCKTON of abuse he put miorine through but I’m well aware that I’m chasing a fantasy there.

um. permet ghosts. they don’t quite make sense in-universe, honestly, but I don’t really care. they were a very nice way to tie-up the narrative themes and character arcs of the people they affected, and I’ve always been the kind of person that can value thematic and symbolic parts of a narrative above the strictly logical side. I don’t really need to know how and why permet ghosts exist beyond what was explained in like, a single line, because it felt satisfying and thematically appropriate to have them. they did what they needed to do, and I can suspend my disbelief enough to quiet the part of me that questions the “how”.

I KNEW there was some shit up with elan prime. then again, I also thought it was a lot more “oh shit I just realized how in over my head I am, that’s a lot of people that are gonna be murdered and it’s overpowering my learned habit of reducing human life to numbers on a sheet of paper, this might be a bad idea”, and not as much “ya’ll are boring and I’m tired of you, see you in hell, peace out”. but I’m not sure how in-character the former would’ve been, so *shrug*.

eri in a keychain is JUST funny enough for me to forget that she killed people. well actually that’s a lie, it’s just that there’s very little ways that eri’s story could have wrapped up, really. either she dies in a heroic sacrifice to redeem her sins, which I never really like for a multitude of reasons and also feels really cruel to a child that has spent most of her life trapped in a giant robot after her family, her life and her future were robbed from her by corporate assholes, or she lives in some kind of weirdo in-between life, like she has been doing as aerial for like 17 years (or more?) but hopefully a little less awful. I like the latter better. I don’t think in-universe lore can justify giving her a new body, which I would’ve REALLY liked purely because even if she’s done some bad shit I think eri deserves to live as herself, with full freedom. but this is okay too.

suletta getting to fulfill her dream of opening up a school is *chef’s kiss*. miorine getting to be a girlboss for a cause that she believes in is also *chef’s kiss*. them being a happy couple is *chef’s kiss* squared.

all in all, I’d say the ending was a 7/10. I’m satisfied, even if it’s not perfect. that being said, the entire show as a whole remains at a 9/10 for me. is good. lesbians in space becomes political drama becomes high-stakes war tragedy becomes family drama becomes lesbians in space again. time well spent.

[shikishake]

it’s a little late now, but I was rewatching volume 9 recently and I wanted to talk about a “fun” little detail I noticed during ruby’s breakdown in episode 7. or, not detail I guess, but a narrative decision.

ruby’s problem, for a long while now, is that she feels like she has to be strong for other people. that she’s not allowed to feel bad. she has to be the optimistic hero girl who always picks people up, who always sees the good in a situation, who always helps people out with a smile. she’s had to do it since she was a child, back when summer died and she just had to be a little ball of sunshine and rainbows for a broken father and a sister that suddenly had to be her surrogate mother. yang could do the housework and the raising. ruby couldn’t do anything. so the least she could do was keep smiling, and make sure that nobody worried about her.

but it’s been getting harder and harder for her to keep up for... maybe 3 volumes? kind of 4, we saw hints of it in volume 5, but that feeling of her forcing herself to step up and inspire her team to keep going was really starting to wear on her in volume 6. it was alleviated a bit in volume 7, primarily during the early part where the gang were being “real” huntsmen and huntresses, doing missions for a kingdom, slaying grimm. it wasn’t EASY, but it was simple. the right thing to do was easy to identify and largely pretty simple to execute.

it crashed back in during the latter half of volume 7 and only got worse as volume 8 continued. the feeling of bearing the responsibility of being the driving force that pushes the gang forward, the weight of having to make the decisions and find the solutions, the constant worry of having to find “the right thing” in a sea of a million ways that things could and did go wrong.

but she’s supposed to be the one to stay positive. she’s the one that helps the others pick up the pieces, the one that motivates her friends to keep going. they need her to do her best and smile and march on like nothing bothers her. and she can’t just keep doing it. like past-ruby said in episode 4: “it’s up to YOU to make it better. everything all depends on you. your sister needs you. your friends need you. the whole world needs you to keep fighting, forever and ever, against an invincible monster that took your mother.”

everyone needs her to be the plucky heroine girl that does her best to save the day. and she just can’t anymore. and when she can’t, when she needs the pick-me-ups, when she’s the one that needs to be inspired to keep going for once, she feels like nobody steps up. they’re relying on her to pick them up when they can’t keep going, but she feels she can’t rely on them to pick her up when she’s the one crushed by the weight of everything.

so it is a BRILLIANT piece of writing that, when she finally snaps, when she finally breaks down... jaune overshadows her. again, another person’s problems are more important than hers. again, the focus is shifted from ruby’s feelings to how someone else feels. jaune breaks down, and you have the brilliant scenes of him screaming about the weight of how penny died and what he had to do, and how he now has to just live with that. yet, in the background, ruby just has to watch as her friends crowd around him to comfort him. the camera fully zooms into jaune, and you don’t even see her until she just can’t deal with it anymore, snaps at blake and runs off.

even when she’s breaking down, they’re assuming that they don’t need to pay attention to her. it’s ruby, right? she’s strong. she can handle it. jaune’s a lot more fragile, a lot more unstable, so it’s fine if they focus on him first, right? she can wait a while, right?

[shikishake]

on a third note: they’re gonna get married your honor. they WILL be wives or there’s gonna be hell to pay. if this ends in tragedy I will never forgive them.

[shikishake]

on another note, is it just me or was the original elan uncharacteristically solemn this episode? man’s been a smug sociopath the entire series but he made not a single smarmy uber-corporate comment. for a dude who’s supposedly in charge(?) of the whole peil gang he didn’t seem particularly enthused by the prospect of blowing up an entire sector of space.

[shikishake]

on today’s episode of mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury, everything actually seems to be going okay for once and then, like there’s some kind of cosmic, karmic force actively keeping things from stabilizing, a laser shows up

[shikishake]

no wait I do have one thought. suletta is fucking incredible, man. just that final scene, her hands bruised and torn, moving blocks of stone with this almost mechanical determination. quietly asking her friends to help search for survivors, continuing to work even while talking. just... such a good person. an absolute gift.

[shikishake]

they’re just kids, man. they deserved better. all of ‘em, even shaddiq, despite how mad I am at him right now. in a just world they would just be going to school, and making friends, and building an identity, and finding out what they want their lives to be like. not this horrible bullshit. I don’t know, I can’t think about anything else, it’s just such a waste.

[shikishake]

so I think we can all agree at this point that miorine's whole 'break her heart to save her' ploy was a misstep. for a lot of reasons, really.

it was a misstep for miorine herself, because she's now isolated herself by pushing away all emotional support she had. it was a misstep because miorine trusted prospera to not be awful. it was a misstep because it robbed suletta of agency and infantilized her, doing things "for her own good" without talking to her first.

but, also, it was a misstep because miorine has fundamentally misunderstood the root of suletta's problems.

miorine concluded that suletta was being manipulated by prospera, and that IS true, but the fundamental issue goes deeper. because, see, I'm convinced that if the question had been "would you kill if aerial asked you to" or "would you kill if miorine asked you to" or anyone else she cares about, the answer would have been the same.

suletta loves and cares unconditionally and with her heart on her sleeve, but she's convinced the opposite isn't true. she thinks everyone who was ever kind to her is kind to her because she's useful. if she isn't needed, she's not worth spending time with. if she isn't useful, she's not worth loving.

so I think the part that miorine messed up isn't the part where she sabotaged the duel and stripped suletta of her holder status, it's the aftermath. if miorine had done all that and then still spent time with suletta, if suletta was no longer useful but miorine still showed she loved her even without that, I think it would have shown suletta that she doesn't NEED to be useful for miorine to care. she doesn't NEED to throw her everything into doing whatever other people want her to do, because even if she doesn't, she is still worth loving.

but miorine thought the problem was prospera, and that without prospera around suletta would be free.

thank fuck for earth house, man.

[shikishake]

today on gundam: witch of mercury, Prospera continues being worst mom and also worst person alive. more news at 11.

[shikishake]

also how is this going to teach Suletta literally anything other than “when you are no longer useful no one will want you around”. girl bases her entire self-worth off of how useful she is to others, so in order to help break that, you... act like you’re throwing her away because she’s no longer useful? c’mon.

[shikishake]

how are these people incapable of being honest with Suletta for like a single conversation. stop doing things “for her own good” and talk to her like she’s an actual human being with thoughts and emotions for like, a single second, PLEASE.

[shikishake]

watching the owl house finale after the recent rwby episode gave me a fuckton of emotional whiplash but honestly I DO feel better, so y’know. recommended.