#2) people who point that out for tsukasa and rui also turn around and do this to emu and nene bc they view them as ruikasa accessories

[apotelesmaa]

I think smthn a lot of people don’t get about nene that bugs me is that her hater thing kind of seems to be 1) more of her actual personality coming through now that she has a group she’s really comfortable with 2) primarily aimed at tsukasa (she’s noticeably nicer to rui although she’ll occasionally make fun of him (fondly) & it’s even rarer for her to poke fun at emu)* 2.2) that’s kind of just the nene & tsukasa dynamic. She doesn’t actually hate him** and he doesn’t take what she says to heart. Fondly bullying your friends is a beautiful art.

*frequently seeing ppl act like she’d pull out the hater vibes with rui completely unprompted or even characters outside of wxs and like. She would not fucking say that.

**cannot fuckin stand seeing people act like she’s actually evil for poking fun at tsukasa leave her alone… also rui (& occasionally emu) literally backs her up frequently bc it is A Bit to them. It is always funny to bully tsukasa tenma and nene is the funniest bitch of them all. Also tsukasa deserves it for his dumb behavior in the main story.

[mizuki-foreshadowing]

English Pronoun Use for Mizuki

As we all know, the members of N25 don't know Mizuki's secret. They've been working with her so long under the impression that of course Mizuki's a girl, that when they meet her for the first time they don't think twice about it.

However, Mizuki's classmates all know her secret, and the gossip and negative attention is what drives Mizuki to chronincally skip school. To some extent, they know about her because of the rumors, but it's also something people meeting her for the first time pick up on, too.

In Mizuki Side Story: Nightcord at 25:00, Part 2, we see a student who's never met Mizuki interact with her for the first time and become disgusted.

In Kamiyama High Festival, Episode 1, we see Kohane meeting Mizuki for the first time. While Kohane is shy around new people, and while she may be getting second thoughts if her day with An means spending time with a stranger, we do see two things in this interaction that mean that the gender interpretation can't simply be written-off.

One is that Mizuki picking up on Kohane getting nervous about her as a trans girl fits cleanly into the event story's core arc. It opens with Mizuki wanting to stay home to avoid more negative attention, An treating Mizuki as a friend and inviting her accommodating for her secret, Mizuki reflecting on her bond with Rui as being the same as Tsukasa helping Toya take agency over his life at the expense of others' expectations, and ending with her and Rui reflecting on their loner days together and how far they've come since then. Narratively then, it is Mizuki's secret that drives her to run away after seeing Kohane's reaction to meeting her.

The second thing, is the choice of English pronoun used for what Kohane says. Mizuki had already introduced herself by first and last name by this point.

Originally, I thought it was a translation challenge; Japanese can freely omit pronouns and has a lot of expression between first name, last name, and honorifics. But, the writers using they/them for Mizuki isn't because it's their default, and it isn't because it's what's most diplomatic or correct for her, it's because it's used to indicate whether the person speaking knows her secret.

In Secret Distance, Episode 6, Mizuki, Ena, and Kanade split up to find Mafuyu after she runs off hearing Mizuki tell the story of the haunted school, of a gifted girl with too much pressure taking her own life. Mizuki searches for Mafuyu in SEKAI but it turns out the other two found Mafuyu quickly and were searching for Mizuki. This is Ena's English dialogue using she/her to refer to Mizuki. One very important detail we know today, is that Ena does not know Mizuki's secret.

In Nightcord at 25:00, Episode 9, we learn how what Mafuyu said, that each of the others secretly want to disappear, is true for Mizuki. The harmful gossip and rumors refer to her with they/them.

However, it isn't the case that they/them in the English dialogue is used for Mizuki when people are saying hurtful things. It's used simply for when the person knows her secret. Rui is the person most in Mizuki's corner, who was there with her at the beginning and helped her to change, and he also refers to Mizuki that way in his English dialogue, in Kamiyama High Festival, Episode 5.

Ena not knowing Mizuki's secret and using she/her for her, with everyone who does know her secret using they/them, regardless of their intent, means that pronoun choice in the English dialogue is a deliberate tool the writers use for telling Mizuki's story.

[thrilling-oneway]

Idk why but it feels like they’re dropping the ball with everything tsukasa related recently. Do they just not know what to do with him anymore?

Nah, I think the previous Tsukasa event was really good, I think this time they just. Needed an event here and he was the only viable option. They're doing two events for every troupe and Nene is obviously gonna be the opera house and they're clearly planning something with Rui too so yeah. Tsukasa. Honestly I think this event could have been really good for him if the writing was better.

Like. They say in i think it was chapter 1 that he needs to learn to act physically in character. Like sure he can run around and do stunts and swordfight but can he do all of that as someone else? It's a pretty interesting thing to look at. Only they rely heavily on plot convenience to show his development. Like they bring up core strength (this is consistent with past stories) and flexibility (this is not consistent at all) as things he needs to work on, then drop these in favour of parkour and how fast he can run?? I understand that the parkour was smth he needed to do for a show, but couldn't do so he was disatisfied with his performance. That's totally in-character and makes even more sense when you read his card story and realise he already lost out on the lead role (shaking colopale WHY DID YOU LEAVE THAT IN THE CARD STORY). But the running is literally Not Relevant at all and only exists as a conflict for plot convenience with the plot device thief charatcer.

The issue is that the thief thing is too... Plot device-y. Yeah yeah wxs typical funny shenanigans but ultimately Tsukasa doesn't really learn much because while he learns the stunt in the end it just... Is completely disconnected from his acting. He improves the running and the parkour but does it as himself, and while the people mistake it for being part of the show and he has to improv, this is after he did all that. So he didn't learn how to do physical theatre in-character... And if the writers decided that it was in-character for the role, Tsukasa has gone back to acting characters similar to himself so again not really learning anything new. There's a really good scene with Daigo in chapter 5 or 6 where he talks about how he figuratively hit a wall and that was kinda the highlight of the event for me (aside from emunene crumbs in Nene's card story lol, and this one shoutout to how much Tsukasa trusts his friends in ch7).

Also they completely forget the thief as soon he's caught lol. Turns out he was a kleptomaniac ex-troupe member but they literally don't bring it up until partway through chapter in in a scene that quite literally begins with "So did you find out who the thief was?". Or something along those lines I'm paraphrasing. It wasn't good asfhsgsdjsjks

I think they do know what they're doing with Tsukasa and what I have read of Star of the Story makes it pretty clear. Tsukasa's current thing is improving in different aspects, like playing smaller roles like in SotS (which he still needs to work on iirc), but it felt like they didn't really know what to do with this event specifically, well they did they just executed it badly and used plot convenience so it could even happen. Oh well maybe this will play into a future Rui event somehow considering he was the one who said he thought Tsukasa needed to work on his core strength for stunts like. Ages ago. Not that Tsukasa worked on his core in this event but WHATEVER I NEED TO STOP COMPLAINING.

Tsukasa6 will probably be in the next wxs arc so they'll probably be back to more relevant stuff for then. Especially since that arc will probably be the "Rui and Tsukasa realise they are going to graduate high school soon and Tsukasa has mentioned multiple times in supplementary materials that he wants to go abroad at some point and they kinda need to work out what they're gonna do and how this will affect wxs" arc (or as I've been calling it: wxs disbandment arc 2 <peggle 2 gif attachment>). So that's fun. But yeah I think they know what they're doing they just needed to pad for time here so Daigo's troupe got two events.